Ballistic

TWENTY-NINE

Most of the surviving defenders gathered back in the living room fifteen minutes later. A crowing rooster told them the dawn was near, but the sky outside remained coal black.

Gentry stood, his hands on his hips, bloodstains drying on his denim jacket from his chest to the top of his pants. His beard sparkled with perspiration. He’d just returned from the driveway outside, where he’d found Eddie’s brother’s body lying across the front seats of the old farm truck. Wearily, he announced to the room, “Ignacio is dead.”

“He died trying to rescue us,” said Luz.

“No doubt,” Court replied, though he had every doubt in the world. A quick glance to Ernesto confirmed Gentry’s suspicion that Ignacio’s own father didn’t believe his son had gone out like a hero, either.

But neither man spoke up.

The five remaining members of the Gamboa family were huddled together on the sofa, sobbing and crying now. Ernesto seemed lost in space at this point; there were tears in his eyes, but he was not as energetic in his misery as were the rest. His wife diligently bandaged her husband’s shoulder. Ernesto just kept his chin high and ignored the pain as he gazed off into the darkened corners of the room.

Court continued with the bad news, and Elena translated for those who did not understand. “Ramses is wounded, shot twice, but he’s a tough little bastard. He’ll fight if we get hit again.” Ramses was in the kitchen just now, pouring clear tequila from a bottle all over his arm and shoulder. It hurt like a bitch, but it served as a decent anesthetic. The bandages that Elena had created by tearing bedsheets would help stanch the blood flow.

Court next looked at Laura. “Inez is dead, too. We found her in the chapel.” He paused. Tried to think of something “right” to say. “She went quick. No pain.”

Laura nodded distantly. Fatigue and shock had blunted the blow. Court noticed she did not even cry.

Court continued. “There’s more, I’m afraid. The truck is not going anywhere. It’s riddled with bullets and smashed. And… ”

“And?” asked Diego. He held the M1 carbine in his hand like a security blanket. He’d fired it twenty times at the man who’d been here in this room twenty minutes prior, and although there was neither a body nor a blood trail leading away from the room, Diego felt like he’d protected his family by holding off the attacker.

“And when I was outside, I heard trucks out in the distance, out past the walls of the hacienda.”

“Trucks?”

“Yes. They sounded like big armor-plated trucks.”

Laura stared through her bloodshot eyes. She understood. Nodded . “Federales.”

Court nodded. “I’m going to assume they are not friendlies. A half dozen trucks, maybe. I’m guessing there could be fifty men out there past the wall.”

Court was as shell-shocked as the rest of them. The room just seemed sucked dry of all life. As if even though de la Rocha’s people had not yet accomplished their mission, they had already killed much of the defenders’ will to survive.

Court searched his brain for a silver lining, no matter how narrow the strand. Damn, he wished he was a leader, an officer, a motivator. Fuck, just like he’d been told many times before, at this moment he felt like he was just a “door kicker.” A “breach bitch.” A “gun monkey.”

Finally, he lightened a bit. “As for good news… there is a little. It’s almost dawn, and I do not think they will hit us during the day. They know we have a bunch of new weapons at our disposal, and they can’t fight us from inside their armored trucks, so we have until nightfall to find a way out of this mess. We’ll come up with something.”

Not exactly the speech Patton would have made at a time like this, Court realized.

Laura shook her head. “Joe, you have not slept… you cannot function like—”

“I’ll be okay.” He dismissed her with a wave of his hand. He didn’t have time to talk about how he needed a nap. “I’ve picked over the dead marines, and in addition to the sub guns, I found radios, a set of binoculars, and a mobile phone. They’ve apparently already changed their radio codes. I’ve got to figure the mobile will be tapped or traced, and the tower around here is down, but we can hang on to it. It may come in handy at some point.

They all discussed going to the U.S. for a few minutes, and then it was everyone back to their defensive positions. Court took guard duty on the back mirador, still the most likely avenue of any attack. He told Martin and Diego and Ramses and Laura to wander the house, keep an eye out all the windows as best they could, and the wounded and elderly Ernesto was ordered to lie down with Luz and Elena in the cellar. Laura gave her father a pistol to hold, to give him the honor of still taking a nominal role in the protection of his family.

Twenty minutes later Court lay on the second-floor balcony, facing east, and he watched the soft light of a clear dawn roll slowly over the forest. The white of the back wall of the property appeared slowly, as if it were being painted before his eyes on a black canvas.

