Ballistic

by Mark Greaney

  But they were not humanoid.

  They were human. Two men, their faces well beaten, their mouths gagged with rough hemp, their hands tied behind their backs, and their bodies hanging from ropes from the hooks, tied tight around their shoulders and causing them to writhe in pain from the strain of gravity.

  “Jefe,” said Emilio. “These are two of the men in charge of the advance detail at the dinner last night in PV. After several hours of interrogation last night, we have decided they did not know the Gray Man was in the building. Still, for their failure, I have ordered them to pay with their lives.”

  De la Rocha lowered his rifle. Nodded slowly. “What of the rest of the advance team?”

  “Two more died during my interrogation. Two more were junior men who were stationed in the main dining room and were not part of the prescreening of the facility. I do not hold them at fault.”

  The hooks conveying the suspended men stopped in the center of the range, the men’s feet dangled a foot off the floor. The human targets rocked back and forth, swinging under the hooks.

  “You hold the men in charge at fault.”

  “Of course, Daniel.”

  “Emilio. Those are your men. You chose them; you trained them; you sent them to the restaurant. You are in charge.”

  Lopez stammered.

  “You believe in accountability, yes?”

  “Of course, Daniel. I hold them account—”

  “I hold you accountable. You should be out there hanging with them.”

  Emilio looked at his patrón. He did not move a muscle. Spider had put his P90 rifle down on a table, but he drew his pistol slowly and held it to his side, the leader of the Black Suit’s killers daring the leader of the Black Suit’s bodyguards to try anything.

  Emilio looked at Spider. He recovered from shock. “That is not necessary. I have my 9 mm inside my coat in a shoulder holster. Shall I remove it or would you like one of your men to take it?”

  Spider reached back with an empty hand, waved one of his men forward. The sicario stepped behind Emilio, reached around into his coat, and pulled out the gun.

  “I ask you to reconsider, mi jefe,” Emilio said, his voice calm, but a tremor in his lips belied his emotions.

  “You served me well, my friend.”

  “It . . . it has been an honor.”

  “Too bad some pinche gringo had to come and ruin everything.”

  “Mi jefe, if you give me just one more chance—”

  Daniel de la Rocha shot Emilio in the head right where he stood. In a single movement DLR spun, dropped to a crouched shooting position, and sent two rounds from his .45 into the heads of each of his men tied and writhing ten yards downrange. Their struggles stilled, but the impacts of the rounds caused their bodies to swing back and forth.

  Emilio Lopez Lopez lay crumpled in a ball at de la Rocha’s feet.

  DLR stood and said, “One more chance? A bodyguard does not get another chance. I’ve been in danger two times in the past week.”

  None of the sicarios spoke.

  Finally, DLR holstered his pistol. “Spider?”

  “Sí, mi jefe.”

  “You are my personal bodyguard now.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. You see what happens if you fail twice?”

  “I will not fail you again.”

  The banker stepped out of the nineteen-passenger Fairchild Metroliner turboprop and onto the tarmac in Manzanillo, two hours south of Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific coast. The sun was high in the sky, and the banker flipped his $4,800 Moss Lipow sunglasses down from the top of his head to protect his eyes.

  A limo awaited the banker and his two bodyguards; they were the only passengers on the aircraft, so after taking his time to shake the pilot’s and copilot’s hands, the banker descended the stairs, his $3,000 Pineider leather briefcase his only luggage.

  He approached the limo, and the driver opened the rear door for him. The banker leaned into the limo but then tumbled forward; his chest exploded onto the rich leather interior, splattered on crystal highball glasses, and dripped down smoked windows.

  His Moss Lipow sunglasses shot off his head and tumbled across the floorboard. His Pineider briefcase fell free from his grip and bounced against the rear tire of the limo.

  His corpulent body slid backwards off of the slimy leather, then slapped facefirst onto the tarmac.

  The bodyguards dove atop him as soon as they recognized what had happened, but it was too late.

  The bodyguards could do nothing now but guard the body.

