by Iris Chacon
Jean flexed the numbed knee and reached for the jeans waiting for him at the foot of the bed.
At the Averell mansion, guests were beginning to arrive for Carinne’s wedding. Flowers decorated every corner of the elaborate lawn pavilion and covered the delicate white archway erected at the far end of an aisle carpeted in immaculate white.
Lazaro and his patrol dog made their rounds inside the property’s high stone fence, but they were not alone. Two additional canine security patrols had been added for the occasion. In the sentry tower above the mansion, not one but two armed men stood at alert.
Inside Kyle Averell’s office, the man himself met with His Excellency the groom and Iglesias, the best man. Dressed in tuxedos, they inspected steamer trunks stacked against the office wall. The trunks on top of the stacks were open, revealing state-of-the-art military hardware. On the opposite wall, Rico and two other bodyguards, also tuxedoed, stood vigil.
“Your Excellency, you will have great fun unwrapping these ‘wedding gifts’ when they arrive at the palace,” Averell said expansively.
“Almost as much pleasure as I will have unwrapping the bride, no?”
All the men, except the bodyguards, indulged in vulgar laughter.
“Tell me,” His Excellency continued, “is she as excited as I am?”
“I thought we’d have to give her a tranquilizer,” Averell said truthfully, creating the impression that Carinne was beside herself with anticipation, when, in reality, her father had feared she would attempt to escape. He had spoken strongly with her and exacted her promise to behave properly. “But she’s fine now. She seems to realize how much she has to look forward to, eh?”
The men laughed again.
It was growing dusky outside as the security guard opened the gates of the estate to admit the last expected carload of wedding guests. The gate closed behind the car. The guard looked at his watch and walked toward the house. He was needed nearer the house until time for guests to depart. Lazaro and the dog teams would watch the gates and perimeter.
From outside the fence, a hand snaked around the gatepost. Fingers rested on the push-button electronic pad connected to the electric gate. After a moment’s hesitation, the fingers rapidly punched in a number code just as Yves Dubreau used to do when leaving the property for his morning run. The gate began to glide open quietly.
Jean emerged from the shrubbery outside the gate with his eyes closed. He opened his eyes, looked at the gate, at his fingers, and at the digital keypad. He shook his head; he had never for a minute actually believed that would work.
He slipped quickly through the open gate and disappeared into the shrubbery on the inside of the fence.
The gate reversed itself and began gliding to a close. Just before it locked into place, however, Jean’s hand wedged a broken shrubbery branch into the roller mechanism – effectively leaving the gate ajar an unnoticeable fraction of an inch.
In Carinne’s suite of rooms, Trish was putting the finishing touches on Carinne’s wedding veil when Rico entered. He glanced to one side to reassure himself that Mitchell remained sitting stiffly in the corner chair to which he had tied her hands and feet.
“Is she ready?” he said to Trish.
“Just about,” she told him. To Carinne she said, “You look just like a princess, honey. And soon you’ll be a queen.”
Rico and Carinne exchanged a look.
“Yes, I know,” Carinne said.
Rico stepped forward to offer Carinne his arm and to escort her downstairs. Trish backed away, admiring her handiwork. She was just a tennis coach and companion, but she had done a good job as stand-in wedding dresser, if she did say so herself. Not that there had been any choice. Kyle Averell was not going to admit some stranger into his daughter’s private suite on the day of The Wedding.
Trish sighed. “I hate to miss the beautiful ceremony,” she said, “but somebody has to keep our guest company.”
When Trish turned from watching Carinne to look at Mitchell in the corner of the room, Rico smashed the back of her head with a cobra-quick blow. Trish dropped like a stone.
Mitchell’s eyes grew wide with terror, but Carinne didn’t seem at all surprised. She motioned to Mitchell to be quiet. Mitchell nodded and bit her lip to keep any sound from escaping inadvertently.
Rico lifted Trish’s body from the floor and arranged her on the bed so that she appeared to be napping. “What about Duby’s woman?” he asked Carinne.
