One for One (John Flynn Thrillers Book 3)

by A. J. Stewart

  “We were short staffed.”

  “Explain.”

  “Six men have gone missing.”

  “Missing? What do you mean, missing?”

  “They were out looking into the refugee center thing, and they haven’t checked in, and . . .”

  “And?”

  “They were driving your Suburban. It was possibly seen, leaving the estate shortly after the horse theft.”

  Loup nodded and stepped away and looked at the smashed television.

  “You need to handle this personally, Thierry.”

  “Monsieur, I need to be with you.”

  “I am at Tour Loup all day, with the damn Japanese Deputy Prime Minister. You think someone’s going to get into my building?”

  “There’s something else.”

  “God sake, Thierry, just spit it out.”

  “The horses. They found blood in El Jefe’s stall. A lot of blood.”

  The color passed from Loup’s face. For a moment he looked lost, vulnerable. Then, like a flash, he was back.

  “We have to do the Japanese Deputy PM. After that, cancel my afternoon. Get the jet ready. We’re going down there.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, monsieur.”

  “Do I look like I give a damn what you think?”

  “You’re not supposed to be there this weekend.”

  “And then someone killed my damn horse!”

  “You’re forgetting the Saudi thing.”

  “I’m forgetting nothing. We’re not in the way. We’ll be in this afternoon. If we have to drive back, we’ll drive back. Make it happen.”

  Gorski sat on one of two spare chairs in the small apartment. David the plane spotter was at his desk.

  “The Avro was in Istanbul this morning. It filed suppressed flight plans but I can see it went to Paris Orly.”

  “And then what?”

  “I texted a guy I know up there. He says it’s been refueled and is sitting on the skirt of the taxiway there. It hasn’t gone to the hangar.”

  “So it’s leaving again?”

  “Don’t know for sure, but there’s a chance it’s coming here.”

  Gorski stood. “Thanks David.”

  “There’s something else. A truck came in last night. To the base.”

  “So?”

  “So it carried a cargo container.”

  “Which isn’t going to fit inside an Avro, is it?”

  “No. But the thing is, they didn’t put it in a hangar.”

  “Where’d they put it?”

  “Right there.” David pointed out his apartment window. Gorski stepped out into the small balcony that overlooked the airfield. The runway was on his side of the airfield. On the tarmac at the end of the runway was a blue shipping container.

  “That’s a funny place to put that,” he said.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Gorski thanked David for his time and strode back down the stairs. He hit the fob for Elyse’s rental car and got in and started it. He backed out of the space and then hit the stick into first and drove off.

  And nearly killed David.

  He stood in front of the car, bent over the hood where Gorski had skidded to a stop.

  “Are you out of your mind?” said Gorski.

  “I thought you guys were better at that.”

  “What am I, James Bond?”

  “Whatever. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “I just got a ping from the system. Loup’s jet, the Dassault Falcon 8X. It just took off from Le Bourget. It’s on it’s way here.”

  The flight took an hour. Loup drank two glasses of Remy Martin Black Pearl Louis XIII. They landed and taxied and the stairs were on their way down before the plane had come to a complete stop. A member of the security detail strode down and then ran into the hangar. For a moment there was no movement, and then suddenly the Mercedes G500 zoomed out and skidded to a halt at the bottom of the stairs. Thierry stopped at the top of the stairs and looked around. He had a bad feeling about this whole thing. But he was paid to have bad feelings. And to act on them. He looked around and saw nothing. He strode down the steps and pulled open the door to the Mercedes four wheel drive. Loup followed him down and got straight into the vehicle without breaking stride. A third guy followed Loup and then broke off to go around and get in the front, while Thierry ran around the rear to get in the back with Loup.

  They wasted no time getting to the estate. The Mercedes flew in through the main gate and up to the front steps. Loup ran through the house and out onto the patio and down the path to the stables. The helicopter was on the lawn, which was unusual. They normally moved it before he arrived. He slowed as he got to the stables.

  The stablehand was standing by the door with his head down as if in prayer. The old man had worked for Loup’s father, who was an amateur rider at best. He had tended Loup’s own horses at three Olympic games. He cared for the animals as much as Loup.

  Loup stopped in front of the old man. They looked at each other and then Loup turned to the stables. It hadn’t been cleaned. The blood on the floor was dark and clotted. There wasn’t a lot left. Horses were huge animals and carried a lot of blood in them. But the drain had carried most of it away.

  Loup turned and put a hand on the old stablehand’s shoulder. Loup knew he loved the horses more than life itself. Which was good. Because if his horse was dead, so was the old man. He left the stablehand and wandered back up to the patio. Thierry was waiting.

  “What?”

  “The Suburban. It has GPS tracking. We got a signal.”

  “Where?”

  Thierry tossed something to Loup. He caught it and looked at it. It was a small box with wires coming out of it.

  “By the front gate to the estate,” said Thierry. “They knew where to look.”

  “Are they taunting me? I will hunt them down. I will find every relative, football buddy, ex-girlfriend, pet chihuahua, and kill them all.”

  “Right now, I want to make sure you are secure.”

