Ballistic

TWELVE

Court looked down at his watch and found it was past nine o’clock. Some of the dinner guests had drifted away; others were sitting around in clumps in the back garden, on the driveway by the boat, and throughout the downstairs of the house. The local police wandered around on the outskirts of the event. Laura and Elena had brought each of the cops a big plate of dinner and a tall plastic cup of iced horchata, a cinnamon-vanilla flavored drink made from boiled rice and sesame seeds. The cops ate while standing, careful to keep one eye out the gate towards the street.

Court took another sip from his fourth sweating bottle of Pacifico and began wondering about where he would sleep tonight. Bus service in San Blas had surely halted for the evening, and he did not have money to blow on a hotel. He figured he’d find a bench in the little central park a few blocks to the north, then be on the first bus out in the morning back to Puerto Vallarta.

There was another option. He’d learned through others that the retired U.S. Navy man, Captain Cullen, lived down in Puerto

Vallarta. Court considered asking him for a lift back to PV, but only briefly. A ninety-minute car ride with the icy geriatric was more scrutiny than the international outlaw wanted to subject himself to.

Gentry was pleased to notice that the rest of the crowd had forgotten him; he sat alone at a small picnic table near the back wall of the compound, away from the rows of lights strung over the garden and the flaming torches stuck into the ground here and there, and away from the conversations going on all around him. He eyed the back gate. It was closed but not locked; the darkness beyond called to him.

He’d make an invisible escape now; he’d come to pay his respects, and his respects had been paid. Now it was time to disappear.

Standard operating procedure for the Gray Man.

Court finished his beer. Stood slowly.

“Why is it I find myself so curious about you?”

Court turned around, found Cullen ten feet behind. He held a bottle of tequila in one hand, with thumb-sized plastic shot glasses over the bottle’s spout, and a pair of shiny green limes in his other hand.

“I don’t know.”

“Join me for a drink?” Cullen did not wait for an answer; he sat down at the small picnic table across from Court, put the bottle down in front of him. Cullen retrieved a pocketknife from his cargo shorts, sliced them each a wedge of one of the limes.

Court hesitated. “I’ve got to be going.”

“Where you headed, ace?”

“Uhhh. Back to Puerto Vall—”

“Not tonight, you aren’t, unless you want to blow a hundred bucks on a cab. Elena said you arrived by bus.”

“Well… I’ll find a hotel here.”

“I can give you a lift to PV.”

Court sat back down. Cullen poured thick clear liquid into two tiny cups, passed one to Gentry. Court sipped the tequila, bit down on his lime wedge, and changed the subject by turning the conversation away from himself. “How did you know Eddie?”

Cullen leaned back and smiled. Took off his USS Buchanan cap and held it up. His silver hair shone in the light from the torches burning throughout the yard.

“You met him on your boat?”

The Captain shook his head. “No, no. I never knew him in the Navy. I met him in PV, ’bout four years ago. I run on the beach every morning, used to anyway. It’s more of a walk now but faster than most of the old expat farts around here. Anyway, one morning, after my run, this tough-looking Mexican hombre saunters over to me on the boardwalk. I thought he was going to go for my wallet. But he pointed to my hat. Asked me about my service. We got to talking, and he said he was Navy, too. Of course I’m thinking Mexican navy. When I found out he was an ex-SEAL, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

“Eddie and I became friends. We used to go fishing on my boat whenever he was down in PV. I’ve been up here, sitting at this very table, many nights. Eddie sat right where you are now.”

Cullen sighed a little. He was old enough to have experienced much loss in his life. Still, Court could tell how wounded the man was by the death of his younger friend. “I spent a lot of hours getting to know that fine young man.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cullen put his cap back on and leaned forward. “I gotta tell ya, a stranger showing up at his house, right after he’s killed. How does that look to you?”

Gentry shrugged. “I’m just a guy who came to say good-bye. If I had my way, I wouldn’t even be here right now.”

Cullen nodded, sipped his tequila thoughtfully, and looked back over his shoulder to the house full of people. “It’s going to be tough for them now. Eddie is a villain to a lot of people around here. The press is portraying him as just another sicario.”

“Sicario?”

