Ballistic

TWENTY-FIVE

When Court and the GOPES men returned to the casa grande, they checked the building to find the best places to position sentries to look out over the property. Old Spanish architecture, like that built in Mexico in the 1770s, borrowed much from the Moorish buildings dotting the landscape of Ottoman Spain. One common feature was the mirador, or “overlook,” a balcony or atrium usually covered and usually adorned with an archway, that gave a vista of the property. This building was built in a horseshoe shape, with the concave portion facing south and surrounding the expansive patio and rectangular pool. There were three miradores on the second story of the casa grande, giving view to the front drive, the patio and back wall, and the overgrown fruit tree orchard that ended at the wall by the pond.

Overwatch itself would not be hard here.

The men did a quick inventory of their weapons. Between the eleven people in the home, the grand total of the arms at their disposal were the two Colt SMGs carried by the GOPES, Luis Corrales’s ancient double-barreled shotgun with a box of birdshot loads, two Beretta 9 mm pistols with a couple of magazines each, and a big.357 Magnum revolver with three live rounds.

They had no night vision equipment, only a couple of shitty dimestore flashlights, and no weapons that could really reach out and touch someone at a distance.

Yeah, Gentry realized, if the bad guys came, it could get ugly. If they came hard, it would be over in minutes.

A second meeting was held in the big sitting room at ten thirty. Luis Corrales had gone back to his bedroom to sleep, but everyone else was present and accounted for. Elena lay on the couch with her swollen feet elevated on a pillow and her mother-in-law rubbing them, and the rest of the group either stood against the wall or sat on dusty chairs or tables. Court passed off Martin’s pistol to Laura; the police academy and her badass, overly protective brother had taught her how to shoot, and Court recognized from her actions in Vallarta that she had no problem killing bastards who needed killing. The other pistol went to young Diego. He’d never fired a weapon, so Laura took him aside and gave him a quick primer on the location of the safety and the concept of the magazine and the sights. Ignacio had not stopped drinking tequila since the first offering two hours earlier, so Court and the two federales decided he’d be no help in a fight. Ernesto angrily sent his forty-five-year-old son to a bedroom on the second floor.

They talked about the security situation for a while, though the Gamboas seemed to think it highly unlikely that they would be in any danger here at the hacienda. But Court insisted they needed to do their best to be ready, and after Court questioned Inez about secure places around the property, she showed the entourage a door off the kitchen that led to a steep and narrow stairwell down to a dark subterranean hallway. The hallway ended at a long stone cellar where, back when this was a working hacienda, casks of tequila had been stored. The women moved enough bedding down there for everyone, creating a hiding place and a dormitory, but only Elena, Luz, and Inez bedded down immediately.

Court approved of the cellar as a last-ditch defensive position; he saw the benefit that it was somewhat hidden and any attacking force would be forced to send all their number up a hallway that could be turned into a fatal funnel of fire from those defending the cellar.

But he also saw there was no other way out, no possible means of escape.

Fuck it, he decided. It was the best they could do here in this humongous dark house of horrors. They did not have the luxury of choice in picking their defensive positions.

Court took Luis’s shotgun and kept his stolen revolver. Before heading back to bed, the old man had wandered around for a while, calling Court Guillermo several more times. In the morning who knew what he would think of what was going on around his house? Gentry was not going to let the confused old man roam the hacienda with a twelve gauge. Court had enough potential problems on the outside of the hacienda.

The shotgun was old and simple, and the loads it fired would only be effective at very close range, but it was better than nothing. He’d asked Martin for his submachine gun, and the Mexican officer looked at the gringo like he was out of his fucking mind.

“I’m not giving you my gun,” he mumbled through his swollen jaw.

Court didn’t blame him, and he didn’t bother to ask Ramses.

There was one more security issue, and it was big, and it was one that Court saw no good way to deal with. In order for them to find a way out of this mess, to get reporters to come help or honest people in the army or somebody with some authority somewhere to save them, the Gamboas were going to have to use a telephone. Elena would, by necessity, be calling people who the narcos, either directly or through intermediaries in the corrupt police, would be monitoring. He worried someone might accidentally say something to give away their location, might tip off the bad guys that Elena was laying low somewhere and that this big dead hacienda owned by her sister in-law’s in-laws just might be that somewhere.

It seemed farfetched that the connection could be made, but Court had learned in his time working both for and against drug merchants that there was enough money and murder in this industry to motivate absolutely limitless amounts of labor. Enough men tracking down enough leads would, eventually, lead the enemies of the Gamboas to Casa Corrales.

And the Gray Man knew his side could not possibly win a pitched battle, so he hoped like hell he and those he would die to protect would be long gone when the bad guys came.

But that was a problem for tomorrow. He forbade anyone to use either their cell phones or the landline in the hacienda before morning, because a nighttime attack on this dark place would be a slaughter.

Nestor Calvo spent the entire afternoon and evening on the back patio that he had converted into a makeshift office. The twenty Black Suits had been picked up by a pair of helicopters owned by de la Rocha and ferried from Puerto Vallarta to a stately mansion thirty minutes southwest of Guadalajara. Here, just like at all of the fifteenodd safe houses owned by the cartel’s leadership, the building and grounds were patrolled by dozens of armed guards, all with special operations military training. An outer cordon of security, all infantry trained and their fidelity to the organization proven by years of employment, drove the highways and back roads in pickup trucks. On the roof of the casa a team of guards even kept watch with antiaircraft missiles, lest anyone — police, military, or competing cartel — try to hit the property from the skies.

