One Minute Out Read online

  * * *

  • • •

  I spend part of the day running simulated room-clearing drills with Rodney and Kareem, the two men who will hit the house with me. Then the entire team, Carl included, sits with me in the little house in Bakersfield and pores over online overhead imagery of the property. We work out a myriad of different issues, and by midafternoon we have a plan detailing everyone’s duties and responsibilities.

  It’s a good team and our confidence is high, even though we don’t have anything resembling a solid exfiltration plan. I’m confident that we can overpower the opposition long enough for us to secure the hostages and grab some vehicles, but my confidence rests on Carl’s flying skills and his ability to keep himself and Shep in the air, raining down merciless aggression on anyone who opposes us.

  It’s nine p.m. when we load up Shep’s F-350 and Rodney’s Ford Bronco, and then we head off towards the airport.

  It would be a pain in the ass getting onto the airport grounds in Bakersfield with all our weaponry, so instead we drop Carl off at the front gate of the fixed operating base where his Eurocopter is parked, so he can preflight the helo while the rest of us drive south.

  By ten we’re on the Golden State Highway, still wargaming different scenarios that may come up. I can tell these men have raided a lot of structures together over the years. They are cool and professional and, while they may not be in their prime from the standpoint of their physical ability, mentally they are rock solid, and I know Hanley and Hightower hooked me up with the right group.

  I just wish there were two dozen more of them, but when hitting a fifteen-thousand-square-foot building with an unknown number of hostiles inside and an unknown hostage disposition, I can get a little greedy.

  But, despite the small force at my disposal, I’ll take these guys into battle, and together we’ll do our best.

  * * *

  • • •

  At eleven forty-five the four of us are sitting in the bed of Shep’s truck, looking at the cloudless sky, when A.J. points out a speck of light approaching from the north. It takes minutes before we hear it, but by the time Carl brings the bird on final approach, we’re all out of the truck, laden down with our guns and rucks.

  The helicopter lands in a field fifty yards away, and we start humping over to it.

  The four of us tasked with riding on the outside of the helo make uncomfortable eye contact. Carl is going to fly lights-out to mask us visually, and low so we won’t be heard from as great a distance. He’s told us about his flight plan and the tactics he will employ, and none of us are thrilled about the prospect of racing ten feet over the Earth at ninety miles an hour, in the dark, hooked to the outside of a helicopter flown by a guy who realistically should be home watching TV and thinking of his glory days.

  But at this point, for all our reasons, we’re pretty much committed to seeing this through.

  As promised, Carl has rigged four thick ropes, hooking them with carabiners to fixed points inside the cabin. The carabiner on the other end we each hook onto our utility belts, then we check one another to make sure we didn’t fuck it up.

  The doors have been removed from the helo and our lifelines offer us just enough slack to stand on the skids and hold on to the door frames. If we fall from the skids we won’t drop to our deaths, but we will find ourselves dangling along, bouncing up against the fuselage of the helicopter, and praying Carl didn’t go cheap and buy the rope holding us up at some dollar store in East Bakersfield.

  I push this out of my mind and notice four other ropes coiled on the floor inside the cabin. They’re each thirty feet long and they’ll be tossed out before we get to our target so we can fast-rope down, just a couple dozen yards from the rear entrance.

  We considered a roof insertion of the property; the roof of the hacienda is flat enough, but we’re worried about squirters, enemy slipping out of the property, while we make our way down three stories, so we’ll hit from the back lawn, clear together to the top, and kill anyone who opposes us.

  That’s the plan, anyway.

  I hook on to the front port side, positioning myself right behind Shep and his SCAR 16S rifle in the front left seat. While the other men climb into position, I check my gear once more. I’ve got a nicely souped-up yet simple AK-47-pattern semiautomatic rifle. It’s a big gun for close-quarters work, but it’s proven itself over many decades of fighting around the world, and I know how to run it effectively with my eyes closed.

  I have four extra magazines in a rack on my chest, giving me 150 rounds total.

  The other guys are wearing body armor, but there weren’t any extra plates for me. I’m wearing my pistol in a drop leg holster, and there is a trauma kit and a long fixed-blade Benchmade knife in a sheath on my belt. Rodney gave me one smoke grenade and one flash bang grenade, and they’re both hanging from my chest, and I’m wearing borrowed ear protection over my interteam radio headset, and ballistic goggles.

  I don’t have a helmet. Rodney was fresh out of helmets, too.

  In a small backpack I have extra pistol mags along with the Walther P22 pistol and an attached suppressor, though I’m not sure how covert I’m going to need to be considering we are flying right up to the target in a helicopter. Still, you never know how tonight is going to shake out, so I like the versatility of a low-decibel firearm on my person, just in case.

  At midnight Carl applies maximum power and the rotors battle the air a moment, and then we lift off the field for our twenty-minute flight to the target, surrounded by a swirling cloud of dust.

  Instantly my goggles are covered in the dust, and when I wipe it off I see that the Vietnam vet pilot has already turned off all the lights on the aircraft. I look inside the open hatch and see him there, his craggy face glowing with the green light of the instruments in front of him. He doesn’t have night vision goggles, he’s just flying along low to the ground, picking up speed, and peering into the darkness ahead.

