One Minute Out Read online

  “You’ll get me close enough.”

  I hear him sigh through the radio. “I can do that, but you’ve only got fifteen seconds to get in position!”

  “Copy!” I shout, and then I unfasten my carabiner with my left hand, grab the rappelling line with both arms and legs, and begin sliding down, almost uncontrollably fast.

  More gunfire, both incoming and outgoing, hammers the air around me, and then I hear a new sound—a pounding, jarring series of thuds.

  Carl says, “Taking hits!” And then, “We’re continuing!”

  Shep’s rifle booms and booms above me.

  I draw the Glock from its drop leg holster, sight it on the window not thirty feet in front of me now, and, while still trying to slide down the rope, I fire two rounds into the upper portion of the glass. It’s at a small upwards angle so I’m not worried about shooting a hostage, and breaking the glass is worth any small risk, because solid windows aren’t much fun to dive through.

  I know this from experience, of course.

  Two seconds later I let go of the rope, curl myself into a ball, and impact the damaged window at twenty-five knots, because Carl has slowed to land on the roof. I fly in surrounded by shattered glass and shredded curtains, my hearing protection and goggles fly off, and I tumble through the air. I tuck in tight, expecting a jarring crash onto the floor, but instead I bounce on something soft, roll end over end, my rifle’s polymer buttstock knocking me in my mouth as I tumble.

  And then, somehow, I end up on my boots in an uncontrolled run.

  Above me the helicopter hovers over the roof, and gunfire continues all around.

  I stumble across a room and finally do bounce against a wall, slamming my shoulder hard and dropping the Glock. I miraculously keep my feet, then turn back around and heft my rifle on its sling.

  Yeah, I do all my own stunts.

  I see what happened immediately. I came through the window, hit a king-sized bed in a large bedroom, and then momentum shot me back up and all the way to the far wall. As I look around I see the bed is unmade and there is a smell of candles in the air, and once I realize there are no threats present, I pick up the pistol and slip it back in its holster.

  Stealth mode, I tell myself, has been disengaged, since I alerted anyone in the area by crashing through the glass.

  Moving to the door I’m slightly dazed, and I feel blood on my lips, but it’s nothing I’m not used to. I’m operational as long as I have breath in my lungs and brain function, and I’m trained not to slow down for injuries that aren’t disabling.

  Before I get to the door I hear running just outside. I step behind the door as it flies open, and I see a man with dark curly hair enter with a black AR-15 up at his shoulder.

  He scans the room, and I wait patiently behind him, wondering if he has any buddies following, but when I don’t hear other footsteps after a moment and the man begins to turn back around, I fire once into the side of his head.

  Blood ejects out his temple and he drops ten feet away from me. I fire once more into him as I spin out of the room, into the hallway.

  Rodney’s voice is on the radio now, just audible through the gunfire raging outside. “All hostiles on the roof are down; we’re entering via the stairwell, west side of property.”

  A.J. speaks up next. “I’ve got inbound forces, two vics, leaving the bunkhouse. Unknown number of hostiles; they loaded up the trucks out of my field of vision. They’ll be on your poz in under a minute unless I can slow them down. Will advise.”

  Shep transmits, the thumping rotor pounding through my earpiece. “Harry? You inside, or did you hit the wall?”

  I respond softly, not sure what threats lie ahead. “I’m in. Keep up that air cover as long as you can.”

  “Roger that,” Shep says.

  I call to A.J. “Overwatch, I need you to buy us some time with the hostile QRF. It’s gonna take a while for three dudes to clear this place and organize the hostages.”

  A.J. replies coolly, “I’ll see what I can do. Targeting the engine blocks on the trucks.”

  I push the worry about the enemy outside of the house from my mind, and I focus on the enemy inside with me now. Moving up the well-lit passage with my rifle optic up to my eyes, I see door after door in front of me, like a hotel hallway. The door just ahead on my right opens and, without a moment’s hesitation, I lunge at it, impact the person on the other side, and push them up to a wall.

