Legal Action - Box Set (30 page)

              Ambassador Tremont arrived and after saying hello to Bly he stood next to Charlotte who was staring out the penthouse window at the rooftops of London.

              “Beautiful city isn’t it? A lot different than New Orleans and the South,” he said.

              “I was just thinking, for a poor girl from the middle of nowhere Mississippi I’ve looked out on quite a few beautiful cities,” Charlotte said, then she lifted her sad blue eyes and looked into his.

              “I didn’t know,” he said, “I had a wife and a baby and I was home from college. We met at her debutante ball…”

              “I don’t want to hear it now; maybe when I get back,” she said and held her hand out, “I need those visas and whatever information you have.”

              Before Ambassador Tremont walked out the door, he turned to Bly and said, “You might not need the visas but take them just in case, they’re in Taiwan, no one knows if… well, that’s all we know.”

CHAPTER SIX

              After a lengthy argument and Charlotte’s refusal to get off the jet until they landed in Taiwan, Bly told the pilot to take off. Charlotte sat curled in one of the wide leather reclining chairs as the jet climbed into the sky and turned something over and over in her hands.

              Bly sat in the seat next to her, “what do you have there, Charlotte, a lucky rabbits foot?”

              “Hmm, when I was thirteen a toothless gypsy told me I was a ‘lucky, lucky girl’, so much for trusting gypsies,” she said and opened her hand to him.

              He plucked the switchblade from her hand and weighed it in his own, “does this make you feel safer?”

              “No, it makes me want to use it. When I find the person directly responsible for… whatever they’ve done to Finn, I’m going to hurt the bastard. Does that make sense, Bly? Have you ever loved someone so much that you could do unimaginable things?”

              “Of course I have, like flying to a semi-communist country with a crazy woman holding an illegal knife,” he said and they both smiled. He closed the knife and pressed it into her hand, “think before you use it, unless someone’s hurting you, in that case do what you have to do. We’re going to agree on something now and if you start arguing I’m ordering the pilot to turn the jet around. We know where they are and West and I and his men are going to get them out as quickly as possible and you’re staying on the plane with the two pilots and whichever man West leaves to guard the jet. THE END, so just close your mouth now and we’ll get them back if they’re alive, I owe you that.”

              “You owe me?” she asked.

              “I should have come looking for you that day you were missing, before you left with Finn, so maybe I owe it to myself.”

              “No ‘what ifs’ remember? What will be will be, right?” her eyes filled with tears and she quickly wiped them away and shook her head to clear all the unwanted thoughts. She would know soon if Finn and JP were alive, her mind had churned nonstop for the last three weeks conjuring horrible scenes of what might be happening to her husband and their friend. She would know in a few hours if they were coming home or if she was a widow, and she began to tremble with fear. “Why are they in Taiwan, who has them, do you know?” She asked Bly as he wrapped her in a soft cashmere blanket to stop her shivering.

              “Huang,” he said, avoiding her eyes, “he has a compound near Beitou that he uses for vacations, it’s very private, that’s where we believe he’s holding them if they’re still...”

              Charlotte could feel the jet beginning its descent and as Bly got up to prepare, she closed her eyes and prayed.

              West had assembled a small army of men who looked like carbon copies of Finn and JP. They sat quietly, packing ammunition into belts and vests and jackets, and loading ominous looking handguns and assault rifles. They
were
a small army it seemed, with a large army’s worth of weaponry.

              The men dressed in the vests and jackets and stashed the weapons in duffle bags and the jet barely rolled to a stop on the runway when they jumped out, followed by Bly and West. The door closed quickly and she moved from window to window and watched as they piled into waiting jeeps and rushed away.

              The pilot steered the jet to a small paved area off to the side of the main runway, a handful of private jets and planes were scattered about in makeshift hangars. Thick fog hung in the air and swirled along the ground turning all that it touched a strange watery grey. There were no people in sight; no living thing moved other than the dense forest of trees that hid the small airfield from view.

              “This must be a horrible place,” Charlotte said to no one in particular, “all that fog, and there’s a putrid smell.”

