One for One (John Flynn Thrillers Book 3)

by A. J. Stewart

The general blinked hard again. His mind drifted. Why was this man here? This legionnaire. This traitor.

  “You killed one of my men,” said Flynn.

  “I should have killed you all. But they will. Now that you’re back. They’ll kill you all.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You stood have stayed hidden.”

  “They should have let me.”

  Flynn wrapped a cloth around the general’s mouth and pulled it tight, and then he took a knife from his back. His preferred blade. A Glauca B1. Three razor sharp edges.

  “I don’t have a lot of time. Your men will come back, so . . .”

  He stuck the knife deep into the general’s thigh. Thoreaux screamed into the gag. Flynn waited until the scream became a whimper but didn’t remove the knife.

  “In Iraq, you ordered me to stand down even though I wasn’t in your chain of command. Who told you to do that?”

  The general shook his head. Flynn rocked the knife back and forth and Thoreaux screamed silently again.

  “Who ordered you?”

  Tears ran down the general’s cheeks. He couldn’t comprehend how this man had made his career—his life—go all so horribly wrong. Flynn pulled the knife out and the general grimaced.

  “Who?” Flynn pulled the gag loose. He put the knife between the general’s legs. “And if you try to scream—”

  “They’ll kill you. They’ll kill your family. They’ll kill everyone you know.”

  “They already tried that. Now who.”

  The general gave Flynn the name. It meant nothing to him, but it would soon enough.

  “Is he army?”

  “No,” said Thoreaux. “Palais de l'Élysée.”

  “Palais de l'Élysée?” Flynn repeated.

  The general nodded. “See, you cannot defeat them.”

  “Is he one of the eight?”

  “The eight? This is a wives’ tale, a rumor. There is no eight. They are everywhere.”

  Flynn stood and nodded. “D’accord.”

  Thoreaux jutted his chin, defiantly. “Now what? You will kill me, like a savage?”

  “Oui,” said Flynn.

  The general’s chin dropped, as did his bravado.

  “I have money. I can pay you.”

  Flynn frowned. “Okay.”

  The general was surprised, but then thought he shouldn’t be. The legion was nothing more than savages and criminals. Of course they could be bought.

  “Where is the money?”

  “In the floor, under that chair,” said the general, nodded at a large reading chair.

  Flynn pulled the chair back and found a section of tile cut in a square. He lifted the section out to reveal a safe.

  “The combination?”

  Thoreaux offered Flynn a snarl so he held up the knife. The general gave him the combination and he opened the safe. Inside he found cash, watches and a gun. He left the weapon and the timepieces. The cash was a small amount of West African CFA francs and a large amount of Euros. Flynn pulled a plastic bag from his pack and deposited the money inside, and then looked back to the general.

  “I knew it,” said the general. “Once a mercenary, always a mercenary.”

  Flynn shook his head.

  “I’m not a mercenary, general. I’m a legionnaire.”

  Flynn held up his Glock and shot the general in the head.

  The gunshot was loud and although the building would absorb some of the sound, he didn’t wait around for someone to come and check on the general’s welfare.

  Flynn found them in the third room he tried. Two girls, freshly cleaned and dressed, sitting on a sofa, terrified. He looked like the other men in the house so they had no reason or motivation to trust him. But he assumed they would be compliant, through fear if nothing else.

  “Parlez vous Français?” Flynn asked them. He got blank stares in reply. It wasn’t uncommon for people in the townships to not speak French but Flynn had picked up a couple of words of the Mossi language while in country.

  “Home,” he said. Still nothing.

  He waved his hand and smiled.

  “Home.”

  He showed them the open door and slowly they stood. He led them out, half watching forward for danger, half looking back to encourage. He got to the stairs and looked down for guards. He saw none, but he knew they had to move. The van would get back to the barracks and find nothing happening. How long they took to get back would depend on whether they picked up on the so-called attack being a decoy, and on their concern for their employment tenure.

