One Minute Out Read online

  As we transition to our pistols, the man on the floor draws from his hip and aims our way.

  He gets off a single shot before Rodney rolls out from behind the planter and dumps a dozen rounds from his SCAR into the prone attacker, killing him instantly.

  I look next to me and see that Kareem is hit. His right shoulder glistens red, and he stumbles back a step but does not fall.

  He looks down at the wound. “Dammit!” he shouts, in anger, but not in pain.

  I’ve been shot before. Pain comes later.

  I reach for the medical kit on his chest rig to patch him up, but he just shakes his head. “I’m good to go. First things first; we ain’t got much time till those cartel boys bust back in. Rodney and I will get the girls together upstairs; you go check out that grotto.”

  “Roger.” I sprint off to the west side of the building, my rifle in front of me, as the two other men make their way back up the stairs.

  FIFTY

  Jaco Verdoorn, White Lion One, and Duncan Duiker, White Lion Seven, knelt in the kitchen with pistols pointed towards the doorway to the hall. They’d just seen three of their colleagues killed right in front of them, and the kitchen shot up around them, bullets from the entry hall tearing through everything in sight.

  They couldn’t see the shooters from here because of the angle. Verdoorn imagined the Gray Man and his cohorts were no more than fifty feet away from him now, but he wasn’t racing into the “fatal funnel” of the doorway to find out.

  Duiker turned to Lion One. “We thought he’d sneak in low profile, but he came in a fookin’ helicopter and he brought a platoon of men with him. Who does he think he is?”

  Verdoorn boiled, angry at Gentry, angry at himself. He’d misjudged the American assassin, took his previous stealthy modus operandi as a predictor of his future actions, and now Jaco realized he’d pay a terrible price for it. He couldn’t raise any of his men on the radio, and it now seemed likely that he, Duiker, and Loots, who had driven off with Cage, were all that remained of the original ten White Lion men.

  Verdoorn made a decision while still squatting behind the table. “We’re gettin’ out of here before the police come. We have to get the Director out of the country till the heat from all this recedes.”

  “What about the Mexicans on the property?”

  “What about them? There’s twenty-five of the bastards, or there were, anyway. Let them take their best shot at Gentry and his mates.”

  The two South Africans backed out of the kitchen, their pistols still pointed at the doorway to the entry hall, and then they sprinted for the row of luxury cars outside driven here from LA by the guests.

  * * *

  • • •

  I find three young women in the grotto hiding behind a faux waterfall, one no older than sixteen. Four johns, all of them unarmed, are with them. They’re hiding, too, and even more terrified than the hostages. I search the men quickly, then leave them behind as I lead the women to the main stairs.

  I don’t like going back in the entryway; there are a lot of entrances to cover, but I don’t see that I have any choice.

  As I advance carefully up the east wing hallway, one of the girls grabs me by the arm.

  “What?” I ask, annoyed.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Wouldn’t the back staircase be safer?”

  I spin around and reverse my direction. “A hell of a lot safer. Show me where.”

  We encounter one more hostile on the rear stairs, and I dump a half dozen rounds of 7.62 into his back before he sees me. A minute after this we are back on the second-floor landing, looking down the main staircase at the entry hall and the front doors. Kareem and Rodney are with us now, along with all the hostages they’ve rounded up.

  Roxana is not here. I call out to the group. “Who knows Maja?”

  One girl says, “The Romanian. I know her. I came with her yesterday.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sofia.” She shakes her head, then says, “Nora. My real name is Nora.”

  “Where is Maja now?”

  The hostages confer a moment, and then the young girl from the grotto says, “The tall bald man from South Africa dragged her downstairs and outside. Just after the Director left. I don’t know where they went. I ran into the grotto.”

  Shit. Jaco must have fled with Roxana so he could use her as a bargaining chip.

  I start to turn away but then spin back to her. “Wait. The Director? He was here?”

