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Shaw helped Reggie bandage her face while Whit watched stonily from a corner of the luxurious cabin. The copilot came back to them. “We’re ready to go wheels up whenever you give the word,” he told Frank as the man slowly sat up, rubbing his arm where the doctor had given him an injection of painkiller.
“That won’t be happening,”
Everyone turned to see Whit standing there pointing a gun. “You two can go,” he said, indicating Shaw and Frank. “But the three of us are gonna take those fresh wheels out there and head on.”
“That’s not a good idea,” said Shaw.
“For us it is,” shot back Whit. “I don’t know who you blokes are, and I don’t want to know. Thanks for the assist, but you go your way and we’ll go ours. No hard feelings, I promise.”
“You guys will never get away,” said Frank, attempting to stand before Shaw put a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“I actually like our odds.”
“You’ll need a hostage,” said Shaw. “Because without that, you really have no chance against this guy here.” Shaw pointed at Frank. “He’s got more resources than you can deal with. But he also doesn’t want to lose me. That gives you leverage.”
Whit looked skeptical. “So you want us to take you hostage? That ain’t happening.”
“Then you have no chance,” snapped Shaw.
Whit poked a finger into Shaw’s chest. “Bugger off.”
Reggie stepped between Whit and Shaw. “He’s right, Whit.”
“I’m not taking your lover boy along for the ride just because you—”
Shaw moved Reggie to the side and took a step toward Whit. “You couldn’t even recon a site properly. You let them ambush you and would be dead if it weren’t for me. You said so yourself. Now we have to get out of the country. Without wings we’ll have to go another way. I can do that because I’ve done it a hundred times. Can you?”
Now Whit looked uneasily at Reggie.
Dominic said, “He’s right, Whit, we’re not prepared for this.”
Whit fumed inwardly for a few seconds. “All right, but the first time you try anything…”
“Right, whatever.” Shaw brushed past him heading for the aircraft’s exit door.
“Shaw!” shouted Frank. “You can’t do this. You don’t even know who they are.”
“I’ll be in touch, Frank. Hope you heal fast.”
The others followed him off the plane.
As they climbed into the Range Rover, Whit asked Shaw, “Hey, how did you get away in the first place?”
“With a toilet, a little water, and some elbow grease. And you might want to call somebody to untie your guy after they wake him up.”
“Bloody hell,” said an impressed Whit.
CHAPTER
60
FEDIR KUCHIN’S villa was empty. No SUVs out front, no windows open, no cigar-smoking in the rear grounds. The bags had been packed, battered men gathered up, and they were gone. A phone call had been placed and his private jet had picked him up not at the commercial airport in Avignon but at a corporate jet park. He now looked down at the French landscape from twenty thousand feet as his private plane worked its way up plateaus of calm air to its cruising altitude.
Next to him sat Alan Rice holding an ice pack against his face with another strapped to his right knee. Pascal, and two of the other guards who’d been attacked by the Muslim impersonators, were nursing their own injuries. The man who’d been hit by the car had a broken leg. Kuchin’s mouth and jaw were badly swollen from Shaw’s blow and there were two new empty spots in his gums. He had
refused any medical attention, not even Advil. He simply sat in his seat and stared down at the quickly vanishing French terrain.
They are down there somewhere. And they know who I really am.