Although Court did not expect a daylight attack, he recognized a new danger. With the light of day came the potential for snipers in the distant hills; anyone out on these verandas would have to remain on their hands and knees to stay below the level of the railing.

The rooster continued to crow. Damn rooster. Court’s veins had been filled and then sapped of adrenaline so many times in the past twenty-four hours, he just needed to sleep now, now that it was time to begin a new day.

He heard a noise in the distance, just on the other side of the wall, and his vision cleared with a fresh rush of adrenaline. A man’s shouting. Court fixed his attention on the part of the wall from where it came; he could just see the white band sixty yards from his position. Another shout, and just then something dark flew through the air, over the wall, over the jacaranda vines, and it hit the long grass, bounced high and awkwardly like an oblong ball. It rolled and came to rest in lower grasses, twenty-five yards from the far edge of the murky swimming pool.

Ramses and Martin appeared on the balcony next to Gentry. They had been “floating” through the house on patrol, and they had seen it, too.

“What is that?” asked Martin.

Court took the binoculars he’d pulled from a dead marine and peered through them; there was not enough light for the small optics, but he could see the roundish shape lying there in the grass. “No sé,” he answered. He did not know.

“A bomb?” asked Martin.

“If it’s a bomb, we’re okay,” said Court; it was still a good distance away from the house.

“A head?” asked Ramses while picking at the bloody bandage on his arm. Everyone knew that narcos loved to chop off heads.

Martin chuckled. “Did you see it bounce? That’s not a head.”

Ramses chuckled, too, though he winced from the pain in his wounds as he did so. “Yeah. It’s not a head.”

Court entered into the gallows humor while he scanned the length of the wall. “Plus, we would know if we were missing any heads. We’re not, are we? Should we do a head count?”

Ramses laughed and translated for Martin, who chuckled as well. Court knew they were all near delirious from stress and exhaustion.

Court put down the optics and rubbed his eyes. Sipped the last dregs of coffee that Luz had brought him earlier.

A few minutes later the light improved as the sun rose and morning glowed over the peaks of the Sierra Madres to the east. Court took the binoculars again, squinted, cocked his head, willed the daylight to grow and show him what was there. There was no question the sicarios wanted him to see it. They’d called out so that someone would be looking right there when the object came over the wall.

Suddenly, his delirium-induced humor was gone; he had a deep sense of foreboding about this… thing, out there in the grass.

Whatever it was, he knew only that it could not be good.

Wait… A little more light shone on the left side of the object. It became clearer slowly. “It’s… it’s a soccer ball.” He blew a slow sigh of relief. Held some of the exhalation. Could it just be a soccer ball kicked over the wall at six in the morning?

“Is there a note on it?” asked Martin.

Court kept looking; he just needed a bit more light on the righthand side.

Laura appeared out on the back balcony. Court had no idea if she recognized the threat of distant snipers, but she mimicked the three men, dropping to her hands and knees as she crawled in from the bedroom. Her hands and knees made no sound on the stone tile as she shouldered up to the American and lay down flat. “What are you looking at?”

Martin explained that someone had kicked a ball over the back wall. He and Ramses and Laura speculated about this, but Court was not involved in the conversation. His eyes were in the binoculars.

“What the hell is that?”

A little more light shone in the valley. He forced his eyes open wider to take in more light. Yes, that helped.

It was a…

No… not that.

Oh my God.

Gentry shut his eyes tightly.

Now he knew. He whispered to himself in English. “What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

“¿Qué?” asked Laura.

Court lowered his optics and looked back towards Eddie’s sister. “Laura. I need you to find me a large plastic bag, a towel, a water bottle, and I need your cell phone.”

“The phone doesn’t work.”

“Does it have a camera?”

“Sí.”

“Bring it to me.”

“¿Por qué?”

“Just do it!” he snapped at her. He was tense and angry, but he then caught himself. “Please.” She turned and crawled off the balcony.

Ramses asked, “What is it? What did you see?”

“I… I’m not sure.”

Martin said, “It’s just a soccer ball, right?”

Court climbed up to his knees, took the double-barreled shotgun in his hand, and began crawling back through the door to the second floor of the house. “I wish.”

