One Minute Out Read online

  Roxana isn’t unharmed, of this I’m certain. Before I respond I hear a man shout out from another room upstairs. “What the fuck are you doing, Sean?”

  I don’t recognize this voice, either, but I know exactly who it is. “Hi, Ken. Just met your daughter. She’s going to miss you.”

  There is no response.

  “I met your man Jaco, too. By the way, you might want to get that pool out there professionally cleaned.”

  The bodyguard shouts down again. “If you won’t knock it off, Gentry, we will kill you.”

  I back off the stairs, my right hand holding the Walther because of the knife still sticking out of my left shoulder. Through a grimace of pain I say, “I love your optimism, Sean.”

  “It’s desperation, dude,” and that’s exactly what I hear in his voice now. Then he screams out, plaintive and terrified. “What are you? A hero? A fucking saint? We aren’t all like that, you know? Some of us out here are just trying to make a living.”

  I kneel down, searching for a target in the mirror’s reflection. While doing this, I say, “I had a mentor, and he had a thing he used to tell me. ‘Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.’”

  For several seconds I hear nothing, nor do I see anything through the reflection.

  Softly, Sean says, “I like that.”

  I think he’s right above me, so I can fire into the ceiling and, with a little luck, get some .22 rounds on this guy, but I don’t know where Roxana is, so I decide that I’ll have to ascend the stairs to verify my targets.

  But just as I begin to move, he says, “Look. What do you say I tell my guys to toss their weapons, I do the same, and you let us all walk out of here?”

  I’d like to shoot this guy. I imagine that the remorse he seems to be feeling now only comes after getting busted protecting an evil man, and I don’t have any respect for that type of self-development.

  But three armed men on the second floor are slowing down my approach to my target.

  “Anybody else up there? Other than Cage and Maja?”

  “No, sir. I swear to God.”

  “Is Cage armed?”

  “A little folding knife. That’s it.”

  “All right. You boys come down, slowly, and nobody will fire on you.”

  After a pause the man says, “I’m trusting you to do the right thing here, Gentry.”

  “Ditto. You step onto that landing empty-handed, or I drop you where you stand, got it?”

  I hear the other man again, the one I take for Cage. “Sean! I’ll double your salary! I’ll double it! And no hard feelings, swear to God. Just hold out till the cops come, do your job protecting me, and I’ll double . . . fuck it, I’ll triple your salary! Permanently.”

  Hall speaks to me, not to Cage. He just says, “This fuckin’ guy. Right?”

  But I respond, “That’s a lot of dough, Sean. It’s gotta be tempting. It’s your call.”

  The squadron of LAPD helicopters flying overhead nearly drowns out his soft response. “I’m just a surfer, bro. I don’t need much. But I need my life.”

  Cage shouts, “Sean! Sean!”

  I hear Sean’s weapon thud on the carpeted floor right above my head, and then he steps in front of the mirror. He’s directly above me, but I don’t shoot the ceiling. Two more men come into view, their hands raised. One has blood smeared on his face, and more blood stains the sleeve of tats on his right arm.

  All three men walk downstairs, past my position. Sean, the last of the three, looks at me as he passes. He nods in cool appreciation, then forces a smile as he says, “Maybe we grab a beer when you’re done.”

  I look away, back to the staircase. “Why would I do that? You’re still a piece of shit. I’d love to be your karma, but I know it will catch up to you someday.”

  Sean looks downcast, and then he turns away and walks towards the door behind his men.

  I call over the radio. “Three coming out. Don’t fire unless they pose a threat.”

  Rodney says, “Roger. Be advised, cops have blocked off the roads out front, but they haven’t moved on the property. Helos in the air all around. Got a call from Carl. He was forced to land at a heliport in Hollywood. The LAPD will have him in custody by now.”

  “Okay,” I say. “You boys try to get clear. I’ll wrap up here.”

  Kareem answers now. “We’re not going anywhere, Harry. We’ve got your back.”