  Flynn directed the girls across the breezeway and straight out the front door to the petit véhicule protégé that sat waiting. Unlike the civilian SUV, the military PVP required no key, so Flynn shuffled the girls in the back and then jumped into the cab. He flicked the switch and fired up the engine, and drove straight for the front gate and then came to a stop right in front. He slipped out and pulled the steel stake from the latch. He hadn’t wanted the guard to get it if they had returned earlier. Now he needed out.

  But he couldn’t open the gate alone. He put his shoulder into it but got almost no movement. Then the man appeared. It was the same guy that Flynn had helped close the gate in the first place. The man nodded to Flynn and then gestured for them to both put their back into it. Together they pushed the gate open, revealing the busy street outside.

  Flynn wiped sweat from his brow and looked at the man who had helped him. The man gave him no smile.

  “C'est un mauvais homme,” said the man.

  “No more,” said Flynn. “He is a bad man no more.”

  Flynn jumped back into the PVP and pulled out into the traffic. He headed out of town, in the general direction of the barracks, and he saw a dozen vans that might have been the men returning to Thoreaux’s house. He wasted no attention on them. He headed for a township but not near the barracks. This was where the van with no windows had gone. He drove by memory and stopped the PVP outside the same corrugated iron structure. No one came out. Perhaps they thought Flynn was there take more girls away. Instead he opened the back and helped the two girls out.

  For a moment they refused to go back inside, unsure of what Flynn wanted from them. He waved them away and they seemed to understand the sign language, and they stepped backward into the house, not taking their eyes off Flynn.

  No one came out but he didn’t leave. He stood by the vehicle and waited. Eventually the man who he had spoken to when the girls were taken came out from behind the structure. He was shirtless and sweating. His look was not one of thanks.

  “You bring trouble for my family,” he said.

  “There will be no trouble,” said Flynn.

  The muscles in his arms ripped in place of a facial expression. “They are soiled. They bring shame to us.”

  “Not so. They are not soiled. Nothing happened. I assure you.”

  The man watched Flynn for something. Perhaps the truth. The man wiped his mouth with his hand.

  “You bring trouble for my family,” he said again.

  “No,” said Flynn. “The man who took them is dead.”

  The man shook his head. Flynn pulled from his daypack the plastic bag containing the money he had taken from General Thoreaux’s safe. He tossed it to the man. He looked in the bag but registered no surprise at what he found there. He glanced back at Flynn.

  “What do you want?”

  “Take that,” Flynn said, nodded at the bag. “Take your family away. Go to Côte d'Ivoire, go to Ghana. Anywhere. You have enough to buy a house. You can get a job. But there’s one condition.”

  The man looked at him now as if this was what he had been waiting for. There was always a condition.

  “You have to leave today. Those bad men, some of them will come here, looking for me. You must not be here anymore.”

  The man looked at the bag and again at Flynn. His face told Flynn he thought the entire thing was too good to be true. But he understood that whether he liked it or not, the die ha
d been cast, and the bad men would come. But for once he had a way out.

  He nodded again to Flynn and then turned toward the house and ran to the door. When he got there he turned back to offer his thanks.

  But Flynn was gone.

  The phone rang on the man’s bedside table. He wasn’t asleep but he was tucked away from the cold Parisian night, warm and comfortable under a thick duvet and silk sheets. He stuck an arm out to collect the cell phone.

  “Oui.”

  “Alain, It’s Henri. Have you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “Thoreaux.”

  “Who?”

  “General Thoreaux, Burkina Faso taskforce.”

  “D’accord. What of him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  The man called Alain sat up in bed. His wife lay beside him, sound asleep. She had worn earplugs for years. More for his snoring than anything, but they helped when the phone rang in the middle of the night.

  “How?”

  “Shot in the head.”

  “In the field?”

  “In his home. The unofficial one.”

