One Minute Out Page 48
Both men are right, of course. With a shrug, I say, “I’m going in, with or without you guys.”
Kareem chuckles a little as he fingers the bloody bandage on his shoulder. “Settle down, hero. You ain’t the only dude here that wants to do the right thing.” He looks at Carl and his two surviving teammates. “For Shep, we’re gonna see this to the end.”
Carl, A.J., and Rodney agree.
The wiry Vietnam vet starts walking over towards the helicopter now. “We’re skids up in three minutes, fellas.”
A.J., Rodney, Kareem, and I turn back to the satellite image, and we all get to work on making a hasty plan to hit the mansion.
* * *
• • •
Fourteen minutes later the last of the bags were loaded into the Mercedes SUVs. Cage grabbed a small framed photo of him and his entire family off his desk and carried it in his hands through the expansive foyer towards the front door. Both Jaco Verdoorn and Claudia Riesling moved along with him, and Sean Hall walked just a couple steps behind, next to Maja, who was being led by one of his men.
Hall pulled his phone out and checked the time, and when he did so he realized he’d missed a text from Charlotte. In a sudden panic he remembered he’d agreed to take her surfing this morning, but quickly he relaxed, knowing that her mom had told her to stay well clear of the house.
But when he tapped the text to look at it, the panic returned.
“Oh, shit,” he said, and he slowed, then stopped. Charlotte was waiting for him right now back at the pool house.
Cage kept walking with the rest of the group nearing the front door.
Hall started to call out to his employer, but then he turned his head at a faint noise.
Helicopters are common in the skies over Los Angeles, so no one in the entourage had paid any attention to the thumping rotor sound till it echoed louder than usual along Jovenita Canyon Drive, bouncing off the higher hills in front of the house and rolling in from all directions.
Cage stopped at the front door, Hall’s men around him, Jaco standing at the Director’s side.
Sean was frozen in place in the grand entry hall of the mansion, recognizing that the helo was low, it was racing closer, and it was right now shooting over the rear of the property.
Then the helicopter flew over the mansion itself, towards the front of the home, its rotor noise vibrating paintings on the walls.
Verdoorn reached out and grabbed Cage by the shoulder and brought him back away from the door, then leaned back out and looked for the source of the thunderous noise. There was nothing in front of him but Hollywood Hills and megamansions, but then a red helicopter suddenly shot over his head, not fifty feet in the air.
He’d not seen the aircraft that attacked the night before at Rancho Esmerelda, but this one sounded identical to him.
He reached for his waistband, and as he pulled out his HK pistol, several small objects, each the size of a soup can, bounced right in front of him on the drive between the front door and the row of Mercedes SUVs.
Red smoke poured from the canisters as they bounced on the stone drive, billowing quickly in all directions.
Verdoorn started shouting orders, Cage’s men began rushing forward, and Sean watched twenty-five feet away through the growing cloud of red smoke while the helo pulled up steeply and transitioned to a hover over the steep front drive. Bodyguards and White Lion men raised weapons to shoot at it, but rifles began barking from inside the helicopter, so the men abandoned their counterattack and sought cover.
One of Sean’s men was already outside the home, on the other side of the row of three Mercedes; he fired on the threat with his handgun but was cut down by rifle fire before he got a second shot off.
And then the smoke became too thick to see the chopper hovering over the driveway.
Verdoorn yanked Cage down onto his back in the foyer and rolled him away, while Duiker, one of Verdoorn’s two surviving operatives, took a round through the forearm and tumbled back, writhing in agony as blood spurted from him.
Sean and his men had pistols and submachine guns. Loots had a rifle, but no one dared return to the doorway. Instead some men took up positions in windows in the front room and the library, eyes peering around walls, searching for a target in the impenetrable red smoke, while Hall and others ran forward to get to Cage so they could move him to safety.
* * *
• • •
Two minutes ago Carl dove his AS350 towards sea-level Hollywood, then turned the nose away from the downtown LA skyline and back towards the Hollywood Hills. He followed the incline, low and fast, towards the rear of Cage’s mansion on Jovenita Canyon Drive.
A.J. and I stood outside the cabin on the starboard side, with Rodney and Kareem opposite us on the port-side skids.
Carl nearly caught a set of power lines with the skids on the ingress, and a few seconds after this I was certain we were going to plow into a glass-and-steel luxury home. We missed the flat roof by five feet, and then I saw the target location right in front of us, higher on the hill. I reached into the cabin of the helo with both hands, letting my rope lifeline hold me there, my boots on the skids. From a cardboard box I retrieved a pair of M-18 smoke grenades and pulled the pins one by one, and thick red smoke burst from the bottom of each.
Seconds later we rocketed over Cage’s infinity pool, and I dropped both M-18s as close as I could to the back door of the home before flying over the roof.
I didn’t look to see where they landed because I was already reaching back into the helo, as were all four men on the skids, and we quickly pulled out one more grenade each, yanked pins, and dropped them at the very front of the house as we passed above it.