“An assassin. The general consensus is that he and his men were working for a cartel in competition with de la Rocha. After he died the federales and Nayarit state police came here, went through all his personal belongings, confiscated his computer and his guns. Even his pension has been held up pending an investigation. It’s bullshit: he died following orders to protect the people here, but they see him as another corrupt federale.”

“Why do they think that? I don’t understand any of what’s going on here.”

“No matter, ace. You’ll be gone tomorrow. No sense in learning the intricacies of the local conventional wisdom.”

Gentry knew he was being chided by the old man. Treated as if he was just some drifter passing by. It angered him. Court would die for Eddie Gamble. If there were still an Eddie Gamble to die for.

“Tell me.”

“Why?”

“Because I care. And because I suspect you have some opinions on the matter.” Court reached for the tequila bottle, poured two more shots.

Cullen nodded slowly and sliced off two more wedges of lime.

“Eddie led a team of eight men. His unit took orders directly from the attorney general in Mexico City, who’d been authorized by the president to eliminate the top cartel chiefs of Mexico.”

“Eliminate?”

Cullen nodded.

“A sanctioned hit squad?”

“Exactly.”

Court did not blink an eye. “Go on.”

“Eddie and his men were good. They assassinated the leaders of four of the top six cartels in the Mexican interior in the past six months. Daniel de la Rocha would have been number five.”

“But the entire team was wiped out in the process.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I don’t understand why he blew up the yacht.”

Cullen shook his head. “Me, either. There’s a lot that I don’t get. Of course Eddie never told me about operational details, just chitchat here and there.”

Court sipped his drink. “What’s with all the support for this de la Rocha shithead?”

Cullen waved his arm in a wide circle. “Not just around here. Everywhere. There are movies, books, and songs about him. He’s a celebrity, a rock star. His father was a bit of a legend, too. He ran the Porfidio de la Rocha cartel in the eighties and nineties, worked directly with the Colombians to move their product to the U.S. But Daniel took no favors from his dad; instead he joined the military and then the GAFES, the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, an elite army paratrooper assault unit. He trained in the U.S. at Fort Benning and Fort Bragg, and at the School of the Americas. He left the army when his father was killed by the government in ’99. Daniel went to prison himself for a couple of years; when he came out, he surrounded himself with former military colleagues, men from his commando unit. They are a really tight group, all fixed up like a cross between businessmen and paramilitaries. They all have the same haircuts, wear the same suits, they keep themselves in shape, and they always travel together in a convoy like a military operation. The press started calling them Los Trajes Negros. The Black Suits.

“Since getting out of prison, de la Rocha has stayed officially clean; he owns a domestic airline that ferries commuters from the big towns on the coast to little towns and villages all over the Sierra Madres. He has a bunch of other businesses, too. Orchards, farms, logging mills. All completely aboveboard. He claims that’s where his money comes from, and he’s apparently bought off enough government employees to where no one is scrutinizing his balance sheet.”

“But you’re a hundred percent sure he’s dealing cocaine?”

The older man finished a sip of tequila before shaking his head. “DLR deals with some coke, some heroin, some pot, but that’s not where the bulk of his money comes from. The Black Suits run the second largest foco cartel in the world.”

“Foco?”

“Crystal meth. Most Mexican cartels don’t specialize in a certain drug, rather they control a territory or a distribution route. There they will deal in anything, pot, coke, meth, kidnapping victims, even pirated DVDs. But de la Rocha has his own business model, combining both manufacturing and distribution. He supposedly has these massive crystal meth processing plants — they’re called super laboratories — somewhere up in the Sierra Madres. But no one knows where they are, and even if they were found, I doubt they could be directly tied back to de la Rocha.”

“I still don’t get the love for this guy around here.”

Court could tell that Cullen had warmed up to him to some degree. The older man’s tone did not contain any of its earlier reticence. “Most of the narcos are ghosts, but not Daniel. He takes control of his image like a movie star, doesn’t fit any mold for a cartelero. He’s only thirty-nine. He’s got six kids, doesn’t cheat on his wife, dresses like the Prince of Wales, and supports half the legit charities in the nation. Here in Nayarit, down in Jalisco, and over in Michoacán, the state police have been accused of protecting him. It’s a safe bet that the accusations are valid.”

