Марк Грини - One Minute Out

She can’t see me, I’ve got her held facing away, so it’s a reasonable question.

“ Da. I mean . . . yes.”

In the distance I hear barking dogs, but they aren’t close. I’d seen wild boar in the trees as I made it to the woods, so I wonder if the Malinois are off chasing the wrong fleeing prey.

“You are British?” she asks softly.

Why not? “Sure,” I lie, but I don’t bother to fake an accent.

“The other girls?”

“They would not leave.”

To my surprise, she nods. “Yes. They have family, or they think they go somewhere better. I no have any family, and I know where they are going.”

“Where are they going?”

She shrugs. “Sex work in Europe, I think. But they no make money. They will be slaves. Just products to be used.”

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Liliana. What is your name?”

“Prince Harry.” I’m British, might as well take advantage of it. She either doesn’t get the joke or doesn’t like the joke, but either way, she makes no response.

I ask, “Where are you from?”

“A village near Tiraspol. It is in Moldova.” I know where Tiraspol is, I’ve been there, but I don’t let on.

“Why you here?” she asks.

“I came for Babic.”

“That is the old man?”

“Yes.”

“You kill him?”

With a shrug I say, “I did.”

“You Albanian mafia?”

What a strange question, I think, but I just say, “No. Someone else hired me.”

But then I think about it. That someone is unknown to me. Hell, for all I know, I am working for the Albanians, though that would be a first. I used a broker in this industry, a shadowy guy on the dark web who I know to be reliable enough. After he established my bona fides, he’d offered me something like ten ops over a couple of months, all of which I turned down, until the day I opened an e-mail to see “General Ratko Babic” on the top of the target portfolio.

Yeah, I told myself at the time. This one, I’ll do. The pay was one point one million, but I would have worked pro bono. A half mil has already been put in my account in good faith, and my return display of good faith was to shoot that worthless sack of shit and let him bleed out, which I just did.

Services rendered. Whoever the hell paid for this hit, be they sinner or saint, I expect them to be another satisfied customer.

“I don’t know where to go,” the girl says, and I realize I’m thinking the same thing. All those women and girls back in that chamber of horrors are still there. There are still armed men around them, and the victims still have the fear of retaliation to their families if they go against the wishes of those holding them.

“How long have you been here?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Maybe one week.”

“There are kids in there, aren’t there?”

Liliana nodded, still facing away. “One is fourteen. Two are fifteen. Two are sixteen.”

Christ. I loosen my hold on the woman, and she scoots away a little, but she doesn’t get up and run. She just turns towards me. I still have my balaclava covering my face, so I let her do it.

I say, “I have a Jeep. I can take you to Mostar. It’s not far. You can tell the police what happened. Maybe they can—”

I stop talking when her expression changes. She regards me like I’m nuts. Slowly she shakes her head.

“No police?” I ask.

“Police are bad, Harry.”

“Mostar police?”

What sounds like a weak laugh comes from her, and she looks off to the sound of barking dogs, which now seem to be even farther away. “Mostar police. Belgrade police. Tiraspol police.”

“Are you certain, or are you guessing?”

“Always police. Police from Mostar come to farm.”

I say, “We have to help the girls.”

“I want to help girls. But girls gone. Never see girls again.”

“How do you know?”

She shrugs now, looks me hard in the eyes. “Because you came.”

I feel that pain in the pit of my stomach that comes the moment I realize I fucked up. I went into this with the objective of making the world a better place by taking an evil man out of it, but in doing so, I just might have condemned many others to a horrific fate.

Gentry, what have you done now?

I stammer as I talk. “Someone down there told me they would all be beaten for what I did tonight. Is that . . . true?”

She nods assuredly. “It does not matter that they no responsible for what happen. The men . . . very bad. They punish for this.”

Slowly I ask, “Will they kill them?”

She shakes her head now. “No. They no kill them. Women are money to them. Thousands of euros a day. The men never let them go while they can make money.”

“Who are these people?”

“Serbian mafia. Local police, too. I think old man pays police for protection.”

I change gears. “Would you recognize the policemen who you saw at the farm?”

“Recog-nize?”

“If you see them again, will you know them?”

She nods. “They rape me. I sex with them. Of course I see faces.”

“Right.” I want to drop this chick off in Mostar and put this entire clusterfuck in my rearview, but I know I can’t do that. I’m responsible for those women now, for the simple reason that I showed up tonight and imperiled them even more than they already were. It may not make sense to others, but I accept it.

Their fate . . . simply put . . . is my fate.

I say, “Look. If I take you to Mostar, you can show me the policemen who came here.”

Again, I get the “what’s wrong with you” look from the young woman.

“If they see me, they kill me. Why I go to Mostar? I want go Moldova.”

“I can protect you, then I will get you back home. I promise.”

“How you protect me?”

“Sister, I just killed six . . . correction, seven men back there. Believe me, I can protect you.”

Her eyes widen. I don’t brag about killing as a rule, but I need her to know I’m deadly serious about this. Apparently, she isn’t quite buying it yet because she asks, “Why? Why you care? No one care about the girls in the pipeline.”

“The pipeline?”

“ Da. The pipeline. Our countries, into Serbia, into Bosnia. From here I don’t know. Someone say a boat, but I don’t know where boat going.”

“How many girls?”

She shrugs. “In Belgrade? Fifty in the apartment. Here? Twenty, twenty-five in the cellar.”

“Where are the other girls? The girls you saw in Belgrade and Sarajevo?”

“I do not know. They take away. Do not return.”

Jesus. “I can’t help them, but maybe, if we’re fast, we can help these women. Find out where they are going next. I have to do something.”

Again, she asks me, “Why?”

“Because I came,” is all I can say, parroting the reason she gave me that the women would be brutalized even beyond what they were already being subjected to.

“Come with me to Mostar. One day. Two, tops. We’ll watch the police station, and you try to find one of the cops who came here.”

I tell myself there might still be time to save all those trafficked humans I saw in the cellar. I don’t know if it’s true, but I have to believe. “Liliana, will you help me, please?”

“You get paid for killing old man?”

The question comes out of nowhere and it surprises me. I’m so surprised, I answer honestly. “Yeah. A lot.”

She nods slowly, taking this in. Then, “Good. I am very hungry.”

I nod and smile in the dark. I can work with this woman.

I help her to her feet. “We’ll be in Mostar for breakfast.”

With a sort of noncommittal shrug she says, “Okay, Harry. I go with you. I find policeman, but you cannot stop the pipeline.”