by Mark Greaney
“Eduardo Gamboa.” He said it again softly. Then said, “Eddie.”
Court blinked again, dropped his bearded face into his hands, and thought back to the month he spent in hell.
LAOS
AUGUST 2000
Four soldiers in army green ponchos pulled the American out of the back of the truck and shoved him through the thunderstorm, up the muddy trail. He stumbled once on the pathway to the wooden shack: his manacled hands and feet forced him to move slower than his minders found reasonable, and his long, rain-soaked hospital gown and bare feet hardly promoted sure footwork on the slick stones. One Laotian prodded him in the back with his old SKS rifle to encourage Gentry to pick up the pace. Once under the porch roof of the shack, Court dropped to his knees, but the guards yanked him back up and left him teetering there while the door was unlocked. He swayed with the wind of the storm as he stood and waited; finally, they moved him inside the building.
The soldiers took off their ponchos and hung them on wall pegs while an officer came out from behind his desk and unlocked a door to a stairwell that descended into darkness. Court teetered again, nearly tipped over, but strong hands on his back and shoulders guided him down the narrow stairs. At the bottom another locked door was opened, Gentry was pushed forward onto a brick floor, and his shackles were removed. The four soldiers unlocked an iron cell and shoved him inside.
He dropped in the corner of the cell, and they left him there in his wet hospital gown, the metal bars clanging shut behind him. The soldiers slammed the basement door behind him, locked it, and then retreated up the steps.
Gentry had landed on moldy sawdust; he’d caught a mouthful of it and spat it back out as he lay on his side. He opened his eyes and struggled to look around. A folded up pair of baby blue pajamas lay on the floor next to him; he could just make them out. There was a faint light emanating from a ventilation slit high on the wall above him; only a trace of dim illumination tracked down softly to where Gentry lay, but it did nothing to reveal the room around him.
He couldn’t see an inch beyond his arm where it lay outstretched on the sawdust.
“Shit,” he mumbled to himself. “Fucking perfect.”
“English?” A man’s voice called hopefully from the dark in front of him, from inside the bars of the cell, maybe a dozen feet from the tip of Court’s nose.
Gentry did not respond.
After a while he heard movement, the sound of a person sitting up, clothing rubbing against the stone wall.
“You speak English?” The accent was American, with perhaps a foreign background.
Court ignored the question.
The voice in the blackness continued. “I’ve been here for two weeks. Spent the first couple of days checking for cameras or listening devices. Trust me, these pendejos aren’t that sophisticated.”
Court slowly moved himself into a sitting position, leaned back against the iron bars. He nodded to the dark. Shrugged his shoulders. “I speak English.” He was surprised by how weak and raspy his voice had become.
“You American?”
“Yep.”
“Same here.”
Court said, “You talk funny.”
A chuckle from the disembodied voice. “Born in Mexico. Came to the States when I was eighteen.”
“Then you’re a long way from home.”
“Yeah. How bout you? What did you do to end up here?”
“Not sure where ‘here’ is, exactly.”
“We’re a couple hours northwest of Vientiane in a military camp where they dump foreign heroin smugglers. It’s not an official prison; there is no judge or trial or Red Cross or anything like that. They bring the traffickers here to interrogate them, pull the names of their suppliers from them, and then when they’re sure they’ve squeezed out everything they have to offer, they take them to a work camp and have them build roads until they drop dead. They say in three weeks the rainy season will be over and the roads will be passable, then everyone here is off to the labor camps.”
“Bummer,” Court said after another cough.
“How much dope did they catch you with?”
Court closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the cold brick wall. He shrugged. “I wasn’t running drugs.”
“Sure you weren’t, homes. Just tell them it was a misunderstanding.”
“Actually I came to rescue some dipshit DEA dumbass who got himself captured by the boneheads running this place.”