Court sipped his drink and looked up at the bright stars.

Cullen leaned forward. “Don’t think of Daniel de la Rocha as a drug dealer. Think of him as Robin Hood. He provides for the needy, protects the helpless; he supports more legitimate causes down here than anybody else.”

“So the locals don’t care about what these drugs do?”

“Nobody but nobody in Mexico gives a damn that millions of drug addicts in the United States want a product. Nobody here feels sorry for them for fucking up their lives. They hate the murder that the carteleros bring down here, sure. Who wouldn’t? But the average Jose on the street knows the last way to go against the narcos is by supporting the cops or the government in the war. The corruption down here is massive. Pervasive. Anyone with a brain knows there are only two ways to protect yourself and your family. Either stay the hell out of the way, or join the cartels. Well, guess what, ace? Joining the cartels pays a lot more than sitting on the sidelines. Plus, it’s a lot safer.”

As Court had suspected, Cullen was an opinionated old cuss. “Cops, judges, soldiers, mayors… you can’t trust anyone here. A lot of guys start out with the best of intentions. But the narcos give them a choice. Plata o plomo.”

“Silver or lead,” Court muttered.

“A better translation would be money or bullets. The narco will give you one or the other, take your pick.”

Court nodded then pointed to the police standing around the back garden. “These cops here. The guys and girls with the batons. They seem like they think Eddie was a good guy.”

Cullen waved a hand through the air, rendering them irrelevant to the conversation. “Municipales. San Blas cops. Yeah, they like the family. Ernesto, Eddie’s dad, has lived here forever. But the cops down in Puerto Vallarta? Rotten to the core. The state police? Can’t trust them. Ditto large swaths of the federales. Even the army stationed around these parts is crooked. I don’t even know what to think of Eddie’s own unit, the special operations group. It seems a bit fishy that all of de la Rocha’s regional competition has been wiped out in the last few months, with one exception.”

“Who’s the exception?”

“Fellow up north in the Sierra Madres named Constantino Madrigal Bustamante. They call him el Vaquero, ‘the Cowboy.’ He’s an even bigger son of a bitch than de la Rocha. Some people are saying Eddie’s police commando unit was secretly working for the Madrigal Cartel. Taking out all the competition.”

Court’s eyebrows furrowed. “If there was a list of shitheads to go kill, how do we know Madrigal wasn’t just the last guy on the list?”

Cullen smiled ruefully. “Mexicans don’t think that way. There is a lot of conspiracy theory in play down here.”

Court had heard this before. He was no stranger to Latin American culture.

“So, Captain, who are the good guys?”

Cullen considered the question for a long moment, like it was an impenetrable mathematical puzzle. “I know Eddie was a good guy. I don’t believe the Madrigal conspiracy for one second. Some of the other federales are good, no question.”

“How do I know a federale when I see one?”

“You can tell them apart from the local cop; they wear black uniforms, body armor, and ski masks. Their cars and motorcycles and helicopters and armored cars say PF, Policía Federal.”

This was the type of intel that Gentry had picked up in the thirty or so other areas of operation in which he’d worked or traveled in his career, both as an asset of the CIA and as a private hit man. “So… the good guys wear the masks around here. I’ll have to get my head around that.”

“Yes, but so do a lot of the bad guys.”

“Perfect.”

Court looked at four local cops hanging out on the patio, leaning against their beat-up mountain bikes. Laura was standing among them, refilling their plastic cups with milky horchata poured from a plastic pitcher. “How come the cops on our side are the ones with the sticks and the bicycles, and the cops on the other side have the guns and the helicopters?”

“Maybe we picked the wrong team.”

Court drank his tequila down. “I’m beginning to think maybe Eddie did.”

Cullen looked at him thoughtfully. “I wish I knew who you were, Joe.” The old man even said the phony name in a way that demonstrated that he knew it was bullshit.

Court changed the subject again. “Why did Eddie come back home? Did you ever talk to him about that?”

Cullen waved a hand. “To save his country. To fight the narcoterroristas. To bring his skills from the USA down here where they could do the most good.”

“But?”