Five minutes later he was out on the patio, crouching low behind a planter full of azaleas. He used the overgrown landscaping and stayed as low to the ground as humanly possible to make his way back to the swimming pool, stopping every few feet to listen for the presence of human noises and the absence of animal noises. He heard chirping birds and even the croaking of frogs at the pool, and this relaxed him a little. He was reasonably certain he was the only person in the back garden of the hacienda, and he used this confidence to propel himself onwards. If the sicarios came over the wall, still forty yards away from him, he was well aware he would be fucked. They’d be able to see him lying there in the grass. He only had a weapon that fired two shots without reloading, and reloading from a pocket full of shotgun shells would not be terribly efficient.

He carried the gun as a last resort, but he knew, the last thing he wanted to get involved with right now was a gunfight. Ramses and Martin were up on the mirador, covering him with the MP5s taken from fallen marines, but otherwise, he was on his own.

He passed several bodies from de la Rocha’s first two waves of killers. Court, Martin, and Ramses had already picked the corpses clean of any useful equipment or intelligence, so he only used them now for concealment as he crawled across the patio, alongside the smelly pool full of mosquitoes and frogs, the pool he’d swam in five hours earlier.

He heard voices again on the other side of the wall. A loud shout, a cackle, like a laugh from an insane person, and he halted his low crawl. It did not take him more than a few seconds to recognize that they would not attack — who would divulge their location only to then come over the wall, exposed to the defenders that they had just alerted? No, Court understood, they were trying to get the attention of the defenders of the hacienda so that they would notice the thing they’d slung over the wall fifteen minutes earlier.

This worried Gentry almost as much as a direct attack.

He started moving again, covered the cold tile a little more quickly now, though he did not actually want to arrive at his destination. He had seen enough through the lenses of the binoculars to understand what he would find. He’d brought along the bag sticking out of the waistband of his pants and the water bottle rolling around inside it as well as the camera in his back pocket for a reason.

He’d brought the binoculars with him as well. Not because he would need them here, crawling along the patio on his belly like a grass snake. No… he took them because he did not want those back at the casa to see the soccer ball. To see what he was doing. He’d do this alone, make the best of a terrible situation, and then explain the terrible situation to those back at the house as best he could.

Morale was crucial for a population under siege, morale had become terrible in this house of death, and now, Gentry was pretty sure, morale was about to go straight down the goddamned motherfucking toilet.

He entered the tall grass, passed more bodies of corrupt policemen and low-rent civilian killers, and went on towards the object lying in the grass ahead.

Due to literally hundreds of experiences in his life and the things he had seen during those experiences, Court Gentry was a man who, simply put, was almost impossible to gross out. But his face tightened as he reached the ball in the grass, his body recoiled slightly as he noticed the blood smeared on the ground next to it, and his hand did not want to reach out and roll it closer to him. But he did; he extended his arm and put his fingertips on the ball and pulled it to him. His hand felt something cold and soft as he did this, and he almost vomited there in the grass. He steeled himself as he brought the ball in close and looked at it.

The loose and slack face of a human being, a young man, had been sewn with thick black leather thread onto the ball, which was smeared with blood, scuffed with grass stains. There was a tuft of turf lodged into one of the hollow eye sockets. He had no idea who the face was, but he was certain that someone back at the house would know.

This would not be some random local chopped up and made into a grisly toy.

No, this would be someone’s loved one.

Someone’s family.

This was a message. Give up, come out, or everyone you love will die.

Court put the ball in the bag, rose to his knees, and sprinted low back towards a dilapidated stone garden shed. Inside it was moldy and dark; he left the door open to give him enough light to work with, and he took the ball with the face sewn to it, and washed it with the water from the plastic bottle. He then took the towel and blotted the face as clean and dry as possible. Doing this nearly sickened him, but he saw no other alternative to his plan. When the face was as clean as he could make it, one could not possibly call it “presentable”; he looked it over a long time. It was only semi-recognizable as being part of a human; the sewing had torn off along the forehead and a flap of skin hung down; Court pressed it back where it belonged. The chin was extended down a little too tightly, pulling the face out of normal proportion like the opposite of a bad facelift.

Gentry groaned, fought a third wave of nausea, and pulled out the camera phone.

Ten minutes later he was back in the huge sitting room of the casa. He’d positioned Martin on the rear mirador and Ramses at the front door; each man now was responsible for one hundred eighty degrees of territory, which was far from ideal, but Court knew that he needed to get the Gamboa family together. Court sat on a chair in front of Elena, Laura, Ernesto, Luz, and Diego.