An extremely long pause. Then a fresh chuckle. Then a hearty laugh that seemed utterly out of place in this black dungeon. Then the sound of movement in the dark. In the low light close to Court’s face, a bearded man appeared. He looked Mexican, late twenties, and several inches shorter than Court. He wore baby blue pajamas, and the skin around both of his eyes was tainted with fading bruises, obvious even in the deep shadow. He stuck out a hand. “Eddie Gamble. DEA, Phoenix Field Office, on special assignment to the Bangkok Field Division.”
Court shook the hand weakly. “Hey, Gamble? How’s that special assignment of yours working out?”
“How’s your assignment working out, ese?”
Court smiled; the muscles in his jaw hurt. “No better than yours, I guess.”
“So you are here to save me, huh?”
Gentry nodded.
Eddie Gamble swatted a bug from his forehead. “Is this the part where the rest of your unit rappels down from the rafters and we all blast out of here with jet packs?”
Court looked up towards the low ceiling. “God, I hope so.” Nothing happened. He looked back to Gamble. Shrugged. “Guess not.”
Eddie asked, “Who are you with?”
“Can’t say.”
“I’m cleared top secret.”
“Chicks dig that, don’t they?” quipped Gentry; his eyes were becoming accustomed to the low light, so he scanned the cell now, found nothing but a shit bucket and a water trough and a couple of tattered blankets as furniture.
“I mean . . . I’m sure you can tell me who you’re with.”
“Sorry, stud. I’m codeword-classified.” Codeword-classified meant only those who knew a specific code could be privy to a set of information.
“I bet chicks dig that.”
“They would if I could tell them, but they’d have to know the codeword.”
Gamble laughed at this, and at the situation. “You can come rescue me, but you can’t tell me who you work for?”
“The DEA is looking for you. I just happened to be in the area, sort of, so I was sent by my people to nose around.”
“And then?”
Court shrugged. “Bad luck. I got sick. I was meeting with some contacts, and I passed out. I woke up in the hospital. I had cover for status only; my papers weren’t good enough for the scrutiny of the hospital, so they called the cops. My papers weren’t even close to good enough for the cops, so they called military intelligence. Military intelligence wiped their asses with my papers, basically, so here I am.”
Gamble reached out and put his hand on Gentry’s forehead. “You get stung by any mosquitoes?”
“I crossed over the Mekong about a week and a half ago. Damn bugs ate my ass up. Guess they don’t get a lot of white meat around here.”
“Backache, muscle aches, stomach cramps, dizziness?”
“Fatigue, joint pain, vomiting,” Court finished his list of symptoms.
“You have malaria,” Eddie said gravely.
“Thanks, doc, but I already figured that out.”
Gamble looked at Gentry a long time before saying, “Brother, that’s a death sentence in a place like this. You need meds. Clean water. Solid food that doesn’t have cucarachas crawling in it. You aren’t gonna get that here.”
Court shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll be okay.”
Eddie stood quickly, so quickly Gentry flinched. Gamble moved to the bars and started shouting for the guards up the stairs. Court couldn’t understand a word of it. The guards did not come down, and after a mome
nt Gamble sat back down, visibly angry.
“We gotta get you to a hospital.”
“They just pulled me out of a hospital, remember.”
“¡Pendejos!”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s Spanish. It’s kinda like ... assholes or something.”
Court nodded. “And that was Laotian you were speaking to the guards?”
“Thai. Not exactly the same, but close enough for government work.”
“Figured a DEA agent with Mexican roots would be sent to Latin America. I guess if you speak Thai, you get sent here.”
“I get sent everywhere. Before this gig I was in the Navy for six years, in the Teams. I went all over, picked up some language on the way.”
“The Teams? You were a SEAL?”
“Team Three.”
Court nodded, as respectfully as one can while resting his head on a wall. “You’ve been here two weeks. You should have escaped by now, spent a week banging beach bunnies on the coast, and then made it back home with time to spare.”
