One Minute Out Read online

  “Who are you?” she asked warily.

  The man said, “Call me Kostas.” He reached out to shake her hand, and when she reluctantly offered hers, he grabbed her roughly by her wrist and yanked her off-balance. As she screamed in surprise, he shoved her down onto the bed with a confidence in his eyes that told her this was nothing new for him.

  When she found herself on her back, the man said, “I find it’s best for everyone if we get right to it, don’t you?”

  Her heart felt like it would tear out of her chest now. “No!”

  Roxana began to hyperventilate, but through the fear she felt rage.

  The older man said, “I hear you are quite a brat, but I will take responsibility for teaching you how to behave going forward.” With that he reached and grabbed one of her legs, yanked it to the end of the bed, and began wrapping a silk scarf around her bare ankle. She saw him tie the other end of the scarf to the low bedpost, and she fought to pull her leg away.

  The older man was surprisingly strong, and she could not break free.

  Right before he cinched the knot tight, however, Roxana used her other leg to kick him in the side of the head.

  The man in the red robe tumbled sideways to the floor, halfway to the lavatory, and Roxana scooted backwards along the bed until she had her back pressed against the headboard.

  “Stay away!”

  The man who called himself Kostas climbed back to his feet slowly; she could tell he was stunned and embarrassed but not especially injured. His silver hair hung over his eyes, so he shook off the impact to his head, then smoothed it back into place.

  “You,” he said with a grin. “The rumors are right about you. You are one disobedient little bitch.”

  He moved forward confidently, but when she kicked out at him again, he took a step back to rethink his plan. He stepped over to a small writing desk in the corner of the room, then reached into a drawer and pulled out a large knife. It was in a sheath, but he waved it in the air in front of him. “Now. You don’t want to fight with me, dear. Nothing good will come of it.”

  Roxana stayed where she was, eyes locked on the knife.

  “No?” he said after a few seconds. “Maybe you would like me to bring some friends. That will make this a very special night for you.”

  She said nothing.

  “Yes . . . one of my roughest men holding you down, with he and I passing you back and forth.” He smiled. “Won’t that be fun?”

  He stepped around to the left of the bed. Roxana scooted to the other side, but he didn’t leap for her or come at her with the knife at first. Instead he pressed the button on his end table. She heard a loud click and realized he had just unlocked the door.

  The Greek called out now. “Anton? Come in.”

  Roxana said, “I swear I will kill you if you touch me again.”

  Kostas just laughed and crawled onto the bed in front of her, and unsheathed his knife. She backed away as much as she could, pressing herself tight against the headboard. When he moved closer she slid off the bed but found herself in the corner by the other nightstand, with nowhere to go.

  Kostas lunged at her, forcing another scream out of Roxana. He crawled all the way over the bed and landed on the floor on the other side, all but pinning the young Romanian girl between the bulkhead and the side of the bed, with the nightstand and the wall behind her.

  He waved the shiny blade back and forth in front of his face, then moved forward again. This time she clawed at his face, scratching at him.

  He swung the knife towards her reflexively. It missed her face by inches, but only because she fell backwards on the nightstand and then down to the floor.

  Roxana was on her knees in front of the Greek in the red robe now; she couldn’t see who came through the door behind him, but she heard it open, then close and lock.

  The old man had all the advantages here: he had the knife, he had another man to help him, while she had her back to the wall and nowhere to maneuver.

  The young Romanian woman readied herself for his move down onto her; her plan was to try to take the hand with the knife and jerk the man off balance, then disarm him and slit his throat.

  She knew the guard behind him would only shoot her for doing this, but she told herself she would rather die than submit.

  She reached up and clawed again, and her nails raked across the old man’s right cheek.

  The man rubbed a hand over his face, then looked down at the blood on it. He screamed now. “Jaco was right about you! You aren’t worth the trouble! Better I just cut your bitch throat and toss you overboard. I’ll tell the Director you committed suicide, and no one will ever talk.”

  He moved at her with the knife poised to strike.

  And then, without warning, Roxana watched as his scratched and wrinkled face turned from pale gray to bright red in an instant. Roxana couldn’t tell what she was looking at, but quickly she realized she wasn’t, in fact, looking at his face. It was a red silk scarf being brought down over his head, finally continuing down lower to wrap around his throat.

  And there it cinched tight.

  The old man’s eyes went wide with shock. He tried to swing back with the knife, but Roxana watched while a gloved hand at the end of an arm in black deftly disarmed him, and then the old man in the red robe was lifted up into the air, his arms and legs flailing just feet from the Romanian in the corner on her knees.

  She stood up, pushed herself tighter into the corner, and she could see the new person in the room now. He wore a wetsuit and a hood over his head, but she saw enough of his face to register a short beard and intense eyes. He dragged the man over the top of the bed, finally heaving him back and into the middle of the stateroom, his bare feet dangling over the carpet as he was hanged by the silk scarf.

  Behind him, just this side of the door to the hall, the bald-headed guard in the black polo lay crumpled, his eyes open in death.

  The diver must have dragged in the body before shutting the door.

