Ballistic

NINE

“Señor?”

A woman’s voice from behind startled Court, took him away from that night in the highlands of Laos, and brought him back to the warm, breezy afternoon on the Pacific coast of Mexico.

Not surprisingly, she spoke in Spanish. It was a dialect Gentry found difficult to understand. “If you want to write something, will you please do it now so I can paint over it? I’d rather not have to come back later today. It is a long walk back to the road for someone in my condition.”

Court turned to the woman’s voice. She stood behind and below him, down the hill a few feet on a dirt path that wound its way from the cobblestone road that ran down to San Blas.

She was alone, her dark hair was pulled back tight, her white cotton dress blew in the warm breeze. She carried a small white paint can and a brush in her hands and a large purse on her shoulder.

She was thirty-five or so. Very pretty.

And very pregnant.

“I’m sorry,” Court replied in Spanish. He stepped down off the hill towards the dirt path. “I thought this man was someone I knew. I was mistaken.” He made to pass the woman with a slight nod, no eye contact, but she stepped in front of him. She held her head high and her shoulders back, boldly challenging him.

Court stopped.

“Who are you looking for? It’s a small town. I’m sure I know most every family interred in this cemetery.” Clearly, she knew he was lying, and from the look of her confused expression, Court’s accent had caught her attention.

He hesitated. He was busted, no sense in drawing out an obvious lie.

With a shrug he said, “I knew Eddie. I was just in the area. Thought I’d come by. Sorry. I have to catch a bus. Excuse me.” He tried to move past her again, and again, she shifted into his path.

“Eddie? You are American?” She had switched to English.

“Yes.” She remained wary; she did not smile or nod. But slowly she extended a small hand, and Court took it. “You are Eddie’s wife?”

“My name is Elena. Sí, I was Eddie’s wife.”

“My name is Joe.” He pulled the name out of the air.

He regarded the woman for a moment. “Eddie was going to have a baby?” Court winced even as the words came out of his mouth.

“He is going to have a baby. A boy.”

He said nothing. Just nodded.

“You were with Eduardo in the Navy?”

“No.”

“Ah, Drug Enforcement Agency?”

“No.”

The soft features of her caramel-colored face scrunched up as she thought. “You knew him back in California or something?”

He hesitated. He hated telling people the truth. It was not how he operated. He determined to remain vague. “A long time ago, your husband saved my life, risked his own to do it. That’s really all I can tell you.”

He felt her eyes on him for a long time. Twice he glanced to her and found her staring at his face; both times he turned his head back to the gravesite.

She smiled. Said, “He saved many lives, I think. Here and in the United States. He was a good man.”

“I’m really sorry—”

“Are you here for the memorial?”

“The memorial?”

“Tomorrow, in Puerto Vallarta, there will be a commemoration of the eight officers who died in the bay. We are expecting a large turnout of locals who will come to honor their sacrifice. Will you be there?”

Gentry hesitated. “I’d love to. But I have to get back on the road.”

“What a pity.” Elena looked as if she did not believe him, which to Court meant she had a pretty decent bullshit detector. “I need to paint the cross again.” She stepped up the hill and knelt down, unsteady with the change in her center of gravity. As she opened the can of paint, she looked back over her shoulder, smiled, and extended a new invitation. “You must come home with me now. Eduardo’s entire family will be there, some friends, and the relatives of three of the other men killed. Everyone is at our home tonight for a dinner; in the morning we are all going together to the memorial. Eddie’s mother and father will be so pleased to meet a friend of Eduardo’s from the United States.”

“I wish I could, but I’d better be heading back to—”

“You have come all this way. You and Eduardo were friends. What would he think looking down on me from heaven if I did not take you home and give you a meal for your trouble?” She knelt and began working as if the matter were decided — she covered the black graffiti with the clean white paint.

Court wanted to protest more, but he could not deny he could use something good to eat. With what remained of his cash he had just enough to make his way across the country to Tampico and buy a few tortas or tacos from street vendors along the way. He wouldn’t fight Eddie’s wife on this.

He motioned at the graffiti. “Who did that?”

“Cabrones,” she said, then looked up at Court with an apologetic smile. “Just people who are fans of Daniel de la Rocha.”

“The drug lord has a fan club?” Court asked, somewhat taken aback.

“Oh, they say he is an honest businessman. They say that he has done much good for this area. They say my husband acted without permission. But Eduardo knew all about de la Rocha; he would not have gone after him if he were a good man.” She finished her work. A few bright splotches of white had dripped on the broken brown dirt below the tombstone. “We will get him a nice headstone. Once the messages stop. It’s not worth the trouble now.” Then she stood. She let Court take the paint can and the brush, and they began walking towards the exit of the cemetery.

