Page 156 of One Minute Out

Shep added, “So you’ve got a pilot, a small team of shooters, a target, and a timeline. Guess you just need a plan. And weapons. Did you bring any weapons?”

“We’ll work on the plan together,” I say. “As for weapons... I was hoping you guys could bring along your own.”

This is unprofessional, and the men waste no time in letting me know.

“What kind of bullshit op is this?” A.J. asks.

I heave a sigh. If they thought that was unprofessional, they’re about to really flip their lids. “And, do any of you gents have an extra rifle you can lend me?”

They bitch, but nobody climbs to their feet to leave the room, so I call that a win.

Rodney, the homeowner, finally says, “I’ve got guns, Harry. You can pick what you want, but only if you promise not to bleed all over them.”

“I sure promise to try.”

•••

Rodney’s house might be a shit box, but he has a gun safe in a back room that looks like it cost more than the property itself. It’s six feet tall and five feet wide, and when he opens it, I see something like a dozen long rifles and shotguns, as well as a dozen more pistols, and several knives.

There are AKs, ARs, an Israeli X-95, and even a big Belgian FN FAL. He has a pair of sniper rifles; one is a Knight’s Armament SR-25 semiautomatic and the other an old bolt-action Remington 700. Both look useful for tonight’s mission, but I grab an AK with an underfolding wire stock.

Rodney says, “Got crates of ammo in the storage room out back.”

“You allowed to own this stuff in California?” I ask as I adjust the rifle’s sling to my frame.

“Nope. Not allowed to shoot people, either, but I figure that’s probably on the agenda tomorrow night.”

“Good point.”

I pull a Walther P22 pistol out of the safe and pick up the .22 caliber silencer lying next to it. “Mind if I grab this one, too?”

Rodney looks at me quizzically. “Sure. But I’ve got other pistols with threaded barrels. You don’t need to take that little peashooter.”

I put the Walther and the silencer into my canvas backpack. “You never know when you might need to shoot a pea.”

He looks at me like I’m nuts, then hooks me up with the rest of the gear I need.

Seeing the impressive size of his cache, I say, “You guys are supposedly retired. Why are you hanging on to so much weaponry?”

I expect him to say he’s just a gun collector or a firearms aficionado, but instead he verifies what I have been assuming all along.

“We’re always looking for the next thing we can’t stay away from. We’re out of the fight after Manila, but we’ve all wanted to get back into it. Even Stu, until his wife got pregnant. The rest of us? The shit we’ve seen? Damn, dude. I’m going to be going out hunting traffickers and abusers till I take my last fucking breath. Same goes for the other boys, Papa included.”

“Works for me,” I say, and then I head out to the driveway to climb into Duvall’s pickup for the drive down for our recon on Rancho Esmerelda.

FORTY-SIX

Shep and I drive south for an hour and a half, most of it through canyoned scrubland, finally arriving at our destination at four in the afternoon. He parks his F-350 on the gravel side of Lake Hughes Road; we both pull packs out of the bed and begin hiking through hills. After thirty minutes of this we crest a rise and then drop to our bellies.

We are most of a mile north of Rancho Esmerelda, just south of San Francisquito Canyon Road, and with the maps on our phones and the GPS on Shep’s watch we’ve picked this particular site as a good overwatch position for our evening of reconnaissance. We pull binoculars for a quick look, then unpack a high-end spotting scope Duvall brought along to get a better picture of the property.

Spotting scopes suck in the night, but the buildings around Rancho Esmerelda are lit up and the moon is nearly full. These conditions help us this evening, although Shep and I both know they will hinder us tomorrow when we have to try to get as close to that target as possible without being seen.

After looking through the optics for just seconds we realize we are facing a large and formidable property. The sixty-power scope Shep brought along helps identify the main guard force to be, as near as we can tell, Mexican or perhaps even Salvadoran gangsters. If experience is any guide, these men will be trained in the use of their weapons but not overly organized as a cohesive fighting force. They are carrying what appear to be civilian AR-15s and shotguns, mostly, and they amble about on foot, drive patrols over the sixty rolling acres in four-wheelers, or sit in covered fixed positions around the property.

We don’t see any women milling about outside, but that’s no surprise. Still, we quickly get an idea about where the victims are being held. The guard force is centralized around the main building, a luxurious three-story ranch house we estimate to be somewhere around fifteen thousand square feet. While there are other outbuildings around the ranch, sheds and warehouses and a barn and a couple of cabins, from the disposition of external security we determine that the girls are located in the big house.

The bunkhouses are to the east on the far edge of the property, but there are vehicles parked behind them and a halfway decent road through the undulating landscape to the big stucco house, a half mile to the west.

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