by Tony Lavely
Carina (Cari) Betheler
A dancer
Fat Guy
Kidnapper for hire, Punk’s partner
Punk
Another kidnapper for hire
Jack
Kidnappers’ leader
Ian Jamse
Mercenary - principal of Ian Jamse, LLC
Susan (Sue, Three) Jinet
One of Jamse’s team
Doctor Liam Stone
Cari’s professor
Kevin deVeel
Ian’s partner
Rebecca (Beckie, Kie) Sverdupe
Seventeen YO who Jamse believes he needs
Michael (Mike) Sverdupe
Beckie’s younger brother
Melissa (Lissa) Durst
Beckie’s best friend
Nigel
Proprietor of The Retro Place, a Soho strip club
Nancy
A dancer at The Retro Place, house mother
Barbara Saunders
One of Jamse’s team
Patrice
Pilot, one of Jamse’s team
Cäcilie [sa-see’-ya (En. Cecilia)]
Werner’s aide de camp
Miguel
Jamse’s Italian associate
Villa staff
Tonio
One of Miguel’s team
Adolph Werner
Child sex slaver
three women
Derek Hamilton
One of Jamse’s team
—
EVALUATION
June - July
Wendy (Cinq) Grove
Abducted middle-schooler
Kylie (Kyle, Six)
Abducted Middle-schooler, Wendy’s friend
William
Kylie’s boyfriend
[Carol]
Kidnapper
[Seth]
Kidnapper
[Trigger happy guard]
[Short Stack] Cyrus
Large bald man - keeper of girls
[Jas]
Keeper of girls
Kevin deVeel
Sergeant Lamont
California police officer
Ian Jamse
Susan Jinet
Barbara Saunders
Derek Hamilton
Jean-Luc Fereré
Pilot, one of Jamse’s team
Police liaison officer
The Groves
Wendy’s parents
Lisa Grove
Wendy’s younger sister
Rebecca Sverdupe
James (Jim) Sverdupe
Beckie and Mike’s father, Jean’s husband
Nigel
Nancy
Bethany Stadd
One of Jamse’s team, a dancer at The Retro Place
Julia
Carol’s sister, a dancer at The Retro Place
Carol
Julia’s sister, a dancer at The Retro Place
Patrice
Jean Sverdupe
Beckie and Mike’s mother, Jim’s wife
Michael Sverdupe
Melissa Durst
Mister Wright
Jim Sverdupe’s roommate in hospital
Megan
An abducted girl
The doctor
One of Werner’s staff in Arizona
The Boss
One of Werner’s staff, in charge in Arizona
Wilem
One of Werner’s staff, a photographer
Karen Wilson
Pilot and trooper, one of Jamse’s team
Freddie Wilson
One of Jamse’s team
Dan Wu
One of Jamse’s team
Rosa
An abducted middle-schooler
Ana
An abducted middle-schooler
Samuel (Sam) Dabron
One of Jamse’s team
Willie Llorens
One of Jamse’s team
Elena Rios
One of Jamse’s team
Doctor Millie Ardan
Chief doctor, a trauma surgeon, one of Jamse’s team
Sydney
An abducted middle-schooler
Ashley
An abducted middle-schooler
Erin
Erica’s twin, an abducted middle-schooler
Erica
Erin’s twin, an abducted middle-schooler
Shalin deVeel
Kevin’s wife
Maurice Boynton
Jamse’s aide and factotum
Trillian
Jamse’s ocelot
—
CLOSURE
July
Rebecca Sverdupe
Susan Jinet
Kevin deVeel
Shalin deVeel
Jim Sverdupe
Jean Sverdupe
Derek Hamilton
Jean-Luc Fereré
Kiel Lot
Thai policeman
Willie Llorens
Thai taxi driver
Two Phuket police
Cäcilie
Li Meile
Abused girl in Thailand
Wu Ting
Abused girl in Thailand
Adolph Werner
Zhang Xia
Translator
Melissa Durst
Trillian
Maurice Boynton
Mike Sverdupe
Go Shen
Handles security for the Nest, one of Jamse’s team, Rou’s husband
Go Rou
Administrator, one of Jamse’s team, Shen’s wife
—
() indicates a nick- or alternate name
[] indicates the name is not used
About This Book
ALLURE IS A RECASTING OF the original Mercenaries book, Mercenaries: A Love Story. It has been revised, heavily edited and given a new cover. Beckie’s introduction to Ian Jamse now stands alone, as Sandfall. In Allure, Ian elects to invite Beckie into a job he has accepted. He discovers disinviting her to be more difficult. One of the Mercenaries stories, Allure is a young adult thriller set in an approximation to the real world.
At this writing, the Mercenaries stories include (and are best read in the following order):
Sandfall
Allure
Freedom Does Matter
Connections
Coda?
