Assassin (The Billionaire Series) (29 page)

“Excellent, I’ll make a few calls,” said Beaumont.

“Do you think we’ll get to be involved in Operations Sandy and
David?” asked Jones who was disappointed at missing out on some real action.
Kidnapping teenage girls was not his idea of soldiering.

“I don’t know. But you never know, if we pull this off, we
just might manage to get you in on the action for Operation David but I think
Operation Sandy is a definite no.”

“By the way, the girl is harmless to us. She doesn’t even know
she’s not in her bed. If he concedes shall we just put her back?” Jones didn’t
mind killing her but only if it was necessary.

“Nah, too risky, when I give you the call, just dump her
overboard.”

“Ok, seems a waste though. She’s going to grow into a real
beauty,” replied Jones.

“C’est la vie. I’ll call you as soon as I know. We may have to
prove she’s alive in the meantime. So keep your phone on,” said Beaumont before
hanging up.

Lela had heard to the whole exchange. To anybody watching her,
she looked asleep. However, she was fully alert and had merely slowed down her
breathing and heart rate and relaxed her muscles. She had complete control of
her body, having been trained from birth in understanding how her body worked
and how to control every muscle and nerve.

***

It had been less than an hour since Tom had been informed of
Lela’s kidnap when his phone rang.

“Hello?” he answered.

“Tom Kennedy?” a digitised voice asked him.

“Yes, what do you want?” responded Tom.

“I want you to reconsider our original offer for Alba.”

“What? You’ve kidnapped my sister to force me to sell you
Alba?”

How could they think they would get away with it? The minute
he sold them Alba, he would know who they were, it just didn’t make sense.

“But if I sell you Alba, I’ll know who you are. You’ll have to
kill us,” said Tom answering his own question before the digital voice could.

“Don’t worry, nobody will ever know who owns it,” came the
reply.

Tom was not going to do anything foolish. He had to play it
cool and cleverly. Thanks to Papa, his sister’s life depended on it.

“I’m sorry but I don’t understand. You’re going to buy the
world’s largest company and remain anonymous?” asked Tom mystified.

“Yes. That, however, is not your concern. You should be more
concerned about your sister and the ten men currently holding her,” said the
digitised voice. Papa, listening in on the call, was relieved to hear that
there were only ten men.

“How do I know she won’t be harmed? I won’t sell you Alba
until I see her back safely,” Tom said firmly.

“I’m sorry but that is non-negotiable. You’ll only see her
again AFTER you’ve sold Alba. I’ll call you back in two hours.” The digitised
voice hung up.

Beaumont looked down at the phone with satisfaction. He had
almost certainly secured the purchase of Alba International. He was tempted to
call The Chairman to let him know but thought he should wait until it was a
done deal.

***

Lela listened as the men chatted to each other. There were too
many accents to pin them down to one country. She was trying desperately to
take in as much information as she could while the men were relaxed.

“What are we doing after here?” asked one of the men.

“Probably going to Operation David, but I don’t know.
Depending on how quickly this is over, we might make Operation Sandy first,”
replied the man who was obviously the leader.

“What about her?” asked the man. Lela could feel the man
motioning towards her.

“As soon as we get the OK,” the leader responded. Again, Lela
sensed another movement but this time it was a horizontal motion, she assumed
across the man’s neck.

“Fair enough. Any news yet on that useless twat Perez?” the
man asked.

“Nope nothing. Last I heard he was sitting on the side of
Machu Picchu with a clear shot of the boy. The next thing I hear is that the
boy is back and we’ve never heard a peep from Perez. He’s just disappeared,”
replied the leader.

“Maybe the boy saw him and paid him off. Jesus he’s got more
money than the rest of the world put together, no?”

“Impossible. Perez was a klick away, in full camouflage, with
a sniper rifle.”

The significance of the conversation hit Lela hard. They had
tried to kill Tom. Before she could think about it any more, the leader’s phone
rang. Oh God, thought Lela, knowing the call could be the signal to kill her.