No more than a second or two after releasing, Carl spun the helicopter violently on its axis 180 degrees, then lowered us down closer to the driveway.
We looked towards the front door and saw men there; both A.J. and I were on the side of the helo with a sightline towards our enemy, so both of us fired a few rounds at targets. A.J. dropped an armed man in a polo standing next to three black Mercedes G-Wagens, and I think I hit a man pointing a weapon at me in the doorway before the targets disappeared.
Carl was pulling off a tricky maneuver getting us so close to the Earth due to the steep downgrade of the driveway. We knew from the first glance on Google Maps that he wouldn’t be able to land without striking a rotor against the cement, but he hovered about four feet aboveground, his eyes locked on to his outboard rearview mirror, his spinning rotor within a foot of striking, which would cause it to disintegrate and, no doubt, kill all of us.
The other three men unfastened their carabiners and dropped the last few feet, blunting their impacts by collapsing on their legs when they landed. I know their ankles and knees and hips and backs will have something to say about their decision soon enough, but I was relieved to see all three men adjust their packs and their rifles and begin moving, albeit slowly and uncomfortably, forward towards the Mercedes SUVs.
Now the Eurocopter launches higher into the air as it spins to the right, then begins shooting back towards the house. I’m still outboard on the skid, but I reach for my carabiner and hold it with my left hand while my right keeps my Kalashnikov on my shoulder.
Opening the fastener, I unhook myself from my lifeline but grab hold of the strap so I don’t slip and fall.
A few seconds later Carl dips down lower on the far side of the house, flying through the thick red smoke. Once we break through, I step off the skid while the aircraft streaks along twenty-five feet aboveground at forty miles an hour.
Falling through the air, I hold my rifle close to my body and tuck in my legs, saying a prayer that this next stage of my plan works as well as the last one.
* * *
• • •
Sean Hall ran over to Ken Cage, lying on the floor near the open front door, and helped h
im back to his feet. As the two men began running for the rear of the property, Hall shouted into his walkie-talkie. “Scott and Randy, on me! The rest of you, buy us some time till the cops get here! I’m going to get the principal into Citadel Two. Collapse on that location as you fall back.”
“Citadel Two” was Hall’s code name for the second floor of the pool house, a fallback position he’d set up in case of an attack on the principal or his family at home.
Hall knew Charlotte was in the pool house, so it wasn’t an optimal destination, but he also knew it was the last place the men attacking from the front of the property would be able to check.
It was all about delaying now, delaying Gentry and his crew from getting to the boss.
Hall had been in the LAPD, and he knew they’d be surrounding this place in moments, and he assumed Gentry didn’t want to get rolled up by local cops, so his helicopter would have to come back to pick him up in a matter of moments.
This was going to be a waiting game, and Hall thought getting Cage as far from Gentry as possible was his best course of action.
“Take Maja!” Verdoorn shouted from behind him. “Maja stays with Cage!”
Roxana Vaduva was grabbed roughly by one of Hall’s men and dragged through the house. She dropped the cord she’d cut earlier from around her wrists, then began pulling and swinging at the man forcing her back through the house. She slowed him, and this slowed the entire entourage, but within twenty seconds they were at the back door.
Sean Hall was surprised to see a dense cloud of red smoke on the patio, partially obscuring his view. He took this to mean that attackers were coming from that direction, too, but he kept advancing, knowing that turning around and running back towards the stairs, towards the source of incoming gunfire, would be a bad idea, and hunkering down here on the ground floor would only help Gentry locate Cage sooner. No, he would try to use the smoke to stay hidden from anyone out here, and he’d shoot anything that moved.
Cage, on the other hand, stopped his forward advance in the kitchen when he saw the red cloud at the sliding glass door. Hall screamed at him, pulled on him, just like his men did to Maja ten feet behind. Soon they were all in the smoke, running across the patio, turning right so they didn’t stumble into the pool, finally bursting out into clear air by the two rectangular koi ponds.
They ran on. Hall was first to the door to the pool house; he pushed Cage into his living room and kept his gun up high as they raced upstairs.
* * *
• • •
I kneel in the shallow end of the pool now, my eyes and the top of my head the only parts of me visible while I watch Cage, Roxana, and three other men enter the pool house, fifty feet away. They’re facing away from me, they have no idea I’ve just dropped from the sky into the swimming pool, and they also have no idea that they’ve been spotted.
The pool jump seemed like a good idea when we drew it up, but when I crashed into the water, the weight of my gear sent me to the bottom of the deep end. I was aiming for the shallow end, naturally, but mistimed my jump because of the smoke, so I shot right to the bottom and remained there. Movement of any kind was nearly impossible, but I had been prepared to dump equipment if necessary, so I quickly removed my AK and my chest rig, leaving on my utility belt and my small canvas hip pack.
Now I’m armed only with my Glock 19 pistol and the suppressed .22 caliber Walther pistol. I have a spare mag for the Glock, and a fixed-blade knife.
I wipe water from my eyes and speak into my mic, which, thankfully, is fully waterproof. “You guys breached yet?”
