One for One (John Flynn Thrillers Book 3) Read online

  One for One

  A John Flynn Thriller

  AJ Stewart

  Jacaranda Drive

  For Evan, and those who protect him from harm

  Contents

  Readers’ Crew

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Readers’ Crew

  If You Enjoyed This Book

  Also by AJ Stewart

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Readers’ Crew

  Sign up to AJ Stewart’s readers’ crew for the exclusive John Flynn / Jacques Fontaine novella The Compound, and occasional updates on new books. Visit ajstewartbooks.com/jf-reader.

  Chapter One

  Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, West Africa

  John Flynn watched the man through the crosshairs on his rifle. The man leaned against the truck of tree enjoying a cigarette—his third in half an hour. Flynn suspected a free-flowing supply of cigarettes was part of the incentive program for the local men who guarded the house. It was a basic rectangular structure, two stories tall and surrounded by a cinderblock wall that had been rendered the color of the red earth all around it. Flynn had wondered, when he first saw it, whether they had used the sand as a pigment in the render. The wall had a walkway fitted around its inside, such that guards could walk the perimeter and see over the top to defend the house.

  All the roads around the house—it was well fortified but too small to be considered a compound—were the same ferris color, hard-packed clay topped with sand that blew in and out on a whim. The sand clung to everything—walls, trees, skin—and gave the entire city a sheen of organic rust below a parched blue sky.

  Flynn could hear the city throbbing and alive from his perch on top of the building across the street. He was hot under the cover of a canvas tarp, even though it was late in the season. Winter was not a consideration in West Africa. There was a dry and there was wet, there was hot and there was hotter, there was humid and there was unbearable. Flynn was grateful he had come before the unbearable season had kicked in.

  He had been in-country ten days. He had wasted no time in finding the general’s residence. Not his official residence, which was an apartment within the French army’s headquarters. This was his other home, the one that was out of sight of embassy officials and therefore out of mind of the French government.

  Flynn had climbed a mud brick building in the dead of night and stayed on the roof for two days, getting the rhythms of the house, the comings and goings of the local men guarding the perimeter and the old women tasked with cleaning and cooking within. He sipped water from a plastic bladder and ate nuts and salted meats. Then he spotted the SUV carrying the general in a convoy of two with a small jeep-like vehicle—a tan petit véhicule protégé—leading the way each time.

  Flynn didn’t move until the second van arrived. This one was different from the van that had arrived every eight hours since he had been watching. That vehicle had windows, like a small bus, and served to rotate the guards on duty around the house. This one, however, was an unadorned delivery van that had once been white but now bore the ubiquitous dusty red. It arrived in the evening as the sun fell across the low skyline, plumes of traffic dust blending with the sunset to send spears of violet and gold across the sky. At another time Flynn would have kicked back and watched the colors bob and weave and eventually succumb to the darkness. The twilight was different in Africa, the particulars of dust giving the sky its own unique tint.

  But Flynn didn’t watch the sky. His eyes were on the delivery van. A delivery van arriving at a time of day when no normal delivery was done. Not even in Africa where the days baked long and hard. Here, deliveries were an early morning proposition. So it was not bread or grain or even liquor. Something else entirely.

  It wasn’t part of the mission parameters to know what was in the van. The van was for all intents irrelevant. But that was the difference with this mission—with all missions now. They were conceived, designed and carried out by the same mind. Flynn’s. So if he wanted to know what was in the van, he would find out. That was for damn sure.

  He packed his kit and left his position. Everything he required fit into the pack strapped to his back. He pushed the dirt bike out onto the road and then rumbled it to life. The gurgle of the engine joined the cacophony of other bikes and small cars across the capital. On the bike Flynn was invisible in plain sight. As long as he was moving.

  Which he was not. He stopped outside the building opposite the general’s house. Traffic moved by in a steady stream of horns and two-stroke engines. Flynn had always planned to move positions. His initial spot was good for watching but not for action. Even five hundred meters was too far for rapid deployment and way too far for a sniper shot without a decent rifle.

  As he watched the second van arrived on its eight hour cycle. The van transporting men to take over the night shift around the small compound. The steel gates in the wall opened and the van slipped inside. From his low position he couldn’t see the men getting out, or those getting in, but he had seen it from his higher perch before and the process was consistent. So he waited.

