One Minute Out Page 20

  What happens is a lot more violent than I’d hoped for, considering my aim here was to protect one of the people inside the van. The big top-heavy vehicle turns ninety degrees to the road on squealing and smoking tires, and immediately tips over at speed. As I slam on my brakes I look in my driver-side mirror and see the black van crash onto its right side. The rear door flies open with the impact, and a body ejects onto the street.

  I can’t tell if it’s male or female.

  Poor Talyssa, I think. First, I came slamming down from the sky, knocking her to the cobblestones in a pile of men, and now I’ve wrecked her out in a brutal crash.

  I’m leaping out of the Vauxhall before the last of the debris from the crash has even rained back to Earth. Drawing my pistol, I actuate my weapon light under the barrel, shining it on the scene.

  The person ejected is a man; he doesn’t look as badly injured as I expected him to be, but I fix that immediately by firing twice into his right side as he tries to rise to his feet.

  He spins away from me and ends up dead on his back in the street, arms and legs splayed.

  I move around to the front of the vehicle, look through the cracked windshield, and see the driver and the man in the front passenger seat lying on top of each other. They are moving, but I don’t fire, because I can’t see Talyssa. She might be on the wall of the van behind them, so I run around to the back, crouch down, and enter there.

  My light reflects off the dust and smoke in the air, but through it all I see an arm wildly waving a stainless semiauto pistol my way. The gun snaps, earth-shattering in the small space, and I return fire into the face of the figure holding it, unsure whether I’ve been shot. I don’t feel any impact, but I keep firing till the stainless steel pistol falls away. Only when it does so do I see that this is one of the bearded men; he’s lying on top of Talyssa in the second row. She is screaming bloody murder, thank God, and now that I know where she is I move into the van and put my hand on her head to hold her down against the closed sliding door resting on the street. When she’s out of my line of fire I open up on the men in the front seat, dumping a dozen rounds from my Glock into them.

  “Are you hurt?” I shout now as I reload, because my ears are ringing from the gunfire in the closed-in space, and I know the Romanian woman’s virgin ears will be faring much worse.

  She shouts back at me. “I . . . I don’t know! This man is on top of me and—”

  “Hang on.”

  I pull on Talyssa because I can’t get over the seat to get the dead guy off her. It’s hard work getting her turned around and over the seat back, but finally she is able to crawl out under her own power.

  Her face is scratched and bruised, and her eyes show mild shock, but she could be a hell of a lot worse, so I count my blessings.

  We stand amid the wreckage under a streetlamp; I feel all over my body to double-check that I didn’t catch a bullet. I can’t find anything but sore spots, and painful bruising is a lot better than being ventilated by gunfire.

  Another car has stopped behind us and I hear barking dogs and shouting humans in the yards of the homes on our right. I’ve holstered my weapon under my T-shirt; I’m covered with cuts and scrapes and filth from all the scrambling and fighting I’ve been doing over the past half hour, so to the people here I look just like another car crash victim.

  But we can’t play this off like a simple traffic accident, since no one for a quarter mile in any direction could have missed the sound of all the shooting.

  I help Talyssa along, ignoring the young man who climbs out of the tiny Nissan behind us. Then we get into the Vauxhall. Seconds later I’ve reversed direction and am heading back to the east, moving at a reasonable speed. Flashing lights approach, so I pull into a driveway, as the bullet holes in my windshield are easy to see, even at night.

  Once the first responders have continued on to the west, I’m back on the road, and my right hand reaches out to feel over Talyssa’s body. It’s called a blood sweep, a quick way to find an injury on someone who may not even be aware they are injured because of the effects of adrenaline. You have to put your hand everywhere to be sure, and I do this without thinking.

  It’s a common practice in my world, but to the uninitiated I imagine it feels a little off.

  Instantly she recoils and smacks my hand away. “What . . . what are you doing?”

  I pull my hand back to the steering wheel. “Sorry, it’s a thing we do.”

