Hell In High Heels --- A Jane Delacroix erotic novel: Sex, Sin, and Slaughter in Southern California (9 page)

               Using the converted M1911A1 to cover the bodyguard cadre, the American DIA agent used the smaller 9mm pistol to pin Hun Sen in place.

               "I have never seen a more grotesque example of amateur hour in my fucking life, and I was in the goddamn Congo in 1960. You people are pathetic and seriously about to piss me off. General, you better calm your boys the fuck down or I will kill everyone, burn this house to the goddamn ground and start over in Cambodia from fucking scratch!"

               He turned and glared at the stunned warlord. "Don't believe me?" The General, still holding his bloody ear, just whimpered. "Tell them!" Javacovitch snapped.

               Hun Sen muttered something in Cambodian. Scowling, Boupha slowly backed up. The chief bodyguard nodded at his two men and they lowered their weapons.

               Javacovitch lowered the PPK then slid it into his shoulder holster. He lowered the fully automatic Colt but let it stay down by his side. He turned toward Hun Sen.

               "I know, I know. Everyone loves a great torture and gang rape, especially after their pride has been hurt. But let me remind you that with a single phone call I can get B-52's rolling straight over your opium fields. This close to harvest? Guess what 20 tons of jellied gasoline would do to your poppies. Go ahead, picture it."

               Javacovitch walked over to Boupha. The Cambodian glared out at him from under a beetled brow. Javacovitch smiled. The man looked confused. Javacovitch laid the heavy barrel of the .45 upside the Cambodian's temple with a single, whip like crack.

               Boupha went down. His legs folded up underneath him in an unnatural angle and his thick jaw hung open like a door with a broken hinge. Javacovitch looked down at him like a sewer inspector regarding a leaking pool of waste.

               "Hun. Or Sen. Whatever, I still get confused by which is the family name," Javacovitch sighed. "I've read this bimbo's file--"

               "Fuck you and the horse you road in on," Jane told him.

               The DIA agent continued as if she hadn't spoken. "And she's just a Hollywood escort. I'd say she was almost a private dick, but that's just ridiculous given her jugs. Hugh Hefner thought he had something with Monroe? Shit, this girl makes Jayne Mansfield look flat chested."

               "Dream all you want, asshole." Jane sneered.

               "The
point
is," Javacovitch continued "don't you think it's just a little bit above her typical operational status to be helping in an investigation of you? She should be following movie stars around, sucking cock and snapping blackmail pictures. She's being used as a stalking horse, Sen. Someone in my government has stumbled onto our op, and I have to know who it is in order to quash it."

               Boupha got to his feet, eying the DIA man murderously. The other two bodyguards came forward to help him up, but he waved them impatiently away. It was an unintentional parody of his attempts to help his own boss earlier.

              He glowered at Javacovitch, the side of his head swelling from the blow he'd taken.

               "You feeling froggy, boy?" the ex-Green Beret asked. "Leap."

               Boupha looked away. Javacovitch looked at him in disgust. He however decided not to turn his back on the man anytime soon. He looked toward the General who got slowly to his feet.

               "General, we need to talk for a moment. I really don't want Miss Delacroix here, your opium whore, or anyone of the three Stooges there, overhearing what I have to say."

               Hun Sen turned toward his men and nodded. Scowling, the unit left the wine cellar, standing on the landing at the bottom of the stairs and pulling cigarettes out. Javacovitch shut the wine cellar door in their face.

               The American turned toward Jane, her head was held funny, all of her blonde hair hanging thickly to one side. It seemed slightly out of place, but the DIA agent didn't have time to figure out what was wrong. The clock was ticking and if he was going to salvage anything from the Hun Sen asset operation then he'd have to hurry.

               Before that he needed to give the warlord very specific instructions. Turning his back on the bound and naked Jane, he waved Hun Sen toward the secundum at the back of the wine cellar. He hadn't made up his mind if he need to kill the whore or not. If she were an FBI proxy it might be his only course. If she was operating under the auspices of the CIA however, he might be able to extract himself from this mess, and prosecution, by turning the whole Cambodian mess over to The Company.

               Just that quickly Jane found herself suddenly alone. She wasted little time.

               Turning her head to the side, her hair fell back and revealed Hun Sen's switchblade. Slowly, carefully, she grasped the pear handled stiletto in her white, even teeth and lifted her head to the side. Stubbornly, slowly at first, the tip of the knife pulled clear from the wood.

               She paused, knife in her mouth like a pirate, and considered her situation. She was nimble, she was agile. Compared to a man she was weak, but her flexibility was a strong point. She grinned, David Sten certainly thought so. The ribald humor helped settle her nerves. She needed to be on, dialed in, because she wasn't getting a second chance.

               Her hands were bound at the wrist to the leg of the writing desk. The legs of the little table were short, her limbs lovely and long. The fingers of her hands could reach the floor. The problem was they were growing more numb with each passing second.

               However, one of the things on her side was that General Hun Sen could afford the best. The stiletto was no cheap throwaway knife used by street punks. It was a weapon designed for killing, for style and durability. It's weight was balanced perfectly.

               Stretching her neck out she tried to touch her right ear to her shoulder. Blood was caked on the bake of her thighs and the spidery-touch memory of Hun Sen's grotesque fingers still burned her flesh. She opened her mouth. The pearl handle bore her lipstick kiss.

               It fell like a dart straight down into the old packed earth of the cellar floor. The point drove into the dirt like the proverbial knife through hot butter until half its long blade stuck. The handle didn't even quiver as it came to a stop.