Coming early in 2016:
Discoveries
In process:
Princess (working title)
Ralf and Catrin (working title)
The links will take you to Amazon, where you may peruse more information on these, and of course, purchase one or more.
About the Author
Tony Lavely lives with his lovely, compassionate wife in Massachusetts, USA, in reasonable proximity to their children and grandchildren. Being RIFed has provided ample time for him to pursue writing. Allure is a heavy revision of his first novel. It is an thriller set in a close approximation to the real world.
He was privileged to be a part of the Twelve Worlds Anthology for Charity, still available at on-line outlets. This collection of short stories benefits Reading Is Fundamental, and meeting (on-linely) the other authors was great fun and excellent experience. Those guys are great! (‘Guys’ used in the best The Electric Company tradition: “Hey, you guys!”)
He reads fantasy and adventure, confidently believes that The Muppet Movie is one of the best movies ever made, and his iPod playlist includes works from Beethoven to Twisted Sister. “Big Balls” by AC/DC is also one of Mike’s favorites.
He blogs at http://www.tonylavely.com/
On Twitter: twitter.com/tlavely
Email: atl.for.writing at gmail.com.
If you find a typo in this book and report it with this number (CS151223.3), you can score a copy of Freedom Does Matter or any of Tony’s other books, as well as his thanks.
Excerpt Freedom Does Matter
This story follows Allure by a year and a half. Beckie and Ian have their troubles, like any real co
uple in love. The excerpt is from a post-release version.
Chapter One
The Beginning - Cairo
KEVIN DEVEEL SNAPPED THE NOTEBOOK closed and slid it across the table to Ian Jamse, his partner in the mercenary team they’d helmed for almost twenty years. He examined the room one more time, looking for things out of place. Old habits die hard, he mused, even if we’re not quite so much soldiers for hire, now.
When his sweep was complete, he found Ian watching, a small smile curving his lips. He knows we’ve done this every day we’ve been here, Kevin thought. And that, though well-paid, negotiating a land dispute hardly rises to the level of international terrorism.
“Any thoughts?” Ian said.
Kevin decided Ian meant the notebooks. “No. I’m impressed you keep these notes.” He recalled other pads Ian had filled with task related data. Three on this job, so far. “Who’s going to read them?”
“No one.” Ian’s smile became a knowing grin. “They serve as a reminder of past debates.”
Kevin grinned in return. “I’ll find Dan and we’ll bring the sheikhs up from downstairs.”
Their teammate, Dan Wu, was in the hallway chatting with two of the Cairo Trade Center’s security guards. “Everything okay?” Kevin said.
Dan nodded. “Everything’s secure.” He rubbed his black hair. “Hope Ian can get this deal finished. I’m ready to get home for a few days.”
“You and me both,” Kevin said. They’d been in Egypt twenty days. He sighed. “We’ve missed the Independence Day celebrations. Patrice flew Shalin and the kids over to Nassau for the Junkanoo parades. They had a great time.” He checked the hallway once more, then his phone. “Let’s go collect the clients,” he said before turning to the security guards. “Let the staff know we’re ready for the coffee and tea, please.”
Ten minutes later, the dozen Egyptians, one woman amongst the men, entered the conference room. Kevin, standing half in and half out of the doorway, watched as they took their places. When the passage was clear, he called, “Is Sue still downstairs?”
“Yeah,” Dan said. “She was checking on the bill for hospitality. It was gonna take a few more minutes.”
“Move closer to the elevators, then.” He surveyed the conference room. Ian was standing at the head of the table, ready to take his seat. The two sheikhs, Al Hosni on Ian’s right and al-Kassis on his left, had taken their positions behind their chairs, waiting while the attendant finished pouring their coffees. Another server distributed small cups along the table. Kevin took three steps in the direction of the snack table, looking for a bottle of water.
He heard an obtrusive “Pop!” behind him. The noise echoed in the large room.
Spinning, he saw Ian sprawled over the end of the table, blood pouring from his head. As he ran headlong toward him, he hollered out the door, “Shooter! Ian’s down, get Sue! Ooof!” He’d run into one of the Egyptians. He caught the man and used him to keep them both from falling. Oaths came unbidden, unspoken, as he thrust the man away.
While his eyes were locked on Ian’s motionless body, shouts and the clatter of overturned furniture assaulted his ears. He shoved another person toward the door then vaulted a chair to land beside Ian. Along with Ian’s blood, spilled coffee and tea covered the table top and dripped to flood the white marble of the floor. The acrid smell of gunpowder covered that of the spilt coffee.
The chaos faded. While Kevin kept Ian from sliding to the floor, Dan and the security guards verified that no one else had been injured. They had the room emptied and Ian laid out atop the table before Sue arrived.