  He waited until the steel gates in the wall opened and the van with the windows emerged and turned left. Flynn zipped into the traffic and followed the taillights. They headed out of town. Ouaga, as the locals called the capital, was a sprawling city of two million, and like all large cities, it was really a series of discreet villages all joined together. They left tree lined streets behind and headed to the outer bands of the city, the villages farthest from the center. Here there were no buildings taller than one story and nothing even remotely resembling a paved road.

  The van stopped at an enclave of buildings that were basic but more solid than the surrounding wood and mud structures. These were rendered cinderblock, patched haphazardly over time but still adequate. Men stepped from the van and walked in a line toward a long low building that Flynn figured for a barracks.

  Such accommodations were not uncommon around Ouaga. Men came from distant villages where work was scarce and stayed in shared rooms for weeks or months or years to provide for their families. Flynn watched each man wander into their barracks with the tired gait of workers coming off shift. He could hear them chatter amongst themselves and although he didn’t speak the language, he had spent enough time in the region to recognize the tongue of the Mossi people.

  Flynn waited for the men to go through their routine. They reappeared in ones and twos to wash their grimy faces in a trough, and collect a ration of kerosene from a drum for cooking and lighting. Then they settled back in the barracks to eat. O
nce all the men were done with their evening rituals Flynn fired up his bike and rode away.

  He was ready. He knew the movements and he knew who and what and where. But as he took his perch back up on top of the building opposite the general’s home, the presence of the second van gnawed at him. It could have been more men, which would be problematic but not insurmountable. It could have been more weapons, which presented the same outcome. Or it could have been something else. He didn’t make a decision. He would sleep on it and see what the new day brought.

  There was the usual movement after dawn, smoke wafting as food was prepared, the people and the birds active before the heat set in. It was late morning when the gates opened and the delivery van appeared. Flynn scrambled down and onto his bike and sped out into the morning traffic. The van was so generic as to be almost invisible, but he had memorized the plate number and soon found it. Like the van transporting the men, this vehicle headed out of town. The traffic thinned as the cinderblock buildings gave way to mud brick, and then again as mud brick gave way to structures made of branches and off cuts and sheets of discarded corrugated iron.

  These were the townships, the villages that clung to the outer perimeter of the city. There were tens of thousands of people living without electricity or sewerage or running water. Women walked the streets carrying baskets, children played in the dust with third-hand footballs.

  The van drove around the township until it came upon a deserted area that was clearly used as a refuse dump, then it stopped. Flynn pulled up short and watched. The van’s side door slid open and a girl was shoved out onto the dirt. The van was moving again before the door fully closed. Flynn watched the girl. She was young, maybe fourteen. For a time she didn’t move. She just sat in the dirt and watched the van drive away. Then, when the van was out of view, she gingerly picked herself up and dusted off her clothes, puffs of red earth floating around her. She looked at the first of buildings of the township as if perhaps they were unfamiliar to her. Then she walked. Away from the dump and around the buildings. She slipped in between two ramshackle structures and was lost to Flynn.

  He didn’t follow. He didn’t need to and he didn’t want to. Flynn had seen girls like that before, many times. The only surprise was that she was alive. He kicked the motorbike to life and roared away, clenching his teeth as he rode.

  He would have to stay in Oauga a little bit longer than he had planned.

  Ten days total, as it turned out. He would have preferred to be somewhere comfortable. He enjoyed a bed as much as the next man. But he stayed on the roof. The family in the apartment below didn’t disturb him and they had no idea he was there. The delay gave him time to plan, time to prepare. Time to acquire the equipment he could not bring with him. Time to confirm the movements of the guards, and to visit the barracks once more. He walked through the maze of stalls in the market, collecting fruit and dried meat and a used shirt from a woman selling army surplus.

  Then back to his position to watch the general stay for three nights and then be gone for four. The house fell into a lazy rhythm. Guards patrolled the wall around the house, but did so in couples, complete with chatter and cigarettes. Then there was activity. A cleaning grew came in. Food was delivered.

  The general was coming back. Flynn got ready.

  General Thoreaux’s mood was sour. He hated spending time in the army compound, and he hated spending time with the special forces unit that had been sent from France. This was his command, his domain, his kingdom. His word was gospel. It was with the artillery troops, and with the locals. The embassy staff spoke behind his back, he knew it, but they still stood to attention and did what he damn well told them to do. But the special forces units? They were a law onto themselves. They listened but they did not follow his command. Half the time they didn’t even salute.

