Марк Грини - One Minute Out

But before I do, I feel a hand grab me by the leg. I kick free but realize the man who crashed into me is on the ground in the smoke close by.

And then I see the knife. A glint of steel shining through a break in the red cloud, slashing in my direction.

He misses, but he has the advantage.

This man has speed, violence of action; there’s a weapon in his hand while I’m still fumbling with my backpack.

In my world we call my situation a deficit of initiative, but that’s just a fancy way of saying this asshole got the drop on me so now I’m fucked.

I sense more than see him lunging at me through the thick cloud, and I roll out of the way. The blade strikes the stone, and I launch up to my waterlogged boots.

The man disappears in the red cloud, then reappears just as suddenly. He’s on me again as I pull the fixed-blade knife from my belt. He slashes to the right, cuts into my tunic at my rib cage, and I feel a hot sting.

I retreat back a few steps and lose sight of him again.

I’m bleeding. The cut feels long but not deep.

Knife fights on TV are a joke. In the real world there is no dancing around, swinging the blade left and right, or stabbing straight down from the sky. Not by anyone who knows what the hell they are doing. The knife fights I’ve been in are a horror show. A combatant diving forward and jabbing straight out towards the midsection, over and over, three or four times a second if he’s fast. The attacks are difficult to defend against; the person defending does what he can to scramble back, falling backwards or juking to the side, but it’s not like Hollywood, where the guy on the receiving end has time to parry with a thoughtful move and then counterattack.

If you fight with a knife, you are going to get cut. By your enemy, or by yourself, you are going to get cut. More than once.

I get cut more than once.

I see his arm thrust out again through the cloud, and this time the blade nicks me on the right forearm. I feel a second hot sting and hear the blade tip slicing the flesh. The cut is two inches from the muscles that make some of my fingers work, so it’s very nearly a debilitating wound, but his awkward jab presents me with an opportunity.

I lunge low with my own knife, hitting him in the back of the hand and slicing it open with a four-inch gash.

He screams, steps back, and we lose each other in the swirling cloud for a moment again. Smoke wafts over from the back doors of the mansion and spews from the grenade between the koi ponds, and the breeze seems to churn it around us.

I’m breathing hard, not moving, my back to the shallow end of the swimming pool behind me.

Where is he?

From somewhere in the red cloud around me I hear him. “I bladdy love my job, Gentry!”

Fucking Jaco .

He appears on my right, closing fast, and, in a desperate attempt to avoid getting slashed, I fall backwards onto the stone. He lands on me, and we’re wrestling and swinging and ducking now. Two desperate men using all their strength, all their training and cunning, to try both to kill the other and to avoid being killed.

I’m on my back when I drive a knee up into his crotch and jab with my knife, stabbing him in the right forearm, then I roll again as he dives down towards me, smoke swirling around his now-visible form.

Soon we find ourselves with me holding the wrist that’s holding his knife, and him holding the wrist that’s holding my knife.

I roll to my right with all my strength, and we tumble together into the shallow end of the swimming pool. I land on my back on the upper step, only a foot deep. But Jaco’s on top of me, he still has my knife hand tight at the wrist, his knife is pointed right over my heart, and I use all the strength in my body to keep it from plunging straight down.

By being above me, with the weight of his body over his knife hand, I realize that he has leverage I don’t possess.

“Got you, Gentry!” he shouts, and I think he may be right. The knife tip disappears into the water, inches from my heart now.

Smoke wafts over us, obscuring my view of the bald-headed man leaning over me, lying on his knife to drive it down while I hold it up with a weakening left arm.

I find myself hoping Kareem and Rodney will appear over us and save me, but not for long.

I need a new strategy, and hope definitely isn’t it.

I realize what I have to do now, and I don’t love it, but it’s my only play. I drop my knife in my right hand, surprising him, then I spin my wrist down, deeper into the water on my right, whipping out of his grasp. The hand is unarmed now, but I bring it up to grab the knife above my heart. With my left hand I let go now, reach down to my left side, and fumble with my pack there. Jaco senses that I’m making some sort of a move, so he throws his entire body onto the arm holding the knife.

I’m about to get stabbed and I know it.

I shift my body to the right, just a few inches, and Jaco’s cold steel connects with the skin on my left shoulder, just below the clavicle. The blade plunges into me, hilt deep, and I scream in pain.

And then I swivel my left hand out of the pack and shoot him on the right side of his midsection, at contact distance, with my suppressed Walther .22.

He lurches back in surprise, and I take the opportunity to scramble back myself. His knife is still stuck all the way into my shoulder, so I disarmed him, but I paid one hell of a price to do so.

My left arm hangs low to my side now; I can’t lift it to fire the pistol again.

The bullet I shot him with is small and slow, one of the least powerful rounds one can use. I haven’t killed him, but I’m sure I’ve hurt him and put a tiny bit of lead a few inches into his intestines. He starts to stand, and I try to do the same, but my left arm still won’t cooperate.

But my right arm is fine. I reach down one more step into the pool, retrieve the knife I dropped there seconds ago, heft it as I launch to my feet out of the water, and dive on him at the edge of the pool.

I land on him fully and the knife sinks into his chest, hilt deep.

I push myself off him and sit on the top step. The smoke blows away enough to see him there on the patio, his legs dangling down into the water, his face ashen and his eyes wide with bewilderment. He just lies on his back, staring skyward.

“Still love your job, Jaco?”

He coughs up blood that stains his face, then runs down to his white shirt and crimson tie, trickles into the pool, and reddens the water around him much like the last wisps of the smoke grenades redden the air around us.

He dies lying next to me without saying a word, and I pull myself up to my feet and step out of the pool. I walk over to him and kick him over towards the edge, and he falls into the water and begins floating away, facedown.

The smoke clears finally, and I regard the knife sticking out of my shoulder.

I have to leave it there for now; otherwise it will only bleed more.

I switch the Walther to my right hand and begin again for the pool house.

Suddenly I’m aware that the gunfire from the main house has stopped.

“Rodney? Report status?”

“House is clear. I’m hit. Not life threatening. I’ve linked up with Kareem. We’re coming over to the pool house.”

The door is just feet in front of me now. “Remain outside. Watch for squirters.”

“No reason for you to breach alone, Harry.”

But he’s wrong. There is a reason. “Say again, hold positions on the patio and provide cover.”

Rodney is obviously confused by this, but he’s a good soldier. “Understood. Be careful in there.”

• • •

Dr. Claudia Riesling had called the Uber when she was still hidden in the trees on the hillside, and then she’d waited until the app told her it was less than a minute away before struggling over a fence and out onto the street.