Sue went to work, though her muttered imprecations left Kevin with little doubt about her feelings. She turned her head to face him, cheeks glistening. “I need Millie. This is too much for me. All I can do is basic trauma care: stabilize the injury, keep him from bleeding out…” She choked back a sob. “We need Millie.” She went back to work.
Kevin began a frantic search to contact Millie Ardan, the team’s chief doctor. In half an hour, he touched Sue’s arm. “Millie’s in Germany. Frankfurt. She’s hiring a charter.”
Sue rubbed her eyes. “Frankfurt ought to be good for that.”
He nodded. “Unless you disagree, she wants us to take him to the plane. She’s got everything there, and we can leave as soon as she can get him ready.”
“Hmm. Okay. Let me call her back.”
In two hours, they had Ian in the one-room hospital aboard the plane. Kevin wondered if Ian’s breathing was labored; when he asked Sue, she agreed and put an oxygen mask on him.
An hour later, Millie called; she’d finally gotten a charter and she’d arrive between eight and nine.
Kevin thought about calling the Nest, their base in the Bahamas, but decided to wait. Millie had put the hospital there on alert, and not only did he have little to report, they could do nothing except worry with him. He didn’t need any help for that! He pulled up a seat beside the gurney supporting Ian. Sue had taken the far side where she could keep watch on Ian’s vitals. Airport noises outside and beeps from the monitors inside were the only sounds.
Derek Hamilton, the team’s token Brit, poked his head around the partition. “You wanted to debrief, right?”
Kevin looked up. He didn’t really, but the team’s procedure demanded it, especially when an injury was involved. Or death. “I’ll be right out.”
“I don’t have anything to add,” Sue said.
“Yeah. I doubt any of us do, but we need to get… whatever, documented. Stay here with him.” She raised her eyebrows and glared. “Yeah, I know. Thanks.”
The debrief took less than an hour. Derek had the only new information: “No one knows anything about the shooter—”
“Nothing? He was right there with us! How could no one have seen him?”
Derek was holding his hands out. “No one saw anything, ‘cause they were all waiting to die, I guess.” He shrugged. “The police finally arrived. They weren’t as interested, once they found Ian’s a foreign national. Kind of chuffed that we’d taken charge of ‘im.”
“Less for them to worry about. Damn!” Kevin took a deep breath. “Any thing else?”
“The Trade Center guys said they’d forward the surveillance video once it’s been vetted for, I don’t know, state secrets or something.”
“Thanks,” Kevin said. “Okay. Let’s keep up the watch around the plane. I’ll relieve Dan.”
Alone, taking his turn guarding the plane in the mid-afternoon heat, Kevin castigated himself. I’m the one who allowed it to happen, he thought. All these years of Ian saving my arse, and I don’t help him!
He pushed his recriminations aside and reached for his phone. The call to the Nest could wait no longer. Telling his wife, Shalin, would be bad enough, but he dreaded talking to Boynton. Maurice Boynton, Ian’s factotum, was almost twice their ages; he had been with them since they’d left South Africa for England.
His agitation betrayed him: he dropped the phone and in trying to make the save, kicked it ten feet into the plane’s wheel. He retrieved it, then paced the hundred-ten foot length of the airplane seven times. Hardly shaking, he sat on the base of the stairs and scrolled to his wife’s number.
Brushing his cheek, his palm came away wet. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried.
The conversations went no worse than he expected until, after he’d finished with Boynton, Shalin called him back. The first word she said hit him as hard as anything since the shooting: “Beckie?”
In his mind’s eye, he saw a girl. An attractive nineteen-year-old girl with long chestnut hair and lustrous green eyes, about five feet tall and slight. Ian’s fiancée, Beckie Sverdupe. No matter what Boynton had said about notifying people, Kevin knew he wouldn’t be the one to hide this from her. Her work with the team would have qualified her even if her relationship with Ian hadn’t.
“Ask Patrice if he can fly to Minnesota and pick her up tomorrow. Call me back and I’ll let her know when he’l
l be there.”
“Should we do that?”
Kevin thought for a second. Ian might throw him off the team. If he lived. But if he concealed this from Beckie… In his vision, the girl was now standing arms akimbo glaring at him. If he concealed this from her, she would flay him alive. “Yes.”
Chapter Two
Day One - Minnesota
BECKIE SVERDUPE BRUSHED HOSHI, HER Thoroughbred, after an early morning riding session preparing for Monday’s riding camp. The warm July sunshine, typical for Minnesota, and the familiar smells of Hoshi and the stable exhilarated her. Her whole life had been lived in Prior Lake, west and south of Minneapolis, until last year when high school ended. Before college began, she’d moved to the Nest, located on an archipelago of seven Out Islands in the Bahamas, to live with Ian Jamse, her fiancé.