His brain floating, Horse watched the wake of the tug and cargo barge chujn the dark ocean. He had been a child and teenager on Catalina. The people had beaten him, jailed him, humiliated him, driven him out of their precious community.
Now he returned.
He returned with a gang of seventy-two felons, psychopaths, addicts.
He came back with a Plan. A lethal plan conceived and drafted by the only man Horse had ever admired: an ally, a friend, and a man of wealth and prestige and position.
He came back with a white-hot hatred for the community that had rejected him. The people of the island would suffer the terror of the Outlaws. The people would die. And their terror and death would make Horse rich beyond his dreams.
2
Fearful of a Japanese invasion of California during World War II, the United States Maritime Service had turned Catalina Island into a fortress and training ground for the armed services.
Closed to the public throughout the war years, only a few civilians had remained on Catalina. Submarines, aircraft carriers and battleships crowded the waters beyond Avalon Bay and Two-Harbors on the island's isthmus. Units from every branch of the armed forces trained on the island. As part of the military presence, the Maritime Service installed a network of loudspeakers and air-raid sirens throughout the city of Avalon.
With the end of the Second World War and the dismantling of the military installations, the network of speakers and sirens remained, intact and periodically tested, as part of the Civil Defense program, in case of another global conflict or the threat of disaster.
Now, suddenly, the sirens ripped the silence of sleeping Avalon.