Ballistic

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.

Slowly, the cop raised his weapon; Gentry recognized it as a Colt 635, called a Shorty, a 9 mm submachine gun. The federale lifted the barrel over the cinderblocks and pointed it down towards the crowd. Gentry still did not move, did not know what the hell was going on. Was the policeman there to protect those on the stage, and did he see some threat? Or was he planning on killing Elena Gamboa? The Colt was no sniper rifle, but a long burst from the gun could send thirty rounds of 9 mm bullets streaking one hundred and fifty feet to the podium, knocking everyone standing there dead to the ground.

Shit, thought Court. He did not know what to do. If this man was a good guy, he sure didn’t want to kill him, but if he was a bad guy, he didn’t want to sit by and watch while he blasted innocents.

He did not know, but instinct told him that the situation before him smelled bad, and his instinct had been honed and refined through years and years of danger. In a moment of semi-resolution, Gentry stood in the dark room, walked across the cement on the balls of his stocking feet towards the black-clad man. Fifteen feet, ten feet, five feet behind him. His footfalls were quiet, and what sound they did emit was drowned out by the noise from the street and the park.

Court knelt down, out of view of the open window, directly behind the crouching cop.

“Hi.”

The Mexican federal officer spun on the balls of his feet, his head whipped around only to meet a vicious left jab from the American assassin. With a pop and a crack, fist met face. The cop’s dark glasses flew off, the wide eyes of the policeman quivered, and the man went limp, a one-hundred-forty-pound sack of flour dropping towards the cement. Court caught him, more or less, and laid the unconscious man down on his back. Quickly, Gentry took his weapon.

Court looked down through the spaghetti-like mass of electric wires and telephone cables strung from his high perch here, across the street to poles down at street level by the park. Below these wires, directly under his position, he saw a fresh group of black-clad figures pushing through the crowd in the street. They were Policía Federal as well, and they’d come from the alleyway with the armored truck. They were dressed exactly as the policeman lying at Gentry’s knees.

Below Court and to his right, de la Rocha continued rambling on into the bullhorn. Twice more Elena Gamboa tried to speak, but both times the immaculately dressed man standing in the sun on the hood of the white SUV continued talking, forcing her to give up and just stand there at the podium. He said something about the lack of an indictment, something about the corruption of the special operations group of the federal police, something about how songs and action movies are merely entertainment and are no basis for judging a man guilty. He waved folded sheets in his hand, his “list” of conspirators against him, and he railed against Constantino Madrigal and los Vaqueros, “the Cowboys.”

Court peered down at the Feds pushing through the crowd. The crowd itself had begun pushing and shoving to get away from them. Five cops at least, maybe more; it was hard to count their numbers the way they moved into the pulsing and recoiling mass of civilians around them, everyone burning under the hot noon sun.

“Señor!” shouted Elena now towards de la Rocha. “I speak for my dead husband! You will allow me to finish!”

Court spoke in his cell phone’s mike. “You’ve got five plus suspicious-looking fuckers working their way towards the podium in the crowd. Federal officers.”

“Shit.” Court heard Cullen relay this information to Laura, and he saw her step behind the lectern to talk to Elena. Elena pushed her sister-in-law away gently as she continued addressing de la Rocha.

Court looked back to the federales. Civilians literally scrambled out of their way now, but the masked men moved aggressively through the citizenry, shoving with hands and arms, and then… yes. Guns! Where their hands before had been empty, he now saw black metal. They had drawn weapons: Colt submachine guns for some and black semiautomatic pistols for others.

Every sight and sound and sixth sense Gentry had seen or heard or felt since arriving in the plaza suddenly made sense; it all formed together into a solid mass of certainty in his gut.

He understood now.

There would be no riot.

This was going to be a massacre, and he had a bird’s-eye view of it all.

“Yank her ass off the stage, Chuck! It’s about to go loud!”

“Okay!” the old man shouted back.

Court heard the captain yell at Elena. “¡ Vamanos!” Let’s go! Court looked above and across the two-thousand-strong crowd in time to see the white-haired American with the blue ball cap take Elena by the arm.

And then a gunshot rang out.

Court looked back to the federales, but immediately his head followed the source of the noise, below and to his right. His mouth opened in shock. Daniel de la Rocha dropped his bullhorn, his hands wide from his body; a second shot sent him tumbling backwards, stumbling off the hood of the huge white Chevy Suburban Half-Ton and down into the arms of his black-suited bodyguards.

Pistol smoke rose from the crowd in front of the SUV.

“I’ll be damned,” Gentry muttered to himself.

He sure hadn’t seen that coming.