Ballistic

by Mark Greaney

  He fired again and nailed the hacienda’s wall perfectly. Fire, stone, and white dust exploded back and up in the dark. Gentry fired again, hit again, but wide of his last impact. He now saw black openings in the wall, with a five-foot wide “column” of stone between them. He aimed as carefully as he could at this remaining piece, and he pulled the trigger.

  His weapon was empty.

  Damn. Court climbed back inside, tossed the launcher on the floor in the back between the Gamboas, and quickly buckled up.

  “Hit it!” he shouted.

  “Hit it?” Laura screamed back her question, disbelief in her voice.

  “Right in the middle! As hard as you can!” He then turned back into the back and screamed to the rest of the little clan. “Hold on to something!”

  The gunfire came first. A couple of the campesinos at the front gate had gotten in front of the armored cars. Their shotgun pellets tickled the walls and windows of the huge truck looming closer.

  Laura Maria Gamboa Corrales slammed the six-ton vehicle through the two-hundred-year-old wall, pulverizing it into stones and dust and whipping moneda vines. Inside the jolt was cataclysmic; the damaged windshield gave in completely, broke apart and away, and slid forward down the stubby hood. The occupants were stunned, but Laura’s new wide vision of the road in front of her greatly helped her driving; she pulled the wheel back to the left, crashed through a few low bushes, and nailed the left rear quarter panel on an ancient Datsun pickup. The impact spun the little truck across the road like a toy, forcing shotgunners to dive for cover, their straw hats flying into the air like leaves kicked up by a breeze.

  Court Gentry unbuckled his seat belt, rolled onto his knees, and crawled into the back of the van. He grabbed the MM-1 launcher and scrambled to a case of grenades bolted against the wall by the back door. He worked there for a moment; Diego and Luz and Elena just watched him in the dim red light.

  “Laura, stop the truck!” he shouted after another ten seconds.

  “Are you crazy!”

  “Do it!” She slowed the MCV, and Court opened the rear door. He almost fell out; his legs were weak after the concussion of the crash. Back in the dark, one hundred and thirty yards behind, the dozens of federales sicarios left behind at the casa grande were now making their way down the driveway towards all the cars positioned there. Gentry hefted the grenade launcher, sighted through its notch and post iron sights, and launched five tear gas grenades at the cars and trucks.

  When he finished, even before the last canister impacted back at the gate, he dropped the MM-1 in the road and climbed back in the truck. “¡Vamanos!” he called forward to Laura, who put the big tank back into gear. It shuddered and scraped as it moved along now; they’d put the command vehicle through a hell of a lot more abuse than it could be reasonably expected to suffer, but it had kept them alive.

  “Where are we going?” Laura asked when Gentry made it back up front.

  He climbed into the passenger seat and snapped the seat belt tight around his waist. “Fuck if I know,” he admitted.

  THIRTY-THREE

  If Court hated leaving Eddie’s awesome truck behind, dumping the armored car, damaged though it was, just about killed him. It was battered and smoking, the “run flat” tires were tearing up with each passing mile, and the windshield was gone, but the big MCV still felt sturdy and secure. Still, there was no way they could drive for very long without garnering attention, and refueling would have been impossible without all but drawing a crowd of paying customers to get a close-up look at the shot up federale command vehicle.

  It was eleven thirty when they pulled behind an auto-salvage yard in the town of La Venta del Astilero, a suburb just west of Guadalajara. They’d stayed off the main roads, more or less, and they’d avoided virtually all of the Tuesday late-night traffic.

  With no front windshield, the cool air in the truck was almost unbearable, especially for Laura behind the wheel. Her small-muscled arms were covered in goose bumps visible even in the low light, and by the time they found the salvage yard, she was shivering.

  Shivering and crying. Her father’s death was just one more heinous punishment to her heart. Court felt terrible for her, wanted to reach out and touch her, to hold her hand while she drove, to tell her it would be okay.

  But he did not.

  He did not because he did not know how to touch the sad, beautiful girl.