  “I’m fine, Thierry. You should be worried about yourself.”

  Loup walked away into the house, shouting as he went.

  “Find my damn horses!”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Thierry posted his men around the property in as regular a rotation as he could given he was six down. He focused on the house—the interior and the roof. There were no horses outside so no one was riding, so he left the perimeter open. There was a lot of open space between the forest and the house. A moat of grass, should anyone decide to attack.

  He still had the bad feeling but he didn’t sense that anything would happen at the estate. It seemed that the whole point of the exercise was to get at the horses. He didn’t know if that was for money—ransom or sale—or just to get at Loup. His boss had many enemies, and many jealous friends. But time would tell. Someone would contact them, or they would not.

  “Perhaps the police?”

  “No,” Loup had said. “We must find these men, Thierry. So that I can peel the skin off their hairy backs.”

  Loup sat in a antique armchair opposite a large inglenook fireplace, that crackle and popped with old wood, and played across Loup’s face, making him look not of this world. He rejected the notion of dinner and drank no more.

  At 6:03 p.m., Thierry’s phone rang.

  The screen read Raymond. One of the missing six. Thierry answered.

  “Hallo,” said Thierry.

  “Monsieur Loup will bring two million euros to Les Grottes de La Balme at eight p.m. Failure will result in another dead horse.”

  “We don’t have that kind of cash—”

  The call ended. Thierry hit the screen to return the call but it was dead. The phone had been turned off.

  Loup had stood up, lit by the fireplace behind.

  “What?”

  “They want two million euros. Eight o’clock.”

  “Are they mad?”

&n
bsp; “Or they say they’ll kill another horse.”

  “What do we do?”

  Thierry put up his palm to hold off his boss as he heard the footsteps coming from the basement. Delacourt ran over to him.

  “Did you trace it?”

  Delacourt nodded. “La Balme.”

  “La Balme?” said Loup.

  “They want to meet at the Caves at Le Balme. That’s where they are,” said Thierry. “We’ve got them.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I’ll send my men.”

  “How did they get your number?”

  “The call came from the phone of one of my men. Raymond.”

  “Was it him? On the phone?”

  “I cannot say. I suspect not.”

  “You suspect not? So either your men are so incompetent that six of them were defeated and have gone missing, or they are so traitorous that they are ransoming my horses. So which of these men will you send to the caves, Thierry?”

  “I will send—”

  “You will go!” screamed Loup. “You will find these men and you will capture them and you will bring them back here and you will start cutting things off until they tell me where my horses are. And then I will fill them full of holes so they bleed to death over many weeks. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Oui, monsieur.”

  Loup turned back to the fire and Thierry grabbed Delacourt by his shirt.

  “You watch over him. Wear him like a shirt. Something happens to him, so help me God I will kill you myself.”

  Delacourt nodded. Thierry rounded up three other men to come with him, and took two from upstairs windows to watch over the drawing room that Loup sat in. Then he strode away. The caves were only about twenty minutes south, but he wanted to get there well ahead of time.

  Loup was losing his grip. He could feel it, slipping like perspiring fingers on a cliff’s edge. He was used to being in control and he didn’t like the sensation of not being. Not one little bit. But he knew he would win. These morons, stealing his horses like rustlers from the American West. They really didn’t know what they were dealing with. They thought he was rich and powerful. They could only guess at how rich, and they would never truly know how powerful. He had, together with the others, a reach that exceeded the earth. There was no rock they could hide under, no country, no city, no building that would offer them safe harbor. He would find them and they would die. How slowly would depend on how many of his horses he got back.

  He clenched his fists and felt his knuckles pop with rage. How dare they! Man to man was one thing. Boardroom to boardroom. But to take an innocent animal, the most regal of all. His jaw clenched until it hurt. Then he spun on his heel and stormed out.

  The two men on duty in the room paused and then followed. So did Delacourt. Across the house and out onto the patio, all ablaze with light. Loup charged down the stairs, and onto the path. He heard his feet crunch on the crushed granite as he strode. And then he heard another set of crunching footsteps. He stopped and pivoted. The two men from the house had stopped up on the patio, watching. The third, Delacourt, had followed him like a puppy down onto the path.

  “Leave me,” said Loup.

  “Monsieur Thierry said—”

  “Monsieur Thierry doesn’t pay you! I do! Now leave me.”

  “But, Monsieur.”

  Loup stormed back toward the house. Could he not get any peace? Between his daughter and his wife and mistress and Thierry, he never got a moment. Not even to grieve for an animal that he—what? Cared about? Loved? He couldn’t love a horse. He didn’t know what it was. But this annoying man! Loup strode up to him.

  And punched him in the face.

  Delacourt’s nose exploded and blood ejected all over him and Loup. He stumbled and fell and landed with a crack as his head hit the hard pathway. Loup didn’t wait around. He turned on his heel and strode away. Storming down the path to the stables. A soft glow from the lights around the outside. He got there and looked into the darkened space. The door lay open. There was no point closing it. The horse had bolted, as the saying went.

  Loup shook his head. He caught his breath. For a moment he thought to look back to the house, but he didn’t. He stepped into the barn. He wanted to see the blood. He wanted to make sure it was still there so he could rub their faces in it before they died. He reached through the darkness to find the light switch.