  The man in bed grunted. He knew of the general’s extracurricular activities. But such things were tolerated as long as they didn’t get out of hand. It was Africa, after all. Nobody really cared, as long as it didn’t end up on the news.

  “Terrorists?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so? What does that mean?”

  “The local guards he used were drawn away by an explosion. But I suspect that was a ruse.”

  “Thoreaux being shot doesn’t sound like a ruse.”

  “No. But his close protection were ours.”

  Alain grunted again. Losing French soldiers would make the news. They couldn’t cover that up. And then people might start digging.

  “How many lost?”

  “That’s the thing. None.”

  “Explain.”

  “All the close protection were taken down with tranquilizer darts—the kind of thing they use on lions and tigers. A potent barbiturate, fast acting, but not deadly in the dose given.”

  “Someone broke into his home, shot the guards with tranquilizers but then shot Thoreaux in the head. I assume not with a tranquilizer.”

  “A single 9mm round.”

  “So they wanted the general dead but not any of his men?”

  “That appears to be so.”

  “What do we make of this?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Any leads?”

  “There were two girls, the general’s toys. They were taken. Our men went to their village, but they were not there.”

  Alain looked at his watch. It was too late for early papers, but the internet was a twenty-four hour news source. “We cannot have the general dead in his home.”

  “No. I have arranged it. I just need your sign off. He will die tomorrow, in a vehicle accident. A possible roadside bombing. We could use it to get more troops out of your man.”

  “Thoreaux has a bullet wound in his head.”

  “It will be a bad accident. A closed casket.”

  The man in bed nodded. “D’accord. Make it so.”

  He ended the call and looked down at his sleeping wife. The general had outlived his usefulness anyway. The girls, the guns, the mini empire. It was no great loss. Alain put the phone on his bedside table and slid back under the covers. He would find a suitable replacement in the morning.

  Chapter Two

  Southern Poland

  The air was cold and fresh as John Flynn marched through the town of Zakopane. It was as fine an alpine village as he had ever seen. Alpine chalets and mountains views that rivaled anything in Austria or Switzerland or France. People in thick coats filled the streets, making their way to coffee houses or to busses headed for the ski slopes in the area known as Poland’s winter capital.

  Flynn shrugged his daypack on his back and marched on. It was good to be out in the fresh air after spending a couple of hours packed in a bus from Kraków. He watched families hefting skis and snowboards, the blanket of snow putting smiles on pink cheeks. Hungry after his bus journey, Flynn stopped off for some apple cake and espresso, before heading out from the town toward the mountains.

  The Tatras Mountains marked the southern border of Poland with Slovakia and, due to years behind the iron curtain, had still not made it onto many tourist maps outside of the eastern part of the continent. Flynn marched with energy, brought on by both the vistas and the thought of his destination. He rested in a clearing and snacked on some przysmak piwny, a local version of beef jerky, and sipped on ice cold water. Every ten or fifteen minutes he saw a new view that took his breath away. The snow covered peaks of Kasprowy Wierch watched him the entire way.

  It was late in the afternoon when Flynn came upon the old farmhouse. It was classic Zakopane architecture, reminiscent of Swiss and Austrian chalets but distinct in its own way. It was more modest than the buildings around the resorts, old but in good repair. The track leading up to farmhouse was covered in a layer of snow even late in the season. Flynn noted no tire tracks, and his boots were covered with every step.

  As he reached the property itself Flynn noticed that there was no smoke coming from the chimney. There was every possibility the house was vacant, which would make the trip fruitless but for the glorious scenery. Then he saw the barn. The door lay ajar and the sound of hydraulic equipment cut through the frigid air.

  Flynn pushed the door further open, more to announce his presence than to gain access, and then he stepped inside. An old pickup truck of a make and model he was not familiar with took up the front of the barn. Tools lay scattered around the floor. Flynn stopped before the grille, next to the legs than protruded out from under the vehicle.