  Nora says, “He’s been here all night. They just drove away.”

  Un-fucking-real. It’s just like Venice. I’ve missed this asshole once again.

  I fight away the frustration and think about my predicament. The large enemy quick reaction force hasn’t attempted another breach of the building, but I know it’s just a matter of minutes before they do.

  I hit the transmit key for my radio. “A.J. What do you see out there?”

  The team sniper responds quickly. “I can only see the back of the property. The QRF went around to the front three minutes ago.”

  I tap the push-to-talk button again. “Carl, say status.”

  “Oil leak is dealt with. Not too bad. This bird will fly, but I won’t want to do much in the way of acrobatics.”

  Rodney says what I’m thinking now. “Harry, there are a lot of ways into this building. If fifteen or twenty guys hit in a coordinated fashion, the three of us are gonna get our asses overrun.”

  He’s right, of course. We can’t hold back that entire force if they come hard from different directions.

  I decide to call Talyssa to tell her that finding Roxana and the Director is her responsibility, because I’m not making it out of here alive.

  But before I do, a statuesque blond woman in an evening gown pulls on the torn arm of my tunic. “You think you men are the only ones who can fight?”

  I don’t have time for this. “What are you talking about?”

  “I can fight, too.”

  She looks like a twenty-year-old fashion model, and I discount her immediately. “I love the spirit, miss, but those guys out there are gonna be Mexican cartel, and they know how to handle their weapons.”

  “So do I.”

  Incredulous, I say, “You can shoot an M4?”

  “I’ve never tried.”

  I start to turn away. “Yeah, let us handle—”

  “But I can shoot your AK. I spent two years in the Ukrainian army.”

  I turn back to her, astonishment evident on my face. “Doing what?”

  “Infantry.”

  Kareem hears this. “No shit?”

  She looks into my eyes and lifts her chin. “I can handle that rifle on your chest, but you won’t let me because you men are too proud to—”

  I pull the sling over my head, removing the Kalashnikov from my body. “You’ve got me all wrong, sister. I couldn’t be happier you want to fight. Hell, I’ll let you run this shit.” I hand the weapon to her.

  She takes it, slings it around her neck, drops the mag to check the ammo, and then clicks it back into place. I look around to the nine other women up here at the top of the stairs. “You guys got any handy skills?”

  Three hands rise. A woman tells me she spent two years in the Polish air force, where she learned basic firearms handling. Another, the sixteen-year-old I found hiding in the grotto, says her father is Bulgarian police and she’s probably shot a pistol as much as I have.

  She’s wrong, but her attitude is right, so I pass her my Glock.

  Other women head off to pick up weapons and ammo from dead men on this floor, and soon one brings me an AR-15 along with two extra magazines to replace the weapon I handed off to the tall Ukrainian. Rodney and I position our four new shooters behind cover facing both wings, and Kareem sho
ws a few more how to handle guns while the first three keep watch down the stairs.

  The rest drag furniture out of bedrooms, sliding it across the floor. A dresser, a table, a TV stand: it’s more concealment than it is cover, but it’s something, and Rodney helps them line it all up on the stairs to provide cover from below.

  I radio A.J. and tell him I have nine guns in the fight now, and he responds by letting me know he’s moving to Carl and the helo. It’s the right call to shut down the sniper’s hide at the back of the property, and for the two of them to link up. We won’t be flying thirteen people out of here with a four-seater helicopter, but when the time comes, one more low-and-fast pass with the helo and a rifle may help disrupt the enemy attack.

  It takes the cartel boys a few minutes to plan their second wave, but they do a decent job of it. First the power goes out on the property, and then the front door opens again, while the shooting simultaneously begins from both hallways.

  But the enemy’s advantage is greatly decreased by the fact that they have three narrow attack points, and we have three weapons pointed at each one. All nine of us fire like mad, dumping so many rounds downrange that it overwhelms the two or three men who can fit abreast at each attack vector.