  “What? Who does that? No one does that!”

  I let it go. “Check yourself, are you bleeding? Are you hurt?”

  Coming out of her anger and shock, she does as I ask. After a moment she says, “I . . . I don’t think I am badly injured, but I hit my head when we crashed.” Rubbing her upper arm she says, “My shoulder hurts, but I think I’m okay.”

  I know from experience that if her head and shoulder hurt now, they’re going to be killing her in about twelve hours, but I don’t mention this. I have to find out if she learned anything at all in the few minutes she was in captivity. I don’t expect to find out much, but I have no idea how else to continue my pursuit of the kidnapped women without some sort of new intelligence.

  But before I can speak she turns to me. “Thank . . . thank you.”

  This I don’t expect. “Uh . . . sure. I thought you’d be pissed.”

  “Pissed? I haven’t been drinking. Have you?”

  “Mad. Angry,” I clarify, knowing she probably learned British English, so she thought I was telling her I thought she was drunk when I pulled her out of the van.

  “Why would I be mad?” she asks now.

  “I don’t know. I guess because I used you as bait and almost got you killed.”

  She shook her head. “You saved my life. I put yours in danger by not trusting you on the rope, and still you came for me. Thank you.”

  I say, “I think you are drunk.”

  She looks me over a moment. “Maybe you didn’t do it for me. Maybe you did it for the women you are trying to save. But still . . . thank you.” She reaches out and squeezes my forearm, then retracts her hand and puts it back in her lap.

  I ask, “Did the men say where they were taking you?”

  “Not to me, no. But they did say something.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Romanian is a Romance language. Albanian is not. But both are from the Balkan sprachbund.”

  She’s a smart woman. I’m lost already.

  And she sees it in my face, apparently. “I can’t speak Albanian, not at all, but I can understand some words and phrases.”

  “And they spoke openly in front of you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not very professional of them,” I say. “In fact, we can’t trust it. It could have been disinformation.”

  She picks some grit from the car crash out of the back of her arm, wipes a little blood off her hand onto her jeans. “They were very agitated after you showed up, for good reason. I don’t think they were thinking about being professional or trying to deceive me when we left the Old Town. They were all screaming at one another. At me, too.”

  “Yeah, I heard. What did they say?”

  “I heard the driver say something about a boat.”

  “A boat?”

  “Yes. He definitely said a boat, and then he said something strange. He said, very clearly, ‘next to the president.’”

  “The president?”

  “Yes. I am sure of it.”

  “The president of Croatia?”

  “I have no idea what he was referring to.”

  I pull hard to the side of the road and slam on the brakes.

  Talyssa grabs the dashboard to keep from being propelled forward. “Why are we stopping?”

  I don’t answer; instead I lift my phone and look at the GPS, move the map back farther west, in the dire
ction the van was headed. After a few seconds I find what I’m looking for. “The Valamar Dubrovnik President Hotel. On the tip of the peninsula. Fifteen minutes from here.”

  Talyssa looks out the window at the darkness, then back to me. “That must be it. Let’s go, then.”

  I grab my pack out of the backseat, then fish through it a moment. Pulling out her phone and her pistol, I hand both items back to her.

  “What . . . what is happening?”

  “I’m going on alone. We will stay in communication with each other. We’re lucky you survived tonight. I’m not pushing it again.”

  “But . . . my sister.”

  “You can do more to help your sister by supporting me than you can running around with me.”

  “You are just trying to get rid of me.”

  She’s right, but I don’t admit it. “Not at all. If I find that boat they’re talking about, I’m going to need to follow it. I’m also going to need to know about the owner of it, where it might be going, that sort of thing.”

  After a moment she nods. “I . . . I can help with that.”

  “I know you can. Keep that phone on; I’ve got the number programmed into an app on mine that will keep me untraceable, but you will be able to reach me when you need to.”