“Negative,” Rodney says. “We’re at the front door now, about to flash-bang our way in.”
“Roger that,” I say. “Primary target has retreated into the pool house with three hostiles and one friendly.”
“Understood; we’ll link up with you when able.”
I hear the flash bangs go off in the house, and then I hear an unreal amount of gunfire. I don’t know how long it will take my crew to make their way back here, so I decide I’ll have to hit the pool house alone.
I stand up fully in the pool, pull a smoke grenade from my belt, yank the pin, and hurl it closer to the pool house, hoping to cover my approach in more of the red obscurant.
And then I begin wading forward. I’m down a gun, I’m alone, I’m outnumbered, and I know the cops are closing in. Nothing about this is optimal, but time is not on my side, so I’ll have to make it work.
* * *
• • •
Sean Hall left his two men behind him covering Maja and the Director while he cleared the upstairs. He had them stop and wait on the landing between the floors, while he moved up, checking the two bedrooms, his small office, and two bathrooms, along with the larger of the closets.
Only once he was certain no one was lying in wait up there did he call down to his men for his boss and the hostage to be brought up.
Cage was hyperventilating, the terror evident from his breathing, his wild eyes, and the sweat that covered his pink bald head. Hall rushed him into the back corner of the rear bedroom.
“You stay in here with Maja,” Hall said. He normally was deferential to his boss, but now that Cage’s life as well as his own was on the line, Hall was the alpha.
The former Navy SEAL felt all the terror right now that his protectee’s face displayed; this Gray Man seemed to be some sort of unstoppable force, and unlike Verdoorn, Hall had no wish to get a closer look at him. But his military training had taught him how to compartmentalize his fear and to remain on task, so he was all business now.
“Where are you going?” Cage asked nervously as Hall started for the door.
“Not far. I’ll be at the top of the stairs with my men. We just have to hold Gentry and the others back.”
“How long will it take for the cops to get here?”
Sean knew beat cops would already be swarming over the lower part of the Hollywood Hills, converging on the gunfire, and he could hear air cover overhead. But as for when SWAT would actually hit the property, he couldn’t be sure.
“It might be a half hour; they’ll want to know what they’re getting into. But Gentry won’t want to get caught in the cordon already sealing off the streets. If he doesn’t find you in the big house, he’ll probably bug out. We delay him until that happens.”
Hall hoped this all to be true, but he wasn’t certain. He pushed Maja to Cage, and the shorter man took her in his grasp, wrapping an arm around her neck.
“Give me a gun!” the Director demanded now.
Hall had one firearm on him, just like his two other security men. He wasn’t giving Cage his gun. Instead he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife with a four-inch blade. He opened it and handed it to his boss.
Then he turned and left the room, heading back for the hallway near the stairs. His two men, Scott and Randy, were there and covering down the stairs. Randy had been shot, apparently back at the front entrance to the house, but his arm wound looked manageable.
Hall pulled his walkie-talkie, unsure how many of his men or Verdoorn’s men were left.
“Principal is secure at secondary citadel.”
He then clipped the radio back on his belt and grabbed his phone from his pocket. At the top of the stairs he typed a short text to Charlotte.
Wherever you are—find cover. It will be over soon.
* * *
• • •
Charlotte Cage was on the ground floor of the pool house, hiding in the utility room, right below her father. She lay flat on her stomach behind three surfboards propped against the wall, and she tried not to scream in terror as gunfire echoed around the entire property.
She had no idea what was going on here, but she was too scared to run for the back door, and she didn’t know where she would go if she did.
She held her phone in her hands and saw t
he text from Sean when it lit up the screen. She struggled to type out a reply, but she finally managed to do so.
I’m in the utility room hiding. Please help!
Charlotte put the phone on the floor by her face, then closed her eyes tight, willing this to end.
* * *
• • •
Dr. Claudia Riesling ran through Juliet’s bedroom on the second floor, because she’d seen a window there that overlooked thick hillside foliage. Her plan was to climb down into the bushes and escape the property before it was too late. If she could just get to the street, she told herself she could call an Uber and, with luck, she could get the hell out of here before the police stopped her to see how she was involved in all this.
She knew the threat anyone around would face when the police rained down on this property. The Consortium would be uncovered and, if she was here at the time, she’d be tied to it.
This event would be too high profile for Cage’s people to cover up, of this she felt certain. Anyone involved here who survived the attack of the Gray Man would be heading to prison.
She had a plan, of sorts; she would leave the country. Riesling held bank accounts in Panama and Antigua and Malta, and she knew which countries would and would not extradite her back to the United States.
Fleeing America would not be ideal for her, but she knew the Consortium itself would live on after this, even without Cage and his minions here.
It was just too large, there was too much money to be made.
And they would always need someone with her skills.
The American woman dropped to the ground from the second-story window, turning her ankle slightly when she landed. She limped along the western side of the property, holding on to branches to keep from tumbling down the steep decline. She made her way to the six-foot-high stone fence surrounding the two acres, and then she began climbing.