  It’s too dark to see who’s getting hit, but our outgoing fire is awesome to behold. I lost my ear protection when I crashed through the window, so I doubt the girls and I will be hearing much for the rest of the night.

  None of the armed women will probably win any marksmanship awards, but they all seem to be able to dump rounds in the dark just about as well as me and my two teammates. The three with experience reload, the others run dry, and then, after I rock off my second full magazine and reload with a third, Rodney calls a cease-fire.

  Shell casings trickle down the stairs for several seconds, but no more enemy contact returns.

  Just then, Carl transmits over the radio. “All call signs, I’ve got multiple pax fleeing on foot to the south. I’m not going to pursue. I’ve got this bird flying, and I don’t wanna fuck it up by catching more lead.”

  Kareem rogers up, and we begin getting the women ready to move.

  Now I hear a shriek behind me, and I spin around as Rodney actuates his weapon light, shining it on the floor in the direction of the noise. The tall Ukrainian who’d fielded my Kalashnikov lies on her back, her irises rolled back in her open eyes, a pair of bloody bullet holes in the center of her gown.

  One of the other hostages, a small Asian woman who doesn’t seem to understand English, has been shot just below her right knee, and a redheaded girl in her twenties looks like she took a ricochet to her left hip. Kareem drops to the floor next to the Asian, along with several other women, and they all work together to treat her, while Rodney pulls out his medical kit and bandages the redhead.

  One of the hostages is dead, and two are wounded. Anger threatens my mission, so I force myself to take a deep breath. “We’re going to go for a couple of those SUVs out on the driveway. We’ll either find the keys or we’ll hot-wire the things, I don’t give a shit which. Everybody is coming, we’ll carry the wounded.”

  * * *

  • • •

  It seems like a thousand police lights flash in the darkness just a mile or so behind us as we race overland in a convoy of two silver Cadillac Escalades. Our headlights are off and I’m glad I’m not behind the wheel, but soon enough Kareem and Rodney find a back road that leads off the sixty-acre ranch and we drive it to the highway, then turn to the south, heading to Calabasas to drop the injured women off at the hospital.

  I make contact with Talyssa and tell her what happened at Rancho Esmerelda. I hate letting her know that her sister was hauled away during the fight by Jaco and the Director, but I do so. I tell her to stay put down in LA, ask her to watch as much news as she can about the shootout and to see if she learns anything of note that might help us find out the identity of the Director.

  She doesn’t like being sidelined like this, but I finally convince her that I don’t have any other plans on how to move forward, so it’s not like she’s missing out on anything.

  I’ve got a vague idea about going after this psychologist Talyssa has identified, but in the short term it doesn’t sound that promising. Even though we didn’t see her tonight, we can be sure she is aware that I am here, and that makes it pretty unlikely she’ll just be sitting around the house waiting for me to show up.

  Sooner or later, yeah, Dr. Riesling might show herself, but I don’t have that kind of time. Hanley is going to send Travers and his boys to LA the minute he hears about the battle in the San Fernando Valley, and I’m going to get yanked back into service for the CIA.

  Whatever I’m going to do on this op, I figure I have about twelve hours to get it done before I’ll be ducking Ground Branch.

  The two Escalades drive on through the early morning: me, two other men, and nine women, with not one of us knowing what the hell happens next.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ken Cage sat in the back of the Mercedes SUV, his heart sending sharp pains through his chest as he worried about everything that was falling apart around him.

  He held a phone to his ear and it rang and rang. Cage cursed at the delay, until finally a sleepy woman’s voice answered.

  “Ken?”

  “Listen to me, Heather. I need you to wake up.”

  “Wha—what time is it?”

  “Don’t ask any questions, please. I need you to get the kids and get out of the house. Now. There’s a little mix-up and it won’t be for long, but Sean feels it’s safer if—”

  “What’s going on?”