  The man in black spoke now, right into the Greek’s right ear. In a soft, low voice that was strained with the effort of holding the man in the air by the throat, he said, “You like it rough, buddy? I’ll show you rough.”

  The old man’s eyes locked on Roxana’s, and then they slowly rolled back in his head.

  She held her hands in front of her mouth as tears ran down her face.

  The man in the wetsuit lowered the dead body down to the floor, then stood back up and looked her way.

  Roxana wanted to scream, but instead she held her breath, terrified of what would happen to her now.

  The killer moved a few steps closer to the end of the bed, looking to her. He jerked his head towards the body in the red robe. “Who’s he?”

  Roxana cocked her head in bafflement.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The girl doesn’t appear hurt and, from the look in her eyes as I put my makeshift garrote around the old dude’s head, she’s a fighter. She was prepared to die in combat rather than yield to her attacker, and I have nothing but respect for that.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have killed him, but the logistics of getting him off this boat along with Roxana didn’t compute. I figure I can swim out of here with one person, and I’d much rather that person was going along willingly. The moment I saw Roxana I decided she would get the other ticket off this boat. She could tell me where they were heading and who was who in this organization.

  She spends five seconds staring me down, before replying in a halting voice. “He was . . . I don’t know who he was. How is it you don’t know?”

  I don’t answer her. Instead I ask another question. “Are you hurt?”

  She replies by saying, “There are many men with guns on this boat.”

  “Tell me about it.” I ask again, “Are you hurt?”

  She looks me up and down, and then at the
two bodies on the floor. “How can you kill two men and then just have a normal conversation?”

  I don’t agree this is a normal conversation, but I take her point. I look down to the two bodies. “They’re bad guys, right?”

  She nods. “Very bad.”

  I shrug. “Fuck ’em.” And then I ask a third time, “Are . . . you . . . hurt?”

  “I . . . I am okay.” The shock of the moment seems to have her in its grip, but her eyes soon clear and she looks into mine. “It’s you . . . you were the man in the red room. The one who killed the Serbian?”

  “You were there?”

  She nods, looks to a point on the wall. “I was there.”

  I want to ask her about what happened after I left the farm, but I have more pressing matters at the moment.

  “What’s your name?” I ask, although I know the answer. What I don’t know, however, is her state of mind. I need to find out if any bonds have developed during her captivity that will make her a threat to me or my mission.

  “My name is Ma . . . it’s Maja.”

  This is pretty standard in kidnapping situations. They’ve got her using a different name, both for operational security and as part of her reeducation process. But I know, without a doubt, that this is the girl from the picture with Talyssa.

  Nobody looks like this.

  I shake my head. “No, it’s not Maja. You are Roxana Vaduva.”

  Her eyes shut and tears cascade down her cheeks. She sits down on the bed roughly and sobs softly with her face in her hands. “How do you know who I am?”

  “Because Talyssa sent me.”

  Tears flow, she collapses on the bed crying, and I look down at my watch.

  I sit next to her, my pistol drawn and pointed towards the locked door. “Why are you up here with this old dude?”

  She lifts her head, and with a hint of anger, she replies, “Why do you think? I was brought up to be raped. I haven’t been behaving, I guess, and this is how they punish you around here.”

  “You’ve been held with the others?”

  She shakes her head now. “I am getting VIP treatment, I have been told, because I am now the property of the head of the Consortium.”

  This has me momentarily confused. “The head of the entire organization?”

  “Yes.”

  “No shit? Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. He told me his name was Tom, but that might be a lie. I met him in Romania.”

  “At the nightclub in Bucharest.”

  “Yes.”

  It’s clearly the man from the airplane that Talyssa had been tracking. This confirms Roxana’s sister’s suspicions, but we still don’t have any idea who this prick is.

  I look over at the old dead guy in the robe. To myself I say, “Shit. I bet he knew the guy’s name.” Looking at the girl again, I say, “Anyone else on board in charge?”

  “There was a South African man. He was making decisions. He calls himself John, but the man lying dead on the floor there talked about someone named Jaco. I don’t know if that’s John’s real name or not.”

  “And this Jaco guy knows who Tom is?”

  She nods adamantly and sniffs away wet tears. “He was there, in Bucharest. They were traveling together. Along with a bodyguard named Sean. There were some other bodyguards and some Romanian gangsters there with them, too.”

  My attention is on this South African, because I’m astonished someone obviously so high up in the organization is here. Getting hold of this guy might be worth the added risk. “What does he look like?”

  She describes him, and my hopes are dashed. This is the dude who left with the Greek goons on the tender.

  “He’s off the boat now.”

  She raises a finger. “There is someone else. A woman on board. An American psychologist called Dr. Claudia. The entire pipeline is not just a way to move the girls, it is a way to reprogram us for what is to come.”

  She describes Claudia. I haven’t seen such a woman aboard, and don’t think I’ll be able to go hunting for her. No, I’ll take Roxana, in the hopes she can help us identify the men she met in Bucharest, because they are running this entire show.

  “Okay. Any chance you know how to scuba?”