  “Okay.” She seems unsure, but right now I just want her out of danger.

  I add, “Also, you may not know it yet, but you are going to be very sore tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Not tomorrow, you won’t.”

  She climbs out of the car and I follow her, then walk over to a pair of scooters parked along the street next to the hotel. Both are locked, but I pull my pick set and quickly free them both.

  One is a Gilera Stalker, a little 50cc two-person two-wheeler. And the other is a Derbi Boulevard, a more powerful scooter with a 150cc engine.

  “Where do I go?”

  I don’t really have an answer for this. “Just get out of town. Find a little suburb, sit tight, wait for instructions from me.”

  “That’s it?”

  I shrug. “Pick up some ice, painkillers, bandages, and antibiotic ointment.” I add, “Trust me.”

  It takes me a few minutes to hot-wire both scooters, and soon she is heading east, and I’m heading west, looking for a boat next to the President Hotel.

  It’s not much to go on, but it’s all I’ve salvaged out of one hell of a shitty night, so I do my best to think positively as the aches and pains from all my activity continue to make their presence known across my body.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Maja was well into her second night in the bombed-out warehouse with the rest of the women and girls. It was a warm evening, but the breeze off the water coming through the blast holes in the walls and the blown-in windows made it bearable. Bedding had been brought in by the guards, and there was plenty of room to lie down on the dusty concrete floor.

  Maja now lay with her head on a little pillow, her eyes tired and bleary from the stress, and she looked around the room, which was difficult with the intermittent moonlight. The female captives around her lay on blankets and mats; most slept, but a few, like Maja herself, tossed and turned.

  She heard a vehicle pull up and come to a stop outside, and then she heard car doors opening and closing. The three Albanian guards sitting around the room stiffened up and then the scuffle of what sounded like a dozen pairs of shoes echoed up the ruined staircase.

  She sat up, as did many of the girls around her.

  She couldn’t make out the faces of the men who appeared out of the stairwell. Some seemed to be more of the group who had taken over from the Serbians, and they all carried rifles over their shoulders. But there were also four or five silhouettes that didn’t match any of the men she’d remembered seeing since arriving here.

  A tall and fit man with short hair and a clean-shaven face passed through a shaft of moonlight, looking over the women, but Maja didn’t get a good look at him before he moved on towards a back wall. Others followed behind him, and she could see white faces, serious eyes, and well-made but casual clothing. She saw no weapons, but the men moved across the big dark space with true authority.

  These guys were in charge, not the guards.

  Maja wondered if this meant they would be leaving again soon.

  She knew she was being smuggled and trafficked for the purposes of sex, but she had no idea where she was going or who she would be made to serve when she got there.

  Not that it mattered. Her life was over; she held no hope for rescue or escape.

  Maja looked over the new arrivals and focused again on the tall bald man, now in a darkened corner.

  The light was insufficient to reveal any of his facial features, but something about his gait, his posture, and perhaps even his dark aura reminded her of someone she had met before.

  * * *

  • • •

  Jaco Verdoorn stood in the darkness of the open third story of the ruined building, inspecting the condition of the women here.

  Normally he didn’t come personally to any of the safe houses in the pipeline. But this warehouse was the closest point to Old Town Dubrovnik where the Albanians could take their prisoner, so when he was told upon landing that a team had picked up the Europol woman and was bringing her back here, Jaco and his nine men came directly.

  He would interrogate her to find out where she gained her intel on the Consortium and, more importantly to him, he’d find out where Court Gentry was, and what he was doing. Once he had this information, he would leave, the Albanians would take the prisoner and kill her, and then they would help guard the merchandise until five a.m., when the shipment would be moved to their transport to market.

  Looking around, Verdoorn realized this wasn’t the right location for an interrogation, but he was not surprised the Albanians didn’t know any better. He wasn’t going to beat and torture the woman in front of the merchandise; that would be bad for morale. And even if he took her down to another floor of the building, or did it outside in the back of a car, the sound of her screams would carry in these cavernous spaces and along the wide-open shoreline.