  It’s a young woman with blue eyes filled with terror. I hold my gloved left hand over her mouth while she deals with the shock of everything that’s happening around her.

  She’s wearing a T-shirt and panties, her sandy brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and it appears as if she’s just taken a shower.

  It’s not Roxana, and I have no idea if I saw this woman in Mostar or not.

  Leaning close to her, I say, “English?”

  When she nods, I ask, “How many guards?”

  I take away the hand, and she speaks with a pronounced accent, which I take to be Czech.

  “I, I don’t know. Many. And new men here. White men. Maybe seven, eight? They have guns. They dressed like johns.”

  “How many johns are here now?”

  Again, she says, “I don’t know. Not many. Maybe five?”

  I transmit quickly to Kareem and Rodney. “Be advised. Enemy personnel mixed in with the johns. Treat every male you see as potentially hostile.”

  Rodney responds, “This ain’t our first rodeo, Harry.”

  These are the guys who gunned down over a dozen traffickers in Manila; they don’t need me telling them to keep their weapons at the ready.

  I stop transmitting and try to extract more target intelligence from the woman in front of me. “How many females here now?”

  “Nine,” she says, and then she shakes her head. “No. Two came yesterday. Eleven. Eleven now.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Most are on second or third floor, but some of the johns take the girls to the grotto on the ground floor. It’s on the other side. There might be girls there.”

  “I need you to get dressed, then climb into the bathtub and wait for someone to come collect you.”

  “Where are we going?” Her voice cracks with fear.

  “You are going home.”

  She looks at me with bewilderment. “You are . . . you are the good guys?”

  To this I only shrug as I turn away. “We’re more like the ‘slightly better than them’ guys.”

  I leave the room to the sound of her running on bare feet, deeper into the room and, hopefully, to her clothes and shoes.

  Telling this girl I was going to get her home might have been a bit ambitious on my part, since me and my mates are probably outnumbered four or five to one right now, but hopefully it will have the effect of getting her moving.

  FORTY-NINE

  Roxana Vaduva had run naked into the bathroom, and here she quickly dressed in warm-ups and a pullover that she’d left lying over the edge of the bathtub. When the gunfire began she dove to the floor and covered her head, and then a helicopter chopped the night air right outside the bathroom window. She crawled to the door and locked it, but only seconds later she heard a man’s voice. “Maja! Get out here!”

  It was Jaco; he sounded breathless, excited, but not afraid.

  She looked at the locked door but didn’t move towards it, hoping he’d go away.

  The South African’s voice rang out again, but this time he was right outside the bathroom. “Open it now or I’ll kick the bladdy thing down and wring your neck!”

  She unlocked the latch and opened the door.

  Jaco reached in and took her by the arm, then yanked her out of the bathroom, out of the bedroom, and into the hall. The two entered the stairwell, and Roxana struggled to keep up with the tall bald-headed man.
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  The gunfire outside was mixed in with the sound of the helicopter receding.

  “Where are we going?” she demanded.

  He kept rushing down the stairs, her wrist tight in his hand, and he said, “Not a word out of you or I’ll break your jaw.”

  Roxana said nothing else.

  Jaco took a radio off his belt as they reached the ground floor and began running through a large entry hall towards the front door of the house. “Lion One is exiting.”

  “Roger,” came a reply from one of his men. “The heli flew off to the north, I think he landed. Can’t see him.”

  “Good,” Jaco said, “because we’re goin’ south.”

  Sean Hall’s voice came over the radio now. “I’ve got the Director in one of the G-Wagens. We’re outta here!”

  “Wait!” Jaco demanded, then ran out the back door of the building with the girl in his grasp, a pistol high in front of him.