               She had been perfect.

               She reached out with strong, clever fingers tipped by nails painted red as her lipstick, as red as her flowing blood, and grasped the switchblade. Deftly, she turned it like a surgeon holding a scalpel and began working on the ropes pinning her right wrist.

               If she got half a chance she was going to unleash hell on these bastards and the FBI could worry about its own goddamn investigation.

The ocelot was a perfect design of nature.

               A little over three feet long, the predator feline weight 40lbs of compact muscle. Its night vision was phenomenal, so far beyond human capability it was very nearly machine-like in its perception. Vision wasn't the only way it hunted, however.

               From the tip of Texas, down through the jungles of Central and South America into the northern ranges of Argentina, the cat hunted by exploiting the odor trails of its prey. While not a bloodhound, the cat's olfactory abilities were considerable.

               This ocelot's name was Marty and his owner was Jane Delacroix.

               Uncannily intelligent, even for a species touted for its startling mental acuity, the wild cat barely tolerated Detective David Sten. Despite their uneasy truce revolving around Jane, the LAPD detective knew he could count on the feline for what he needed.

               At the foot of the estate's wall, he set the Ocelot down.

              He'd driven like a madman to Jane's place where he'd taken a change of clothes, a painter's step ladder she used to change her light bulbs, and Marty.

Wherever Jane was, the cat wanted to be. If the woman was within a mile of the animal it would unerringly move to be by her side. The bond they shared had always struck Sten as odd, preternatural somehow, or even psychically empathetic. It seemed like a lot less beloved pet and a lot more witch's familiar (he was careful to never share this insight with Jane).

              He didn't understand it, he'd never seen anything like it, but he trusted it.

               "Look, Kitty," he muttered. They were crouched in the bushes at the back of the big house. "You need to go to Jane. Find your girl, buddy."

               The Ocelot looked at him with the huge saucer eyes designed for nocturnal hunting. It purred low down in its chest with a fierce rumble. It yawned and its jaw seemed to almost unhinge, revealing formidable fangs that Jane kept ivory white by brushing them just like a baby's. Its tongue was long, pink and rough as sandpaper.

               "Come on," Sten urged. "Don't make a monkey out of me, goddamn it."

               The feline regarded him. Its look was haughty as a nonplussed Jane Delacroix. Sten closed his eyes tightly against his mounting frustration.

               "
Please
," he gritted out.

               He opened his eyes, prepared for disappointment. It had been an ass stupid idea anyway. Who'd he think he was, a circus act? Lorene Green, maybe?”

               The ocelot was gone. Startled, Sten looked around. The cat looked down at him from the top of the estate wall.

               "Now we're cooking with gas!"

               The cat lazily turned its head toward the big house then disappeared in a single, fluid leap.

               "Christ! Wait for me!" Sten hissed.

               Quickly, he threw the step ladder against the wall and scrambled up.

He prayed he was in time.

              The last ropes came away with a
snik
and Jane sagged against the table for a moment in relief. Her considerable chest heaved with the pounding of her heart, unintentionally provocative by the sheer, raw, sexuality of her form.

               Her soft flesh was covered with bruises, blood painted her thighs making the white down of her pubic hair seemed framed in the scarlet. The makeup on her face was smeared and her hair was wild. She gathered her will and stood straight. Naked as Eve in the Garden, she looked like a mythological warrior woman holding the wicked blade of the spring-loaded stiletto.

               She looked around quickly. Time was not on her side. All bad humor to the side, running and scrambling without a bra was not an easy task; she would never out run the ultra-lean Cambodians or a man as fit as that sonofabitch, Javacovitch

               Her legs were good, Hollywood perfect, but it was her brain that was going to get her out of this. Looking around she spotted only two doors out of the underground chamber. Behind one, she heard Boupha and his men talking. It was an obvious no go. It was also the only way to the stairs. The other door was where Javacovitch had taken Hun Sen. There were no windows.

               Growing more frantic, she cast about. She saw rack upon rack of dusty wine bottles. The table she'd been tied to, and the coils of rope used to tie her down. A single powerful light hung from the ceiling.

               The ceiling.

               She craned her head and looked up. Old World rafters, arched over the cool, stone walls. The style had been fashionable when Mexico controlled California, used almost exclusively by the Catholic friars in building their monasteries. The worn wooden supports ran thick with shadows and cobwebs.

               It wasn't perfect, hell it wasn't even good---but it was all she had.

               Moving quickly, she clambered up onto the table where just moments before she'd been helpless and bound at the whim of villains. Placing the stiletto back between her teeth, she reached out her long arms and jumped like a gymnast.

               Her hands caught the worn wood of the rafter and she almost slipped. The muscles of her arms stood out in vivid relief as she struggled to hold on. In the next breath she found her purchase and swung up. Maneuvering into position quickly she crouched, cat-like on the beam.

               She wasted no time in reaching down and pulling the cord to the light up. When it was close she struck the bulb once, sharply, with the hilt of the switchblade. There was a tinkling of falling glass and the cellar plunged into darkness.

              
David Sten,
she thought,
where the hell are you?

               The first thing Marty found was the Doberman.

               Sten came over the wall and bounced off the ground with the gun up and in his hand, cocked and locked. He caught a flash of tawny fur cutting out through the landscaping and heading for an open patio door around the big, kidney shaped swimming pool.

               He came up and started sprinting hard, the Ocelot was already onto something besides the heavy stink of smoke, that much was obvious. His soles made indiscreet slapping sounds as he vaulted a low metal railing and landed on the concrete laid around the pool.