  She shakes her head, a distant look in her eyes now.

  “No problem. I’ll get you through this. I’ve staged a rig on the aft deck. We’ll get to it. You can breathe from my octopus, it’s my spare regulator, it attaches to my tank. We’re not going deep. The water is going to be cold without a wetsuit on, but I’ll keep my arm around you and we’ll stay close together all the way to the shore. We’re not very far from—”

  “No.”

  I stop midsentence and shake my head. Not this again. “Roxana, no one is going to come after your family. I can protect them.”

  She speaks flatly now. “I am not leaving the girls below. You have to take us all.”

  “It’s just me. I don’t have a boat or a submarine or a dozen Navy SEALs. It’s just me. Alone. How am I going to scuba dive with twenty-five women?”

  Roxana deflates a little. “The yacht is going to Venice, I know that much. Tomorrow night there is something they call the market. They are going to sell off the women below, plus some more women they are picking up here.”

  “Sell them to who?”

  “Claudia says they’ll go to mafia organizations, oil sheiks, high-end prostitution operations around Europe and the Middle East. After tomorrow night in Venice, all these women will be gone, and there will be no way to save them.”

  I just stare at her and say nothing, because even with this information, I don’t know how to save them.

  She must see the uncertainty on my face. “You just have to go to the police there, they can find out where—”

  I interrupt with, “The cops are useless in this. The pipeline only goes places where they control a section of the police.”

  This doesn’t seem to surprise Roxana much at all. She just nods, looks to the floor. “I’m being taken to the Director. I can lead Talyssa to him. I don’t know how. Maybe I can find a phone or a computer or something to communicate with her once I get where I’m going and find out where that is.”

  She’s as brave as her sister but, also like her sister, I’m not sure she fully understands what she’s in for. “Do you have any idea what is likely to happen to you between now and then?”

  With a nod she says, “Of course. I will be raped. Beaten. I’ll be punished for you coming here.”

  I am thinking the same thing, and I don’t know if I can deal with more of what I’ve been feeling since Mostar. Before I can reply, however, I hear a sound outside the bulkhead.

  An outboard motor, increasing in volume.

  The tender is returning to the boat.

  “Don’t let them catch you,” she says. “Go.”

  Telling myself I have a little time, I look away for a moment, and I begin to worry that I don’t want to know the answer to the question I’m compelled to ask. But I have to know. Turning back to her, I say, “What did they do to you after I left the red room?”

  She sits back up on the bed and begins weeping again. “That night, after you left, they took us into the mountains. Raped some of the girls. Maybe most of them. One tried to run . . . she did not get far.”

  “They killed her?”

  In answer she says, “She was only a kid.”

  I feel nausea coming on. I can put up with so much awful shit in this world, but only when it’s not my actions that caused it. This? This child getting murdered, others getting raped?

  It’s on me.

  Guilt can cripple you. Or it can be a driving force. Only your internal strength decides how you respond to your failures.

  I fight my stomach into submission with a couple of deep calming breaths. “I’m sorry�
� is all I can say.

  She rubs tears from her eyes as she says, “I’m glad you killed that man. The Serbians had been raping the girls, anyway. That is not your fault. And the girl ran because she thought she had an opportunity. Who knows? She might be the luckiest one out of all of us.”

  Once more I try to get her to listen to reason. “Not if you come with me right now. I can protect you, Roxana. Trust me.” But I see a resolution in her eyes that is so similar to what I’ve seen from her sister for the past few days that I know it’s futile to fight her.

  “Tell Talyssa I love her.” She breaks down in fresh tears, and I can read it all on her face. She knows this is her one decent shot at survival, and almost definitely her only chance to get out of this situation without being brutalized by her captors.

  But she is steadfast in her decision.

  And I know when I’m beat. “I’ll tell her. She thinks you blame her for what happened.”

  Roxana wipes her eyes again, shakes her head. “No. I did this. I did this on my own. And I’m going to continue my mission until I find out where this all leads. I’ll contact her, and then she . . . and you . . . can come and tear this whole thing apart.”

  “That sounds like a good plan.” I offer my hand to her and she looks at it. With a beautiful little smile that takes me by surprise, she says, “I haven’t had a man want to shake my hand in a while. Other things, yes, but not that.”

  I feel bad for what I’m about to do, but I do it anyway. She offers me her hand finally and I take it in mine, and as I shake it I say, “I’m going to have to make this look good. You’ll thank me later, but probably only much later.” I add, “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry about what?”

  I pull her up from the bed towards me and, at the same time, I fire out a left hook to her temple, knocking her out cold, and then I catch her and gently lay her down on the floor in a heap. I tear open her sleeveless blouse and position her next to the bodies.

  I couldn’t leave her sitting here in this stateroom untouched with two dead guys lying around. Even if I ran around this boat till everyone saw me and all on board knew an assassin had schwacked this perv and his shithead bodyguard, it would look damn suspicious that I didn’t at least hurt her in the process. If she looked in any way complicit in what happened, I couldn’t imagine what they’d do to her then. And even now, leaving her lying here on the floor feels wrong on every level.