Марк Грини - One Minute Out

I speed through the center of the hilly town with no idea where I’m heading. It’s tough holding a gun on a passenger while driving one-handed, and I clip the mirror off a parked panel truck during a left turn.

I look to Vukovic, then tap the cell phone on his belt with the barrel of the 9-millimeter.

“Call them! Tell them to back off, or you’re gonna get shot!” It’s nearly impossible controlling the Jeep at these speeds, and I know the cops behind me are already radioing to others with instructions to cut me off ahead. My only chance is to get Vukovic’s help in having them end the chase, and then get out of town before all the other police of Mostar rain down on me.

But Vukovic doesn’t move. He looks at me without fear and speaks calmly, because he knows I’m after information, and I won’t kill him. He says, “You are going to die.”

I move the gun from his temple to his knee, and press it there. “Maybe. But first, you are going to limp.”

“What?”

“I need information from you. I can still get it from a one-legged man.”

Vukovic looks at the weapon, taking stock of his predicament now, and I see a slight crack in his visage. The first real hint of concern.

He pulls out his phone, hits a button, and brings it to his ear.

I speak fair Russian, better Spanish, a little German and French, and some Portuguese, and I’ve picked up a dozen phrases in Serbo-Croatian, but I can’t understand a word of what this guy’s saying now. I look at him while he talks, hoping to give him the false impression I have a clue, but it makes racing through these tight narrow streets even more dicey.

He starts yelling into the phone, and I tag another parked vehicle, sideswiping the little two-door with my left rear quarter panel. My tires scrape a curb on a turn as he ends the call.

Looking in the rearview I’m relieved to see the police vehicle behind me slowing down. It turns off down a deeply sloped side street a moment later.

With the barrel still on Vukovic’s knee, I ask, “Can they track your phone?”

“No.”

It’s impossible for me to tell for certain if he is being truthful or not, so I take his phone and throw it out the window anyway.

In times like this, it pays to be a dick.

“What do you want?” he asks, but we have some more housekeeping to attend to before we get down to all that.

I move the gun off his knee. “Put your handcuffs on. Behind your back.”

In response he just says, “You are the man who shot Babic. The Branjevo Partizans are going to kill you for that. You need to be running for your life, not talking to me.”

I move the CZ back to his temple now, and with a sigh designed to show me he’s a tough guy who isn’t scared, he pulls out his cuffs and puts them on. I break the keychain off his belt and toss it out the window so he can’t unlock himself, and I let him stew silently in the fear hidden behind his false bravado as I drive up and into the hills.

THIRTEEN

We make it out of the city without any more problems, and Talyssa Corbu calls and directs me to the place she found for the interrogation. After driving around a bit more to make damn sure no one is on my tail, I follow her directions. When I get there I muscle the Jeep into deep foliage off the road till it’s hidden, then park it and pull out my prisoner.

I’d put a black hood over Niko’s head as soon as we were out of the city, and this, along with his hands cuffed behind his back, makes him utterly compliant.

It’s work getting up this hill through these trees, which means Talyssa has done a good job finding an out-of-the-way spot. I get lost for a minute, but the young Romanian woman calls me and talks me back on track, and ten minutes after climbing out of the Jeep with the chief, I see the location. It’s a concrete bunker from the Bosnian civil war, mostly covered in vines and brush, pockmarked with bullet holes and RPG strikes. Still, the structure is remarkably intact.

I shove Vukovic inside. Rain drips through blast holes in the concrete above my head, openings that give some light to the otherwise dark space.

The walls are covered with graffiti. The words “Red Star,” the name of a soccer team, are emblazoned in red. “Tito” is written in spray paint all over the place, which surprises me, because he was president of Yugoslavia a long time ago, he’s been dead forty years, and he was an asshole back when he was alive.

Weird that kids around here take the time to tag bunkers with his name.

Talyssa Corbu stands in the middle of the dim space in her raincoat, the hood over her red hair and a scarf tied over the lower half of her face, just as I instructed her.

I pull a spare handcuff key from where it’s stitched behind my belt loop at the back of my pants—kept there just in case—and I unlock my prisoner, then resecure his hands over his head, attached to bent rebar sticking through one of the mortar holes. I leave him there, the bag still over his head, while Corbu and I step outside the bunker and speak in whispers.

“This place will work fine.”

I see now in the outside light that her eyes are filled with terror and concern, and she speaks in a voice tinged with trepidation. “Any problems?”

I know what she is asking by this. “Nobody got killed.”

Obvious relief washes over her, but I see her lower lip continue to tremble. “What now?”

“Now is the ugly part. I won’t know how ugly till I get started. You want to wait out here?”

“Of course not. I need to be in there listening to what he says. But . . . please do not torture him first. Give him an opportunity to tell the truth.”

She’s so out of her element right now. It speaks volumes about her relationship with her sister that she’s doing all this, but I worry about bumping up against her limits soon, perhaps in the next five minutes.

“I’ll start gentle. But what’s gentle for me probably won’t be considered gentle by you. I will use something called the presumptive. It means that although we don’t know everything, we’re going to come at him like we do. I’ll lead. I’ll tell him we know he’s with the pipeline, and the Consortium.”

“The Consortium?”

“In the car he asked me if I was sent by the Consortium. Does that mean anything to you?”

She shakes her head and looks back at the entrance to the bunker. “What about me? What do you want me to do?”

“You just whisper in my ear if you have something to say.”

She nods her assent, although she remains incredibly reluctant about all this. I return to my captive and hear him muttering something in Serbo-Croatian. I don’t know what the hell he’s saying, but I don’t like it. I smack him on the side of the head, and he shuts up.

Talyssa gasps in surprise behind me.

“You better speak English, Niko, otherwise the only language we can communicate in is pain.”

He switches to English, and again he says, “You the man that kill Babic, yes?” After a little chuckle he says, “Some bad people looking for you.”

“Where are the women?”

“Who are you? What do you want?”

I didn’t go through all this shit to get interviewed, so I don’t answer. Instead, I repeat, “Where are the women?”

Now he replies with “What women?” and I punch him in the jaw. I know it hurts, because I’ve gotten my own face bashed in a time or two.

Talyssa gasps again.

Vukovic grunts, and his head shakes inside the hood. After a moment it begins to hang. He’s not unconscious, he’s just showing signs of defeat, coming to the frightening realization that his future depends on me. It gives me some slim hope that I won’t have to pound on him all day.

“The women and girls who were locked in the cellar of Ratko Babic’s house. Where were they taken?”