Page 175 of One Minute Out

We drink coffee and clean and rebandage Kareem’s arm wound, in that order. Carl and A.J. talk about Shep’s dog, agree to share custody and take care of her now that her master isn’t able to do so.

And then we sit around, just hoping for a bolt out of the blue.

We know we can’t count on Roxana, so our only fallback plan is to scan the news on a couple of the guys’ mobile phones, reading updates about the gun battle a few hours earlier a half hour’s drive to the north of our position. We’re hoping against hope that the media will be able to tie someone to the property or to one of the dead there, as much of a long shot as that seems.

We also pull out binos and scan the airport grounds, on the off chance the Director is flying out of this airport. It’s a hundred-to-one shot, which demonstrates how desperate we are.

My phone rings and I answer it in my earpiece. “Talyssa?”

The Romanian Europol analyst’s voice conveys a sense of dread. “Harry... it’s him. He’s on the line. He says he will kill Roxana.”

“Patch him through.”

I hear some clicks, and then I say, “That you, Jaco?”

His dark voice replies, “Nice work last night.”

I laugh. It’s phony, but I want to appear relaxed and in control. “You like that shit, do you?”

“Love it. I thought you’d sneak in, your standard operating procedure. Figured you’d kill a couple Mexicans with a stiletto before my guys came across you and did you in. But no, you went big, didn’t you? Made a lot of noise, broke a lot of things, killed some people who didn’t matter.”

“We slayed a lot of your boys, didn’t we?”

“Maybe. But what did you get out of all that?”

“I recovered a house full of sex trafficking victims, all of whom can identify the people who—”

“Nobody’s identifying a bladdy thing, mate. Those whores will be useless to you. We’re protected at the highest levels. You’re pissin’ into the fookin’ wind.”

I don’t respond.

He then says, “I was just telling your girlfriend on the phone that I’ve got her little sis here with me, in the next room. I’m thinking about walking over there and sticking my knife through her heart. What’s the Gray Man going to do about that?”

“I don’t have to do anything about that, because you aren’t going to touch her.”

He laughs. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because the only reason you took her away from the ranch last night was that you know she’s your fail-safe, your last chance to bargain to save yourself, save your boss.”

He pauses for a long time, and then he says, “Gentry... I’m going to tell you something about me.”

I sigh. “Knock yourself out.”

“I was South African military, Fourth Special Forces Regiment. As a recce I saw action in the Congo and the Central African Republic, plus some other shit I’m not talking about.”

“Good. Because I couldn’t care less.”

Jaco sniffs out a short laugh. “My point is, when I left the military, I went into intelligence. For three years I chased down every Gray Man sighting or potential Gray Man sighting in Africa. A couple hunts in the Middle East, others on the Indian subcontinent. Hell, I even went to Bangladesh on a lead.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Never been to Bangladesh.”

He acts like he doesn’t hear me. “But intel work was a fookin’ bore. No Gray Man, no action, no test of the mettle like I’d gotten in my twenties as a recce.”

To this I say, “Any chance I could get you to tell me why you called?”

Another laugh from the South African, but I can tell in his voice he’s stressed. He ignores me again and keeps up his story. “No other options for a bloke like me but to go into corporate security. I thought it would be tiresome and monotonous, but it was even so much worse than that. So when my company was contacted by a corporation in the Consortium, when I started gettin’ the full picture of what this is all about, when me and my boys started working tough, demanding jobs to keep this entire bladdy enterprise afloat... I was like, ‘Yeah. That’s more like it.’”

“You’re a piece of shit. You know that, right?”

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