by Mark Greaney
“I met him when he was in the DEA.”
“So, you are DEA, or did he arrest you once?” Cullen asked with a smile as if it were a joke, but Gentry sensed the old man considered the “long hair” in front of him to be a human being worthy of suspicion. Cullen began to say something else, no doubt another chiding remark. But Elena returned and interrupted the conversation.
“I almost forgot. Come, Joe. We have more people to meet. You two can talk at dinner.”
It was a short walk down the narrow hallway to the kitchen. Here a half dozen women of various ages prepared the meal; they used every possible flat surface in the small room to slice fruits and vegetables, ice down beer, stir large pots of soups and rice, and butter bread fresh from the oven. Two were introduced as Eddie’s aunts, another as a sister-in-law.
At the sink a woman with short black hair washed sweet potatoes; she wore an apron and her back was to Court and Elena, but she turned to ask Eddie’s wife a question.
Court’s eyes locked on hers, and he found himself unable to pry them away. She was beautiful, extraordinarily so, but not like Elena. She was smaller, with café au lait skin that was a bit darker than that of Eddie’s wife. Her sparkling brown eyes were massive, half-hidden under bangs that she blew out of the way as she toweled off her hands. She was almost boyish in frame and mannerism, and her shoulders showed hints of muscularity under her simple white blouse, which had a hand-sewn floral print.
Elena said, “This is Joe from los Estados Unidos. Joe, this is—”
Court finished the sentence. “Eddie’s little sister. Lorita,” he said it softly, reverently. He could see a lot of his old friend in her. In a flood of memories the weeks in the shit-splattered Laotian cell came back to him. Eddie had spoken of her nonstop, and his one regret about running to America had been leaving the little girl behind. He sent most of his meager enlisted-man’s pay back home, supporting his parents and sister from afar, but it was painfully clear that he felt he’d abandoned the kid by leaving her behind here in San Blas.
Lorita finished wiping her hands on a rag and stepped forward; she shook Court’s hand, and he felt her eyes on him. He mumbled something in Spanish about being an old friend of her brother’s. His words sounded stupid to him.
She spoke to him in English. “No one calls me Lorita for long time. I’m Laura. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“Igualmente.” Court said likewise in Spanish, indicating to her she could continue in her mother tongue if she wished.
“You were with Eduardo in the Navy?” she asked, but quickly Elena stepped in.
“He can’t talk about how he knows Eduardo. Some kind of secret mission, I think.” She winked at Court. There was sadness in her eyes but a conspiratorial playfulness as well.
Court nodded, and said, “It was a while ago. He was a great guy.”
Laura nodded. “Yes.”
He looked in her eyes and caught himself backing away. He continued in Spanish for her benefit. “I spent . . . a lot of time with Eddie. He talked about you. You were just a kid then, I guess.” He stammered for something else to say, but nothing original came. “He talked about you.”
She smiled at first, but in seconds her round eyes narrowed to slits and her face reddened. She began to cry.
“Lo siento,” I’m sorry, she said with an embarrassed smile. She lifted her apron and wiped her dripping eyes with it, then left the room quickly.
Elena ignored the display of emotion; she had already moved and began working on the sweet potatoes in the sink.
Court stood there by himself in the center of the kitchen, now afraid to say one more fucking word.
Dammit, Gentry.
LAOS
2000
For ten minutes Court leaned his back against the wall next to the door to the stairwell with the water bottle in his hand. He’d filled the empty plastic bottle with fuzz from the wool blanket and the gauze from Eddie’s head, and he’d wrapped the outside with a piece of the blanket enshrouded in the white medical tape. This exertion threatened to put him to sleep for hours. He fought it with all his might. He’d just begun to nod off when he heard someone coming down the stairs.
Gentry hurried to his feet. He sucked in musty air tainted with the stench of his own waste, filling his lungs with the oxygen he needed to give him a burst of strength for the coming moments.