  His driver slowed as the gates were opened to his compound. It was no chalet in the Loire, that he knew, but it was his little piece of France in this God-forsaken place. As commander of African forces based in Djibouti life had been tolerable. The small nation of Djibouti had made itself strategically important by allowing military bases for anyone who could pay: from the United States to China, Japan to France. With that came western comforts. A community. An arts council had even been started.

  Thoreaux had still harbored plans for a homeland-based command, but conceded that Djibouti would be tolerable until he made that move a reality. Then Iraq happened. Not the war. That was not France’s disaster to overcome. But then something happened during the drawdown, as the Americans were leaving. Something went missing. The general had no idea what, but important people in Paris wanted it found.

  Thoreaux had not found it. Then those responsible also disappeared. And with them Thoreaux’s chances at promotion, of a return to France. He was left to fester in Djibouti. He went to France on leave and found his house had been sold and his wife had bought a villa in Lyon. She didn’t ask for a divorce, but she suggested that he not ever bother to visit. He returned to Africa angry and bitter.

  Then the damn Muslims had attacked the French embassy and the army base in Ouagadougou, and Thoreaux was tasked with overseeing the anti-terror units that were sent in. Except the units paid him no attention. They ran their own show. The did their own thing. They all but ignored the general. As did Paris.

  The SUV pulled to a stop and the driver got out and opened the door. The driver was a sergent, and he had been with the general for years. The general stepped out and stretched his back. His mouth was dry as usual. Dust invaded everything, even his insides, he was sure.

  He strode into the house. Even the smell of it was French. Lavender, flown in from the Mont-Ventoux. Fresh in the summer, oils in the winter, kept the stench of Africa off his skin while he was in his sanctuary. A servant handed him a cold bottle of Perrier as he strode along the breezeway between the wings of the house, which he downed greedily, wiping the bottle across his brow when he was done.

  “Can I get you something, mon Général?” asked his sergeant.

  “A bath.”

  “The water is heating, mon Général.”

  “Prepare a Cognac. And a cigar. I shall need a cigar.”

  “Of course, sir. And would mon Général care for some company tonight.”

  The general stopped. A smile crept onto his lips.

  “Yes, Sergent. Some company. The last one is still here?”

  “No, mon Général. She is no longer with us. But I will have a selection ready for you this evening.”

  The general nodded and marched away.

  Flynn hadn’t seen the van with no windows the entire time the general had been away from his home. Now Thoreaux was back, it pulled through the open gates and tore away. Flynn followed on his dirt bike. The route was familiar, until the end. He wondered if they did recognizance beforehand. It seemed unlikely they would just pull someone from the street. Unlikely, but possible.

  The van slowed outside another township, or it may have been a different part of the same township, the way both Queens and Harlem were part of New York. But this was no New York. The van crept along the dusty paths between the structures. There were no roads per se, because there were no cars.

  But the van was known. Flynn saw women pull children off the street, blankets were pulled across doorways. And then van rolled on slowly. And then it stopped. Flynn watched from behind a house that was not much more than a tent. Two men got out of the van and entered a structure of board and corrugated iron. He heard yelling inside. Then he saw the two men leave, each dragging a young girl along. Another girl ran out and jumped onto one of the men’s back but was swatted away.

  The girls were tossed into the van and it pulled away. Flynn made no move to follow it. He knew exactly where it was going. Once the van had turned out of view he marched across to the house. The third girl was crying, and she was being consoled by an older woman who cradled her as a mother would. Flynn stopped short of them.

  “Are you ok?” he asked in F
rench.

  They both stared at him, mute. Perhaps with fear, or incomprehension. French was the national language in Burkina Faso, but not everyone spoke the colonial tongue. In the townships many people only spoke the Mossi language.

  “Can I help?” he asked, just in case.

  Then a large man appeared from behind the house. He was young, maybe twenty, and tall and broad-chested, and his skin shone with sweat.

  “What do you want?”

  “You speak French?” asked Flynn.

  “What do you want?” he repeated. Then he noticed that the women before him had tears in the their eyes, and he spat rapid fire words at them that Flynn couldn’t understand. They replied and then he stared again at Flynn.

  “Who are you?” he asked. His French was heavily accented but fluent.

  “Those men. Do you know who they are?”

  “You are with them?” The man took a step toward Flynn, the muscles flexing in his arms.

  “Non. Do you know who they are?”

  “Bad men.”

  “Oui. Have they been here before?”

  “Sometimes. What do you want?”

  “What happens when the girls come back?”