“Duby’s woman! I am not Du—” Mitchell began indignantly.
“Cut her loose,” Carinne interrupted her. “She’ll stay put until we get back.” She looked meaningfully at Mitchell. “Won’t you?”
Mitchell was still nodding when Rico cut her bonds and escorted Carinne from the room.
In the deep shadows beneath the shrubbery against the perimeter wall, Lazaro lay unconscious under a bush. His dog lay quietly beside him, licking greedily at a juicy, meaty bone. Such dogs were well trained not to accept food from strangers, but, of course, Duby was no stranger.
On the darkest side of the sentry tower, out of view of the wedding throng, Jean climbed the stone wall of the building like a human fly. His left knee and shoulder were less reliable than their counterparts on his right, but he pushed and pulled himself upward so rapidly that those limbs did not have to bear his weight for long at a time.
Frank Stone removed Jean’s shrub branch from the electric gate’s rolling mechanism and gently slid the gate open. He looked at his watch and then at the sentry tower. He didn’t expect to actually see his former special agent climbing the tower, but he knew the climb was in progress.
Moments later, Jean reached the top of his ascent and dropped, silent and deadly as a Florida panther, into the sentry tower between the two guards who stood facing away from him. With a forearm around both men’s necks, he jerked them backward, strongly and quickly, cracking their heads together with skull-fracturing force and dropping them soundlessly in an unconscious pile on the floor.
Watching the tower from his hiding place beside the gate, Stone saw the sentries go down. He motioned with one hand, and a combat-clad assault team, armed for Armageddon, eased single file out of the shrubbery, through the gate, and swiftly toward the house. In their black uniforms, they caused no more notice than moon shadow rippling across the grass.
Using the excuse that he must stay behind in order to walk his daughter down the aisle, Kyle Averell ushered the groom and best man out of his office in the care of a bodyguard who would guide them to their place inside the wedding pavilion. As he returned to his desk, Averell glanced out his window to see the electric gate at the end of his long driveway standing open.
In the excitement of finally seeing his vendetta fulfilled, Frank Stone had been less careful than Jean in disguising the unlocked gate. Stone had left the gate open at least three feet, a gap that was easily seen from the house.
Averell didn’t see anything moving near the open gate, but that didn’t mean there were no intruders on the grounds, and he had too much at stake this night to risk underestimating his enemies. One enemy in particular.
He snapped his fingers, and the one bodyguard remaining in the room came to attention. “Go to my daughter’s suite, and bring me Doctor Oberon,” Averell commanded.
Rico and Carinne passed the bodyguard in the corridor, but they took no notice of one another. Rico seemed to be escorting the unwilling bride to her doom, as scheduled, and the bodyguard was simply following orders, as always.
Averell was still standing at the window, alert for any suspicious activity outside, when Carinne entered the office, followed closely by Rico, who closed and locked the door. Averell turned when he heard them enter, and he reacted to Rico’s strange behavior with a raised eyebrow.
“Sit down, Daddy,” Carinne ordered, before Averell could say a word.
Rico stepped forward and pulled out Averell’s desk chair politely. He seated Averell and deftly removed Averell’s pistol from the top
right-hand desk drawer as well. Averell looked with surprise at Rico, who merely stepped back two long paces and stood, holding the pistol loosely by his side. Rico smiled and nodded a respectful greeting.
Averell looked at Carinne. “What is going on here? We don’t have time to sit and chat, my girl. We’re supposed to walk down the aisle in just a few minutes. His Excellency is already waiting at the altar, so to speak.”
“Yeah, about that,” said Carinne, removing the veil Trish had spent a half-hour arranging. “I’m not getting married today.” She tossed the veil over a nearby chair and fluffed her hair with her hands as if to scare the wedding cooties out of it. She breathed in and out boisterously, as if released from a burden.
“And just what do you think you are going to do other than get married today?” her father said in a voice that had frightened sheiks, presidentes, judges, and federal officials.