  * * *

  • • •

  Carl banked sharply over the property to the east of the mansion, and Shep hung his upper torso out of the helicopter to line up his optics on a man racing up the drive on a four-wheeler with a rifle on his back. He took the shot, hit the four-wheeler but not the man, then told himself he needed to concentrate his fire on a larger group of hostiles moving in from the east, because there certainly were plenty of targets.

  A.J. came over the headset now. “Papa, the two QRF trucks are down. I put rounds through both engines, but the men are out and moving on foot. Twenty of them, easy. I’ve lost them behind a hillock between me and them. You’ll have to try and rake them before they get to the house.”

  Shep acknowledged, then spoke to Carl. The two men were sitting just feet apart in the helicopter, but the incredible noise of the machine meant they needed radio headsets to communicate.

  “Take us back to the west, low, slow pass.”

  Carl said, “I’ll give you low or I’ll give you slow, but you can’t have both. We’ll be a sitting duck.”

  “Low and fast, then. I’ve got to thin that herd!”

  “Roger that. Hang on for a yank and bank!”

  Carl pulled the stick hard and the Eurocopter swung violently to the left.

  Shep aimed in on a group of flashes right where A.J. directed him, and he squeezed off a single round, killing a cartel soldier with a shot through the stomach. He shifted fire to the right and sent another round into the foot of a second enemy, taking the man out of the fight.

  He poured rounds into the group as they flew fifty feet above the men, the sound of incoming gunfire cracking through the outgoing and the AS350’s engine and rotors.

  Shep transmitted as he aimed on another cluster, moving through thick brush off the dirt road. “Harry, be advised. Me and A.J. are giving this QRF a bloody nose, but you’ll still have a dozen or more men at the house in under two mikes. There’s too many of them and—”

  Just then accurate automatic weapons fire from the ground pounded the nose of the helo.

  “Pulling out!” Carl shouted as glass and metal sprayed around the cockpit. He yanked the stick hard to the right now, sending the Eurocopter into another hard turn. Shep lurched to his right and then slumped back in his seat, his head down.

  The Vietnam veteran at the controls nosed his aircraft down to build speed and to flee the gunfire and, as he concentrated on the dark landscape feet under his skids, he called out over the radio. “Papa is hit! Papa is hit.”

  Only when he leveled off did he look over to the big man next to him. Shep had taken a rifle round through the throat, and blood spurted out over the controls on his side of the dash. He was ashen and his eyes were closed, his arms at his sides as his lifeblood poured from him.

  “Shep! Shep!” Carl tried in vain to get a response from the big man. Rodney and Kareem called over the radio, desperate for an update on their leader, but the pilot ignored them, because now his oil light flashed on his instrument panel.

  He had to land, but he also knew he needed to create more distance from the enemy before doing so.

  “Report status of Papa,” A.J. demanded now.

  “KIA,” Carl replied. And then, “Sorry, boys. And you’ve lost your air cover for now. A.J., I’m putting down about two hundred yards west of you to check this out. You’ve got the fight on the outside now.”

  “Roger that,” A.J. replied, before adding, “Harry, Kareem, and Rodney, the fuckers from the bunkhouse are heading your way.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Jaco Verdoorn made it to the row of three black Mercedes G-Class SUVs already idling in front of the house. Cage and Hall were in the second vehicle, with three of Hall’s six men in the driver’s seats of the impromptu motorcade, and one more in the front passenger side of each vehicle.

  Verdoorn opened the back door next to Cage, who was seated next to Hall. The South African all but threw Maja inside across from them.

  “What the hell is she doing here?” Cage screamed. Cage was panicking and, to Verdoorn, Sean didn’t look much cooler. “Let’s move it!”

  Verdoorn didn’t respond to his boss. Instead he looked to Hall. “Remember. She’s the key.”

  “She’s the what?” Cage shouted.

  Hall nodded to Verdoorn, then turned to his protectee. “Sir, we’ll talk about it on the drive. We have to get out of here before that helo circles back.”