Calvo smoked a Cuban cigar and sipped warm Dominican rum as he typed notes on his laptop, stayed in constant phone contact with his intelligence contacts back in PV, and kept both eyes flickering up to the large television that had been brought outside from a bedroom and wired to the satellite through a bathroom window.

The intelligence chief of Los Trajes Negros monitored international reaction to the massacre, the official government response in Mexico City, and the back channels to the military and government and police that kept him in the know.

All this was the work of ten men, but Calvo kept up, and truth be told, this is what he loved. The intrigue, the negotiations, the public media stance, and the backroom threats. This was his world, and he found it intensely satisfying.

But he had another duty today, and that irked him to no end. Young Daniel, his boss, was unequivocally more interested in finding a fetus and ending its life in order to satisfy the perceived whim of some stupid idol. De la Rocha put more stock into the gaze of a plastic figurine on his bedside table than he did in the reports of his intelligence chief, and he ordered Calvo to focus on doing the bidding of the statuette, instead of doing the business of running the second-largest cartel in the region.

To this end, for this stupid fool’s errand, Calvo had made and taken over fifty phone calls in the previous three hours. And even though his heart wasn’t in this task, even though he found it an idiotic, unprofessional, and reckless waste of time to divert his attention, the Black Suit’s men, material, and political capital to such a trivial task as the life of one unborn child — well, Nestor Calvo was nothing if not a professional, and he did his job.

And he did it well, as evidenced by the fact that he had, in fact, determined the general location of the Gamboa family.

De la Rocha shot out the back door. It was one in the morning, but he still wore his suit and his tie; his face around his trim mustache and goatee had been shaved clean for dinner with his men, so he still looked as fresh as he had when Calvo had first seen him at eight a.m. the previous morning.

“Emilio said you wanted to talk?”

“Sí, Daniel.”

“Tell me you have found something!”

“I have found something.”

Daniel moved closer, sat on a leather and wicker settee next to the desk. He poured himself a shot of rum from the Waterford service next to his intelligence chief, leaned back in the sofa, and crossed his legs.

“What is it?”

“You already know that the two Policía Federal sicarios who survived the gringo at the Parque Hidalgo were killed in Nayarit on the way to eliminate Elena Gamboa.”

“Yes.”

“Witnesses of the attack on the road said two men in PF uniforms killed our men.”

“Federales killed the federales?”

“Sí.”

“Madrigal’s men did this?”

“I don’t think so.”

“So, if it was not los Vaqueros, what do you make of it?”

“I have a theory.”

Daniel smiled. “Of course you do, consigliere.”

Calvo nodded. “On La Sirena—Colonel Gamboa’s assault force was how many men?”

“Eight.”

“And how many of their bodies were recovered.”

De la Rocha nodded thoughtfully. “Only six.” He sipped the warm rum from the Waterford crystal glass.

“Exactamente. Two were never found. And then today, two federales appear and kill our sicarios. My contacts in the federal police report no desertions in the Nayarit area; all men on duty are accounted for. Of course, it is still possible that men not on duty did this, but why? The only other person in the area with any control over government forces is Constantino Madrigal, but if these men were working for los Vaqueros… explain to me how Madrigal benefits by killing sicarios on their way to kill the wife of a dead PF officer.”

De la Rocha was sold on Calvo’s theory. “Constantino does not do anything that does not benefit him.”

“I agree. I think there is a very good chance that two of Gamboa’s men are still alive, they somehow survived the explosion on La Sirena, they killed our two sicarios, they rescued the Gamboas from the municipales and the army up in San Blas, and now they are working to protect what is left of Eduardo Gamboa’s family.”

“Along with some gringo, apparently.”

“Yes.”

“Okay… so where does this all take us?”

Calvo had a road map open on the desk, he spun it around towards his jefe, and as Daniel leaned forward, Nestor placed a manicured fingernail on a city in the interior of the country.

“Tequila? Explain.”

“Two Suzuki Policía Federal motorcycles, just like those owned by our sicarios, were seen on the road near Tequila. With them was a large Ford truck, similar to the one owned by the late Major Gamboa.”

“Do we own the municipal police in Tequila?”

“Por supuesto que sí.” Of course we do.

DLR stood, drained the dregs of the rum into his mouth.

“¡Perfecto! Get them out on the roads. Find where these people are hiding. Tell Spider to put together a local force of hit men and get them in position. We will find the Gamboas, and we will kill them all right where they hide!”

Nestor cleared his throat. Drummed his fingers on the oaken desk. “Daniel. We have made an incredible statement today. Finding the Gamboa woman and killing her is something well within our power, but what more will it achieve? Why can’t we just let it go?”

De la Rocha looked out over the patio, into the night. He sighed. “I’ll tell you why. Madrigal controls a portion of the federales, just like he has men in the municipales, the judiciales, the state police, and I can accept that. But the GOPES? No… these men are too clean. If they start working for Madrigal, then I must show them—”

“There is no reason to think Major Gamboa knew he was doing the work of Constantino Madrigal.”

Daniel waved the thought away. “Gamboa was smart, but he thought he was smarter than he actually was. He thought he would use the intelligence of the Madrigal group and then kill Madrigal on his own. I don’t like smart men who will not play by the rules. And I want to show any other man who thinks he is so pure and clean and perfect and smart that I will start by killing him, and I will end by killing everything that he has ever loved.”

Calvo said nothing.

“You will find Elena Gamboa. Spider’s men will then kill her and her baby and anyone else around.”

Calvo nodded at his boss. There would be no changing his mind. “Sí, patrón.”

De la Rocha turned to go into the house, but he stopped, called back to his consigliere. “And Nestor. Do not question me again about this.”

“Sí, patrón.”