Марк Грини - One Minute Out

Claudia headed to the kids’ rooms after Cage directed her to a stack of suitcases in a hall closet.

Within five minutes of arrival, the Director and his people were all over the house, hurrying through their assignments, while a few miles away the pilots of the Gulfstream waited at LAX after filing a flight plan for San Jose, Costa Rica.

• • •

It’s just after seven a.m. when we park next to an unused warehouse just outside the fenced-in grounds of Van Nuys Airport. We sit down at picnic tables along a chain-link fence, just twenty-five yards from where Carl’s bullet-pocked helicopter is parked on a pad at the end of the runway.

We drink coffee and clean and rebandage Kareem’s arm wound, in that order. Carl and A.J. talk about Shep’s dog, agree to share custody and take care of her now that her master isn’t able to do so.

And then we sit around, just hoping for a bolt out of the blue.

We know we can’t count on Roxana, so our only fallback plan is to scan the news on a couple of the guys’ mobile phones, reading updates about the gun battle a few hours earlier a half hour’s drive to the north of our position. We’re hoping against hope that the media will be able to tie someone to the property or to one of the dead there, as much of a long shot as that seems.

We also pull out binos and scan the airport grounds, on the off chance the Director is flying out of this airport. It’s a hundred-to-one shot, which demonstrates how desperate we are.

My phone rings and I answer it in my earpiece. “Talyssa?”

The Romanian Europol analyst’s voice conveys a sense of dread. “Harry . . . it’s him. He’s on the line. He says he will kill Roxana.”

“Patch him through.”

I hear some clicks, and then I say, “That you, Jaco?”

His dark voice replies, “Nice work last night.”

I laugh. It’s phony, but I want to appear relaxed and in control. “You like that shit, do you?”

“Love it. I thought you’d sneak in, your standard operating procedure. Figured you’d kill a couple Mexicans with a stiletto before my guys came across you and did you in. But no, you went big, didn’t you? Made a lot of noise, broke a lot of things, killed some people who didn’t matter.”

“We slayed a lot of your boys, didn’t we?”

“Maybe. But what did you get out of all that?”

“I recovered a house full of sex trafficking victims, all of whom can identify the people who—”

“Nobody’s identifying a bladdy thing, mate. Those whores will be useless to you. We’re protected at the highest levels. You’re pissin’ into the fookin’ wind.”

I don’t respond.

He then says, “I was just telling your girlfriend on the phone that I’ve got her little sis here with me, in the next room. I’m thinking about walking over there and sticking my knife through her heart. What’s the Gray Man going to do about that?”

“I don’t have to do anything about that, because you aren’t going to touch her.”

He laughs. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because the only reason you took her away from the ranch last night was that you know she’s your fail-safe, your last chance to bargain to save yourself, save your boss.”

He pauses for a long time, and then he says, “Gentry . . . I’m going to tell you something about me.”

I sigh. “Knock yourself out.”

“I was South African military, Fourth Special Forces Regiment. As a recce I saw action in the Congo and the Central African Republic, plus some other shit I’m not talking about.”

“Good. Because I couldn’t care less.”

Jaco sniffs out a short laugh. “My point is, when I left the military, I went into intelligence. For three years I chased down every Gray Man sighting or potential Gray Man sighting in Africa. A couple hunts in the Middle East, others on the Indian subcontinent. Hell, I even went to Bangladesh on a lead.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Never been to Bangladesh.”

He acts like he doesn’t hear me. “But intel work was a fookin’ bore. No Gray Man, no action, no test of the mettle like I’d gotten in my twenties as a recce.”

To this I say, “Any chance I could get you to tell me why you called?”

Another laugh from the South African, but I can tell in his voice he’s stressed. He ignores me again and keeps up his story. “No other options for a bloke like me but to go into corporate security. I thought it would be tiresome and monotonous, but it was even so much worse than that. So when my company was contacted by a corporation in the Consortium, when I started gettin’ the full picture of what this is all about, when me and my boys started working tough, demanding jobs to keep this entire bladdy enterprise afloat . . . I was like, ‘Yeah. That’s more like it.’”

“You’re a piece of shit. You know that, right?”

He ignores the comment and continues. “I love my job, Gentry, is what I’m saying. But now . . . now I’m up against you, the one prize I’ve wanted for years and years. Can’t believe how lucky I am that you got drawn into this whole thing.”

I shake my head at this. “I bet Kostopoulos and Babic wouldn’t consider themselves lucky. Does the Director know you see my arrival in California as a positive turn of events?”

Now Jaco laughs maniacally into the phone. “I see the glass as half-full. The Director wouldn’t get it, he’s not like us, not a huntsman. He likes his food caught and cleaned and carved and served to him on a china plate. You and me, on the other hand, we don’t care about the dish. We only care about the art of the pursuit, the thrill of the kill.”

“You’re right about that. So why don’t you let Roxana go, and then you and I can hunt each other into oblivion.”

“Nice try, but if you got your girl back, I can’t be sure you wouldn’t just slip away, Gray Man style. No, mate. I need the lamb on the stake for the lion to come for it.”

“You’ve told your boss she’s a bargaining chip, but that’s not it, is it? You are holding on to her so that I keep coming for you.”

Jaco says, “Bingo.”

A.J. hands me a cup of coffee from the McDonald’s on the corner, and I take a swig. Normally I would benefit from the caffeine almost immediately, but this asshole has me so amped I have plenty of energy. I say, “I’m going to be on top of you, soon. My face in your face, while your life is leaving you through a hole in your chest. And, as you’re bleeding out, I’m going to ask if you’re still so happy to have me chasing you.”

“Keep tellin’ yourself that, Gentry. It will bring us closer.” Almost to himself he says, “I love my job.”

I’m tired of this testosterone-infused back-and-forth, but I’m trying to get something out of him I can use. He seems to think I’m going to appear in front of him any minute, but the truth is I’ve only got his boss narrowed down to an area some hundred miles in diameter.

But before I can try to pull intel out of him, he says, “Until that day, Court.” And then the line goes dead.

Shit.

• • •

As the bodyguard worked on pulling coffee mugs out of a cabinet and pouring milk into them, Roxana looked out the window at the back of the property and thought it looked like images she’d seen of Versailles. The pool, the marble deck, the foliage and setting: it was idyllic.

9102 Jovenita Canyon Drive. What a strange place for the devil to live, she thought.

She’d seen the address on the way in; all she had done as they drove was try to find street signs, notable buildings, and other things that would help her direct her sister to her, should the opportunity arise. But while pulling into the drive they stopped a moment for the gate to open, and right in front of her she saw the street address on the massive mailbox.