  Four hundred yards away the Gray Man closed the stock on the collapsible Sako rifle; in seconds he had the weapon stowed in a canvas bag, and the bag tossed into the passenger floorboard of his black Mazda pickup.

  He’d killed the banker with one shot. The .338 Lapua round was overkill from only four hundred yards—it could be counted on to drop a man at more than six times the distance—but Gentry found the shack on the hillside not far from the airport’s ramp suitable to his needs, and the Sako was the only long-range weapon given to him by Hector Serna.

  He wasn’t worried about overkill; he was worried about the result. And the result was clear.

  With less than an ounce of lead he had eliminated sixteen years of expertise in money laundering.

  Yes, Daniel de la Rocha had other bankers, and there was no shortage of qualified men in Mexico ready and willing to replace the corpse that now lay on its back on the tarmac while a frantic bodyguard futilely attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But the banker’s death was a body blow to the finance end of the operation.

  Court did not spend one second on remorse or regret. No, he looked at his watch and stepped down harder on the accelerator.

  He had two more jobs to do before the day was done.

  “Gilberto Moreno was killed by a sniper at noon today.”

  It was eleven thirty in the evening, and de la Rocha knelt at the icon of la Santa Muerte. He’d been praying silently in his chapel here at Hacienda Maricela, but Nestor Calvo had entered the room behind him, had exchanged glances with Spider, and then had called out the bad news to his kneeling patrón.

  “The Gray Man?”

  “Undoubtedly. And that was only the opening shot. At five thirty, a small explosion set fire to one of our warehouses in Colima; it destroyed an entire shipment of ephedrine from India. It will push back production of foco for a week.”

  “Dammit,” DLR said, his eyes not leaving the skeleton bride in front of him. “He works fast.”

  “And then he struck again just minutes ago.”

  “Where?”

  “Again in Colima. He hijacked a truck containing poppy paste. Killed the driver. The truck was driven off a cliff.”

  “How much paste?”

  Calvo shrugged. “Our heroin shipment was not as badly hurt as the foco . . . maybe two days to make up the production.”

  DLR prayed for a moment more, and Calvo stifled a sigh. He kept his face impassive, Spider was looking at him, and he did not need Spider telling their boss that his old advisor was annoyed by Daniel’s displays of fealty to the dumb doll in the corner hutch.

  De la Rocha looked up at la Santa Muerte. “She is angry.”

  Calvo shook his head. “No, Daniel. He is angry. This is about the Gray Man, remember?”

  Daniel stood, walked back across his darkened chapel towards his consigliere. “One man, in one day, affects my finance operation, my heroin operation, and my methamphetamine operation.”

  “Sí, Daniel.”

  “I trust we have men in Colima looking for him?”

  “The entire police force plus other assets in the area. But I assume the Gray Man is gone by now.”

  “Gone where?”

  Calvo shrugged. “I do not know. But I wonder if he will go after other aspects of our enterprise. Marijuana, transportation, aircraft, shipping, kidnapping. As long as he is alive, we won’t know where he will turn up next.”

&
nbsp; “Who is supplying him with the intelligence about our enterprises?”

  “Someone with knowledge of the full scope of our operations. I would say either someone in the federal police or perhaps even someone in the Madrigal Cartel.”

  “I know it is Madrigal.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  DLR walked out of the room, Spider close on his heels. Calvo followed.

  “It’s Madrigal,” repeated DLR to Nestor.

  “She told you that, did she?”

  Daniel stopped in the hallway. Turned back to Calvo, and Spider took up his position at his boss’s side. De la Rocha said, “Her information has proven better than yours in this matter, consigliere. You would do well to improve your value to me.” DLR and Spider turned away again and disappeared up the corridor.

