AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Averell's henchmen kidnapped Mitchell from the Coconut Grove Arts Festival when they didn't find the man they wanted. Their intended victim, Jean, was wounded attempting to catch the fleeing kidnappers, and he has since threatened to "come for" Agent Stone if Mitchell is not returned home safely.

Enjoy Chapter 18A of DUBY'S DOCTOR: "THE RESCUE, pt. 1."

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Frank Stone haunted the hospital for several days, annoying the nurses, stalking the doctors, and being a colossal nuisance. He kept uniformed officers on guard outside Jean's hospital room, at the doors to the stairwells, and at the elevator lobby – as much to keep Jean in as to keep potential assassins out.

For the first 24 hours, Jean's doctors had kept him sedated, for fear he would injure himself or someone else in his determined efforts to escape the hospital and find Mitchell. At the beginning of the second day, Jean reluctantly agreed to stay in bed at least another 48 hours in exchange for the doctors' promise to discontinue using mind-numbing, nausea-inducing drugs and uncomfortable physical restraints.

Stone knew enough to stay out of Jean's sight until day three, when he entered quietly just before dawn and tiptoed to a chair near the bed.

"I am not sleeping," Jean's voice came out of the semi-darkness.

"I thought you probably wouldn't be. Feel like talkin'?"

"Get me out of here."

"Maybe I can finagle that for ya, but if I do, you hafta work with me to take down Averell. It's the only way to get Doctor Oberon home safe. You can't go all Lone Ranger on me."

"Just get me out of here."

"Do we have a deal?" Frank Stone was well named. His heart might have been made of quartz for all the sympathy he showed for Jean's injuries or Mitchell's jeopardy. Frank's narrow agenda was all that mattered to him. He would do whatever it took to get Kyle Averell, without a second thought for Yves Dubreau, Jean Deaux, or Mitchell Oberon.

Yves Dubreau would have known this about Frank Stone, because he was an agent accustomed to doing things Stone's way. They had worked together in the nether world of covert national security operations for years. To Dubreau, someone like Mitchell Oberon would be merely collateral damage – regrettable, but acceptable.

Dubreau would not hesitate to fall in line with Agent Francis Stone, but Dubreau was dead.

Jean Deaux hesitated. A long minute of tense silence vibrated across Stone's nerve endings like electrical current.

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.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Well, it looks like Stone's rescue plan is underway, but what plan are Carinne and Rico cooking up? Why did they untie Mitchell? 

Get answers in next Monday's conclusion of chapter 18 of DUBY'S DOCTOR: "Rescue."

Thanks for your faithful reading, and many thanks for those votes and comments.

Until next time,

Iris