The door opened. A guard came through with a pen. He stopped as he was closing the door, noticing now that the prisoner was not in the cell.
Court Gentry moved from behind the door, slammed into the man in a bear hug, knocked him to the ground with body weight.
Court made it up to his knees. Grabbed the stunned soldier’s head with both hands, lifted it, and smacked it against the stone floor. Once, twice, three times.
The young man’s eyes remained locked open in death. Court fell on top of him. Utterly exhausted.
Seconds later he reached back with his bare foot and pushed the door shut. He finally recovered enough to pull the Chinese-made Type 77 pistol from the Laotian’s gun belt. It fired a weak 7.65 × 17 cartridge, which Gentry would have hated to bet his life on, except in the situation in which he now found himself. He struggled back across the floor, fought a wave of diarrhea that wanted to expel from his bowels as he moved, and finally made it to the door and to his water bottle. He jabbed the muzzle of the weapon into the neck of the stuffed plastic device, satisfied himself it was as secure as possible, and tried to climb back to his feet.
Nothing doing. He had neither the energy nor the balance to stand.
He’d have to fight while lying on his back.
The water bottle would serve as an adequate suppressor for the small pistol, at least for a round or two. The report of the pistol would be muffled, but it would hardly be silent, as the suppressor could do nothing for the mini sonic boom created by the bullet breaking the sound barrier.
Still, this ersatz suppressor, just like the highest-end militarygrade silencer, was designed not to make the weapon silent but to make it not sound so much like a gunshot when the weapon fired.
Looking at the dead soldier next to him on the floor, Court amended his operational plan yet again. He’d planned on dragging the man inside the cell and covering him with the remains of the blanket to fool the guards returning with Eddie. But the American operative knew good and well that if he could not even stand on his own, he hardly possessed the strength to pull the dead weight across the floor.
Instead he lay back on the floor, five feet from the door, and waited.
He fell asleep, woke up with a start as he heard a key in the lock in the door in front of him. He would have liked for Eddie and the guards to enter the room and close the door behind them so that the muffled gunshot would not be heard above. But with the dead body lying just a few feet from the door, he knew that was not possible. So as soon as the key was turned and the latch engaged, Gentry sat up, hoping like hell there were only one or two guards with Eddie.
But there were five men coming down the narrow stairwell single file. They were all soaked from the thunderstorm above, and they were tightly packed together, no man more than two steps from the next; Eddie Gamble was the third in line. The first guard still had his hand on the door latch when he stepped in. Gentry held the pistol in his right hand and held the homemade suppressor tight to the muzzle with his left hand. Before the first soldier could react, Court pointed the water bottle at the man’s face and fired a single round. The end of the bottle burst open with a loud but manageable pop, and the soldier’s head snapped back. He spun backwards to the ground with his hands rising to his bloody face.
Court did not hesitate. He raised the pistol and the smoking silencer up higher and shot the man just in front of Eddie. The Laotian had not even begun to make a move for his weapon before he took a small bullet in the right eye, and he fell dead instantly.
The wool in Court’s silencer burned and smoked now, the second report was twice that of the first. He r
aised it at Eddie Gamble, who wisely dropped down to his knees on the bottom step of the stairs. Court shot the man behind him in the throat just as the soldier’s handgun rose at the surprise threat down in the basement.
This time, Court’s burning water bottle shattered completely, sending a barb of sharp plastic into his left thumb. The gunshot was muffled, unquestionably, but much less so than the first two rounds. The weapon was now useless as a covert tool. Court tossed the bottle aside and pointed the pistol at the remaining sentry.
The last soldier in line did not reach for his gun; instead he turned to run back up the stairs. Eddie Gamble spun around, clambered over the thrashing Laotian with the spurting juggler vein, and grabbed the escaping man by the ankle. The soldier screamed out just as he fell, crashed face first, and then tumbled back down, dragging his wounded comrade and his prisoner along with him as he fell. The four bodies rolled down the steps and collided with Gentry at the base of the stairs, coming together on top of the first soldier to be shot, six men in a ball of twisted arms and legs. Blood from the gurgling throat wound of the dying guard coating everyone and everything with a thick, hot, crimson stream.
