Ballistic

by Mark Greaney

  Cullen filled Court in as they drove. “It’s Monday, so there will be a cruise ship in port. Thousands of tourists down on the Malecon, the boardwalk lining the beach. Plus locals come into downtown on Mondays. The streets would be tight, even without this protest going on. I know a place I can park east of the event, just up the hill from the action.”

  “The site of this rally. What’s it like?”

  “It’s called the Parque Hidalgo. Used to be a park, but the city cleared out the grass and the trees and the market, so now it’s just a flat, open cement plaza sitting on top of an underground parking lot. I guess the plaza is about fifty yards square, ’bout three blocks inland from the beach. There is a big staircase running off the plaza to the left that leads up to a street on the hill above. The Talpa Church sits up there.”

  “Does the church provide overwatch on the location?”

  “Overwatch? Hell, son, I never was a ground pounder, but I get what you mean. Yeah, it might. Not sure, to tell you the truth.”

  “And in front of the plaza?”

  “Just a busy downtown road. Three lanes, all one way, and gridlocked this time of day. Buildings on the other side. Commercial property. My dentist’s office is right in there. There’s some construction going on if I remember correctly. Everything is four stories high or so.”

  “I need a phone,” Court said as a plan of action began to form in his head.

  “Here, take mine.” Cullen reached towards the BlackBerry on his belt.

  “No, I need my own, so I can contact you after we split up.”

  “Why are we splitting up? We need to stay around Elena and the family. She’s seven months pregnant; somebody throws a beer bottle, and she won’t be able to get out of the way. Ernesto and Luz aren’t as old as me, but they aren’t as fit, either. Laura can handle herself, but Eddie’s brothers are worthless; his uncles and aunts are mountain people who’ve probably never even seen a crowd this big before. We need to protect the family.”

  “We will. Look, trust me. Let’s do this my way.”

  Cullen looked at Court out of the corner of his eye while he drove through thickening traffic. “Help me understand just what skills you are bringing to the table.”

  Court’s game face slowly hardened. “If I were armed, I’d be bringing more skills to the table.”

  The captain sighed. “We don’t want to do anything to make a bad situation worse. Somebody charging in in a blaze of glory is not going to—”

  “I’m not looking for glory. If the shit doesn’t hit the fan, you won’t even know I’m there.”

  “Good.”

  “This rally . . . Do you expect the press to be there?”

  “Most definitely.”

  Court reached over to Cullen, pulled the USS Buchanan cap from his head. He put it on his own and pulled it down low.

  Cullen looked at him as he drove.

  By way of explanation, Court said, “I’m a little camera shy.”

  “Do I want to know why?”

  Court shook his head, looked out at the road. “You really don’t.”

  Cullen turned back to the road himself; the creases in his face deepened in thought and worry.

  “What have you done, son?”

  “I’m just like the other good guys down here. There are enough bad guys around that I don’t want them to see my face.”

  Cullen nodded, but it was obvious he was still suspicious. He reached into the backseat and pulled an identical Buchanan cap from the floorboard and put it on his silver-maned head.

  They pulled into a supermarket, and Cullen rushed inside, came back a few minutes later with a cell phone and a wired earpiece in black plastic. Court had already ripped the devices out of their packaging before Cullen had pulled the CrossFox out of the parking lot.

  The memorial had begun by the time they parked the car a few blocks behind the large stone Talpa Church, on a steep hill above the plaza. They followed the rumbling noise of the crowd, and canned patriotic music played on a tinny public address system as they walked down the hill. The music stopped, and a woman began speaking to the crowd. It was not Elena Gamboa’s voice, but Court thought it sounded like one of the other police wives from the dinner the previous evening. She railed against the narco traffickers, the lack of opportunity for the youth of Mexico, and the corruption in the local police force. Gentry could not understand more than half of it, but it seemed pretty rambling and disjointed, even if it was delivered passionately. He and Cullen passed some Puerto Vallarta Municipal Police manning a wooden barricade just as the speaker called out their department as being in the back pocket of the “terrorist” Daniel de la Rocha. The cops glowered down the hill towards the protest with their right hands resting on their pistol grips.