  Cage looked across the vehicle at Maja, who just stared back at him with blank eyes. He wanted to move to her and choke the life from her, but Jaco had stopped him from doing so once already, insisting that she was important leverage to use against the Gray Man.

  So Cage refocused his attention on his wife. “Heather,” he continued. “I’ll have to explain everything later, but—”

  “What have you done?”

  “Done? I haven’t done—”

  Heather was fully awake now, and she screamed—in anger, not in panic. “What . . . have . . . you . . . done?”

  He answered her in a meek voice. “Nothing. I didn’t do anything.”

  “I don’t know what you do and I don’t know who you do it with, and I really don’t care. But you and I have built something, and you are not going to fuck it up!”

  “It’s just work, babe. It’s not—”

  “Bullshit!” Cage’s wife screamed. “You are a criminal, and I’m not talking about cooking the books. You’ve been doing that for twenty years. But whatever you’re into now, it’s changed you. Look, you can be gone as long as you want, you can fuck whoever or whatever you want while you’re gone, I can’t stop you. But you keep that shit away from me and the kids, and you keep us in the life you’ve given us. You are not going to take that away. Nobody is going to take that away from us. Do you understand me?”

  Cage bit his lower lip, thought about his next words carefully. “I am doing my best to keep you out of any danger. Sean wants you to leave the house, just for a day or two, while he and Jaco take care of things. Please do this for me, honey.”

  Heather Cage breathed into the phone for a few seconds, and Ken sat there listening, his eyes closed. “Charlotte isn’t here. She’s up in Arrowhead at the Ambertons’ lake house.”

  “Call her. Tell her to stay right there.”

  “She’s not going to answer her phone in the middle of the night, Ken.”

  “Call her anyway. Do that, then take Justin and Juliet, and go.”

  “Go where? The beach house?”

  “No! Don’t go to one of our properties.” He thought a moment. “It’s almost one in the morning. Just go get a hotel. I don’t care where, but text me when you k
now where you’ll be. This will all be over and I’ll come—”

  Heather hung up the phone.

  Cage handed the device back to Sean. “They’re leaving.”

  Sean had been listening in to the conversation. “Charlotte’s in Arrowhead, right?”

  “Yeah. She’s fine.”

  Cage then looked again to the girl he first met a month ago in a nightclub in Bucharest. He said, “So . . . all this is about you. Doesn’t that make you feel special?”

  She turned away from him, gazed out the window.

  His voice turned both sinister and sexual. “You thought things were tough before? Now I’m really going to punish you, and I’m going to love every second of it.” He smiled. “Jaco says we have to keep you alive. Anything else that happens to you is at my discretion, and you’ll pay dearly for this shit.”

  The Romanian woman said nothing.

  Cage leaned forward, close to her face. “I will fuck you up, and I’ll start today. By the time I’m finished with you, you won’t want to go home. You’ll want Jaco to fucking kill you to make the nightmares stop.”

  “You are the devil,” Maja said.

  “You bet I am, little girl.” Cage reached out, took her by the throat, and squeezed.

  Sean Hall sat in the row in front of Cage and Maja, but he was still turned back in their direction. He grabbed his employer’s arm and pulled it away. “Keep your head in the game, Ken. We have to leave her in one piece to use her as insurance. She’s important.”

  Cage shrugged away from his bodyguard’s grip, but he kept his malevolent eyes on the kidnapped woman, a cruel sneer of a smile on his face. “You just wait, bitch. You just wait.”

  FIFTY-ONE

  Carl and A.J. land, refuel, and patch up the helicopter on a darkened tarmac at Bakersfield Municipal Airport. They roll Shep Duvall’s corpse into a couple of thick contractor bags and tape them together, creating a poor man’s body bag, and then A.J. takes a cab back to the house to retrieve his truck. He returns with it, loads Shep’s lifeless body into the back, and then drives it to the parking lot of a hospital. Here he gently lays it under a tree at the edge of the lot, in sight of the emergency room.