Page 8 of One Minute Out

A room, about ten feet wide and twenty-five feet deep. Walls of bare earth and wooden beams. There are more dirty mattresses on the floor, more broken sofas around the perimeter. A row of three chemical toilets, essentially buckets with cracked plastic seats, sit exposed in the corner on my right.

And two dozen or so women, some may be girls, sitting, squatting, lying flat. Pressed close together and forming a single life-form in the red dim. Someone turns off the music and I hear coughing, crying.

I see chains, and realize they are all shackled by their ankles to eyebolts in the floor.

I smell bad food, cigarette smoke, sweat, shit, piss, and, above it all, absolute and utter despair.

No one speaks a word. They just stare at me with wide, fearful, imploring eyes.

What... the... fuck?

I’ve seen some things in my days. I’ve never seen this.

“I tell you,” Ratko says while standing next to me. “Best in world for best in world. All for you, Gray Man.”

I’m not the “best in world,” and though the ex-general keeps saying it, these people are probably not “best in world” at anything in this condition. But that isn’t for me to judge. They are all daughters or wives or sisters or mothers. And they are all human trafficking victims, it is plain to see.

I have no idea what they’re doing here, why an old Bosnian general would have so many slaves with him on his farm, but whatever the reason, I know one thing for certain.

All these women and girls, all of them are human beings, and right now they are circling the drain of a sick fucking world.

I was mad before. Now I’m wild with rage.

I raise my Glock at Ratko with my right hand while looking back to the ladies. “Those of you who speak English, close your eyes, and translate that to the others.”

That gets Ratko agitated, but some of the ladies do as instructed. Others just keep looking on, knowing exactly what is about to happen, but unafraid.

Babic speaks in a rush now. “There are more. Many more. In two weeks. You get them all. You come back. I give to you when they come.”

I can’t listen to another fucking word out of this piece of shit’s mouth, my fury is so overpowering. My right hand clenches, not from the seething anger, but because I want to hear my gun go bang.

My gun goes bang.

I don’t even look at the general as the hollow-point round slams into his fat bare belly. The suppressor, plus the fact that we’re down in the basement, makes me feel confident I am still covert. He thumps to the floor, writhing and moaning. I glance his way briefly, and shoot him twice more.

His body jolts with the impact of the rounds, then stills.

The radio check continues in my ear. I hear the clipped cadence of different men as each calls in, with either a name or a location or something else in Serbo-Croatian that I can’t understand.

I tune it out again and look up to the large mass of women in the tight space in front of me. “Who speaks English?”

All eyes are open now, and one blonde stands up in the middle of the crowd.

“I do.” Other women call out, as well.

“Listen carefully. There’s an old bus behind the house. We’re going to get on it and get out of here, but we have to work fast, and we have to work together.”

The standing woman—she sounds like she could be Ukrainian to me—simply says, “No, sir.”

I’ve turned to check down the hall, but my head spins back towards her. “What?”

“It is not possible. We stay. We must stay.”

“Are you out of your mind? None of you look like you want to—”

But I hold a hand up, telling the women to wait a moment, because the earpiece I stole from the security guard upstairs just came alive again.

A man keeps repeating a word in a questioning tone. “Milanko? Milanko?”

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