  “This shit could turn ugly,” Court said as they began pushing through street vendors and stragglers at the top of the long stone staircase that ran alongside the big square.

  “Yep,” Cullen said tersely; he looked over the edge of the railing down towards the podium, searching for the Gamboas.

  Moving down the big staircase was an exercise in both diplomacy and aggression. Court would tap one person on the shoulder and politely ask permission to pass, and then physically adjust the next person to make way for himself and the old man. The plaza below to his left was every bit as crowded, easily two thousand people crammed into a single city block to listen to the speaker. Court worried there were some in the crowd here to encourage trouble, and likely others who were just trouble-loving spectators hoping for a little excitement.

  Finally, at the bottom of the steps, Court said, “Why don’t you get close to the family? Be ready to move them away and out of the action if this all breaks bad.”

  “Alright. But what about you?”

  Court turned slowly, 360 degrees. Then he looked back to Cullen. “I need to stay on the perimeter. Get a feel for the action, the crowd, the streets. The vibe.”

  “How is that going to accomplish anything?”

  “I’m pretty good at this. You brought me here because you think I might be able to help. Let me help.”

  Cullen nodded. “Call me if you see something.”

  “Let’s establish coms right now and keep the line open between us.”

  Cullen called Gentry, popped his earpiece in his ear, and Court put his earpiece in and answered. “Good luck,” the Gray Man said into his mike, and the men set off in different directions.

  Moving west through the mass of humanity, away from the stage, Court immediately ID’d troublemakers in the crowd. There were groups of dissenters here and there; around him he heard angry comments, arguments, even some pushing and shoving. A woman mumbled that the Policía Federal shouldn’t be blowing up boats in the bay, and another woman snapped back that DLR was a son of a whore and the only pity was that he survived.

  Within sixty seconds of leaving the captain’s side Gentry spotted men who clearly did not belong. Heavies, stone-faced tough guys watching the others around them instead of focusing on the speaker. He passed two of these individuals within yards of each other, picked them out as undercover operatives working for the police, the government, or maybe even one of the drug cartels.

  Court saw bulges on their hips, evidence the men were wearing guns secreted into the waistbands of their blue jeans. Plainclothes police agents were common at Latin American protest rallies; it was nothing Court hadn’t seen before in Brazil or Guatemala or Peru or a half dozen other places. Often they weren’t as dangerous as they looked, but still he knew to keep an eye out for these assholes.

  Court spoke into his mouthpiece. “Chuck, have you made it to Elena yet?”

  “Just about. I’ll get up on the dais with the family. One more speaker after this broad and then it’s Elena’s turn. When she’s finished at the podium, I’m going to do my best to get everyone back up the stairs and away from this crowd.”

  “Roger that.”

  Court arrived at the three-lane street just below t
he Parque Hidalgo. There were a few cars and trucks parked along the curb, but no traffic flowed. Instead, PV cops had the street blocked to the north, and easily two hundred people stood in the middle of the road or on the sidewalk next to it, their eyes riveted to the stage.

  The speaker finished, and she received polite applause from some and angry whistles from others. Gentry passed another tough-looking hombre who neither clapped nor paid attention to the speaker; instead he made eye contact with the bearded gringo pushing to the east before turning his eyes towards another part of the audience.

  Court’s gaze settled on a building that overlooked the park. The first two stories were finished; they housed a dental office, a travel agency, a pharmacy, and a few other offices. But high above street level the third and fourth stories were construction; iron beams, rebar, cinderblock, electric wires, scaffolding, and big, dark open windows that overlooked the entire crowd and the stage. To a man like Court Gentry, it looked promising. Here was an overwatch, a place where he could get a bird’s-eye view of the event.