Court ended up on his back, the pistol fell away from his hand, and his weakness prevented him from engaging in the fight that was happening on top of him. Eddie and the fourth sentry kicked and punched and bit and clawed at each other while Gentry just lay there, his arms out wide. The battle rolled off of him, leaving the man with the throat wound, now dead from blood loss, lying across his feet. Gamble’s size, strength, and training eventually gave him the advantage against the soldier. Finally, after a brutal struggle of thirty seconds, Eddie got off a clean cracking punch to the guard’s face, knocking him out cold.
Eddie rolled off the Laotian gasping in exhaustion but then quickly recovered and crawled over to Gentry. Eddie’s eyes were wide in shock. Amid pants and wheezes he said, “Get up, bro! We’ve got to get out of here!”
Court wasn’t going anywhere under his own power. He just shook his head and gave orders. “Listen carefully. Grab a gun from one of these guards. Put on a poncho and walk out the front door like you own the place. Go to the motor pool to the left of the interrogation shack. You’ll need to pick a car you can hot-wire. Go!”
“Not without you, amigo,” replied Gamble, and he pulled a gun from one of the dead guards and then heaved Court up and onto his back.
“Give it up! You can’t get me out of here!”
But Gamble ignored the comment. As he fought his way slowly up the stairs, pulling himself upwards with both hands on the wooden railing, struggling with the dead weight of the weak and sick man on top of him, his knees buckled more than once. But he made it to the top of the stairs, out into the one-room shack, and found it empty. He lowered Court to the ground and then grabbed a couple of green ponchos that were hanging from pegs by the door. He dressed Gentry with one and took one for himself. Court fought his way back to his feet on his own, using the desk to help himself climb up. Both men pulled their hoods down over their faces and walked out together, Gentry leaning against his friend.
The late morning rain beat down in near horizontal sheets, obscuring the view from the guard towers and the porches of other shacks around the waterlogged compound. Court stumbled, Eddie grabbed him tighter, and they walked directly across fifty yards of pathways to the motor pool. They passed close enough to a small warehouse to see a group of four soldiers inside, looking out at them in the rain. The men did not come after them, but they did not look away, either.
At the motor pool the men found a dozen jeeps, cars, pickups, and flatbed trucks. Eddie lowered Gentry into the backseat of a small Chinese-made sedan, and then he jumped in the front and dropped down below the steering column.
Court fought to pull himself up to see out the window. He heard the sounds of the DEA man cracking the plastic steering column, cussing in Spanish as he struggled to hot-wire the vehicle with soaking wet hands, poor lighting, and the pervasive threat of imminent death.
Gentry saw them through the rain running down the rear windshield. Two soldiers approaching from the fence line, their wooden-stocked rifles hanging from their shoulders, their poncho hoods obscuring their faces like Grim Reapers. They walked directly towards Eddie and Court.
“Hey!” Court said, “Fast Eddie? You’re gonna be Dead Eddie in about fifteen seconds if you don’t get this thing moving.”
“I’ve never boosted one of these. Shouldn’t take too much longer.”
“Figure it out! We got company coming!”
“Okay! Just have to . . .” The engine started. Court looked up to see Eddie making the sign of the cross over himself, then kissing his fingertips and touching them to the dashboard of the little car. He put the transmission in gear, looked back to Gentry, and said, “Vamanos.”
The Chinese sedan rolled forward over gravel and rainwater. Eddie turned for the compound’s main gate, doing his best to drive slowly and naturally. Court looked out the back window again. The two soldiers had unslung their rifles. They seemed confused for only a moment. Then both men raised their weapons at the departing sedan.
