One Minute Out Read online

  Sofia spoke up as they neared a door at the end of an ornate hall. “Dr. Claudia? How many girls are kept here?”

  Claudia answered, “No one is kept here, they all want to be here.”

  “How many women want to be here?” Sofia asked.

  “At any one time, twenty or so. I don’t know what the occupancy is now.”

  They passed a window and Roxana slowed and looked out, again searching in vain for clues as to their location.

  Soon Claudia led them into a bedroom, with an adjoining door to the next bedroom. “Maja, you will be in here, and Sofia, just through that door is your room.”

  Roxana found the space to be beautiful, large, and well-appointed with antique furniture. A four-poster bed, a makeup vanity and a chest of drawers, a sitting area, and a massive oak wardrobe accented the room. She followed Sofia into her bedroom and found it similar but not identical, with a different color scheme. Claudia directed them to their closets, which were full of clothes, including expensive-looking evening gowns along with more revealing attire.

  Roxana could see Sofia’s eyes light up upon seeing the clothes, upon taking in her new living space. The American psychologist had done a good job brainwashing her, Roxana determined.

  After the women were settled in, Claudia said someone would be by shortly to take them on a tour of the house. She explained that although they were not allowed to go outside without permission, the building itself was theirs to roam if they wanted to.

  Soon the door was closed between Roxana and Sofia’s rooms. Roxana and Claudia stood by her new bed, and the Romanian woman could feel the eyes of the American peering into hers, trying desperately, Roxana imagined, to see if her compliance was genuine.

  Roxana masked her true intentions, of course. She was here to help her sister, just like she’d been from the beginning, although right now she had no idea how to be any use to her at all. There were no phones in the room, she’d passed none walking through the house, and, anyway, she didn’t know where the fuck she was.

  Finally Claudia looked away from Roxana and at her watch as she said, “I have sessions with some other residents. I will be back here to see you each day for the next five days. You will have good days and bad; that is to be expected. I want to make sure you are settling in.”

  Roxana was confused. “You don’t stay here at the property?”

  Claudia shook her head. “No. I am not a part of what happens here. I am a part of the process that prepares you for it. I do not stay overnight. I will be back, and I will do what I can to help you.”

  Gone was her unbridled optimism about Roxana’s time here on the West Coast. Now she seemed more sanguine, less upbeat.

  Roxana decided to take a chance. “Where are we? What is this place?”

  Claudia did not answer; she just stared again into the younger woman’s eyes for a long time. Eventually she said, “You should know . . . Jaco is onto you.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean, he knows about your sister.”

  Roxana’s heart sank and she lowered onto the bed. She didn’t know what this meant for herself or for her sister, but panic welled within her.

  She tried to play dumb. “What about my sister?”

  But to this the psychologist just made a face of disappointment. “You should be proud of yourself for successfully pulling the wool over my eyes for a time. We’ve never had an infiltrator before, so I didn’t properly evaluate you. But now I see through you.”

  “What is it that you see?”

  “You don’t yet accept the fact that your fate is sealed, but you will soon, and as soon as you do, you will realize that your fate is what you make of it. Infiltrator or not, you can have a good time while you are here, if you just let it happen.”

  Roxana didn’t understand this at all, but she was certain this doctor was pure evil, just as bad as the rest of them. She lay back on the bed without another word, and Claudia left the room, shutting the heavy door behind her.

  * * *

  • • •

  Fifty-six-year-old Michael “Shep” Duvall slipped his reading glasses off, then put down his Bible. Sitting up from his worn recliner, he looked around the dark living room of his North Las Vegas bungalow.

  Something was wrong, but he couldn’t say what.

  He scratched at his gray beard, then stood, looked at the little plastic cuckoo clock on the wall, and saw that it was twenty-two hundred hours. He hadn’t read a clock in anything other than military time since he was eighteen years old and would need a second to realize that civilians would refer to the current time as ten p.m.

  The dark house was empty and still; he lived alone, so this was no surprise, but something had alerted him, he was sure of it.

  He soon pinpointed the source of his disquiet.

  Where the hell was his dog?

  Duvall’s four-year-old lab, Monkey, had access to the fenced-in front yard facing two-lane Hickey Avenue by means of a doggie door in the kitchen. She was in and out all evening, every evening, but by this late at night she could always be found on the threadbare brown love seat next to Duvall’s reading chair, either sleeping or just looking lovingly at her master, waiting to follow him to the bedroom for the night.

  But the dog wasn’t on the love seat, and she wasn’t in the living room or in the little attached kitchen by her water bowl.

  “Monkey?” he called out, half expecting the big black dog to shoot through the rubber-curtained doggie door from the outside, although it would be rare for her to be out so late.

  But she did not come.

  Duvall put on the glasses he wore for distance, and he hefted his Wilson Combat 1911 .45 caliber pistol off the end table next to him. He was not a tall man, but he was broad-chested and possessed a dominating persona when necessary. He could intimidate now, even in his mid-fifties, and even with the paunch that had grown around his midsection since he’d left the Agency.

  And the big, stainless steel .45 only added to his intimidation factor.