Gamble bristled in the dark. Court could tell the man did not like the suggestion that he was soft. “Sure, I could get out of here. Two guards come down to take me to the interrogation shack every morning. I could break their necks. I could grab a sidearm and make a run for the motor pool. I could hot-wire a ride in nothing flat. I could smash the front gate, make a run for the Mekong.”
“But you just stay because you like the food?”
Gamble’s facial expression showed incredulity. “Bro . . . I’m DEA. I’m not a SEAL anymore, and I’m sure as hell not some secret squirrel, codeword, badass hombre like yourself. I can’t just run around killing Laotian military.”
Court nodded slowly. He worked under quite different rules of engagement, but he wasn’t going to admit that to Eddie.
Gamble asked, “What about you? Can you tell me your background? I mean, you weren’t born codeword-classified, were you?”
“I forgot everything before this job.”
“Shit, the CIA winds you singleton operators up tight, don’t they?”
Court didn’t bite on the comment. Didn’t admit he was CIA.
Gamble gave him a moment, and then said, “Okay. How bout a name? You got a name?”
Another shrug from the sick American against the wall. “My cover is blown. You can make one up for me. Anything you like.”
Gamble shook his head. Shrugged. “Okay, amigo. I think I’ll call you Sally.”
Court laughed until he wheezed and coughed until he rolled into the fetal position, wracked with pain.
EIGHT
Gentry’s mind left ancient history in Laos, came back to the here and now, and he looked down at the grave of Eduardo Gamboa, the freshly dug earth dry and crumbled around the tombstone.
Major Gamboa had been dead for eight days, it took three days to fish his remains from the Pacific Ocean, his funeral was the day before yesterday, and already people had defaced the white wooden cross with spray paint.
Hijo de puta! Son of a bitch.
Cabrón. Goat, a Spanish pejorative similar to jackass.
Pendejo. Eddie himself taught Court the meaning of the word that now adorned his grave marker.
Court’s jaw muscles flexed in anger. He did not understand. Who the hell could be angry with Eddie? Apparently, there was more to the story than he had heard on the radio at the torta stand in Chiapas. Gentry had caught a two-minute-long follow-up report about the bombing of the yacht, and Eduardo Gamboa was again mentioned as the dead leader of the operation.
No question in his mind. Eduardo Gamboa was the man he knew as Eddie Gamble.
Court had neither seen nor heard from Eddie since Laos. He had no idea the DEA man had returned to Mexico, and this fact perplexed him greatly. Why the hell would anyone want to leave the United States to come down here and fight drug carteleros and governmental corruption? Wasn’t there enough crime and bullshit in the USA to keep Eddie happy up there?
It hardly seemed like a field trip was necessary.
When Court saw the report of Eddie’s death, he’d been on his way to Tampico, on Mexico’s Gulf coast. He’d heard that a lot of European cargo ships called at the seaport there, and he wanted to find a way back to the eastern hemisphere to confront and kill his former employer Gregor Sidorenko, the man who now, along with the Central Intelligence Agency, was actively seeking his destruction.
But the second news report from Puerto Vallarta changed things. It said that Major Gamboa would be buried in his hometown of San Blas, ninety minutes up the coast from where he died.
Court felt that if he were already this close, just a one-day bus journey away, he should at least go and pay his respects.
So here he was, standing on a rock-strewn hillside a mile and a half from the Pacific Ocean. The steeply graded cemetery around him was covered with cheap mausoleums made from tin sheeting and linoleum and plastic and cinderblock. Amongst these larger monuments to the dead there were less ornate tombstones, with candles, plastic statuettes, and fake flowers lying about. Fat iguanas sunned themselves on broken rock or chased one another around massive tufts of banana trees growing wild out of the tall grass. A hot afternoon breeze blew Gentry’s long hair into his eyes as he looked down at the final resting place of his old friend.
Staring at the spray-painted curses he asked himself: Why were all the people around here so mad at Eddie?
