Page 44 of One Minute Out

He doesn’t respond.

“It was the Consortium, wasn’t it?” I don’t know what the hell the Consortium is but, again, I’m doing a presumptive interrogation approach, and sometimes it requires taking a chance.

His eyes rise to mine, and I know I’ve struck gold.

I’m completely improvising now. “They aren’t happy with you after what went down at the general’s farm. You are being made an example of, and then, after you’ve been brushed aside, you will be replaced.” He looks away, sniffing bloody air, but I press him. “Time is short, Niko. The Slovakians will send more killers, and I won’t be there to beat them up for you. Somebody wants you dead, Chief, and it’s the exact same people you’ve been serving.”

I’m inside his head now, I can see it.

“What are you going to do to me?” he asks.

“You have three choices. I can kill you right here, I can take you back home to where the next hitters from the Pitovci are probably already waiting, or I can just leave you here alive. Number one and number two both sound like more fun to me, but I’ll do number three if you give me something valuable to help us find those girls.”

Blood bubbles on his lips as he thinks. “I know one thing. Only one thing. I tell you, I tell you the truth, all the truth I know... and you will leave me here? Alive?”

I lean into his ear and speak softly. “I’m a man of my word. If you believe I’ll kill you because I said I will, you should believe I’ll let you go if I say I will.”

He hangs there and bleeds a moment while he weighs his options. He nods a little and starts to speak. I interrupt with, “Remember, it better be really fucking helpful.”

Finally he just says, “Dubrovnik.”

I cock my head. “Dubrovnik?”

“It’s a city in Croatia.”

“I know that, dipshit. What about it?”

“From Mostar, the whores go to Dubrovnik.”

“How do you know?”

“My men escort the trucks that come, then lead them to the Croatian border. They take the southern route, through the mountains... it goes to Dubrovnik.”

“Where in Dubrovnik?”

“I don’t know.”

“Not that helpful, slick.”

He shouts now, fear and anger in equal measures in his tone. “It’s all I know! It’s everything I have!”

Talyssa speaks up again. “That’s not a small town. How are we supposed to find them there?”

Vukovic’s head hangs again. “I have no answers. I don’t work in the pipeline, I just protect it here.”

I say, “And you’ve done one hell of a fine job, haven’t you?”

He looks up at my masked face, but not in anger. It’s more a look of resignation. I wonder if he knows he’s a dead man no matter if I spare him right now or not. This fact seriously hampers my ability to extract any more intel from him, but I have to try. “Tell me about the Consortium.”

With his head still low, he gives it up. “They run pipeline. They deal with Branjevo Partizans. Partizans deal with me. That it. That everything.”

He seems like he’s telling the truth, and I walk back to Talyssa. “How’s the hand?”

“It’s fine.”

She’s rubbing it still; it isn’t fine.

I say, “This is all we’re going to get out of this guy.”

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