Flies and roaches and rats found the basement cell; the hot, sick stench of human waste saw to that. Court became weaker by the day: he’d lost twenty pounds since the hospital, and his skin was now dry and coarse from the lack of fluids and vitamins. Other than the daily journey to the interrogation shack, he had no exercise and no natural light or fresh air. At the end of the second week the interrogators told Eddie he and his fellow prisoner would be taken to the labor camps in three day’s time. Eddie once again angrily demanded that his cellmate be hospitalized or at least given medicine for his malaria, but the Laotians showed no concern whatsoever for a young Western drug trafficker. Eddie flew into a rage, attacked his interrogators, and was only fought off with the butts of two big SKS rifles that were driven into the base of his skull. He was returned, unconscious, to the basement with a fat, bloody knot on the back of his head. Then Gentry was dragged up for his “session.”

When Court was told about the impending journey north to the work camps, he stunned his interrogators.

“Okay, I’m done with this shit. I’ll give you the names of my contacts in Vientiane, bank account numbers, tell you where we pick up the poppy and how we get it over the Mekong into Thailand.”

Both men’s eyes turned away from the Muay Lao match on the TV and locked on the gaunt, sweat-soaked man sitting in front of them.

“Yes. You talk now!” ordered the senior man.

“No. It’s better I write it all down. Easier for you to understand.”

Both men nodded. “Yes.”

“But I want some things from you.”

“What you want?” Fresh suspicion dulled the pleased expression on the men’s faces.

“My friend is hurt. I want his head bandaged. Carefully bandaged.”

The senior man waved a hand through the air. “No problem.”

“I want a warm, dry blanket. I want a bottle of that water you guys are drinking.” He pointed to a plastic two-liter jug on the table. Again, the interrogators nodded. “What else?”

“I guess some paper and something to write with would be good.”

The guards bandaged Eddie with Court lying nearby in the cell and admonishing them with his frail voice and weak gestures, ordering them to use more gauze and more tape. At first Gamble tried to push them away, insisting that the knot on his head did not need to be mummified in order to heal. But Court was adamant, and finally Eddie relented and let Court take charge of his medical care.

Court had his pad and his pen and a fresh wool blanket, and he wrote down notes throughout the afternoon and evening. During the night he opened the bottle and drank most of the clean water himself, only passing the last few swigs over to the man who’d been keeping him alive. Eddie took it and polished it off greedily, but only after Court assured him he’d had all he wanted.

When the daily ration was brought the next morning, Court surprised Eddie. “I’m taking all your food.”

“No, I’m giving you half. Holding your sweaty ass up over the shitter burns a lot of calories, amigo.”

“Look, I need some extra strength today.” Court pulled both tin plates over in front of him as he spoke.

“What for? What’s going to happen?”

“If it doesn’t work out, I’d rather you didn’t know. It might be better for you that way.”

Eddie looked worried. “C’mon, Sally. You aren’t in any condition to try anything. Let me talk to the guards today; if they think you are giving up some intel and I offer up some disinformation, then maybe they’ll come through with that medicine you need.”

“No… This isn’t about me getting medicine. It’s about getting the hell out of here.” Court began eating from both plates. Gamble looked on hungrily. Between bites of turnip and slurps of bone broth, Court said, “Oh yeah, one more thing. I need all your bandages.”

Slowly, with no idea what the hell was going on, Eddie Gamble took the gauze and the tape from his head and handed it over.

Court spent the next half hour lying on his side under his blanket, his back to his fellow prisoner. Eddie asked over and over what was going to happen, but his cellmate would not answer.

The guards came to take Eddie to his interrogation. As they left, Court called out. “Tell them that I need another pen. This one ran out of ink. If they bring it before I go up, then I’ll have my list ready.”

Eddie looked at him a long time before relaying the message. It was obvious that he could tell something was about to go down, and he was more worried than excited.

When the door shut on Eddie and the two guards, Court used all the strength the bottle of clean water and two full meals had given him to crawl over to the cell door. He pulled out the pen he’d been given the day before, cracked it open, then removed the ink reservoir from the plastic grip. He reached through the bars, slid the ball of the pen into the lock, and felt his way through the tumblers with a shaky but practiced hand. He’d played with the lock for several days running while Eddie slept, had used lengths of straw to feel into its recesses to reveal its secrets. Using one of the broken plastic pieces as a tension wrench, he turned the cylinder. He’d accomplished this feat literally thousands of times in his training at the CIA’s Autonomous Asset Development Program in Harvey Point, North Carolina, and this lock was actually much easier to defeat than most of the ones he’d been trained on.

The cell door popped open in seconds.