              “It’s mist from the hot springs and the smell is sulphur. Some resort, huh? Seems more like hell,” the soldier who was standing guard said. He moved from window to window holding a rifle and he turned to Charlotte for only a second.

              “Do you have an IPod or a playlist on your phone?” he asked.

              She dug through her bag and handed him her IPod.

              He popped it into a dock by her seat that she hadn’t noticed before, “just use these controls to play what you like, there’s a Sonos system on board but it won’t pick up a signal out here. Maybe you could play something soothing, we can all use it, no Metallica, please.” He smiled at her and she heard the pilot and copilot laugh nervously.

              She scrolled through her list of artists, selected Van Morrison, and ‘Into the Mystic’ resonated throughout the cabin of the jet, a song of sad and beautiful longing. She loved the words, ‘
we were born before the wind, also younger than the sun
’ and she thought of Finn whispering them in her ear years before as his hands moved through her hair just before his lips met hers.

              “That’s a good song, I love Van Morrison. I’m Kipling, by the way,” the soldier said, then turned back to the windows, ever watchful.

              “You’re a mercenary, you and the other men, hired soldiers?” she asked and he turned from the windows to look at her.

              “We work for a PMC, we’re private contractors you might say… and that’s all I’ll say,” he said and turned back to his watch.

*

              Hours and hours later while the pilots slept and Charlotte tried to and couldn’t, she and Billy Kipling began to talk to each other. He urged her to eat and then try to get some sleep and she fixed sandwiches in the galley and sat down and opened a coke for each of them and set a plate in front of him. He was getting nervous, she could tell, and they were both on edge, she’d watched out the windows opposite him all day and night and they were succumbing to cabin fever. To make matters worse the mist had seeped into the jet’s cabin and with it, the awful smell of sulphur. They had gone through the entire music library on her IPod and finally sat in silence.

              “
Get up now!
” he shouted and the pilots woke and stumbled to the cockpit. He grabbed his rifle and opened the outside door and lowered the stairs, “get the engines going, we need to be in the air in two minutes! Charlotte get out of the way, go to the rear of the jet, quick!” he was shouting as he ran down the steps to help the other soldiers get on board.

              Charlotte’s heart was going to explode; she could feel it hammering so hard she was dizzy and nauseous. She ran to the back of the jet and strained to see how many men were returning, the jet engines were deafening and all she could see out the window were empty jeeps. Suddenly all the men were on board and the jet was moving fast down the runway. She heard rapid gunfire and smelled smoke, she knew it must be from one of the engines but the jet began to rise and climb sharply. The cabin was full of men and she couldn’t count them all, she tried to push through them but the jet was in a steep climb and she fell back and hit her head.

              She opened her eyes and JP was holding an ice pack to her head and one to his own eye.

              “Nice ride,” he said, motioning to the plush interior of the jet, “thanks for coming to get us, we were beginning to get bored.”

              “Where is he?” she asked and sat up so fast her head was spinning and felt like she’d hit a brick wall.” Is he alright, is he alive? JP, let me see him!”

              “He’s here, he’s alive, you don’t want to see him yet, Char. They’re patching him up the best that they can…”

              Charlotte stood up despite her pounding head and she could see two of the soldiers working over Finn’s body. They had an IV bag hung from an overhead compartment and one was shooting a syringe of something into it while the other one applied bandages. She pushed her way past them and fell to her knees beside him, she barely recognized his beautiful face, it was so badly beaten. He was lying on a leather sofa unconscious and naked, and she had to cover her mouth to keep from screaming when she saw that his body was not only horribly beaten but covered with deep burns as if he’d been branded over and over.

              She said his name and lightly kissed his face a dozen times, then looked up at one of the soldier’s treating the burns.

              “He can’t hear you, ma’am, we shot him up with morphine. He’s got some broken ribs but his vital signs are pretty good, from what we can tell and what his buddy over there has told us, he doesn’t show any signs of internal bleeding. He’s stable right now and holding his own.”

              “Thank you,” she said settling on a spot on the floor so she could be near him yet out of the way. “Thank you all so much,” she began to cry then and to thank God for Finn’s life and all the men on the jet got very quiet, each one happy to have given her back what she loved.

