Марк Грини - One Minute Out

• • •

While the Hungarians had chosen a closer position than the night before, Talyssa Corbu stood in the same darkened alcove she’d hidden in the previous evening. And also the same as the night before, she was unable to see the Hungarians because her sight line into their side street was obstructed by a corner building.

Unaware she wasn’t the only person here right now with aims on the Mostar chief of police, Corbu had a plan of her own. She would wait for the police chief to be dropped off, and then, once the man was alone in his flat, Corbu would walk across the square and knock on his door. Using authentic credentials in her pocket but hoping to flash them so fast the cop didn’t catch her name, Corbu would make her way inside and then pull out the little stainless steel pistol she’d bought on the street in Belgrade a few days earlier.

She’d demand answers from Vukovic, threaten him by waving both her gun and her credos, and just stay there and keep it up until she got what she wanted. That Corbu had never shot anyone, had never roughed anyone up for information, had never even been trained with handguns, was not lost on her. But with each passing day since she’d left her home, her limits had been challenged, broken, and thrown out the window.

She stood there in the alcove, checking the time on her phone and talking to herself over and over in a frantic whisper. “You can do this. You can do this.”

• • •

I shift my eyes left and right as my brain tries to take in and process the scene in front of me. In the distance I see three men in the dark next to a gray van in an alley near the home of my target, and they definitely do not look like part of his security team. They’ve got the bearing of police officers, but they are plainclothed, and from their furtive looks to Vukovic’s building and their nervous pacing around the alley, I think they’ve got some sort of mayhem in mind.

These guys are waiting for the chief of police of Mostar, and not to get his autograph.

My guess is they’re here to kill him, and I can’t let them do that. Not yet, anyway.

But the three men in the alley are just one part of the equation. Ahead and to my left, on the opposite side of the quiet little square, I see a lone man covered in a hooded raincoat doing his best to stay invisible next to a darkened mosque. A couple of vehicles have rolled through in the past five minutes, and both times I saw the figure in the edges of their headlights, and both times the man shuffled and bounced from one foot to the other with nervous tension.

Focusing on the black alcove helps me see him a little better now, even without the headlights. But I can’t make out a face. This guy is a lookout for the three in the alley? It’s the only thing that makes sense to me, but I can’t be certain. Otherwise he’s some sort of a solo act, just like me, because I don’t see anyone else around.

I’m inside a real estate office opposite the alleyway where the three men are standing by the van, maybe forty meters away. I broke into this business half an hour ago, wanting a secure place to watch the square, just to get a feel for the rhythm of the scene. A few passing vehicles, one or two people walking dogs on cobblestoned streets on a warm night, lights on in many of the windows of apartment buildings.

But a manageable location for my plan.

Except for the three in the alley.

And the other guy.

I know I have to remove the three closest to the building from the picture before Vukovic arrives, which, if he leaves work at the same time every night, could be in the next ten minutes. Steeling myself for what’s to come, I push the thoughts of the guy by the mosque out of my mind for the short term, put my hand on the latch of the door to the real estate agency, and take one deep breath. Then I step out onto the sidewalk and begin walking in the direction of the alley. I stroll past my target’s building on my right and continue forward, closing on the three men smoking in the dim light. I don’t look up at them; I just advance as if I’m planning on walking by.

I pass the building that shields me from the other man in the square, the bozo I take for the lookout for the muscle team, and then, when I’m just ten feet from the three men, I stop and turn their way. All three are looking at me; they drop their smokes onto the sidewalk.

“Hi, gents. Any chance you guys speak English?”

The man in the middle is the leader; this is clear in an instant. “What do you want?”

“I was just wondering what’s going on.”

“What?”

“C’mon. Three big dudes standing around a dark alleyway next to a rape van. What’s the plan here, fellas?”

“Keep walking,” says another of the three, and now I recognize the accent. These guys aren’t local. They’re Hungarian.

Scanning their clothing and their shoes as I speak, I say, “I think you guys need to call it a night. Go get a beer.”

They look at one another in confusion now, and my eyes burrow into the folds of their jackets, their front pockets, the cuffs of their pants. I don’t see any weapons printing there, but it’s dark and these guys seem like pros, so just because I don’t yet know where they are hiding their guns doesn’t mean they aren’t hiding guns.

The man in the middle takes a step closer, and the others do the same. “Who are you? You are not police. You are not from here. Why do you care where we stand?”

I don’t answer immediately; I just stare the man down with a slight smile on my face. My actions are bizarre, true, but I have a plan. Right now I’m just talking to them, but I’m doing it in a way that ratchets up the heat slowly to the point where they will eventually realize that I am, in fact, a danger, and not just some oddball American tourist.

It’s all to elicit the reaction I’m looking for out of them.

But so far, I’m not getting what I need.

Time to turn the ratchet some more.

Still looking the men over, I lower my voice from its light and airy tone, giving it some heft. I say, “I’m the guy who’s going to stop you from doing your jobs tonight.”

This, plainly, is a threat, and I begin to get what I seek from the Hungarians.

In my business, we call them grooming cues. A subconscious touching of the area where a weapon is hidden when an armed person feels a threat and is readying himself to draw.

They all do it within seconds of one another. The big man on my left crosses his hands in front of his waist and surreptitiously pats just above and to the right of his crotch. This tells me he’s got a pistol in an appendix holster to the right of his belt buckle.

The man in the center unzips his coat and then, as he takes his hand away, brushes across the right side of his chest under his arm. From this I determine he’s also carrying a handgun, but in a shoulder holster.

And the one on my right may have multiple weapons, but his left hand slips nonchalantly into his pants pocket, and I can see he’s taken hold of something there. It’s printing on the fabric now, and it looks like it could be a closed switchblade.

While this is happening, the leader of the group asks me again who I am and what I want with them. I can tell he is stalling for time, trying to figure out if I’m with Vukovic, if I’m some idiotic American mugger, or if I’m something else.

You got this, Gentry, I tell myself, psyching myself up for the violence that I know is mere seconds away. But while I do this I keep talking. “So if you guys just want to get back in that van and head home to Budapest, it would probably be for the best, because nothing good is going to come from—”

The man on my right takes a nonchalant step forward, but I read his intent. He’s closing the space, getting into striking distance, and I know this means his knife is coming out.