  “Sean?” Cage calls out again from upstairs. “C’mon, Sean.”

  But I am the one who answers. “He’s gone. It’s alone time for you and me, Kenny.”

  “Look, Gentry! I can—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I interrupt. “You can make me a rich man, I know. But I don’t need money. I just need Roxana. If you don’t hurt her, I’ll let you live.”

  He doesn’t respond. I step over to the kitchen, open the freezer, and retrieve a massive frosty bottle of Grey Goose vodka. I bite the glass-and-cork lid off, then pour some on my bloody shoulder, coating my wet tunic, my wound, and the hilt of the dagger protruding there. Vodka runs down my arm and drips with blood from my fingertips. Then I recap the bottle with my mouth and head up the stairs, the pistol in front of me and the vodka down to the side now in my nearly noncompliant left hand.

  On the second floor I see blood on the carpet, obviously where the wounded bodyguard had been standing. Cage’s voice came from a back room, so I walk up the hall, push in the door slowly, and find him standing there, with Roxana tight against his chest.

  There’s a knife to her throat.

  I look at her. The veins in her throat pulsate; her breathing is fast and shallow. “It’s going to be okay,” I say, and I actually believe it now.

  She doesn’t respond.

  I point the Walther at Cage’s face with my right hand. My bloody left shoulder is screaming at me now. I say, “Let her go, or you will die right now.” He holds the knife against her carotid, but I just aim in carefully. “Dude, you are a dozen feet away. Do you really think I can’t put a bullet in your eye socket if I want?”

  “I’ll kill her!”

  “Nope, you’ll drop like a sack of wet sand.”

  Cage gets it. The only chance he has is to comply. He lowers the knife and lets it fall to the floor. He raises his hands slowly into the air.

  “Roxana,” I say, “there are men outside. They’ll help you. Go to them.”

  She seems utterly bewildered to be alive as she heads for the stairs, still in shock. As she passes, she stares at the knife sticking out of me, and the left half of my body, which by now is all covered in blood.

  With my pistol on Cage’s face, I transmit to the guys. “Blue coming out. Talyssa’s sister. Protect her.”

  “Hell, fuckin’ yeah!” Rodney says.

  Cage looks at me, at the gun, at the massive bottle of Grey Goose swinging from my left hand. He says, “You’re after the wrong guy.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “This ought to be good.”

  “I help the process, obviously, but I don’t do it myself. Jaco was the brains. I just do the financing. Stuff like that.”

  “So what you are saying is, you are the money guy for a massive consortium of sex traffickers. That’s your defense?”

  “You promised you wouldn’t kill me.”

  I laugh a little, but say nothing.

  He continues. “Last year we grossed ten point three billion. Sounds like a lot, but this is a one-hundred-fifty-billion-dollar-a-year industry. I’m just a small player. But I know names, Gentry. I know names and locations. I can get you steered towards the big fish. You want that, right? This wasn’t just about Maja. This was about you ending this whole thing. Wasn’t it?”

  I say nothing, just glance out a second-story window. I see Roxana run past Rodney and then Kareem appears, limping, and he wraps an arm around her and begins
escorting her up the driveway. Within seconds he’s leaning on her, and she is the one helping him along.

  Both surviving members of the Manila team are hurt now, but the aches and pains that come from doing this kind of shit at their age are going to only get worse.

  Cage keeps talking. “I can help you. I feel terrible about what we’ve done. I always have. Always wanted out of it. It’s just . . . shit just got out of hand. Believe me, Gentry, I’m so sorry.”

  I sigh a little, and I force my left hand up to my face so I can bite the lid off the vodka bottle. I take a swig of the alcohol; it’s ice-cold, and it’s good going down. I say, “One thing I’ve noticed in this line of work. Nobody is sorry when they are doing what they do. But everyone seems so fucking sorry when I show up to make them pay for it. What do you suppose that’s about, Kenny?”