  Holy shit.

  I catch myself pining for the relative safety of the shootout at the other end of this flight. Surely it won’t be as dangerous as the next twenty minutes.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ken Cage lay on the bed, his eyes on the ceiling, and he wiped sweat from his brow with a hairy forearm.

  His heart pounded in his chest; the angina burned, but he was used to this after sex.

  Next to him, his newest victim lay facing away from him, her naked body exposed, and he heard her soft sobs, like a punished child.

  This made him smile a little. He lay without moving for several seconds, then reached over and grabbed her by her hair, pulled her head back to him. She screamed in surprise, and their eyes met in the low light, inches apart. “Just so you know . . . I was easy on you tonight. Next time, you’ll get to see my wild side.”

  He rolled off the bed, pulled on his shorts, and headed for the door. “No, you didn’t get the high-octane version of me, because I saved my energy for the other new girl.” He smiled again. “You can thank her in the morning.”

  The Director left the room without another word.

  The Hungarian girl called Sofia gazed blankly at the wall through tear-filled eyes.

  She’d been raped, and she’d been helpless during, and now that it was over, she felt just as helpless.

  She looked at a bar glass the Director had left on the nightstand, half full of some brown liquid, and she wondered if she had the mental strength to shatter it in the bathroom and then to slit her wrists.

  But she made no move towards it. No, she just lay there and wept.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Jaco Verdoorn had taken off his suit jacket and his tie, but his shoulder holster was in place over his dusty blue dress shirt, and his SIG Sauer pistol was snapped into it and ready for instant access. His feet were on an ottoman and he reclined in a chair; at nearly midnight he’d
only just fallen asleep here in the library on the ground floor of the massive ranch house.

  He’d spent the evening positioning his own men as well as the Mexicans who were the regular security force here at Esmerelda. Everyone had been warned there were special threats here, and everyone seemed as ready as they could be. Mexican cartel soldiers were positioned on the large, almost flat roof of the hacienda-style building, as well as on the property all around, with many more on reserve, a half mile away at the eastern edge of the property.

  Verdoorn’s own men were here inside the home with him, and he had them in cover. All eight were dressed like the wealthy johns allowed access to Rancho Esmerelda; they wore nice suits, expensive polos, or other casual clothing, and they bunked in a couple of the dozen or so rooms on the second and third floors normally used by the johns and the whores.

  His boys wouldn’t like this environment at all. They weren’t security guards; they weren’t here to police the johns. They were hunters, enforcers for the Consortium. But their ill ease was good, as far as Jaco was concerned.

  He didn’t want them happy—he wanted them ready.

  Verdoorn had steered clear of Sean Hall and his team of six security officers since they’d arrived here with Cage an hour earlier. They were all up on the third floor, in or around Cage’s private apartment on the eastern side of the house, or else positioned around whatever room Cage was in, either enjoying one of his new arrivals or relaxing in the lounge off the entry hall, eating, drinking, and snorting lines.

  Jaco dozed a little, but he’d spent the entire time here tonight wishing Gentry would just get on with it. He’d studied the way the assassin had ingressed to target on the few of his missions about which such details were known. He liked to move silently, with stealth, cunning, and the tradecraft of the most elite assassin in the world.

  The South African fully expected Gentry to try to slip into this building unnoticed, and Verdoorn and his men would be here to greet him, and then the Mexicans outside would close off any chance he had to escape.

  And Cage? As far as Verdoorn was concerned, Ken Cage was Sean Hall’s problem.

  Court Gentry was the real VIP.

  * * *

  • • •

  I try not to puke as our helicopter lurches up and down in the dark. Hanging on to the edge of the open hatch, I tell myself the fast-food tacos we all ate on the drive down from Bakersfield were a bad idea, and A.J. is an asshole for suggesting them.

  But Carl, on the other hand, is a damn fine pilot, and I can feel his skill in the movements of the helo; he has a deft touch to his pedal controls and his cyclic, and I know this flight, as jarring as it is, could be a hell of a lot worse.

  Eventually I hear the power come off and then the aircraft slows quickly and pulls into a hover, yanking me and the other outboard guys forward. Then Carl descends the few feet to the Earth, and the skids touch down. Dust swirls all around the darkness, so I can’t see a thing, but I know A.J. is unhooking his carabiner and leaping from the skid on the starboard side of the aircraft, dropping down to quickly set up a shooting position, more than a half mile from the rear of the property.

  I know with our low flight and our distance that we still should be silent to our enemy, but once we get back up into the air and move forward a few hundred yards, that will no longer be the case.

  We’re banking on the opposition not expecting us to hit tonight, via air, and with such force.

  If we’re wrong, then we’ll probably get blasted out of the sky before this party even starts, so I try not to think about that.

  I brush dust off my goggles again, and I look back inside the hatch towards the two men in the front seats. I can only see the back of Shep’s head; he’s leaning into the scope of his rifle, searching for targets on the roof of the distant building.

