Duby's Doctor (18 page)

Finally, Jean said, “These men are violent.”
It was not a question.

“So am I,” Frank said. “And, so are you.”

“But, I don’t remember ... how to be like
that.”

“I’m counting on skills that were second
nature to you in the past. I’m betting that your body will do what
it has always done, instinctively, without thinking. When it comes
time to just react, I’m confident you’ll react the same way you
always did. All you have to do is let it happen.”

Jean’s voice dropped to barely more than a
whisper. “Do you think they have ... have hurt
Michel?”

“Honestly,” said Frank, “I have no way of
knowing. But, if they’re using her to get to you, they need to keep
her alive at least until they get what they want.”

Jean was silent again.

“The only way to be sure she stays alive is
to get her out of there,” Frank urged. “You’re a civilian, ‘Jean
Deaux.’ If you want to be part of this operation, I can make that
happen, but only if you’ll do exactly what I say, when I say
it.”

Jean took a deep breath and let out a long
exhale. He looked Frank Stone directly in the eyes and said,
“
Oui
.”

Just after the noon meal, Jean sat on the
edge of his hospital bed while a young physician held up a
vicious-looking hypodermic needle and frowned.

“I strongly advise against this,” the doctor
said. “The pain serves a purpose: to keep you from punishing that
leg any further and doing even more damage.”

Frank Stone handed Jean a shirt and helped
him ease it over his bandaged shoulder. “We signed the release,”
Stone said. “You won’t get sued. Just do it.”

The doctor ignored the older man and spoke
earnestly to Jean. “If you tear up this knee again, you could lose
the leg. Do you understand?” He shook the huge hypodermic in Jean’s
face. “This doesn’t fix anything.”

“Will it stop the pain – just for tonight?”
asked Jean.

“It’s tomorrow we have to worry ab—” the
doctor began.

“Will it stop for tonight?” Jean
interrupted.

Frank Stone answered for the doctor, “You bet
it will. This stuff is great. Professional athletes use it all the
time.”

“Not wisely,” the doctor argued. “And,
sometimes not legally.”

Stone flashed his badge. “I’m the law here,
and it’s all right with me.”

“Do it,” Jean said.

Reluctantly, the physician began making
multiple injections in and around Jean’s swollen left knee. “Suit
yourself,” the doctor muttered. “It’s your knee.”

“Not really,” said Jean.

Stone was satisfied that his wishes were
being carried out, so he ignored the doctor and returned to what he
had been doing before the doctor had entered the room: coaching his
fighter.

“What you gotta remember,” Stone said, “is to
lead with your right if you can – keep ‘em from opening the
stitches in that left shoulder. ’Course, if it happens, it happens.
You’ll deal with it. That Rico’s a heavyweight, but you can take
him easy—”

“I’ll take your bent pistol now,” Jean said
abruptly, as if Stone hadn’t even been speaking.

“Sure,” said Frank. “Sure, kid. But, you’re
probably not gonna need it. You’ll get plenty of backup on this
one. Plenty of backup.”

The doctor completed his final injection and
stood back with a sigh. He gave Stone an accusing look, mumbled a
“Good luck” to Jean, and left the room.

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.