Марк Грини - One Minute Out

She has a black eye that looks fresh to me, even in the weird lighting.

And standing above her at the side of the bed is an older man with his shirt off, his girth hanging over his pants, his belt doubled in his hand as if he just removed it so he could use it to beat the woman.

I look the man over, but not for long.

Target . . . fucking . . . acquired.

“Evening, Ratko.”

He says something in Serbian I don’t understand, but fortunately he seems to be fluent in gun-in-the-face because when I raise the Glock towards him he shuts the fuck up. He shows confusion, as if he’s wondering how the hell this lone gunman made it through all his boys above, but he’s not showing much in the way of fear.

“No shoot,” he says. “What do you want?”

And here we go. English. The international language of begging for one’s life.

Before I can answer his question by drawing my knife and stabbing him through his intestines, the woman climbs off the bed, raising her hands in the air. This is a ballsy move in front of a guy waving around a 9-millimeter, but she seems to get that I’m not here for her.

The girl looks at me, then at the door. I nod, knowing that whatever was going on here wasn’t consensual, and I doubt she’s about to go running to the protection guys to be a tattletale.

The woman passes me, her hands still raised and her eyes never leaving mine, and she disappears out the door.

Now Ratko and I have our alone time.

“You are the assassin, yes?”

This dude’s a fucking genius. “I am an assassin, yes.”

“I tell you . . . I have no regrets.”

“Yeah? Me, either. Especially not about this.” I advance on him.

“You . . . you are the Gray Man.”

I stop. He’s right, unfortunately. Some people know of me by that ridiculous nickname. But how does he know who I am? I want to get on with it, but my own personal security concerns tell me to dig into his comment. “Why do you say that?”

“Belgrade send me their best men. They say, ‘Only Gray Man can get you now, but Gray Man not real, so do not worry.’ I listen to them. I do not worry.”

I take another step forward; I’m almost in contact distance now. “No reason in worrying about things you can’t change.”

“They say . . . that you are a ghost.”

“I get that a lot.” Quickly I snap the suppressed pistol into the Kydex holster on my hip and draw the black, six-inch blade from the sheath on my chest.

The gun didn’t faze him. I guess he’s ready to die, but he clearly does not like the looks of the knife in my hand. His eyes fill with terror as he realizes I have plans for him, and this won’t be a quick and painless end to his long, horrible life, after all.

I slip a gloved hand around his thick throat and push him up against the wall. The tanto blade of the Spyderco knife is pointed at his midsection, an inch away from drawing blood.

Quickly he says, “What does Gray Man want?”

I hold the blade up in front of his face. “For this to hurt.”

I talk too much in times like this. I should’ve taken this guy out from a quarter mile away, forgotten about penetrating his compound, and there would have been no talking.

But I am done talking now, so I put the knife against his bare stomach. Before I even draw blood, though, he says something that makes me hold again.

“Girls! Girls here. You take. I give all to you. Perfect girls. The best in world.”

At first I think he’s talking about the young woman who just ran out of the room, but he definitely said “girls,” so I next assume he means the three female cooks who I saw bringing the food out to the security guys. I’m not really looking to open a restaurant, so I don’t answer. I recover again, then ready the knife to drag it across Babic’s midsection.

“Twenty-three. No! Twenty-five. Twenty-five beautiful ladies. High class. For you! Yes!”

Wait. What? I ease up on the blade, but just a little.

“Twenty-five ladies, here ? You’re lying.”

“I show you. You take. Make you happy.”

Oh my God. Is this motherfucker a war criminal and a pimp?

“You were already going to die poorly, Ratko. If you give me reason to form an even lower opinion of your character, this might get even nastier.”

He doesn’t get what I’m saying. He responds, “Here. In cellar. Beautiful. All for you, friend.”

I close my eyes. Shit. There’s always something. Some fucking fly in the ointment.

The knife is poised; I am ready. I think about just killing him, ignoring the crazed rantings of a condemned man.

But no.

Because I am an expert in detecting deception, and I don’t think this asshole’s lying. There probably are some more women down here, and my educated guess is that they’d rather not be.

And, much as I’d like to, I just can’t walk away from that. It’s my fatal flaw: time after time my conscience gets me deeper into the shit.

“Show me.”

“Yes, I show you.”

I draw the Glock again, sheathe the knife, and push him back out into the hallway.

We move quickly to the door at the end of the corridor where the music is coming from, the tip of my suppressor six inches from the back of his neck. I don’t know where the woman with the black eye has gone, but I assume she took the staircase up and is making a run for it.

In seconds Ratko and I arrive at the door; he taps a code into a keypad and turns the latch. Quickly I shove him inside, rush in behind him, and pull the door shut, because in the hall I was exposed to anyone who came down the stairs at the opposite end.

The room is so dark I reach for my NOD to pull it down over my eyes, but Ratko flips a light switch.

A low-wattage red bulb hanging from a cord from the ceiling gives an eerie dim scarlet glow over the room.

Before I can even focus on what’s before me, my earpiece comes alive.

I don’t speak Serbian, but it’s clear: the security detail is performing a radio check.

But it barely registers. I am too fixated on what I see.

A room, about ten feet wide and twenty-five feet deep. Walls of bare earth and wooden beams. There are more dirty mattresses on the floor, more broken sofas around the perimeter. A row of three chemical toilets, essentially buckets with cracked plastic seats, sit exposed in the corner on my right.

And two dozen or so women, some may be girls, sitting, squatting, lying flat. Pressed close together and forming a single life-form in the red dim. Someone turns off the music and I hear coughing, crying.

I see chains, and realize they are all shackled by their ankles to eyebolts in the floor.

I smell bad food, cigarette smoke, sweat, shit, piss, and, above it all, absolute and utter despair.

No one speaks a word. They just stare at me with wide, fearful, imploring eyes.

What . . . the . . . fuck?

I’ve seen some things in my days. I’ve never seen this.

“I tell you,” Ratko says while standing next to me. “Best in world for best in world. All for you, Gray Man.”

I’m not the “best in world,” and though the ex-general keeps saying it, these people are probably not “best in world” at anything in this condition. But that isn’t for me to judge. They are all daughters or wives or sisters or mothers. And they are all human trafficking victims, it is plain to see.

I have no idea what they’re doing here, why an old Bosnian general would have so many slaves with him on his farm, but whatever the reason, I know one thing for certain.

All these women and girls, all of them are human beings, and right now they are circling the drain of a sick fucking world.