  And he did not because he did not really believe everything would be okay.

  The four family members stood along the side of the road and waited while Gentry climbed a fence and dropped into the salvage yard. Luz Gamboa rubbed her daughter’s arms to warm her, and Elena shifted from one swollen foot to the other, held her full belly to take pressure off her back. Diego stood watch with his hands on his hips. Dogs began barking behind the fence as the family prayed together.

  Ten minutes later an engine started and a sheet-metal gate slid open with pushes and grunts. An old pea soup green Volkswagen bus appeared, its headlights off; it pulled into the street, and then Court jumped out, and Diego shut the gate behind it.

  Court jogged back to the armored car for a moment, returned with a pair of 9 mm pistols and an extra magazine for each. He passed one weapon to Laura and slid the other in the waistband of his pants.

  He looked at Diego. “It doesn’t look like much, but the engine turned right over. I put some plates on it, so you shouldn’t have any problems from the highway cops. Head north, just keep going all the way to the border. Sleep in shifts. One sleeps, two awake. When you get to Tijuana, go to a hotel and wait for us. Two days from today, go to the border crossing at ten a.m. Wait thirty minutes. If we aren’t there, leave and come back at three p.m. If we still aren’t there, do it again the next day. We won’t be able to communicate. No phones, no contact. If we get captured, I want it to look like we have no idea where you are or how to get in touch with you.”

  The young boy nodded. Court could see that Diego understood that he was now the man of the family, and he shouldered the responsibility in a way Gentry appreciated. The shock and sadness would come later, Court knew, but that was only if they survived until later.

  “Laura and I will make contact with Ramses. Assuming he is still alive and he’s gotten in touch with the American at the embassy, we will go to Mexico City to pick up the money and the papers.”

  Elena asked, “If you do not show up in Tijuana in two or three days?”

  “You’ll have to try to make it over the border on your own.”

  Everyone just looked at him. He shrugged. “It’s all I’ve got. I didn’t say it was a good plan.”

  Elena wiped tears from her eyes, stepped forward, and hugged him tightly; he felt the baby, his old friend’s baby, kick against him. His eyes widened.

  Elena whispered into his ear. “You have done so much for us, Jose. Eduardo would be proud to know he has a friend such as you.”

  Luz hugged him as well, and she said some sort of prayer. He could not understand it, and while she spoke to him, he could not look into her eyes. The tragedy that had befallen this old woman in the past two weeks was unimaginable, even for a man with a history like Court Gentry.

  Everyone hugged Laura; of course there were tears, and needless to say there was another prayer. Then the family drew close together. Court watched from ten feet away.

  “Perfect. Another goddamned group hug,” he muttered under his breath as they embraced and held one another.

  Eventually, the VW bus rattled off. Court hoped like hell it would make the journey, but at this point, it was time to start worrying about his own operation.

  By one thirty in the morning they were on the road to Mexico City. Court had stolen a motorcycle out of a shed in a residential area a few blocks from the salvage yard. Laura had wanted to leave an anonymous note saying how terribly sorry she was and promising to send money to this address just as soon as she could, but Court would not allow it. Instead she made a mental note of the little home an
d told Gentry she would find a way to repay the occupants.

  They were 325 miles from Mexico City. It would take a minimum of six hours of hard riding, but with luck they could be there by the time her bank opened at ten. Once they were a few miles clear of the suburbs of Guadalajara, Court pulled over in the darkness and called Ramses with the phone he’d left them. Laura had wrapped herself in a dirty blanket Luz had found in the back of the VW, and she fell asleep in the grass while Court made the call.

  Ramses Cienfuegos answered on the first ring. Gentry was relieved to hear the GOPES officer had made it away from the hacienda, but Ramses immediately asked about Martin and the motorcycle engine he’d heard as he dropped over the wall. Court reluctantly confirmed that Orozco had given up his own life so that his friend could escape.

