Марк Грини - One Minute Out

For several seconds I hear nothing, nor do I see anything through the reflection.

Softly, Sean says, “I like that.”

I think he’s right above me, so I can fire into the ceiling and, with a little luck, get some .22 rounds on this guy, but I don’t know where Roxana is, so I decide that I’ll have to ascend the stairs to verify my targets.

But just as I begin to move, he says, “Look. What do you say I tell my guys to toss their weapons, I do the same, and you let us all walk out of here?”

I’d like to shoot this guy. I imagine that the remorse he seems to be feeling now only comes after getting busted protecting an evil man, and I don’t have any respect for that type of self-development.

But three armed men on the second floor are slowing down my approach to my target.

“Anybody else up there? Other than Cage and Maja?”

“No, sir. I swear to God.”

“Is Cage armed?”

“A little folding knife. That’s it.”

“All right. You boys come down, slowly, and nobody will fire on you.”

After a pause the man says, “I’m trusting you to do the right thing here, Gentry.”

“Ditto. You step onto that landing empty-handed, or I drop you where you stand, got it?”

I hear the other man again, the one I take for Cage. “Sean! I’ll double your salary! I’ll double it! And no hard feelings, swear to God. Just hold out till the cops come, do your job protecting me, and I’ll double . . . fuck it, I’ll triple your salary! Permanently.”

Hall speaks to me, not to Cage. He just says, “This fuckin’ guy. Right?”

But I respond, “That’s a lot of dough, Sean. It’s gotta be tempting. It’s your call.”

The squadron of LAPD helicopters flying overhead nearly drowns out his soft response. “I’m just a surfer, bro. I don’t need much. But I need my life.”

Cage shouts, “Sean! Sean!”

I hear Sean’s weapon thud on the carpeted floor right above my head, and then he steps in front of the mirror. He’s directly above me, but I don’t shoot the ceiling. Two more men come into view, their hands raised. One has blood smeared on his face, and more blood stains the sleeve of tats on his right arm.

All three men walk downstairs, past my position. Sean, the last of the three, looks at me as he passes. He nods in cool appreciation, then forces a smile as he says, “Maybe we grab a beer when you’re done.”

I look away, back to the staircase. “Why would I do that? You’re still a piece of shit. I’d love to be your karma, but I know it will catch up to you someday.”

Sean looks downcast, and then he turns away and walks towards the door behind his men.

I call over the radio. “Three coming out. Don’t fire unless they pose a threat.”

Rodney says, “Roger. Be advised, cops have blocked off the roads out front, but they haven’t moved on the property. Helos in the air all around. Got a call from Carl. He was forced to land at a heliport in Hollywood. The LAPD will have him in custody by now.”

“Okay,” I say. “You boys try to get clear. I’ll wrap up here.”

Kareem answers now. “We’re not going anywhere, Harry. We’ve got your back.”

“Sean?” Cage calls out again from upstairs. “C’mon, Sean.”

But I am the one who answers. “He’s gone. It’s alone time for you and me, Kenny.”

“Look, Gentry! I can—”

“Yeah, yeah,” I interrupt. “You can make me a rich man, I know. But I don’t need money. I just need Roxana. If you don’t hurt her, I’ll let you live.”

He doesn’t respond. I step over to the kitchen, open the freezer, and retrieve a massive frosty bottle of Grey Goose vodka. I bite the glass-and-cork lid off, then pour some on my bloody shoulder, coating my wet tunic, my wound, and the hilt of the dagger protruding there. Vodka runs down my arm and drips with blood from my fingertips. Then I recap the bottle with my mouth and head up the stairs, the pistol in front of me and the vodka down to the side now in my nearly noncompliant left hand.

On the second floor I see blood on the carpet, obviously where the wounded bodyguard had been standing. Cage’s voice came from a back room, so I walk up the hall, push in the door slowly, and find him standing there, with Roxana tight against his chest.

There’s a knife to her throat.

I look at her. The veins in her throat pulsate; her breathing is fast and shallow. “It’s going to be okay,” I say, and I actually believe it now.

She doesn’t respond.

I point the Walther at Cage’s face with my right hand. My bloody left shoulder is screaming at me now. I say, “Let her go, or you will die right now.” He holds the knife against her carotid, but I just aim in carefully. “Dude, you are a dozen feet away. Do you really think I can’t put a bullet in your eye socket if I want?”

“I’ll kill her!”

“Nope, you’ll drop like a sack of wet sand.”

Cage gets it. The only chance he has is to comply. He lowers the knife and lets it fall to the floor. He raises his hands slowly into the air.

“Roxana,” I say, “there are men outside. They’ll help you. Go to them.”

She seems utterly bewildered to be alive as she heads for the stairs, still in shock. As she passes, she stares at the knife sticking out of me, and the left half of my body, which by now is all covered in blood.

With my pistol on Cage’s face, I transmit to the guys. “Blue coming out. Talyssa’s sister. Protect her.”

“Hell, fuckin’ yeah!” Rodney says.

Cage looks at me, at the gun, at the massive bottle of Grey Goose swinging from my left hand. He says, “You’re after the wrong guy.”

I raise an eyebrow. “This ought to be good.”

“I help the process, obviously, but I don’t do it myself. Jaco was the brains. I just do the financing. Stuff like that.”

“So what you are saying is, you are the money guy for a massive consortium of sex traffickers. That’s your defense?”

“You promised you wouldn’t kill me.”

I laugh a little, but say nothing.

He continues. “Last year we grossed ten point three billion. Sounds like a lot, but this is a one-hundred-fifty-billion-dollar-a-year industry. I’m just a small player. But I know names, Gentry. I know names and locations. I can get you steered towards the big fish. You want that, right? This wasn’t just about Maja. This was about you ending this whole thing. Wasn’t it?”

I say nothing, just glance out a second-story window. I see Roxana run past Rodney and then Kareem appears, limping, and he wraps an arm around her and begins escorting her up the driveway. Within seconds he’s leaning on her, and she is the one helping him along.

Both surviving members of the Manila team are hurt now, but the aches and pains that come from doing this kind of shit at their age are going to only get worse.

Cage keeps talking. “I can help you. I feel terrible about what we’ve done. I always have. Always wanted out of it. It’s just . . . shit just got out of hand. Believe me, Gentry, I’m so sorry.”

I sigh a little, and I force my left hand up to my face so I can bite the lid off the vodka bottle. I take a swig of the alcohol; it’s ice-cold, and it’s good going down. I say, “One thing I’ve noticed in this line of work. Nobody is sorry when they are doing what they do. But everyone seems so fucking sorry when I show up to make them pay for it. What do you suppose that’s about, Kenny?”

He knows there’s nothing he can say that will stop me from doing whatever it is I want to do. But he tries, anyway. “Listen. I have an arrangement with the government. I help them. Intel on terrorists, mostly. I’ve saved a lot of lives. Just right now I’m working on something, something that’s going to be huge.”