  He began walking towards the building.

  The next speaker at the podium was male, a state prosecutor. He began extolling the brief but illustrious career of Major Eduardo Gamboa, in advance of the late-officer’s wife saying a few words.

  Finally free of the gridlocked crowd, Gentry headed down an alley that ran west all the way to the beach. On his left an archway opened to a hallway that ran under the partially finished building. At the arch he passed the doorway to a pet store; a dozen bird cages hung from the roof off the hall alongside the shop’s windows, forcing him to duck as he walked on. Moving slowly down the narrow hallway, he stepped around more chirping finches and budgies in their wooden cages, which jutted out into his path. Pigeons sauntered around at Gentry’s feet as he moved slowly towards a light ahead. A stairwell at the end of the dark hall.

  And then, thirty feet in front of him, a shadow from the left. Court stopped in his tracks. A man crossed the hallway in the light, from a room on the left to the stairwell up on the right.

  The man was dressed from head to toe in black, and his face was covered with a black ski mask.

  He was a federale, or dressed like one at least, but his skulking movement and mannerisms were not those of a cop here to keep the peace.

  Gentry froze, willed the man not to look up the dark hallway as he passed and just continue to the stairs.

  The man did not look, he did walk on, and just before disappearing from view, Court saw a squat black submachine gun in the federale’s left hand.

  Then Court heard a vehicle pull into the alleyway behind him. He looked back and saw a black armored Policía Federal SWAT van stop directly under the archway by the pet store from where he had just come, essentially blocking him in unless he could find another open exit.

  Court stood alone in the hallway for nearly half a minute, not sure what to do. Ahead of him, somewhere up the stairs, an armed man who seemed to be up to no good. Behind him, who knows how many more shady cops showing up a block away from the event.

  “Cullen, you read me?”

  The reception was shit in the hall. Court heard an echo of the man speaking into the public address in his phone’s earpiece, but he couldn’t hear Chuck.

  Damn. He began heading towards the staircase.

  The second-floor door was locked, and Court didn’t think the man had gone through it, as Court would have heard the latch echo down the stairwell to the hallway. He whispered into his mike, again trying to raise Captain Cullen, but the reception in the stairwell was even worse than in the hallway.

  He slipped off his tennis shoes so that he could move without footfalls echoing up the stairwell, and he began walking up the concrete stairs in his stocking feet.

  On the third floor Court left the stairwell and entered the construction area of the building, looking for the lone federale with the sub gun. The unfinished floor provided open windows out to the Parque Hidalgo and the streets around. He half expected to find the masked policeman here, amidst the darkness and the building materials, but there was no one. Gentry stepped forward to check the crowd.

  The plaza below was packed tight; from this vantage point he could better see the incredible congestion in the space. The speaker finished his comments and turned the lectern over to Elena Gamboa; clapping and cheering drowned out the yelling and cursing, but Court could make out the differing camps reflected in the gathering. Shoving, finger wagging, and other animated gestures expressing displeasure were sprinkled in amongst those clearly here to honor the fallen men.

  Then loud car horns began honking below and to his right, drowning out the applause. First one, then two, and finally five large white SUVs pushed their way slowly through the mass of humanity. They moved in the wrong direction up the one-way street. The big trucks continued honking, and the angry waving of the SUVs’ drivers out the windows encouraged the crowd to part. Finally, the big white trucks stopped, and men began filing out. So dramatic was their entrance to the event that even Elena Gamboa paused her opening comments from the riser to see what was going on.

  Court wondered if this was part of the memorial, but one look to the dais dispelled that notion. The families and other speakers standing up there looked confused by the new arrivals.

  Puerto Vallarta police hung around the outskirts of the crowd, but they did not move on the vehicles or the men. They just stood about like all the other spectators.