“Punch it!” shouted Court.
The rear windshield snapped, glass blew into the backseat, and Eddie Gamble stepped on the gas.
They barreled ahead through the rain; the cracks of rifles from overhead told them they were below the twin guard towers just inside the compound’s entrance. Eddie screamed to his passenger to brace himself, and the little four-door smashed through the wood and wire gate, just as more rounds blew out the rest of the rear windshield. A tight corner to the left sent the car skidding on the paved road, but Gamble turned into the slide and righted the vehicle just as its two right-side tires reached the edge of the blacktop.
The sedan and the two American escapees left the prison behind.
ELEVEN
As dusk descended on Mexico’s Pacific coast, dinner was served at several picnic tables lined up in the large backyard of Eddie’s house. On the back driveway an old open-decked twenty-three-foot Boston Whaler rested on blocks. Leaning against the wall near the back gate were a couple of bicycles; fishing rods hung from hooks next to the little garage. These were Eddie’s things, and it felt weird for Gentry to sit here amongst them without his old friend. In Laos Eddie had a set of filthy baby blue pajamas, just like Court. Nothing else. Now that Court was in Eddie’s world, he saw what Eddie enjoyed doing, he saw who Eddie loved, and Gentry could not help but feel like he was encroaching on Eddie’s world.
Court counted thirty-two people at the tables, including the Gamboa family, the families of a few of the other dead GOPES officers, local friends, and several individuals he’d been introduced to who were in charge of the memorial in Puerto Vallarta. The unarmed local cops whom he’d seen earlier watching over the gathering had grown into a force of eight that wandered around the driveway, out in the street in front of the house, and even patrolled the garden around the dinner tables. He didn’t know why they were there, if they thought some sort of trouble was possible, or even what they’d do about it if trouble appeared.
Court Gentry knew of no real trouble that could be quelled with a whistle and a stick.
Three brown roosters wandered the garden as well; their patrol seemed oddly similar to the unarmed cops. A small pack of mixedbreed dogs of different sizes lounged close to the diners, begging for scraps. Court related to their primal motivations. He was, more or less, doing the same thing here.
Captain Chuck Cullen sat at the head of the row of non-uniform tables, his back to the kitchen and a big charcoal grill alongside the back of the house over his right shoulder. Long black lizards scampered up and down the white stucco wall behind his head.
Court had been placed at the opposite end, facing Cullen; the old man stared him down silently for long periods of time. On Gentry’s right were Elena and her in-laws, and he did his best to stay out of their conversation. Instead he dug into an excellent grilled marlin, more fresh sa
lad and vegetables than he’d eaten at any one time in his life, and he drank beer so cold the bottles stung his fingertips.
Court imagined there had been many dinners just like this, right here, with Eddie Gamble sitting in the chair that Cullen now occupied.
Court noticed the American geezer staring intently at him again, across the length of the tables, over thirty-two big plates of food. Court did his best to ignore him. Instead Gentry found himself gazing at someone.
At Laura.
She was midway down the table on his right, sitting between her two aunts and constantly running back to the kitchen for more plates and bowls and bottles and pans filled with food and drink.
She glanced his way once, maybe twice. Surely, she’d caught him staring at her. He hoped he did not look to her like Cullen appeared to him, overtly eyeing everything he did.
This was no fiesta. The conversations were subdued and hushed; the attendees were sad and angry. Court’s training in reading people was employed as he went up and down the table, trying to discern exactly what was going through each person’s head.
He was good at this. He was so good at it that it was sad, divining the individual misery and fury of thirty people, most of whom had just lost someone important to them. Someone strong and fearless. Someone better than the rest.
Court looked down to his plate, scooped up a forkful of his fried plantains. He told himself he’d drink another beer and hit the road.
LAOS
2000
“You hurt?” asked Eddie from the front seat.
Court checked his body for bloody holes. Finding none, he replied, “I’m fine.”