  He knows there’s nothing he can say that will stop me from doing whatever it is I want to do. But he tries, anyway. “Listen. I have an arrangement with the government. I help them. Intel on terrorists, mostly. I’ve saved a lot of lives. Just right now I’m working on something, something that’s going to be huge.”

  I sigh a little. “And that’s my dilemma, Ken. If I kill you, then I am going to make some enemies that I can’t afford to make. I’ll be hunted down and assassinated by the American government.”

  A slight look of surprise flickers on his face. “Then . . . then you’ll let me go?” he asks.

  I nod. “I will. Not because I want to, but because I have to.”

  I’m egging him on now, hoping to get more bravado out of him.

  He nods up and down vehemently. “So you know. You understand. I do a hell of a lot of good for this country. I’m a patriot.”

  I feel my jaw clench, and then I say, “Like I said, I can’t kill you, because then they would kill me.” I give him a little wink. “But I bet they’d only get really mad at me if I fucked you up for life.” With a smile I say, “And I’m used to them being mad at me.”

  Cage’s bravado is slow to drift away, but it drains from his face finally and he stammers. “Wha . . . what?”

  I aim quickly and fire. I’m not fucking around. And I shoot Cage in the testicles, so that he’s not fucking around, either.

  He screams bloody murder, even more than I’d expected, and then he drops and flails on the floor in shock and agony.

  I walk over to him and pour Grey Goose over the hands covering his bloody crotch. Then I drop the bottle on the floor next to him. Vodka pours from it.

  “Put that on your junk.”

  It takes Cage another five seconds before he takes the bottle, and then he rolls over onto his stomach, writhing around on the cold glass like he’s humping it.

  “Kill me! Just kill me!” he screams.

  I kneel next to him and speak in a slow and measured tone. “The people you assist in the government. They are the ones who saved your miserable life today. You need to go back to work for them with the exact same intensity and effort as before . . . or you know what will happen.”

  “Kill me now, you sick son of a bitch!”

  “I’ll never kill you. I’ll just return and take away more of what you hold dear. This time it’s your manhood. Next time . . .” I see a framed portrait of Cage with his family in the bedroom. It’s lying on the floor, the glass broken. I set it up next to where he’s writhing.

  “Next time . . . who knows what I’ll take from you.”

  I’m bluffing. His wife is probably in on it, but I’m not a detective, so I don’t know, and I would never harm anyone’s kids.

  And now, when I look into Cage’s eyes, I realize he believes I will do what I say I’ll do.

  He’ll comply, he’ll keep working for the Agency, with or without functioning balls.

  I rise to my feet again. “Keep the vodka on your nuts till the paramedics come. It will slow the bleeding.”

  I turn and head for the stairs. Into my mic I say, “I’m coming out the front.”

  “Roger that,” Rodney responds.

  A few seconds later I meet him by the pool. He’s been shot through the thigh; the round went through and through, but he’s already bandaged it tightly.

  He looks me over. “Dude. Your shoulder.”

  I turn and stare at the knife there. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  Rodney laughs. “Better leave it in till you get to a hospital.”

  “What happened in there?” Kareem asks.

  “I let Cage live.”

  “Why would you leave him alive?”

  “Trust me, I took all the fun out of it for him.”

  Kareem sits on a planter by the back door. “Wish the cops would hurry the hell up.”

  Rodney lowers to the ground next to him. Both men look utterly smoked.

  But I don’t sit. “Guys, I’ve got to try and run.”

  Both older men nod, but Rodney says, “Get out of here, brother. Good fighting with you. We’ll see you around.”

  Kareem adds, “Yeah, in the yard at Pelican Bay.”

  All three of us laugh at this.

  It’s the only supermax prison in California, and the only reason we’re laughing is that, right now, none of us really gives a shit. We did our jobs today, and we know what we did was righteous.

  “When LAPD gets here,” I say, “tell them to send a paramedic to the second floor of the pool house. There’s a wounded man, an innocent, and he needs help.”

