Page 160 of One Minute Out

She spoke in a calm voice, the words coming out through her practiced smile. “Tonight is the night, Maja.”

“Meaning?”

“The Director is coming up this evening, just to see you. You should feel very honored.”

The twenty-three-year-old Romanian nodded absently.

“Remember,” Claudia said, “Jaco is watching you very carefully. Don’t cross the Director, and don’t cross Jaco, and all the good things that I’ve been promising you for the last several days will be yours.”

The doctor left the room.

Roxana’s heart began to pound in fear, but she also saw this as an opportunity. If the Director was coming here, into her room, then there was a good chance his phone would be with him. And even if she didn’t know where she was, she could call her sister, make some sort of contact, and describe everything she knew about this property and the people around her. She could describe the little part of the airport property she saw and the drive north and the ocean and the landscape and maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to help.

She knew Tom’s arrival would present an opportunity, but that wasn’t the chief emotion she was feeling right now. No, it was fear. Abject, unadulterated terror. She knew she was going to be raped. She could fight it, but she’d seen over a dozen armed men in the house so far, and she had no doubt they all worked for the Director. If he attacked her tonight, he would have all the reinforcements he needed to exert his will.

And how could she sneak his phone if she was in hand-to-hand combat with him around the room?

The thought of killing herself returned for a brief moment, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Part of her preferred death to what she knew was soon to occur, but another part of her wanted the pipeline exposed, no matter the personal cost. She wanted the Director and Claudia and Jaco stopped, and she knew that she, her sister, and the killer working with her sister were the best chances to make this happen.

The makeup artist entered the room and put her cases on the vanity next to her.

Roxana did not speak to the woman; she did her best to hold in her fear, to concentrate on her task, and to try to get herself mentally prepared for the hell, and for the opportunity, that were both sure to come.

•••

I spend part of the day running simulated room-clearing drills with Rodney and Kareem, the two men who will hit the house with me. Then the entire team, Carl included, sits with me in the little house in Bakersfield and pores over online overhead imagery of the property. We work out a myriad of different issues, and by midafternoon we have a plan detailing everyone’s duties and responsibilities.

It’s a good team and our confidence is high, even though we don’t have anything resembling a solid exfiltration plan. I’m confident that we can overpower the opposition long enough for us to secure the hostages and grab some vehicles, but my confidence rests on Carl’s flying skills and his ability to keep himself and Shep in the air, raining down merciless aggression on anyone who opposes us.

It’s nine p.m. when we load up Shep’s F-350 and Rodney’s Ford Bronco, and then we head off towards the airport.

It would be a pain in the ass getting onto the airport grounds in Bakersfield with all our weaponry, so instead we drop Carl off at the front gate of the fixed operating base where his Eurocopter is parked, so he can preflight the helo while the rest of us drive south.

By ten we’re on the Golden State Highway, still wargaming different scenarios that may come up. I can tell these men have raided a lot of structures together over the years. They are cool and professional and, while they may not be in their prime from the standpoint of their physical ability, mentally they are rock solid, and I know Hanley and Hightower hooked me up with the right group.

I just wish there were two dozen more of them, but when hitting a fifteen-thousand-square-foot building with an unknown number of hostiles inside and an unknown hostage disposition, I can get a little greedy.

But, despite the small force at my disposal, I’ll take these guys into battle, and together we’ll do our best.

•••

At eleven forty-five the four of us are sitting in the bed of Shep’s truck, looking at the cloudless sky, when A.J. points out a speck of light approaching from the north. It takes minutes before we hear it, but by the time Carl brings the bird on final approach, we’re all out of the truck, laden down with our guns and rucks.

The helicopter lands in a field fifty yards away, and we start humping over to it.

The four of us tasked with riding on the outside of the helo make uncomfortable eye contact. Carl is going to fly lights-out to mask us visually, and low so we won’t be heard from as great a distance. He’s told us about his flight plan and the tactics he will employ, and none of us are thrilled about the prospect of racing ten feet over the Earth at ninety miles an hour, in the dark, hooked to the outside of a helicopter flown by a guy who realistically should be home watching TV and thinking of his glory days.

But at this point, for all our reasons, we’re pretty much committed to seeing this through.

As promised, Carl has rigged four thick ropes, hooking them with carabiners to fixed points inside the cabin. The carabiner on the other end we each hook onto our utility belts, then we check one another to make sure we didn’t fuck it up.

The doors have been removed from the helo and our lifelines offer us just enough slack to stand on the skids and hold on to the door frames. If we fall from the skids we won’t drop to our deaths, but we will find ourselves dangling along, bouncing up against the fuselage of the helicopter, and praying Carl didn’t go cheap and buy the rope holding us up at some dollar store in East Bakersfield.

I push this out of my mind and notice four other ropes coiled on the floor inside the cabin. They’re each thirty feet long and they’ll be tossed out before we get to our target so we can fast-rope down, just a couple dozen yards from the rear entrance.

We considered a roof insertion of the property; the roof of the hacienda is flat enough, but we’re worried about squirters, enemy slipping out of the property, while we make our way down three stories, so we’ll hit from the back lawn, clear together to the top, and kill anyone who opposes us.

That’s the plan, anyway.

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