LAOS
2000
Eddie Gamble was right about the Ban Nam Phuong Military Detention Camp being no place for a man with malaria. Court’s weakened condition deteriorated with each passing day of poor food, a cold floor of sawdust, and wholly unsanitary conditions. His mission to rescue Eddie became a joke the minute he was tossed in a cell with him, but now Eddie became the one desperately trying to rescue “Sally.”
Once a day Gentry was pulled up the stairs, taken across the small compound and into a wooden building, dropped on the floor in front of a desk, and questioned by two Laotian military officers who spoke little English and kept one eye on the full-contact Muay Lao martial arts matches broadcast on a small television against the wall. The men drank fresh water from big plastic bottles to torment their sickened and thirsty captive. They asked him over and over how he got into the country and who he’d come to meet and dozens of other questions, without any inkling he was an intelligence operative of the United States of America. Court gave no answers, just asked for medicine and a blanket and a pillow and fresh water.
Each day the interrogators refused.
Other than a few openhanded smacks to the head, they did not beat him, but they used his illness against him, promising he would get no treatment for the malaria until he signed a confession.
And each day he would be dragged back downstairs, dumped in the sawdust, and Eddie would then be taken for his turn in front of the lazy interrogators.
After one week Gentry’s physical condition had deteriorated to the point where he could barely crawl over to the metal bucket he and Gamble shared as a toilet. Eddie began caring for his “rescuer,” helping with his bathroom duties, sluicing him with water to clean him, and even giving him half of his daily rations of potato, moldy bread, and turnip, occasionally augmented with a small tin of cold broth made with animal bones. Gamble cooled Gentry’s fevers by continually dousing his scarlet forehead with a wet sock and rubbed his arms and legs when the chills came. Court protested everything that was done for him and continually encouraged the DEA agent to concentrate on finding his own way out of the camp.
Court was growing too weak to operate his body, but his well-trained brain had not lost the ability to scheme. “Look, Eddie. We’re probably just a few miles from the Mekong River and the Thai border. If you escape from here, then you have a chance of getting home. But when they take us into the labor camps, we’ll be up in the mountains, weeks from civilization, weeks from a border crossing. If you don’t get out of here before we go to the camps, it’s game over.”<
br />
Eddie just shook his head. “I’m not leaving you here, and I’m not letting you go to the labor camp by yourself. You’ll die.”
“I’m dead anyway, dude. You’ve got to concentrate on what you can do. You’ve got to get out of here.”
But Eddie was stubborn; he continued tending to his weakened cellmate and did not try to escape on his own.
With twenty-two hours a day together and literally nothing else to do, Court and Eddie spent an incredible amount of time in conversation. The dialogue was hampered by Gentry’s absolute refusal to reveal one shred of information about himself, but Eddie was a talker. He talked about his life growing up in a small town on the Pacific coast of Mexico, his journey over the border into Texas as an illegal alien, his wayward couple of years in a Chicano gang in Riverside, California, and then his decision to join the military to seek American citizenship.
Eddie had joined the Navy because his father was a fisherman, but he realized quickly he himself did not want to live on a boat. He qualified for SEAL selection and excelled in the brutal training, earned the respect of the cadre and his fellow enlisted men along the way. After two and a half years of pre-deployment training and four years on Team Three, he left the military and joined the Drug Enforcement Agency. His life in Southern California had given him a hatred for drugs and drug dealers, and he worked primarily undercover in different parts of the world.
Two weeks after being brought to the Ban Nam Phuong detention facility, Court lay awake in the dark, sweat chills threatening to drive him mad, listening to Eddie drone on and on about his little sister, Lorita, and how he missed her and hated leaving her behind in the little fishing village where they grew up when he moved to the U.S. Gentry’s mind drifted off Gamble’s life history and turned to the problem at hand. He focused all his attention on remembering everything he saw each day when he was taken from his shack, dragged across the small camp, and dumped in the interrogation hut. It was always raining; there were trucks and jeeps sunk inches into the gravel and mud roads, maybe two dozen guards armed with Chinese-made AK-47s and SKSs.