  “What the hell do you mean, ‘innocent’?”

  I shrug. “I don’t make the rules. I just follow them.” I pause, then say, “Sometimes.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Three minutes after this I’m climbing up a steep incline to a street a block north and a hundred feet higher up the hill, my left arm useless at my side. I’ve pulled my mask down over my face, so if I run into anyone dumb enough to be out on the street I’m going to look pretty scary, but at least the TV choppers above won’t show my mug on the evening news.

  I make a turn and see a gaggle of police cars, twenty-five yards ahead. I can just make out Roxana there, standing next to a squad car with two other women. I recognize Talyssa by her bright red hair, and by the fact that she and her sister embrace so hard it looks like they are trying to crush each other. I don’t know who the other woman is, but after several seconds Roxana turns to her and punches her in the face, dropping her to the ground.

  I suddenly have no doubts about her identity.

  A cop on a bullhorn tells me to drop to my knees on the street, but I just turn away from the roadblock and begin walking back down the hill.

  The guy keeps shouting at me, but I’m unconcerned.

  I guess it’s possible I’ll be arrested by the local five-oh, but I have a sinking suspicion I won’t.

  You’re the Gray Man, you can just slip away, I tell myself.

  But I’m wrong.

  A pair of vans appears around a turn below me on the road, and I’m sure they’ve already crossed a police line to make it this high up on the hill. As they approach, I stop, look at a densely wooded property next to me, and consider making a run for it.

  But I don’t. Instead I just let out a long, tired sigh.

  The vans stop alongside me and the side door of the closest one slides open.

  Zack Hightower looks me over, up and down. “You look like shit, kid.” He sees the hilt protruding from just below my collarbone. “But on the bright side, looks like you won a free knife.”

  I don’t speak, I just climb into the back of the van and it begins rolling off. Armed men all around search and cuff me while Zack looks on. When they’re finished, he reaches over to me and puts his hand around my back. Hightower knows I keep a handcuff key secreted under a belt loop, so he grabs it, then tosses it out of the van.

  He pulls out his phone as we start dri
ving off.

  “Sir? I’ve got him. No trouble, but half of Hollywood is on fire.” He waits a moment then says, “Yes, sir.”

  Zack holds the phone to my ear. I know it’s Hanley.

  I’m right. He says, “Subtle, Violator. Real subtle.”

  I just look out the window.

  He adds, “I want to break your fucking neck.”

  “Get in line, boss.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “He is.”

  “Okay.” I think that’s the end of it, but what he says next surprises me. “Court, here’s what I’m prepared to do. This isn’t a negotiation; this is not my opening offer. You get what you get, and what you get is all you get.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We’ll reach out, quietly, to all the federal law enforcement agencies along the route of the pipeline. Not the state or regional or municipal agencies, but the big guys. At the highest level.”

  I start to speak but he cuts me off.

  “We’ll pass on any information Talyssa Corbu gives us, and then we’ll tell these agencies that we’ll be checking back to see if the pipeline is shut down and the women safely recovered.”

  I think there’s more coming, but when he says nothing, I reply with, “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. You are too precious a commodity for me to let you run around the world saving individual girls. The next job I have for you . . . frankly, kid . . . it’s bigger than that.”

  “What about Kareem and Rodney and Carl?”

  “I assume those are the men who helped you and survived.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The Agency will assist them. We’ll get them out of custody.” He adds, “Eventually. Quietly.”

  Hanley ends the call before I can put up any fight, and Hightower takes the phone from my ear, disconnects it, and drops it back in his bag.

  The Ground Branch guy called Teddy pulls the knife out of me; I scream in agony, but he knows what he’s doing, and instantly he’s cleaning and then bandaging my shoulder, while another guy pours antiseptic on my arm and rib wounds. Chris Travers reaches out from behind me and gives me a squeeze on my good shoulder, then leans forward. “We gotta stop meeting like this, bro.”