  FIFTY

  Gentry found refuge in a disused silver mine near La Rosa Blanca, a small mountain town a convenient drive to Guadalajara, with access to the Pacific coast and Mexico City. Both were within a few hours’ drive. Hector Serna had equipped Gentry with an old Mazda pickup, and Court used the entrance to a long-dormant horizontal mining shaft in the side of the mountain to store the vehicle during the nights. Court had visited a camping store in Guadalajara and purchased thousands of dollars in gear so he would not be uncomfortable during cool nights on the mountain. His gas stove, his small tent, his dried foods, and his gallon jugs of water kept his needs met. His battery-operated generators kept his mobile phones and his GPS charged, as well as giving him light when he needed it to work on one project or another on the cold ground by his truck.

  Court had a lot of projects going in the mine shaft.

  And he had a lot of targets to hit around western Mexico. In the past two days he had been busy: he’d killed a territory boss of the Black Suits in Nayarit, he’d destroyed two aircraft at an airport in Tepic owned by de la Rocha, and he’d torched a warehouse northeast of Magdalena.

  Now it was the morning of his fourth day of his full-scale war on the Black Suits. He’d been up past three but still managed several hours of fitful sleep in his sleeping bag in the bed of the Mazda. Twice he woke up startled by noises close by; both times he grabbed one of his AK-47s and cut open the darkness around him with the tactical light attached to the fore end of the rifle. Both times hunched furry creatures ran off, deeper down into the black mine shaft.

  Even though he was getting a late start, Court had big plans for the day. Hector Serna had passed Court some intel about the Black Suits’ locations in the area, and Gentry had noted them on his GPS. He’d set up a series of waypoints that would take him to each target on the way to his most distant destination of the trip. With luck he’d get to five sites before the end of his workday; he did not expect to return to his mine until the middle of the night, though he was not sure he would find things to destroy or Black Suits to kill at each of the stops on his route. Each piece of mayhem he planned had to be weighed against the chance for death or capture, and each location had to be somewhere he felt he could get out of quickly and cleanly.

  Before noon he’d pulled into a warehouse district in Guadalajara and watched several train cars off-load crates that Serna promised contained pot grown down south in Chiapas and Guatemala. Court watched from a distance through his binoculars, and he believed Serna’s intelligence to be solid, but the loaded trucks idled there within the well-guarded fences of the station for over an hour. He’d tried to pick up the FM radio broadcasts from the walkie-talkies of the men by the trucks, but their handhelds were using some sort of encryption, and Court couldn’t read enough of their traffic to find out what the problem was. He’d planned on hitting the trucks on the highway, but they showed no sign of leaving the station, even at two p.m. Reluctantly, he made the decision to call off this mission, anxious to get on to the next waypoint and blow some shit up before the day was done.

  His second site was a bust as well. It was a safe house for the Black Suits, but when he entered, kicking in the door and clearing the rooms with his AK, he found no one there and no drugs, guns, or money. He thought about just torching the house, but it was on a city street in the Zapopan district of Guadalajara, and he couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t end up burning down an entire block. So he climbed back into the Mazda and sped off to the east.

  There were three more places on his to-do list; he hoped like hell he could find something worth destroying in at least one of them. He looked at his GPS.

  Next stop, another Black Suit safe house, this one in Chapala. Court hoped this wasn’t a dry hole as well.

  De la Rocha slept on a chaise lounge on the cool balcony just outside of his bedroom. He liked the feel of the outdoors. It reminded him of his time in the army, though in the army he wasn’t exactly sleeping on a balcony off an opulent master bedroom in a hacienda on his own 200-hectare property.

  Spider was behind him, in the bedroom, sitting on a high-back chair positioned in front of the door. His M4 rifle lay across his lap. Extra magazines jutted from a bag next to him.

  With no warning Nestor Calvo Macias barreled through the door. Spider launched to his feet, hefting his weapon as he did so, but the older man ignored him, stormed past, shouted out to his sleeping patrón on the balcony.

  “The Gray Man hit the safe house in Chapala!”

  De la Rocha sat up slowly on the chaise lounge and rubbed his eyes. “Chapala? Madre de dios. Did he steal the money we have cached there?”

