Марк Грини - One Minute Out

Does this motherfucker have a point?

Pushing my own motivations out of my mind for now, I say, “Well, it’s been a blast catching up. Looking forward to our next encounter.”

“You and me both, mate.”

I hang up the phone, figuring doing so will piss him off a little. I thought about appealing to him to leave Roxana out of this, but I don’t want to do anything more to make him think he has that leverage over me with her.

Sharon brings the coffeepot back to refill me, but I haven’t taken a sip yet. She says, “Landing in a half hour.”

“Thanks.”

Zack is awake now, and he moves over next to me. Softly he says, “I talked to Matt while you were racked out. We have an idea that might help you a little.”

I’m suspicious, despite Hanley’s limited sanction. “Why is Matt helping me with something he doesn’t even want me doing?”

“Hanley doesn’t want you dying for another cause, he wants you dying for him.”

It’s fucked up, but I know Hanley well enough to know it’s true.

I say, “Okay, so why are you helping me?”

“Me?” Zack looks uncomfortable now, weird on the face of a man normally so cocky and self-assured. After a time, he says, “I have my reasons.”

I know his reason. His one reason. “You’re thinking about who I’m trying to help, and you’re thinking about your own kid, aren’t you?”

“My daughter. She lives in Boulder. That’s not a guess. I found out last spring. She and her mom are in wit-pro, long story, but I got a guy at the Bureau to find out about her.”

I know how hard it is to find someone in Witness Protection, so I recognize the lengths Zack must have gone to. “Why did you seek her out after all these years?”

Now Zack looks almost sick. He isn’t the emotional type, so when his eyes glass up and redden, it’s awkward as fuck for us both. He says, “I’m not gonna live forever. Hell, I might not live till Tuesday.” He sniffs back congestion; there are no tears, but he’s close. He says, “Stacy. That’s her name. Her mom named her. She probably told her I died in the war or some shit.” After another sniff he says, “She’s got another dad. A firefighter. I dug into him hard.” After a pause he says, “He’s a good dude. A saint.” He shakes his head. “Fucking bastard.”

“You want your kid being raised by a good man, don’t you?”

He nods. “Of course I do. But I wish I were that good man. I haven’t done one thing for her but stay away. That used to be enough for me. But it’s not anymore.”

Zack clears his head with a hard shake. “Anyway. These girls in the pipeline. I hope you can help them out.”

I’m almost certain the ones I saw in Mostar, with the exception of Liliana, are all but doomed. But maybe there is still hope for Roxana. “What is it you are offering?”

“Wish I could go with you, but Hanley would kick me in the dick meat if I tried. I do know a guy you might want to talk to, though.”

“Who?”

Zack turns and faces me directly. “Like Hanley said, you’ve got no problem working with some shady fuckers if it helps you achieve your mission. That’s right, isn’t it?”

I don’t hesitate an instant. “I’d work with Satan himself to help these victims, Zack.”

Hightower nods. “There’s a former Unit guy.” He’s talking about Delta Force, and I know them to be among the best shooters on the planet. “He transitioned to Ground Branch. He left the Agency, started a company a few years back in the Philippines, raiding brothels and rescuing kids being abused by foreign tourists. The sickest of the sick fuckers out there. International agencies hired him and his team after they did the prep work. He and his six teammates kicked the doors, Delta style, went in and took down johns and traffickers. Zip-tied the perpetrators and left them for the cops, then got the kids out of there and into shelters.

“This guy saw a lot of action in three years of doing this.”

I say, “He doesn’t sound like Satan to me. Still, I don’t see how some dude in the Philippines is going to be any help to—”

“He lives in Vegas now,” Hightower continues. “His company is defunct.” Almost nonchalantly he adds, “He and his boys straight-up murdered a bunch of dudes.”

I cock my head. “They did what ?”

“A British national in Manila, they walked in on him raping a little kid. I don’t know how little, and I don’t want to know, but with all the shit these guys had seen, whatever they saw in that room, they absolutely snapped. My buddy grabbed the British sex tourist by the throat and squeezed, didn’t stop squeezing till he ripped the motherfucker’s windpipe out. Dude bled out right there. Filipinos working at the house stormed in, unarmed, and the Americans opened fire on every last one of them. Thirteen dead in all. A damn bloodbath, right in the center of the capital.”

“That’s not Satan’s work,” I counter. “That’s God’s work.”

“Yeah, no shit. But the Philippine government didn’t agree. Bad for tourism. Sex tourism, which they tolerate, but also tourism in general. They arrested the seven Americans, held them in some Manila shithole for ten months, then extradited them to the U.S. Due to their ties with the Agency, they weren’t prosecuted here. They were just ordered to keep their heads low and stop doing what they were doing.”

“But . . .” I say. “You think there’s a chance they might do what they were doing again, if I just ask.”

Zack shrugs. “I don’t know. Neither does Hanley. But they were good shooters, and you can’t second-guess their motivation for one second. They lived for this shit before they got popped in Asia and sent home.

“You tell them what you told me . . . you might get yourself some backup.”

It’s worth a shot. “Who is this guy? Your friend.”

“Shep Duvall. Solid dude, or he was when I knew him, anyway.”

Upon hearing the name, I close my eyes.

“What?” Zack asks.

I say, “I know that asshole.”

“Yeah? Well, beggars can’t be choosers, Six.”

I open my eyes and say, “True, but beggars can be beggars. Any chance I can borrow a gun?”

Hightower makes a face of annoyance, but says, “When we land, when we’re off the aircraft, I’ll get a piece off one of Travers’s boys. That’s the best I can do.”

“Thanks, Zack.”

He nods at me, then gives me a little wink. “Go get ’em, Six.”

FORTY-FOUR

The girl called Sofia and the girl called Maja were ushered out of the private plane and marched across the tarmac, far from the small terminal and into a waiting black Mercedes G-Class SUV. Dr. Claudia climbed in behind them.

From the backseat of the Navigator, Roxana saw the Director deplane, climb down the stairs, and look her way briefly as he climbed into the back of an identical Mercedes SUV, with his bodyguard Sean at his side.

Roxana was desperate to find some hint of where she was right now. She didn’t know how she could possibly communicate her location to her sister, but it was a moot point until she actually knew it herself.

She’d looked around for an airport sign, but she saw nothing.

The ocean was on her left as they drove away from the city, and although she’d been no geography wiz in school back in Bucharest, she knew this meant they were heading north if they were, in fact, on the West Coast. There were hills, canyons, and lots and lots of businesses and homes, then they drove away from much of the development and into more sparsely populated arid hills.

Minutes later Roxana Vaduva squinted into the sunshine, looking through the windshield of the van as it rolled through the iron-gated entrance of a large ranch. They rumbled up a paved driveway, past a pair of small, squat stucco buildings, and past four young men. The men eyed the vehicle as it drove by, and she looked through the heavily tinted windows at them, saw the big guns hanging from their chests. The vehicle rolled on; Roxana noted the trees and plants around her and she realized she had never been anywhere in her life that looked anything like this place, but it felt to her like movies she had seen about Mexico.