  Carl’s wrinkled face, all the more wrinkled with the intensity of his focus on his windscreen and on the controls, is a mask of experience and determination. I recognize instantly that he is exactly where he wants to be, doing exactly what he wants, needs, to be doing.

  For a brief second I feel the same, but then my mind shifts back into game mode. As I watch, Carl looks back over his shoulder, takes his hand off his collective, and holds a single gloved finger up into the air.

  His voice crackles over the radio and into my ears.

  “One minute out!”

  The entire team repeats the call into our mics, and then we bring our weapons to our shoulders and scan forward in the darkness as best we can.

  Here we go.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ken Cage stood in the bedroom, still in his boxers, still half-covered with the sheen of sweat from his attack on the Hungarian girl five minutes before. In front of him, Maja stood nervously, her back to the wall, the black cocktail dress perfectly fitted to her perfect body.

  He’d done nothing to calm her nerves.

  “Take it off,” he demanded.

  The Romanian hesitated, then said, “Look, sir, I am—”

  “Take it off!” he shouted now.

  She did as she was told, stood naked before him, her jaw quivering but her eyes remaining on his. Fixed. Proud. Afraid but resolute.

  Cage said, “I’ll finish the job Claudia couldn’t manage on her own.”

  Maja asked, “What job?”

  The American smiled. Dropped his boxers, the Viagra he took hours before still on duty.

  He looked her up and down and said, “I’ll wipe all that delicious defiance right out of your soul.” He moved towards her with aggression, his eyes wild with intensity, and he shoved her back against the wall. Pressing his body against hers, he slipped a hand over her face and covered her mouth and nose.

  Behind Cage the door flew open and Sean Hall rushed in, a walkie-talkie in his hand and an intense look on his face. He wore a white tank top undershirt and jeans, sandals on his feet, and his pistol was jammed into his waistband.

  Cage spun around, making no attempt to cover his manhood. “What the fuck, Sean?”

  Hall raced forward, pulled a robe off the footstool at the end of the bed, and handed it to his boss. He grabbed Cage by the arm, pulling him naked towards the door to the hall while a nude Maja spun away and raced for the bathroom.

  The bodyguard explained as the two men rushed into the hall. “External security says there’s a helicopter inbound, flying over the rear of the property with no lights. Until it’s ID’d, I’m moving you to a secure position!”

  Cage wasn’t happy, at all, but he knew it was best to comply. Hall tended to exaggerate threats, but Ken knew that bitching about it after the fact was the way to go. Fighting with him now would only delay the process and cause everyone more agitation, Cage included.

  As they ran, Cage threw his robe on and cinched the belt tight, and Hall brought his walkie-talkie back up to his mouth.

  But before he did so, the unmistakable booms of gunfire erupted just above their heads, on the roof of the ranch house.

  More rifles outside at ground level rocked off fully automatic a second later.

  Hall kept Cage’s pace up by squeezing his hand on his shoulder as they ran towards the stairs. While doing so, he said, “That’s outgoing. That’s our Mexicans. They’ve identified the helo as a threat! Move!”

  “Where’s Jaco?”

  Hall didn’t answer. Instead he shouted over his walkie-talkie to his men. “We are leaving. Get in the G-Wagens!”

  Cage ran along, enraged that, for the second time in three days, he found himself fleeing for his life with a frantic bodyguard’s hands all over him.

  * * *

  • • •

  “We’re taking fire!” Shep said, and I hear him through the radio, but I also hear the supersonic crack of bullets zipping by the helicopter.

  Shep leans out of the opening next to h
im, his SCAR rifle positioned on a cable running midway across the hatch to serve as a shooting platform. “I’ve got targets on the roof!” he says, then begins firing slow, controlled shots.

  I can’t see any targets yet, or even the target building, but A.J. speaks up over the radio from his sniper’s hide behind us. “Overwatch has targets on the property, east side, ground level. Engaging now.”

  I can’t hear A.J.’s sniper rifle, but I trust he’s dropping some of the sons of bitches who are shooting at the aircraft I’m clinging to.

  I’m still scanning for something to kill; I don’t have any targets from my vantage point because Shep and his weapon are blocking my view in front of me. But I keep searching, hoping to see the telltale sparkle of a muzzle flash somewhere out there in the dark.

  Carl speaks up again. “Too much fire to land on the back lawn! I’m going over the target; we’ll come back around and try it from the front.”

  I finally see a muzzle flash near a small pond behind the house now, and I fire a few rounds out of my AK towards the source. Then I say, “Negative! Negative! Put Kareem and Rodney down on the roof.”

  “What about you?” Shep asks.

  “Carl, can you throw me through a window on the third floor?”

  There is a pause; through it I hear Kareem firing on the other side of the helo.

  Carl replies, “You want me to do what?”

  I sling the AK to the side, muzzle down, and I throw out my rappelling line. “Fly exactly thirty feet above any top-floor window on this side of the property. I’ll lower down the rope, and you fly me right through the glass. I’ll link up with the other two as able.”

  Carl answers me back quickly as he slows the helicopter. “How do I know exactly thirty feet?”