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?”

I guess I now know the name of the dude I dumped in the closet.

The voice on the radio turns loud and authoritative, clearly telling someone, probably everyone, to get their asses to the farmhouse to see what happened to the guy at the top of the stairs.

Back to the crowd I say, “We have to get the hell out of here right—”

“Sir.” The standing woman speaks up again. I can tell even through the grime on her face and the bad light of the basement that she is young and pretty. “We have family. Ukraine. Romania. Moldova, Chechnya, Kosovo, Bulgaria. We leave . . . someone back home kill our family.” She shakes her head. “We no can leave.”

For a moment I am frozen in place. I look at a busload of kidnapping victims who don’t want to leave their hellish prison; I know that something like a dozen men and a pair of attack dogs are about to rain down on my position, and I don’t have a clue what the fuck I’m supposed to do now.

FOUR

   Five men rushed into the house from various stations, all with guns drawn and held at the low ready because, for all they knew at this point, Milanko’s radio had failed or he’d dropped it in the toilet.

But when Karlo got to the top of the stairs he thought to open the closet just behind Milanko’s chair, and when he did so, a very dead team leader flopped out onto the runner lining the floor.

He called it in immediately, and within seconds the dogs were brought from the kennels and let loose in the farmhouse.

* * *

• • •

I turn off the red light in this chamber of horrors, open the door to the cellar hallway, and notice that the Christmas lights running along the ceiling are plugged into an outlet within reach. I unplug them, casting the hallway into darkness, and I flip the NOD down over my eyes. Holstering the Glock, I heft my B&T MP9 machine pistol, extend the short stock, and bring the holographic sight up to eye level.

I see nothing, but I hear the careful footfalls of a single person descending the circular staircase past the open doorway thirty feet up the hall.

Then the footsteps stop.

To the ladies behind me I ask, “Is there another way out of here?”

One of them answers. “We no leave.”

I’m over it by now, so I snap back at her. “I’m talking about me! You guys can do whatever the hell you want.”

Can’t help the helpless, I tell myself, and then I consider their situation. If I had someone special back at home, I wouldn’t want them to pay a price for my noncompliance.

But I don’t, so my ass is out of here.

A lady says, “Only the stairs. There is no other way.”

I turn back to them quickly. “They will move you after this.”

The blonde who spoke before says, “They move us anyway. This is just a stop. We go to Europe, America. They use us for as long as they can, then . . . who knows?”

Another woman says, “We are going to die.”

She was immediately hushed by another English speaker.

The blonde’s voice is grave. “They’ll punish us, now. Because of you coming here.”

I’m certain she’s right. Anyone horrible enough to keep slaves for sex work is horrible enough to discipline the slaves for something that isn’t their fault.

I find my feet rooted to the floor. I don’t want to leave these girls, but my tactical brain can’t find a solution to all this. “I’m sorry,” I say. It’s not enough. It’s nothing, in fact, but I’ve got nothing else.

I don’t ponder my words long, because almost instantly I’m racing up the dark hallway towards the staircase, leaving two dozen desperate women and girls behind me.

Nice work, Gentry.

It seems my footfalls make noise in the hall because I see the dude in the stairwell lean out with his rifle. I have my B&T on full auto, and I fire a pair of three-round bursts at him while at a dead sprint. One or more of the rounds hits his hand or arm, because he drops the weapon and tumbles to the floor.

I take the Swiss-made machine pistol in my left hand as I run, aim it high at the stairs, and as I leap over the wounded guard, I draw my Glock. I point it down between my legs and fire twice into the wounded sentry during my vault so he can’t draw a backup weapon and shoot me from behind.

It’s dirty, but people who offer quarter in a gunfight typically don’t make good gunfighters.

I holster the pistol but sense new movement on the staircase now, which is why I’ve kept my machine pistol aimed there. As soon as I see a rifle and a man holding it, I fire a long burst. The sentry falls forward and rolls down the stairs, and I leap over his sliding body to begin my ascent.

Angling my B&T high and leaning out to cut the corners quicker than if I just kept running up the middle of the stairs, I catch the side of a descending man’s head in my sights before he sees me. I fire four rounds at him, and down he goes, ass over teakettle, his weapon clanking along with the thuds and slaps of his body as he tumbles down the stairs. I round the landing below the ground floor and vault this guy like I did the one below.

Keep coming, assholes. I can do this all day.

I hear a volley of impossibly loud gunfire above me, and the plaster on the wall inches to my right is chewed into dust by pistol rounds, and this tells me I probably can’t do this all day. I dive flat on the steps and return fire, almost blindly, nearly emptying my magazine, and then I roll tight against the wall, my head facing up as I reload.