  He called for Monkey one more time, then flipped off the light next to his recliner and stepped to his kitchen door. Quietly he opened it; the business end of the pistol led the way outside, and he carefully walked the chain-link perimeter fence of his tiny property, looking for any sign of his companion.

  Monkey was nowhere to be found; the rickety driveway gate was closed and locked.

  Worried, but knowing he needed to check his bedroom and his tiny home office, he headed back into the house. He’d just moved through the kitchen for the back hall, had just slipped the Wilson Combat into his drawstring warm-up pants, when the light he’d flipped off by his recliner snapped back on.

  Duvall didn’t scare, and he didn’t startle. His body had been through too much to react any way but efficiently when surprised. He turned to the light and saw a man seated there in his reading chair, one leg crossed over the other.

  The man said, “Leave the hand cannon where it is and your mitts where I can see them.”

  Duvall knew he didn’t have a play for his gun. In the seated man’s hand was a black Glock 19, wearing a silencer and resting easily on his knee, pointed in Duvall’s direction.

  Duvall said, “Mister, if you’re after money, then this is going to be one hell of a disappointing night for you.”

  To his surprise, the man said, “Take a closer look, Shep.”

  Duvall slowly moved a hand to adjust his glasses. After several seconds he said, “Gentry.”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re alive?”

  “That’s a rhetorical question, I guess.”

  “I’m surprised.”

  “You and me both,” Gentry said. “Sit down. I’m here to talk, but if you go for the gun, we won’t have much left to talk about.”

  “I ain’t goin’ for the gun.” Duvall
sat down on the vinyl sofa. “What the hell did you do to my dog?”

  “I gave her a steak. Four-ounce filet mignon. Very rare. Raw, as a matter of fact.”

  Duvall cocked his head. “And . . . did that juicy steak happen to be spiked with ketamine?”

  “Valium. She’s fine.” A pause. “She’s great, as a matter of fact. Lying in the storeroom by your carport, dreaming of more choice cuts flying over the fence and into her mouth, I’d imagine.”

  Duvall nodded now. “So . . . this is just a social call?”

  “What do you think?”

  Duvall leaned back on the vinyl, his hands far out to his side. “I’m gonna guess not.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Shep Duvall is old as dirt, and this disappoints me. He’s overweight and his eyeglasses are so thick they look bulletproof. His hair is thin and gray on his head and thick and gray on his face. But I know the man, mostly by reputation. And I know that not too terribly long ago, he was a stone-cold skullfucker. As a Delta master sergeant, he’d been deployed countless times in the war on terror, and in the CIA he ran one of the best teams in Ground Branch.

  I knew of him at the Agency, after his nearly two decades in the Unit. He ran another task force when I was on Golf Sierra with Hightower, and I worked under him once when the Goon Squad was non-operational, when Zack was out with a back injury.

  I never had a problem with Duvall.

  But that was seven or eight years ago. I thought he was old then, and it appears the intervening years have been rough on Shep.

  He breaks the uncomfortable silence. “You may not know it, Violator, but I was tasked with killing you a few years ago.”

  I did know this, and that is why I think he’s an asshole.

  Still, I say, “You and everybody else.”

  He snorts out a little laugh. “Well . . . it appears I and everybody else failed, because here you are. Is the Agency still after you?”

  “Sort of,” I say. Then, “Not really.” I wrap it up with a little shrug. “It’s complicated.”

  “Right,” he replies. Then, “So . . . other than roofying innocent dogs, what are you doing these days?”

  “I’m working. Same as ever.”

  “Private job?”

  “Sort of. It’s more like . . . humanitarian work.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I need your help.” He isn’t the type of man to beat around the bush, so I say, “I need you to strap a gun on, and to get some friends with guns. And I need you all to come with me.”

  “To do what?”

  “I expect we’re gonna stack some bodies before it’s all through.”

  “You’re the world’s greatest killer, or some shit. Aren’t you?”

  I don’t answer.

  He looks around. “Why me? Why does this feel like a setup?” He shakes his head. “Gentry, I got troubles of my own. I want you out of here. Either shoot or scoot. If you aren’t going to shoot me, I’m going to pick up my phone. One call to Matthew Hanley and I can have a team of Agency shitbirds crashing through the skylights.”

  I look up at the ceiling of his modest house; there are no skylights, and I am reassured he is speaking metaphorically. I say, “Duvall, one call to Matt Hanley will get you a grouchy dude in a bad suit hanging up in your face. Who do you think sent me to you?”

  Shep thinks this over. “I’m out. I left four years ago.”

  “I know.”

  He eyes me suspiciously. “What else do you know?”

  “I know about Manila.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That was a mistake. Not for killing those monsters, but for getting rolled up by the local five-oh after the fact.”

  “Yeah. Still . . . you did the right thing.”

  “Fuck you, Gentry,” Shep barks. “That’s my cross to bear and I don’t need you breaking into my house to try to make me feel better. Make your pitch for whatever you want so you can get the fuck out of here and I can scoop my dog up and put her to bed.”