  Tentatively, Elena Gamboa began speaking again, thanking the organizers of the memorial for putting the event together and thanking the audience for coming to pay tribute to the work of her husband and his fallen comrades. But Court kept his eyes on the SUVs. A man in a goatee and a black suit and tie emerged from the second truck. Court watched him take a bullhorn from a similarly dressed man and climb atop the hood of the big vehicle. Immediately, before he even spoke, both cheers and gasps of horror emitted from the crowd.

  “Damas y caballeros! Ladies and gentlemen! Your attention, por favor,” the man said, his voice tiny and hollow compared to the PA system Elena’s voice had passed through.

  Court spoke into his headset.

  “Hey, Chuck, can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Who’s this asshole?”

  There was a pause. Gentry looked across the park, picked Cullen out of the people lining the back of the stage, standing on his toes to get a look at the white trucks and the man atop the hood. Soon the older American exclaimed, “Holy hell! It’s him!”

  “Him who?”

  “That is Daniel de la Rocha.”

  FIFTEEN

  Court couldn’t believe the balls of this guy. This entire event was to commemorate the police who died trying to kill him, and he shows up, a flagrant insult to both the police and the families of those fallen men. “What is he doing here?”

  “Doing what he always does. Putting on a performance.”

  Confusion mixed with concern in Gentry’s brain. He thought of the plainclothes men he’d seen in the crowd. Were they sicarios, assassins who were part of de la Rocha’s entourage? Or were they in the employ of Constantino Madrigal, his archenemy. Was there more here than the threat of drunks and fistfights and beer bottles? “I don’t like this. Get the family out of here. Now.”

  “I just tried. Elena won’t budge until she finishes her speech.”

  “Dammit,” Court said, and he hurried back to the stairs to find the masked man here in the building with him.

  De la Rocha continued speaking into the bullhorn, and Court could hear every word, and what he did not understand, he put together contextually. “I have come before you today, to tell the people and the authorities that I am not in hiding. I have nothing to hide! The assassination attempt against me on my yacht failed, gracias only to my protector and savior. The assassination attempt was made by government sicarios working directly under the orders of el Vaquero, Señor Constantino Madrigal Bustamante, the real narcotraficante , the real
criminal to threaten the region and our poor nation. Madrigal and his bought-off police gangsters want me dead because I have evidence of government corruption at the highest levels in Mexico City! In my hands I have the names of the corrupt working for Madrigal.” De la Rocha turned his attention from the general crowd and to a dumbstruck Elena Gamboa, still standing behind the microphone on the stage. “Señora, I ask your forgiveness for saying so, but your husband’s name is on this list!”

  “¡Mentiroso!” Liar! Elena shouted into the microphone on the podium.

  De la Rocha ignored her, and once again addressed the crowd at large. “I came today, putting my own life in jeopardy, because I believe that there should be no rally in support of murderers and villains and dishonest police officers . . .”

  He continued speaking, the crowd seemed split down the middle in their reaction now; the arrival of Los Trajes Negros seemed to intimidate some and rally others, even as it incensed many in the crowd.

  But Court Gentry tuned it all out. He was back in the stairwell now and heading up, looking for the skulking federale. At the top of the stairwell he began moving through another dark floor of dusty construction, again towards the windows overlooking the park.

  Then he saw him, ahead in the shadows. The masked man held the submachine gun, and he knelt behind the cinderblock wall, hiding his body and looking down towards the crowd. Court could hear Elena’s voice over the loudspeaker, trying to argue back against DLR while the crowd both cheered and booed her words.

  The cop pulled a radio off his belt, began speaking into it softly. Court could not hear what was being said. He moved a little closer in his stocking feet, staying close to the walls.

  He stepped into the dark room with the officer now, moved left along the wall towards the corner, and went prone behind a low stack of wallboard that lay on the dusty concrete.

  The policeman spoke again, and once again, Gentry could not make out his soft speech, but Court absolutely did not trust the guy. Why would he be up here, crouched down, conspiratorially whispering into his radio to someone? It didn’t seem like the actions of a policeman on the job.