  Ramses took it stoically, then said he had made contact with the American embassy man, and told him about someone who needed several sets of documents on the fly. The American consular officer agreed to a meeting at two p.m. in Mexico City, and Ramses gave Gentry the location.

  Court and Laura drove on for another two hours then stopped for gas. When Court stepped out of the restroom, he began to veer off a little on his way back to the bike. Laura noticed this and offered to drive for a while. Court’s machismo would not allow him to ride on the back of a motorcycle, especially one driven by a five-foot-tall woman. He recognized how silly this was, but he also knew that Laura had likely had as little sleep in the past two days as he had, so they rode a few miles up the highway and then exited, found a thick copse of brush alongside a dirt road through a rolling pasture, and Court stashed the bike.

  “Ninety minutes’ sleep. No more.” Court said it as he set his watch. They lay down next to each other in the cool grass. Immediately, Eddie’s little sister covered Gentry with part of her blanket, and she held him close for warmth.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so cold,” she said as she put her head in the crook of his shoulder and rested her sinewy bare arm across his chest.

  Court said nothing.

  “It’s okay?” Laura asked.

  “Yeah.” Court stared at the starry sky and tried to control his pounding heart.

  Exhausted though he was, it took forty-five minutes for him to drift to sleep.

  The Federal District of Mexico City, known simply to Mexicans as “the D.F.” (el de-efe), is one of the largest cities in the world. It is estimated that between fifteen and twenty million people live within its general borders, and many of them live in abject poverty in slumlike suburbs.

  Laura and Court hit the outskirts of Mexico City at ten a.m., but with the sprawling expanse of the metropolis, they still had an hour or more ride to their first destination. It was well past eleven when they rolled into the city center. They cleaned up in the bathroom of a fast-food restaurant, and then Court dropped Laura off in front of her bank on the tree-lined Avenida Paseo de la Reforma. He hated letting her out of his sight, but they agreed Court coming in with her might have raised an alarm. He assumed the blurry images of him on TV were recent enough to draw attention to Laura Gamboa, sister of the leader of the team wiped out trying to kill one of the biggest and baddest carteleros in the country. So she’d go in alone, wait for her money alone, and then sit in the park outside and wait for Court to return from errands of his own.

  He gave her Ramses’s phone for emergencies, but they did not have enough cash between them for Court to buy a phone of his own. He really had no idea who she would call if she ran into trouble, but it seemed like the right thing to do. She had the Beretta in her purse, she knew how to use it, and he was comforted by this. Court watched her disappear behind the mirrored-glass doors; he looked down at his watch and then turned away reluctantly.

  Gentry had a long to-do list to take care of while Laura picked up her money. He needed to scope out the location of the afternoon meet with the embassy man, to use the last of his money to gas up the bike again, and then to find a decent location to get a hotel room. He’d need Laura and her money to get the room, but Court wanted to drive the streets to get a feel for a secure location.

  He did his reconnaissance and his security sweep, gassed the bike, and made it back to the bank ninety minutes after he left. Laura was out in the park along the paseo, sitting on a park bench and drinking coffee. She’d bought one for Court, and he walked up to her, sat down, and reached for it.

  She pulled the cup away quickly, regarded him like he was a crazy man, and then her eyes relaxed.

  “How can you just appear from nowhere like that? You are like a ghost.”

  Court ignored the comment, wasn’t going to tell her that decades of training and operational experience had made coming and going discreetly a subconscious action.

  “Any trouble in the bank?”

  “None at all. They were a little surprised I was taking all the money out, but they did not ask any questions. They were very nice.”

  “Where is the cash?”

  Laura took a small canvas backpack from a shopping bag and handed it to him.

  “Here it is. You have it now. I trust you.”

  Court slung the bag over his shoulder, smiled as he led her up the street to the lot where he had parked the motorcycle. “If my intention was to rob you, the past three days would have been a shitty way to do it.”

  She laughed a little without really smiling.