  “I knew you would come,” said the man under the truck. He spoke English, not Polish.

  “That right?” replied Flynn.

  “I knew you were on your way two weeks ago. I really expected you yesterday.”

  “I stopped in Kraków an extra day. I needed a new coat.”

  The man pushed back on a dolly and slid out from underneath the vehicle. He got up slowly, wiping his hands with a rag. He wore gray overalls and a long Slavic nose.

  “Mon adjudant,” he said.

  “Not anymore. We’re not in the Legion now. It’s good to see you.”

  Flynn stepped forward and gave the man a brief hug. Each man slapped the others back and then pulled away. Flynn recalled that his old friend was not much one for physical displays of affection.

  “You too,” he said. It’s been too long.”

  “Yes it has. So I don’t suppose you go by Alex Gorecki, anymore.”

  “No, not that there was ever a lot of imagination put into it. It’s Gorski, Aleksy Gorski. Gorski and Gorecki both derive from the Polish word for mountain. And you?”

  “John Flynn.”

  “That suits you better than Fontaine. I always thought that was a little fancy for you.”

  “I guess the admin officials in Legion headquarters got bored easily. They had to make up a lot of noms de guerre.”

  “Well it’s good to see you, John. Come, I’ll make coffee. I remember how you like it.”

  The men walked along a shoveled out path to the farmhouse. They kicked the snow off their boots and then stepped into a mudroom where they sat and removed them. Inside, the farmhouse was basic but spotless. A Kratki woodburning stove sat dormant in the corner of the snug living room. Flynn noted the absence of a television. The kitchen was farmhouse style with butcher block counters. Gorski used a mocha pot on an electric stovetop to boil up a thick coffee that he poured into two small cups.

  “Czarna kawa,” he said. “Black coffee.”

  “It’s excellent. I don’t recall it being your thing.”

  “Not when we spent most of our time in Africa or the Middle East. Too hot. I could never understand how you drank it when it was forty degrees outside.” H
e paused. “Can I use celsius, or have you forgotten?”

  “I grew up in Europe, pal. I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Good, good. Here in Polska, it’s always good coffee weather.”

  “It really is glorious here. Is it just you?” asked Flynn.

  “Yes, and yes. Just me. Come, take a seat.”

  They sat at a heavy wooden table off the kitchen and sipped their coffee.

  “What about you?” asked Gorski. “Where did you go after you died? Home?”

  Flynn paused. He wasn’t sure where home was exactly. Not then, not now. He was American, so that was sort of home. But he had no really family left there. As the son of a Marine he had grown up on overseas military bases and spent most his teens in Brussels, Belgium, where his father was a NATO liaison. He had only ever been to the United States the once, with his father and brother, on a brief trip to New York.

  “Sort of,” he said. “I went to the United States. Colorado.”

  “Is it nice there?”

  “It is. Kind of like here. I bought some land in the mountains, had a little house there. It was nice, quiet.”

  Gorski looked around the kitchen and nodded. “I like it here.”

  “I can see why.”

  “So you never met anyone?” asked Gorski.

  “I did. I took a trip to California and met a girl. We lived together for a few years, just outside of San Francisco.”

  “What happened?”

  Flynn reminded himself how direct Gorecki—make that Gorski—had always been. Straight to the point.

  “My past caught up with me.”

  Gorski sipped his coffee but said nothing. They finished their coffee and then Aleksy took Flynn for a walk through the back of his property. They strode across deep snow in an upper field and paused on the tree line to overlook the valley all the way to the mountains.

  “How much of this do you own?” Flynn asked.

  “Just the area around the house. I’m just on the boundary. Everything you see before you is national park, so I don’t need to own it.”

  “It’s spectacular.”

  “I know.”

  “And quiet.”

  “In winter people mainly stay to the resorts. In summer there is a lot of hiking, but the main trail around here passes about a kilometer away from my house, so I usually only see the lost and the adventurous.”