  “He did not steal it. He burned it.”

  DLR cursed, rubbed his face some more. “¡Qué chingado! How much?”

  “All of it. We had roughly seventeen million U.S. dollars palletized and awaiting transfer to the banks. I’ll get the figures from accounting and give you the exact amount.”

  “And he just burned it? Set it on fire?”

  “Sí.”

  “What about the men guarding the—”

  “One dead. One more missing that we assume—”

  “And all the rest? Surely, we had more men guarding seventeen million dollars!”

  “We had a dozen men there. The rest are alive; they did not know there was any problem until the fire started. They never saw the Gray Man.”

  “Fucking execute every one of those stupid pendejos.”

  “Sí.” Spider said, and he leaned out into the hallway. He barked commands to one of his underlings, sealing the fate of the survivors at the Chapala safe house.

  “Daniel,” Calvo said, a soft pleading in his voice. “In four days he has performed nearly one dozen operations against us. I estimate the value of capital loss and production loss to be, conservatively, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty million dollars.”

  “He is costing me more than twelve million dollars a day?”

  “Conservatively.”

  “But how long can he continue?”

  Spider spoke frankly. “Mi jefe. Our organization is set up to effectively fight the military, the federal police, and the rival cartels. We are less equipped to target one man with the mobility and skills of the Gray Man. There is no way to know how long he can operate before we get him.”

  Calvo interjected, “We think it is possible he is getting his intelligence from Madrigal, but we don’t know that he is working with the Madrigal organization.”

  “Your counterpart in los Vaqueros, remind me of his name.”

  “Hector Serna Campos.”

  “Right. Reach out to him. Tell them it is war.”

  “Daniel, going to war with Madrigal right now would only cost us more money. We cannot—”

  De la Rocha screamed as he stormed from the balcony into his bedroom. “Do not tell me what I cannot do! They are fighting a war with me right now, through this one man!”

  “We do not know for sure!”

  “I know!” de la Rocha screamed, spit flew from his mouth, and he screamed again, a guttural cry of anger and frustration, pent-up rage without an outlet. “I had this man! I had this man in front of me in chains! I could have
pulled the trigger on my pistol and ended this madness a week ago! Why did I not do this? Why did I not kill that pendejo? I’ve lost so many men because I did not pull the trigger.”

  Calvo said, “He’ll keep killing your men if you keep chasing him. He’s too good!”

  De la Rocha regained control of himself. He took a few breaths, rubbed the back of his bare neck, and then waved a dismissive hand. “Doesn’t matter. Men are easy to lose. Pride? Pride is a very difficult thing to lose.”

  He turned to Spider. “My decision is made. As of this moment, it is all-out war on los Vaqueros.”

  “Entendido, señor.”

  “Anywhere we find them, anywhere in the country . . .

  Spider looked into his leader’s eyes. “They die.”

  “Correcto.”

  Calvo did not throw in the towel just yet. “Don Daniel. I beg you to listen. Spider wants war with Madrigal so that he can show you that his men can fight. They can’t kill the Gray Man because of his skill and cunning, but they can shoot a bunch of pinche Vaqueros in the streets.”

  Javier “Spider” Cepeda scowled at Nestor, giving him a look countless men had seen shortly before Spider chopped off their heads. “Mi jefe, the old man just wants to avoid war with los Vaqueros because he is soft. We have been too easy in our dealings with Madrigal for too long, and look how the Sinaloan Cowboy repays us! We will fight them until they kill the Gray Man or turn him over to us. My men will turn their plaza red with their blood, and within a week the Cowboy will see that the American assassin is only a liability to his operation. Then we can back off, if you order us to do so.”

  DLR was nodding before Spider finished. He turned to Calvo. “Nestor. I want you to communicate with your counterpart in los Vaqueros. Tell him that we know they are running the Gray Man, and we see this as an all-out declaration of war on our plaza. We will hold them responsible for the loss in property and in lives, and we will respond accordingly as long as the Gray Man is alive.”