  The U.S. Embassy was just a five-minute walk up the street on Paseo de la Reforma. In front, huge wrought-iron fencing and cement barriers had been erected in the promenade that ran up the street. All around signs that read “No Photography” in English and Spanish had been pinned to the fencing. Distrito cops sat in their cruisers or walked up and down the sidewalk; old but hearty Uzi 9 mm submachine guns with folded stocks hung from leather straps on their shoulders.

  It didn’t seem like the Nation of Mexico gave much of a welcome to the U.S. Embassy, nor did it seem like a terribly inviting building for a Mexican to visit.

  But this was the way of the world.

  Court and Laura bought two new mobile phones and had lunch in a dark restaurant before their meeting; they sat in the back of the little dining room with their backs to the wall. They were both too tired to talk very much; they drank coffee with lots of sugar and picked at roast pork and rice and beans, waiting for two p.m.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The meet was in a mall just a few minutes’ stroll up the paseo from the embassy. Court left Laura at the second-floor food court and then went downstairs to the bathroom next to the Starbucks. He knew the route; he’d reconned here just two hours earlier.

  Court entered the bathroom five minutes late. His contact was there; Ramses had told him the man’s name was Jerry Pfleger. Pfleger was leaning over the sink and looking into the mirror. Gentry got the impression the man had just been squeezing a blackhead on his nose.

  He was young, very early thirties, tallish and thin, with short curly light brown hair and a narrow face that looked like it rarely saw natural sunlight. He wore black sans-a-belt slacks and a white shortsleeve button-down shirt. A thin tie that appeared more polyester than cotton.

  “Romeo?” asked the young man.

  “Juliet,” sighed Gentry in response.

  The code had been Pfleger’s idea. Court thought it was idiotic.

  The embassy man jutted out a hand, and Court shook it. It felt to Gentry as if he were waving a raw fish filet in the air in front of him.

  “Okay.” The young American’s eyes protruded. “Okay, first things first. I gotta tell you, this is weird.”

  “What’s weird?”

  “I mean, I do this shit all the time, arrange papers for those who don’t want to wait in line. No biggie. But the hombre who called me said I’d be meeting a gringo . . . that’s what’s weird.”

  “I need papers for a family that needs to get to the States immediately.”

  “How do I know this isn’t some sort of a sting or whatever?”

  “Do I look like I work f
or the embassy?” Court’s long hair was dirty and matted, his beard five months old.

  Pfleger shook his head. “That’s all you got? Nothing else to put me at ease here? C’mon, pal.”

  “Look, Jerry. I know the guy who called you to set this up. I know the family who wants papers. I’m just the monkey in the middle here. Don’t stress. If you can produce what we need quickly, this will be your easiest transaction ever.”

  Pfleger nodded slowly, then again more quickly. Court saw evidence of some sort of mood-altering substance in the jerky mannerisms of the young man.

  No doubt, Jerry was on something.

  Court groaned inwardly. Perfect. This asshole has been snorting coke.

  Pfleger continued, his mouth moving fast with the gesticulations of his hands. “I mean, normally, I just work directly with the Mexicans who want to immigrate.” Jerry shrugged. “I’m usually not doing it under the eyes of a fellow American.” He put his fingers in the air in a double V salute, affected a lousy and paraphrased impersonation of Richard Nixon. “ ‘My fellow American.’ Ha-ha, Tricky Dick? Right?”

  “Right . . .” Fuck. “So . . . with the papers you will provide, they can just walk right through at the border crossing.”

  He nodded. “Everything they need to get across in Tijuana or Mexicali and avoid the poor-man’s routes.”

  “What are the poor-man’s routes?”

  With a jolting wave of his arm he said, “You know, the desert, the Rio Grande, pole-vaulting the fence or doing the tunnel-rat thing in the sewer. I have colleagues up in Juarez and TJ and Matamoros who do what I do, get the hard-working citizenry of Méjico over the border to fuel the American economy, but only I can arrange for you to walk through with your head held high. I even throw in worker’s visas and green cards. It all looks totally legit because it is legit.”

  “How much?”