“But that’s not why he came back.” Cullen turned back to the driveway, pointed at Eddie’s little sister, Laura Gamboa. “That’s why he came back. For her. One hundred percent. Laura’s husband was killed five years ago up north. He was a lieutenant in the army. His truck was ambushed by matamilitares, special bands of sicarios who kill military men. He was beaten, his eyes were gouged out while he was still alive, and he was shot like a dog. His body was burned in a fifty-five gallon drum, and his head was stuck on a fence post within sight of the Arizona border. Laura was a mess afterwards.

“She has two other brothers, but they are both worthless losers. Drunks. One is an out-of-work auto mechanic and the other is an out-of-work appliance salesman.” Cullen pointed to the two fat men standing by the door to the kitchen, smoking and drinking. Rodrigo and Ignacio. They both looked shitfaced. Court had read their body language during dinner; he could tell neither man wanted to be here. “When Laura’s husband died, Eddie left the DEA, moved down here to San Blas, started working with the Feds.” Cullen took a long breath. “I’ve got to assume little Laura blames herself for Eddie’s death now. She’s taken it even harder than Elena or his parents.”

“Shit.” It occurred to Court for the first time tonight that close family ties had drawbacks as well as benefits.

As if on cue, Elena stepped out of the back door and walked across the yard to the two men. In English she said, “Joe… I’ve made your bed; I can show you where it is when you and Capitán Chuck finish your drinks.”

“Thank you, but I need to get back to Puerto Vallarta.”

Elena shook her head. Court had only met the woman a few hours earlier, but already he knew her to be intensely strong willed. “You are staying with us. Just one night. Francisco, Eddie’s uncle, is driving down to Sayulita early in the morning; I’ll have him run you to the bus station in Vallarta.” She took his hand and squeezed it; she seemed genuinely offended that he would consider leaving her home in the dead of night.

Court glanced at Cullen, and Cullen smiled, raised his eyebrows, and nodded.

Gentry said, “I guess I can stay.”

Cullen switched to Spanish to speak to Elena. Court could not tell if he was just proud of his command of the language or if he was trying to keep the other American out of the conversation. “Listen, Elena. Have you given any more thought to skipping the protest tomorrow?”

Court butted in, but in English. “What protest?”

Elena answered. “I told you. In Puerto Vallarta.”

“You called it a memorial.”

She shrugged. “To me, to the other family members here, it is a memorial. We will speak out for our dead loved ones. But Capitán Chuck thinks it will turn into a rally against Los Trajes Negros.” She looked at the older American. “He does not want me to go.”

Cullen said, “They are expecting a big crowd. I just don’t see it as a great idea for a woman seven months pregnant to be down in all that rabble. There is a lot of anger, a lot of tension after…” His voice trailed off.

“After Eduardo died fighting against them. I know that, Chuck. That’s why I should go.”

Court could not help but take sides. “I agree with the captain. You are pregnant; you don’t need to be in the middle of a riot. Pushing and shoving—”

“It’s not a riot, and I will be on the dais, not down in the crowd. I will be fine.”

Cullen shook his head. “I don’t like it. Eddie wouldn’t want you to get in the middle of that.”

“Eduardo would have gone, and you know it.”

“Yes,” Cullen said, “Eddie would have been there with a tactical team and an assault rifle, and he would have protected the protest from all threats from the monsters who support DLR. But he would not want you to be there, his family to be there, his unborn son to be there. It’s too dangerous.”

Elena smiled at the older man for a long time. “You worry too much about me, Capitán Chuck.” Then she smiled. “You have been a good friend to the family.”

Cullen sat up straighter in the chair. “And I will be as long as I live. Eddie’s death did not change that.”

Court liked the old man, even if the old man wasn’t as crazy about him. Court wished there was something he could do for Elena and the Gamboas, but he couldn’t think of a thing. He said good night to Cullen as the old man headed out front to his car; Court followed Elena inside, past at least a dozen others finding little corners with blankets and pillows to bed down for the night. She took him upstairs to a small bedroom, where she’d laid out a mattress with a blanket and a pillow for him.

The walls of the room were a fresh coat of baby blue. Court imagined Eddie had painted it himself for the son that he would never get to see.