  Instead his arm twisted back on itself, painful and confusing, and then he felt a sharp prick in his neck, and a large hand clasped over his mouth. He thrashed at the attacker, but the darkness was disorientating. And then as he flailed his arms the darkness consumed him, and he fell still.

  It had been a long day. As Flynn had removed the horses from the stable he had seen something unexpected. A small hay loft at the rear of the structure, up among the rafters. He didn’t see the point. In fact, he nearly didn’t see it at all. But it was there and it presented an opportunity. Flynn had returned to the barn after stealing the horses and delivering them to Gorski, and had hurriedly climbed the rafters and lay on the loft space. It was an architectural affectation. There was no hay up there, to be saved and dispensed during a long winter. The food for these horses came packaged with all the right macro and micronutrients that a champion might need. So Flynn lay back in the shadows and watched.

  He waited in the darkness for a long time, and then the stablehand opened the door. He saw the sorrow on the man’s face for the fate of at least one of the horses. Flynn didn’t hate that man. He surely knew that the man he worked for was no saint, but who was? He did his work and cared for the animals better than some parents, and the sorrow he showed was real.

  As the day went on Flynn took stock. With the barn door open he could see everything. First things was the video cameras. They were fixed to the rafters, so he was above them, for now. When the helicopter landed, he scootched across the rafters while attention would on the chopper, and he angled the front camera down a touch. Now it was looking at the barn, but not right to the back of the barn. Tired eyes would struggle to notice the difference on screen.

  He was back on the loft when Loup arrived. The stablehand stood outside and Loup came in and looked at the blood, and then around the barn. For a second he looked up into the rafters and Flynn thought he might be made, but Loup blinked away any semblance of humanity he had, and walked out.

  From there it was more waiting. He done plenty of it. He knew how to power down but not completely power off. Falling asleep was not a great idea, especially given the nature of the dreams that chose to visit him. The sun went down, and Gorski made his call from wherever he thought he could get the security detail to go. And he waited.

  There was no doubt that Loup wouldn’t go to the meet. He would have to have been monumentally stupid if he had. Flynn crept down the rafters via the back stall, and found some things in the cupboard that would be useful. Then he crouched in the corner and waited.

  He was ready to take on three, as many as five. The five would have been a problem. But it wasn’t, because only one appeared. Loup, by himself, his grief for the one thing Flynn had seen him show any affection for, tearing him from his cunning and his business sense, and his pride. He was always going to come back to the stable. When his mask was ripped from him, he was a man underneath, despite what he told himself.

  Flynn simply took two quick, silent steps, grabbed Loup’s arm and stuck him with a solution of high potency Ketamine, a horse tranquilizer that could knock out a horse in seconds. Loup’s meds cabinet was a college kid’s drug habit dream. Flynn used considerably less on Loup, but he was down well before the eight count. Flynn wasted no time. He knew he was on camera now, and after everything that had happened, they had to be watching the security cameras like hawks. Flynn squatted down and let Loup drop over his shoulders, then pushed up and ran out of the stables like a fireman performing a daring rescue.

  The guy who would be watching the security cameras was lying on the crushed granite path near th
e stairs to the patio. Delacourt was trying to stem the blood flowing from his nose. The two other guys on the patio were watching him but didn’t seem in any hurrying to help. Then one of them yelled, “Hey!” and ran down the steps four at a time. Delacourt looked up to see someone in the distance, carrying someone else across his shoulders, and then he closed his eyes as it became too painful to keep them open.

  The two guards saw Loup being carried away. How or by whom was impossible to say, but they ran hard down the path. The guy had about three hundred meters head start, but he was carrying a hopefully not dead weight. He got to the woods about two hundred meters ahead. The two guards ran into the trees and stopped dead. It was pitch black. They couldn’t see the guy or Loup anymore. For a moment they listened. Nothing. Light footfalls to the left, perhaps deer. Straight ahead? A dark, icy cold river. One guy tapped the other and directed him to go back out onto the lawn and run to the far side of the property. If the guy with Loup went that way, the guard would be sure to get to the road by the side of the property first. He took off back onto the grass. The other guy moved into the dark woods. It took a few minutes of stumbling but he came out on the water’s edge. Large dark rocks bordered the icy flow from the mountains. He looked along the bank where there was one and saw nothing so he turned back. Hopefully his partner found the guy. Otherwise Thierry was going to be majorly upset. The guy started working on a story that blamed Delacourt.

  Flynn hit the trees and didn’t stop. He knew the terrain a little better than most. He’d spent hours roaming around in it, lying in it. He pushed through the woods, Loup’s feet occasionally knocking Flynn off course as they hit a tree trunk. The guys behind only had about three hundred meters to catch up, and Flynn had one hundred meters of clear and three hundred meters of forest to run. He counted down another hundred and then slowed as he figured the guys behind would reach the trees. But he didn’t stop. The forest was a hive of activity at night. There was movement and sound everywhere. Mammals and rodents and insects. Flynn moved quietly among the cacophony.