  Verdoorn began closing the door, but Cage put his foot out to stop him. “Wait. You aren’t coming?”

  Jaco turned around and looked at the house. “Gentry’s here, boss. This is where I belong.”

  He shut the door to the G-Wagen and ran back towards the front door of the home.

  * * *

  • • •

  I link up with Kareem and Rodney on the second-floor landing in the center of the building. Both men report shooting two guards, meaning we’ve dropped five in total, and together we’ve found six women and girls, all of whom we’ve asked to shelter in place while we clear the area.

  The raid has been going on no more than a minute and a half, but I can see that both my teammates are gassed. Rodney puts his hand out on a wall for a breather, and Kareem is wincing with each step.

  “You hit?”

  “Hit by time, bro. Bad back.”

  Christ.

  He sees my concern as he begins reloading his rifle. “It’s all about adrenaline now, anyway.” He snaps a fresh mag in and drops the bolt release. “Let’s rock.”

  Rodney gets off the wall and we stack up in a three-man train, then begin heading down to the first floor, but before we make it more than a couple of steps, a group of three armed Latino males spin into view below us. They are looking for threats, but they hesitate an instant as they size us up as targets.

  Kareem, Rodney, and I each fire a controlled double-tap, two into each man, and all three tumble back down to the ground floor, dead.

  We start down again, but Kareem grabs me by the shoulder just as Rodney tosses a flash bang grenade past my ear. All three of us turn away as it detonates below us in the entry hall of the ranch house.

  We descend the rest of the way, where we stumble upon two white men in plain clothing on their hands and knees, disoriented from the banger. Kareem knocks them both flat to the floor while Rodney and I cover back up the stairs as well as the ground-floor hallways leading into both the east and west wings, and a doorway from the entry hall into the kitchen.

  The first man on the floor who Kareem checks is unarmed, but the other is lying next to a Heckler & Koch semiautomatic pistol, and under his coat we can see the telltale imprint of a radio on his belt.

  Kareem says, “He’s hostile. What do I do with—”

  Without speaking, I shift my AK and shoot the man once in the back of the head.

  “We don’t have time to give quarter to these m
otherfuckers.”

  Kareem, who is now kneeling on a dead body, just says, “Works for me,” and then he rises and drops back down over to the unarmed man, wincing with back pain as he does so.

  This civilian is in the fetal position; he’s pissed his pants and he’s crying like a baby. He’s obviously expecting to lose his life, just like the man on the floor six feet away has.

  He is a john, a rapist, likely a pedophile, and my first inclination is to kill him. But he’s not a threat to me. Kareem obviously gets it, because he leans into the man’s ear. “You lay yo’ ass right the fuck here, facedown, and you don’t move till you see daylight through that window. You feel me?”

  The man turns and presses his face into the floor, and he continues crying uncontrollably.

  The front door to the building flies open now and the three of us find ourselves twenty feet away from multiple armed men. We shift aim to the doorway and open up in bursts, and the attackers dive from view. I don’t know if we made any hits, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t expecting to get shot at the instant they opened the front door, just a couple of minutes after we inserted on the roof and the third floor. They can’t possibly know how many of us are in the building, so I expect they’ll take a minute or two to reassess the situation before making a second breach attempt.

  Rodney runs to the door, shuts and locks it, then reloads while Kareem and I cover the entire area.

  Another plainclothed Caucasian, this one young and very fit looking, steps into the entry hall from the kitchen on our right, and he raises his empty hands upon seeing us. “Shit! Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!”

  Kareem speaks softly to me. “That ain’t no john.”

  Before either of us can react, however, the man drops hard to the wooden floor. Behind him, two more men, one Caucasian and one black, spin into view with HK MP-7 Personal Defense Weapons at their shoulders.

  I fire as Rodney dives for cover behind a massive planter by the front door. Kareem and I shoot the armed men, but both of our rifles run dry simultaneously.