“Hello?” answered the leader.

Lela listened carefully.

“Yes, OK.”

Nothing more was said. Lela had no option but to move.

Chapter 71

Tom looked at his watch. It was almost time. The clock had
dragged for two hours. They had moved back to Tom’s room. Papa, Kano and Kisho
were wearing his carpet thin from pacing up and down. At exactly two hours to
the second, Tom’s phone rang.

“Hello?” he answered, putting the phone on loudspeaker.

“Mr Kennedy, do you have an answer for me?” asked the
digitised voice.

“I want to speak to Lela. Unless I know she’s OK, I’m not
selling,” said Tom adamantly.

“Hmmm, I don’t think you’re in any position to make demands
young man, the question remains do you have an answer?”

“Not unless I speak to Lela,” insisted Tom.

“This isn’t a game. Are you going to sell Alba in return for
your sister’s life? It’s a yes or no answer, what’s it going to be?” The
digitised voice echoed around the room as the question hung in the air. Tom
couldn’t answer. He had to know whether Lela was OK. He had to use Alba to save
her. If he sold Alba before he got her back, she’d be as good as dead. However,
somebody beat him to it and answered for him.

“NO!!! The Answer is NO!!!”

“Who’s listening to our call?” asked the digitised voice in a
panic.

“Lela Kennedy!” she replied coldly.

Tom could not believe that she was standing next to him. He
was speechless and Papa was in tears as were Kisho and Kano, the relief was
overwhelming.

“But it can’t be, my men captured you, this is a trick!”

“Not it’s not. Now, is there anything else I can help you with
before I get back to torturing your men?” asked Lela. The phone went dead.

Two seconds later, a mobile phone rang.

“Hello?” answered Lela.

“Fu,” was all that could be heard before the phone went dead.

Lela threw the phone to Tom.

“You may want Daniel or Zach to check this phone out. I took
it off the leader guy.”

Chapter 72

Jones was slowly coming round and began to remember what had
happened, surely it was a dream. He tried to move his hands but couldn’t. It
wasn’t a dream. He remembered getting the call to warn him it would be a least
another two hours before the decision and he had wandered out on to the deck.

No sooner had he stepped outside, when he heard a noise in the
cabin and had gone back in to see the girl fighting four of his men. He had
never seen anything like it. She was tiny but had already incapacitated two men
and he saw her almost decapitate another with a kick as ferocious as he had
ever seen. She hadn’t even completed her follow-through kick before throwing a
punch into the fourth man’s chin which had lifted him clean off the floor and
into the cabin wall.

Jones was paralysed, not by fear but by awe. The rest of his
team, on hearing the commotion, ran into the cabin. They looked at the chaos
and looked for who had caused it, the only person in the room was the young
girl. Jones remembered the sweet smile she threw his men, as if completely
innocent.

The fifth man moved towards her, reaching his arm out to take
hold of her. She let him grab her, and moved so quickly Jones didn’t even see
what she did but he heard the arm break and saw the blood spray from the man’s
nose before he dropped to the floor. The other men hadn’t even had time to
react before another two were knocked unconscious, one receiving a high-kick,
the other a bone crunching punch to the nose. Both dropped to the floor to join
their unconscious colleagues.

The final two saw Jones standing by the cabin door. They
looked at him and he gave them a nod, go for it. They moved together both
throwing vicious punches but Jones could see that Lela was playing with them.
She moved faster than he thought possible. She avoided the first man’s punch
and delivered a tremendously powerful kick to the other man’s abdomen while
reverting to the first with a perfect uppercut and laying him flat. Jones
couldn’t help applaud her. Nine of his men lay immobile on the cabin floor and she
hadn’t even broken sweat nor had they come close to touching her. He asked how
she’d learnt to do what she did but she was very tight lipped about how it.
When he drew his knife, she warned him that knives made her angry. If he put
the knife away, she would be gentle with him. He didn’t, the last thing he
remembered was laughing at her and then pain, then nothing until then.