Carinne flopped into an empty chair across the desk from her father. “I was thinking of going back to college to finish my veterinary degree, or maybe get a Master’s in Business Administration,” she said airily, wafting one hand lazily in the air while casually twirling a strand of her hair with the other hand.
“Oh, you were, were you?”
“Yeah, but then I thought, ‘Carinne, you already know all you need to know about running the family business. And, anything you don’t know, Rico probably knows.’”
“What!” Averell looked from Carinne to Rico and back again. “What are y—”
“I’m taking over the business, Daddy. The legitimate side, anyway. I still haven’t decided whether to continue doing the illegal deals.” She gestured to the trunks full of weapons piled against the office wall. “We’ll give His Excellency a discount on this shipment, to make up for him not getting ... well, me. He’ll take the deal.”
“Wait a min—”
“Then, you’ll announce that I’m the new CEO, and you’re retiring.”
“Over my dead body!” Averell shouted, slamming his hands down on the desk as if he would come out of the chair and vault across to attack his daughter. He never left the chair.
A gunshot split the air, and Kyle Averell slumped forward onto his desk, a neat hole blossoming red in his temple.
Rico wiped the pistol clean with his pocket handkerchief. He pressed the pistol into Averell’s limp right hand then looked to Carinne.
She was strangely, utterly composed.
The office door splintered with a crash and banged open, gouging the wall with the strength of its swing. Carinne and Rico startled and turned toward the sound. Frank Stone stood in the doorway with a gun in his hand. Behind him, in the corridor, Carinne could see two black-clad officers, one of whom was lowering the battering ram they had used to smash through the door.
“We heard a gunshot!” Stone said, quartering the room with his eyes in search of the danger. He stilled when his gaze reached the late Kyle Averell, head down on a desk blotter that was soaking up a lot of blood.
Carinne began sobbing and sputtering. She rose from her chair and ran toward Stone, who lowered his pistol but did not put it away. He enfolded the weeping young woman with his free hand and let her head rest on his chest.
“Uncle Francis,” Carinne wailed. “I’m so glad you’re here. It’s a miracle. We haven’t even called 9-1-1 yet, and here you are!”
“Yeah, well, we were sorta in the neighborhood,” Frank murmured. “Guess this kinda messes up the wedding, huh?”
Carinne sobbed harder and louder, soaking his rumpled suit with her tears. He patted her back awkwardly.
When she had brought herself down to a hiccoughing, sniffling stage, she managed to say, “Uncle Francis, would you send all those wedding people away, please? Tell them Daddy has committed suicide.” She backed off so she could look Frank in the eye when she said, pointedly, “Just like my mother.”
Frank’s eyes held hers for a long moment. He noticed her tears had dried very quickly. He looked at the dead body, at Rico, and again at Carinne. Frank Stone understood completely.
“Just like your mother,” he agreed. “Well, the media will like it, anyway. Where is Doctor Oberon?”
“She’s upstairs in my suite,” Carinne answered pleasantly, even producing an appropriately subdued smile. “We’ve had a lovely visit. Rico was just going up to ask her to come down, weren’t you Rico?”
“Yes, Miss Averell,” Rico said with a slight bow, and he sidled past Stone and between the assault officers to complete the task.
Stone holstered his pistol and gestured for the officers outside to come into the room. Then he tightened his grip around Carinne’s shoulders and gently ushered her out to the corridor.
Jean had not been idle since disposing of the tower sentries. He did not remember the layout of the house from his days as an employee there, but he had studied the drawings and photographs Frank Stone had provided during the pre-mission briefing. Entering from the tower stairs into the uppermost floor of the mansion, he trod softly down lushly carpeted hallways, peeking inside each doorway and trying every closed door.
Sometimes he would whisper, “Michel?” as he glanced into a room, but all the upper rooms were empty. Any servants and houseguests must be already outside at the wedding pavilion.