  “Here’s my pitch, then. I need some shooters. You and your old team from Manila, if you can get them. Solid guys, guys who know how to run together.”

  “What for?”

  “To stop a human trafficking ring.”

  He just looks at me in the low light of the tiny ranch-style house. “I’m not going to make any sudden moves to the fridge, so you better get us some beers. I’ll let you pull my pistol as you go.”

  I step up to him and he stands and turns, his hands away from his body. I disarm him, then walk into the kitchen, keeping him in view, while I pull a couple of cold bottles of Pacifico out of the refrigerator. After popping off the tops, I walk one over to Duvall, and we sit back down.

  Over the next fifteen minutes I tell him about the Consortium. My story would blow a lot of people away: the killing, the rape, the kidnapping, the Serbian general and the Greek mobster and the Italian street battle.

  But not Duvall. He’s a guy who’s seen it all before. He sits there impassively, he doesn’t interrupt, and he nods knowingly now and again.

  And then I finish with the fact that the entire international organization is being run by a man on the West Coast, and we think we’ve pinpointed a location where trafficked women are being kept.

  Slowly Duvall’s posture changes. This isn’t a tale of remote horrors, the likes of which he’s heard more times than he can count. No, now this is about women and girls being brutalized just a few hours away by an animal, and one who is living quite well under the protection of the United States.

  I can see it in his posture. He’s already in.

  “What’s the target location?” he asks. “Specifically.”

  “A sixty-acre ranch an hour north of LA. I assume the victims are held there to be abused and the people who run the entire worldwide enterprise go there to party. I’m going to crash that fucking party.”

  “The layout of the ranch? Where are the victims kept? Where are the guards and guns?”

  “I don’t have that information. From Google Maps I see one large structure. Smaller outbuildings a half mile away that look like barracks for the security force. If I had a UAV or some more dudes I could get a better picture. For now, though, it looks like we’ll have to just hit it all.”

  “Oppo?”

  “The opposition is unknown. Substantial, I’d be willing to bet.”

  Duvall rubs his face hard. I see frustration in his movements. “You’ve got this operation of yours locked down, don’t you, Violator?” He mocks my voice now. “‘I need you to hook me up with some of your friends to help me go up against I don’t know exactly how many of I don’t know exactly who in a sixty-acre property where friend and foe are positioned I don’t know exactly where.’ That it?”

  “That’s about the size of it, yeah,” I say. “I’ve got a clock ticking on my ass, too. I do this now, or it doesn’t happen.”

  “What kind of clock?”

  “You pick. There’s the woman being held there I’m trying to save before anything even worse happens to her, there are the women and girls sold off in Venice that I’d like to recover before it’s too late, and then there’s Matt Hanley.”

  “What does the DDO want?”

  “He wants me, Shep.”

  “He made a deal with you in exchange for me and a chance to go after the Consortium?”

  “You got it.”

  Duvall finishes his beer and stands up quickly.

  I reach for the pistol on my hip but don’t draw it. “Shep!”

  He just chuckles, completely unafraid. “You ain’t gonna shoot,” he says. “Who’d shoot a man who’s about to bring him another cerveza?”

  I relax, take my hand away from my waistband. “Not me.”

  As the big man walks to the little open kitchen, just
steps away, he says, “So you need men like me and my associates from Manila. Men you know who will lay down their lives for something like this if it comes to that.”

  “That’s it. As causes go, you have to admit this is a good one.”

  Duvall passes me another Pacifico and takes a swig from his own new bottle. “Okay, Violator. I like it. I don’t really like you, I don’t like the weak intel, and I don’t like the fact that we’ll be acting on U.S. soil. But I like it, just the same. I’ve spent the last year thinking about Manila. Not sobbin’ for the motherfuckers we slayed, but pissed off I couldn’t go out and slay some other motherfuckers.”

  “You’re in?” I ask.

  “You knew I was in before you got here.”

  I smile a little. “I was cautiously optimistic. What about your mates? You have a six-man team, I’m told.”

  Shep shakes his head. “Did have a six-man team. Scott Camp shot himself in the mouth with a twelve-gauge up in Utah a few months ago. His demons got the best of him.”

  I close my eyes and think of my own demons. I say, “The others?”

  “You can pitch it to them like you pitched it to me. Let them decide.”

  “How far away are they?”

  “For an asshole as unlucky as you, you got pretty lucky. We were primarily West Coast based when we worked in hostage rescue in Asia, and the boys grew roots in that area. One of my guys is in LA, one’s in Bakersfield. Another in Lodi, another here in Vegas. I can get them together quickly.”

  I look at a map of Southern California on my phone. “Bakersfield is closest to the target. We’ll meet there.”

  He nods and I tip my drink towards him. Then I say, “I do need one other thing.”

  “Shit, Violator, what else?”

  “That ranch. I’ve looked at the sat map. It’s a big property, flat, arid, and open.”

  Shep gets it. “They’ll see us coming.”

  I nod. “I need a helicopter, flown by someone who can follow orders, and someone who can put skids anywhere I need them, possibly even under fire.”

  “And you think I just happen to know a guy with a helo willing to fly into gunfire?”