He looked around the cabin. All his men were still alive. Most
were beginning to come round but they were all tied up and gagged. His pain was
intense. His right hand would never be the same again, it hung limply from his
wrist. He really should have dropped the knife. His knee was also gone. He
remembered now. One second she was on the other side of the cabin. He went to
throw the knife but before he had even had a chance to let it go, she was next
to him, had his knife hand gripped like a vice and wrenched it back. The bone
had shattered at the same time as she had crashed her foot into his knee
snapping it cleanly in two. And as his useless hand dropped the knife, she
uttered the words ‘I don’t like knives’. The next thing he remembered was a
flash of light as she shattered his nose with the back of her fist. The lights,
mercifully, went out.

Jones heard people coming. From the floor of the cabin, he
could see the top of sail masts through the porthole. She must have sailed them
back into The Academy’s marina. He could not allow his men to be tortured, if
they talked, too much was as stake. He looked around, others had also realised what
needed to be done. The unconscious men were nudged until they came around. When
every man was conscious, on the count of three, they bit down hard on a small
cyanide canister concealed in their mouths to ensure a very quick death.

***

“They’re in here,” said Lela. “I’ve got them all tied up
nicely,” she announced as she stepped onto the boat. Papa grabbed her, he could
smell death. He went in ahead of her and his suspicion was confirmed.

“They’re all dead, by the looks of it, cyanide,” he announced
when he came back out.

“Oh God, I killed them all, ten men!” exclaimed Lela.

“No, they took cyanide capsules, they killed themselves,”
assured Papa.

“What are we up against?” asked Kisho. “This is getting scary
now.”

“Getting scary?” asked Tom. “Where the hell have you been for
the last month!”

“OK, we’ve got their phone and we know about Operations Sandy
and David and that Sandy is before David,” said Lela changing the subject. She
wanted to get off the boat and go back to her room.

“But it could be anything. Sandy and David are probably just
code words for their operations. You’ll probably find every one of them had a
first name designation.”

“So I risked life and limb for nothing?”

Tom looked back to the boat, he wondered whose life and limbs
she had really risked but with ten bodies behind him he thought better of
asking.

Chapter 73

What the hell could Beaumont do now? The Chairman was going to
kill him. He couldn’t run, there was nowhere on the planet he could hide,
nowhere. How could it have gone so badly wrong? They had Lela, everything had
gone perfectly and then wham, she was there. It just wasn’t conceivable, it was
impossible. He only hoped that Jones had done the right thing. He didn’t know
enough to expose The Committee but he knew too much about the Committee’s army.
The men were very well paid and there was an expectation that they were capable
of the ultimate sacrifice if they risked exposing their unit or their
colleagues.

He still had another twenty four hours to try and pull
something out of the bag. The Chairman didn’t need to know yet. Beaumont knew
that the hole he was in was very deep and its sides very slippery.

***

Williams had his men in place, he was delighted with the
promotion to number one spot in the Committee’s army. He now worked directly
for the boss and had no intention of letting The Chairman down. It was a fairly
simple operation, only two targets and from their first reconnaissance, fairly
light security.

Williams looked around again, acting like a tourist, soaking
in the scenery and his surroundings. It really was a beautiful spot, perfect
beach, beautiful hotel and the most spectacular yachts anchored just offshore.
One yacht in particular had caught his eye, Williams had never seen a yacht so
aptly named, she really was a Beautiful Lady.

Chapter 74

Kisho and Kano took the boat out to sea and after searching
them, dumped the bodies. Unsurprisingly they didn’t find anything, every man
was clean. Tattoos had been removed or covered over, teeth had been removed and
replaced with caps, fingerprints removed by acid. It was as though the men did
not exist and as far as Papa was concerned, they didn’t anymore. Afterall,
these were the men who had intended to kill his beloved Lela.