  He was still thinking of this, trying to figure out where he could relocate the woman for a proper grilling, when the leader of the Albanian cell took a call on the other side of the room. The South African couldn’t understand the words, but the tone made clear the Albanian was concerned, then confused, then angry.

  Then scared.

  Verdoorn just watched him, his hands on his hips, and he wondered how fucking bad this news could possibly be.

  The cell leader ended his call and put his phone in his pocket, then walked over to Verdoorn. The two stepped farther away from the captives so they weren’t in earshot, and Jaco prepared himself to receive this obviously bad news.

  “What’s happened?”

  “There has been an attack. In the Old Town, then again on the road. Fifteen minutes east of here. My men are dead, and the woman escaped.”

  Verdoorn leaned back against the wall. This was bad news for the pipeline and for the Consortium, but he couldn’t help but marvel at his target’s ability to eliminate anyone in the way of his objective. “Gentry,” he said, and the Albanian took it as a question.

  “I do not know. No witnesses.”

  Verdoorn was already pulling his phone to make a call, but he lowered it as he spoke to the leader of the gangsters watching over the women.

  “Get these chots ready to go. I’m taking ’em right now.”

  The Albanian didn’t know the South African slang word for “whore,” but he understood its use in context. He shook his head. “We have to make the transfer at five a.m. It’s when the police in the neighborhood switch shifts, and the new cops work for the pipeline. It’s only three a.m. now. The cops patrolling the neighborhood out there aren’t under our control.”
>
  “Are you dof? You’ve lost . . . how many tonight?”

  “Six.”

  “Yeah. Obviously, mate, your men don’t have the skills to deal with this adversary, do they?”

  The bearded man shook his head adamantly. “No. It’s not one man. Your intelligence is wrong. It can’t be one man.”

  “It is one man doin’ the killin’, and he is the best there is. You . . . you lot?” Verdoorn looked around the room at the gaggle of armed men. “Not the best. We’re doing the fuckin’ transfer now. If the cops get in the way, kill ’em.” He tapped a button on his phone and broadcast into the earpieces of all nine of his men positioned around the property. “Lion Actual to all Lions. Our target is still out there, and still active. Last seen fifteen minutes east of this poz. I’m callin’ the boat to have the tender brought in now, will probably take ten to twenty minutes. I want two long rifles on the roof, scanning east and west; I want two men down at the dock, eyes open on the water. Four more men spread out on the east side of the property watching the hill. Loots and I will escort the women down, eight at a time, but only when the tender shows up ready to take them.

  “I’ll have this local crew spread out farther on the property, but don’t leave security up to them. You know the operator we’re up against. We don’t know what his game is, but if he is aware of this location, you can bet he will be here. Be ready.”

  Verdoorn tapped his phone and placed another call, then said, “It’s Lion. We’ve got to move up the delivery.” A pause. “Right bladdy now! I want that Zodiac in the water and that throttle opened up! Be at the dock in ten minutes.”

  Dropping his phone in his pocket, the South African pulled his SIG Sauer P226 from its holster under his jacket, thumbed off the safety, and jammed it back into place on his hip. He stepped to an open window and looked out at the night. The water was off to his right, and in front of him was the glow of the Valamar Dubrovnik President Hotel, at the bottom of a hill near the coastline and brightly lit, even at three in the morning. But between the hotel grounds and his position, also near the bottom of the hill, was roughly fifty meters of broken building foundations mostly hidden in tall sea grasses, and well enshrouded in darkness. And higher on the hill, above the hotel, was another resort property, full of green spaces, a roof with a good vantage point on this ruined building, and a road in front of it lined with parked cars. Next to this was an apartment building still under construction, and farther up the hill were more apartments, well-lit but with a good line of sight on this poorly located safe house the Albanians chose.