The Last Protector(Clayton White #1)(67)

Then there was a gunshot. And another. The frustration in the twin’s face evaporated and was replaced by a look of complete disbelief. He sank to his knees, looking at White as if asking for help. He stayed there for a second or two, then fell forward onto his face. Dead.

Behind the fallen man, Pierre was holding a black pistol. He moved to the back of White’s chair and cut the leather strap with a sharp knife. White caught a whiff of Pierre’s cologne.

Only the French would wear perfume to a gunfight, he thought, smirking. Pierre moved to the side and started working on the tape that kept White’s left arm immobile. The moment White’s left arm was free, Pierre handed him the knife.

“Do the rest. I’ll cover you,” he said.

“Who sent you?” White asked, cutting through the black tape.

“Alexander Hammond,” Pierre replied.

White momentarily stopped what he was doing. What?

“Hurry up. Oxley and his men are surely on their way back,” Pierre urged him. “I called his head of security and told him the chief of police was at Oxley’s front door and wanted to speak with him in regard to an incident in Cape Town.”

“Is that true?” White asked, working frantically to free his right leg.

“Of course not,” Pierre replied. “It only bought us a couple of minutes.”

“There’s no way they didn’t hear the gunshots,” White said, standing up from the chair.

“Yeah, that too.”

White knelt next to the dead man and patted him down. White relieved him of a semiautomatic pistol holstered at the small of his back. He also pocketed a small combat knife he found in the man’s rear pocket. He heard engines approaching.

ATVs, White thought, recognizing the sound.

“They’re coming. C’mon, hurry up,” Pierre pleaded, already jogging toward the door through which he had entered.

“Go. I’m right behind you,” White said, gathering together the documents Oxley had shown him earlier. He also took Oxley’s cell phone, on which were the recordings he had listened to earlier, and put it in one of his pockets. White sprinted after the Frenchman, who was now waiting for him at the door.

“Where’s your car?” White asked, taking a moment to ensure the pistol he’d taken from the dead twin had a round in the chamber.

“Oh, we’re not leaving by car,” Pierre replied, his eyes on the screen of his phone. He tapped a button, and the exterior spotlights switched off. “There’s a helipad a quarter mile from here. They’ll pick us up in twelve minutes.”

“Who’s they?”

Pierre shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know. But we need to go.”

White was speechless. What kind of half-cooked plan was that? But it wasn’t as if he had other options.

“Just follow me, okay?” Pierre said. “Ready?”

White nodded. “Ready.”





CHAPTER FORTY-SIX


Kommetjie, South Africa

Roy Oxley was steering his four-wheeler down the path toward the tasting room when all the exterior lights across the vineyard suddenly switched off.

That fucking Frenchman was going to regret this. Oxley was going to skin that frog alive, and he would do it slowly while making sure that Pierre Sarazin, or whatever his real name was, didn’t die before Oxley allowed him to.

Oxley swore under his breath as he ducked under the small windshield of the ATV to avoid the dust being churned up by the wheels of the four-wheelers in front of him.

With half his regular protective detail in London with his wife and kids, plus the two others that White had incapacitated, Oxley had only six men on the premises. He prayed that the two gunshots he’d heard coming from the tasting room hadn’t killed Pierre Sarazin. There would be hell to pay if the small man was dead.

Although he had authorized one of the twins to rough up White a little, Oxley hoped he hadn’t made a costly mistake by leaving the man alone with White. Keeping White alive was a priority. Oxley had seen the transformation in the American’s eyes as he had divulged a deluge of damning evidence against Alexander Hammond. White might not have realized it yet, but he’d become Oxley’s most powerful weapon against Hammond. That’s why Oxley was going to ensure White left here alive. He didn’t think White had it in him to kill Hammond, but who knew what the future held? Oxley had seen stranger things happen.

He’d let White go, but the Frenchman . . . whether Pierre was working for Hammond or someone else didn’t matter. As long as Oxley could curl his fingers around the Frenchman’s throat.

Oxley came to a sliding stop next to the tasting room. He turned off the ATV’s engine and signaled his men to do the same. He grabbed a suppressed M4 off the back rack of the ATV and turned toward his men.

“Fire only if you’re fired upon,” Oxley said, taking the time to look each man in the eyes. “I want that French cockroach alive.”

Oxley sent two men to cover the rear of the building before joining his two remaining men, who were already lined up against the wall on the right side of the door.

“Three, two, one, execute,” Oxley said, as the first man entered the tasting room.

The man in front of Oxley, seeing the first man going left, turned right. Oxley automatically went left, scanning for threats. Three seconds after the first man had stepped inside, Oxley’s team had taken control of the tasting room. But none of it changed the fact that Oxley was now down to five shooters.