              They stopped to refuel in Turkey and a doctor came on board to examine Finn and JP. Charlotte wanted Finn moved to a hospital immediately but JP, who had relatively minor injuries, said they should go on to Germany or continue to England. The doctor agreed that Finn was stable enough to travel, so they would continue on to London and an ambulance would be waiting at Heathrow.

              “What about the engine?” Charlotte asked Bly, “I smelled smoke, was one of them hit?”

              “Yes but it’s alright, this is a Falcon 7X, it has three engines but it can fly with only one if necessary. We need to get Finn to a hospital in a friendlier country so we’ll go on to London, don’t worry, it’s the safest jet in the world.”

*

              JP was released from the hospital after three days, he had been beaten daily until Finn showed up, and then Mao Huang’s wrath was turned on the man he held responsible for Jamey’s death. Finn was kept heavily sedated in the hospital for a week. He was lucky, the doctors assured her, he had fractured and broken ribs and cuts, burns and contusions that were healing well and amazingly enough, no internal injuries. He was on massive doses of antibiotics and painkillers and had not spoken or seemed to recognize anyone in his short bouts of consciousness, although his brain scan showed no damage. The doctor’s told Charlotte, Jude and Georgina that he would be more lucid as he was weaned off the morphine they were giving him for the pain he suffered as the burns were cleaned and treated.

              “Mao Huang is dead, as he should be, suffice to say he had a lot of innocent men’s blood on his hands,” Bly told Charlotte as she sat with him in his penthouse suite the night before he went back to California. “His company is a shambles since the news of his death and Bly International is buying up massive quantities of stock. I’m not doing it to be opportunistic, I’ll have controlling interest and then I’ll break it into smaller companies and sell them off. Mao was holding JP to get to Finn, the same old trick Jamey used with you. Mao has daughters but Jamey was his only son and an only son in China is a man’s future and his treasure. He should have killed Finn quickly but he was a sadistic old bastard, turns out he always had been. We freed a dozen men when we took JP and Finn; they weren’t even criminals, just men who had displeased him. Well, he’s gone and so is his empire and there can never be any retribution against you or your family.”

              Charlotte and Bly sat on the floor of the suite playing with Atticus and she told him there was no way for her to thank him. Atticus crawled toward Bly and he picked him up and talked to him like one man to another and Charlotte laughed.

              “That’s a nice sound Charlotte, hearing you laugh, I’m glad I had some part in it. Now this little man,” he said lifting the baby and looking him in the eye, “he has his mother’s eyes and charisma, the girls better watch out for him!” He set the baby on the floor and looked at Charlotte, “funny how my best memories are with you and still my heart is completely broken. I would give my entire fortune if you and this baby were mine, Finn’s a lucky man and the gypsy was right, you’re a lucky, lucky girl.”

              “By the way,” Charlotte told Bly as he was helping her strap Atticus in his car seat, “you do know why JP turned down the lift you offered him back to the states, don’t you?”

              “Oh, knowing JP he’s probably met a girl,” Bly said and smiled.

              “Yep, and not just any girl, a beautiful girl with auburn hair whose pretty much in the mood for a bad boy.”

              “No,” he said, “my little sister, how the fuck did they meet?”

              “Through you and me and this hotel and the hospital, what does it matter? They’ve gone off together for a while, who knows where and
cie la vie
, remember, you only live once,” Charlotte pressed her lips quickly to his, and hugged and thanked him one last time before she drove away.

*

              Jude checked on his little brother constantly and he and Charlotte took turns sleeping in his hospital room until he was out of danger. He was there when Finn’s mind was finally recovering from all the medication he’d been on, then he left for a month to be with his American girlfriend. He’d fallen in love it seemed, with a girl from Los Angeles, and Charlotte and his mother were glad for him but their minds were consumed with getting Finn well enough to come home. They were worried that Finn really didn’t know them but his doctor didn’t seem concerned, he claimed it was normal after the drugs and the emotional trauma. JP had said Finn was given drugs daily while they were held in Taiwan, and they made him scream and rant and remain incoherent most of the time. At first JP thought it was for the best, he’d hoped it kept Finn from feeling the red hot iron that was used to torture him, but now he thought the drugs might have permanently affected his memory.