He finished the top floor and moved down to the next, the floor where Carinne’s suite would be. He turned a corner and spotted one of Averell’s bodyguards entering the daughter’s door. It could only be a bodyguard. Neither the groom nor the father of the bride had shoulders like those (he had seen Stone’s photos of them), and no wedding guest would be wearing athletic shoes with their tuxedo.
He stepped quickly toward the doorway and flattened himself against the wall outside to listen. He closed his eyes and sent up a silent prayer of thanks when he heard Mitchell responding to something the bodyguard had said.
“But, Carinne told me to stay here. She was very specific. I’m not supposed to go anywhere.”
“Well, the boss says different, ma’am. You need to come with me. Now.”
Jean stepped into the room as the bodyguard was holding Mitchell’s elbow tightly and forcing her toward the door. “Michel!” he said.
Her head jerked in his direction at the same time the bodyguard swung her in front him as a shield and clamped a hand over her mouth.
“Duby,” the bodyguard growled, recognizing a former colleague. “Heard you was back.”
“Mmm, yes and no,” Jean said. “Monsieur, I mean you no harm. Only let the lady go, and we will leave you in peace.”
“No, you won’t ‘leave in peace,’ Dube,” said a deep voice from behind him. “You’re gonna leave here in pieces.” A second bodyguard had emerged from within the suite of rooms, and he launched himself at Jean almost before he finished speaking.
Jean spun to meet the attack from behind. At the same time, Mitchell took a hearty bite of the hand across her mouth.
“Johnny, run!” she screamed, and she threw her weight backward against her captor’s chest, jabbing her elbow into his diaphragm with all her might.
The man was not expecting such violent resistance from the woman, and he staggered back, off balance, and fell.
Jean ducked beneath his opponent’s bulk as the man leapt at him, and when Jean came up like a geyser erupting, he rammed his right forearm into the man’s Adam’s apple. The impact reversed the foe’s forward motion, flipped him into the air and landed him on his backside.
Jean stepped obliquely until he could see both enemies, and Mitchell ran to shelter behind him. While the two downed men rose and took menacing positions before him, Jean tugged Frank Stone’s bent-sighted pistol from its holster at the small of his back.
Mitchell expected him to point the gun at his attackers, but instead he pressed it into her hands without looking around at her. “Stone is somewhere downstairs,” he told her. “Go.”
“No!” she protested.
“Michel!” he roared. “Go now! Do not stop for anyone! Go!”
She had never heard that voice of doom before. She ran.
The two bodyguards smiled like hyenas closing in on a juicy carcass. They began advancing, and Jean backed himself, literally, into a corner so that they could not outflank him.
“I don’t want to do this,” he told them. They were too obtuse to recognize the threat.
“Course ya don’t,” one gloated. “I wouldn’t want to be pulverized by me either, if I was you.”
The second man guffawed in agreement, but his laugh was cut short by the heel of Jean’s left foot plowing through his trachea. The man collapsed to the ground, gasping for air that could not reach his lungs. Before he had even reached the floor, Jean had forgotten him and concentrated on his partner.
Jean missed a block, and the attacker landed a blow to Jean’s temple, narrowly missing his eye. The man followed up with a second blow from the opposite direction, but Jean did not make the same mistake twice. Jean’s left forearm swept the incoming blow aside and he followed up with a crotch-busting kick that nearly drove Jean’s right instep from the junction of his foe’s legs all the way up to his belt buckle.
Jean’s left leg supported his entire body weight as he spun out of the kick, completing a full circle, then pushing off the floor to bring a fist down with all possible leverage onto the nape of his opponent, who was bent double. The impact sent the foe to his hands and knees, but he didn’t fall helpless to the floor. Instead, he pulled together enough determination and energy to get his feet under him and jump toward Jean’s gut like a huge toad.
Jean suddenly felt extreme dislike for toads and, using the big bufo’s forward momentum, Jean stepped into the arcing leap, grabbed the toad’s armpits, and deftly directed him out through the nearest window. Too bad, the window was closed at the time. And, it was two stories above the ground. Jean didn’t even look outside; he simply headed for the door, limping only a little.