It had occurred to him that he should just keep this information to himself, to not completely kill the spirit of those in the house by giving someone terrible news. But information was important. There was so little of it right now, and he needed to know who had been discovered by the sicarios and killed. Was he an informant, someone whose death might shine some sort of light on who the enemies and the friends were in this struggle?

No, Court decided, this was a secret too important to keep.

Court knew there was no chance in hell that he would say the right things right now, that he would break anything to anyone in any sort of way that could be construed as comforting or kind. He told himself that he was not trained to provide comfort and that there was no sense in wasting time on pleasantries when there were matters of life or death to attend to.

But it was not lost on the American assassin that this was just an excuse he used to avoid even trying to communicate with other human beings in a normal, compassionate fashion.

He decided that now, for the good of this operation, he would, at least, give an effort in delivering this news in the best way possible.

“We’ve been given a message.”

“What kind of message?” Elena asked, and Court worried that she would be the one who knew the dead dude on the soccer ball and that the shock might somehow affect her pregnancy. He couldn’t help it, he told himself now. He felt his body tightening, leaving the plan of the gentle delivery behind.

“Look. I’m sorry, but I’m just going to say it. Some hombre has been killed by the sicarios; his face has been cut off and sewn onto a soccer ball. The ball was kicked over the back wall, and right now it is in a bag in the garden shed; it’s up high, and it’s safe from animals. I took a picture of the face in case one of you is able to identify it.” He hesitated. “I mean… identify him.”

The family just sat there. Stared at him blankly.

“It’s going to be someone who means a lot to one of you. Maybe all of you. I’m sorry.”

His audience understood the significance now, and the fresh worry turned faces already contorted by stress into masks of horror and pain. But Ernesto nodded, said softly, “Show it to me. If I don’t know who it is, I will pass it on. There is no use in everyone looking if they do not have to.”

Court nodded, pulled up the image on the camera phone, and handed it to Eddie’s dad.

The old man’s wrinkles deepened a bit, but he showed no other emotion. He turned the phone to the right and then to the left with his left hand; his right hand was useless to him now because of the wound on his right shoulder. He took a long time trying to discern a face in the stretched strip of flesh affixed to the ball. After a long moment, a moment in which, Gentry saw, the man wanted to save the rest of his family the pain of having to look, he just shrugged.

“Lo siento,” I’m sorry, he said. “I do not know this young man.”

Diego reached out and took the phone from his grandfather. He put a hand to his mouth in shock but took it away, did his best to recover; his young machismo was bruised by what he obviously considered a display of weakness.

After ten seconds he said, “I don’t know.”

Luz Gamboa took the camera, looked, and quickly passed it on. The brown bags under her eyes, days of sadness and stress and lack of sleep, seemed to tighten some, but she shook her head. Then it was Laura’s turn, and she did not cry, but her face reddened. She crossed herself and mouthed a silent prayer for the dead man. But she did not know who it was.

Elena was last. Everyone wanted to protect her, but she took the camera and looked at the image. She sobbed softly but shook her head.

Shit, thought Court. It has to be someone; why go to all the trouble if we don’t even know the poor bastard? He asked everyone to make sure, to look again; he found himself pissed off that they couldn’t figure out who’d been murdered just to get to them.

But no, no one in the room knew the face.

He wondered if it could have been someone related to the Corraleses. The Black Suits could not know for sure who had been killed in the house, maybe they just—

No. That’s not it.

It dawned on him slowly; he wished he’d considered it before forcing the poor people in front of him to look again. But he thought of it now, so he sent Laura up to Ramses’s position and Diego to Martin’s post. He told Elena and Luz and Ernesto to go to the cellar and try and get some rest.

A minute later the two GOPES officers sat in front of him. Court explained the situation, and both men understood. Ramses took the camera roughly from the American, held it in his good arm, looked at it while Martin stared over his shoulder. Court just watched their faces; he caught himself wanting to see recognition from one of the hardened military men.

And he got his wish. Martin Orozco’s face reddened and his eyes shuddered, lowered as his mind left the present and thought back on a memory. Gentry could see it all in his face. It was someone he knew, someone close, someone he’d known for a long time.

A loved one. Just from the expressions on Martin’s face Gentry said, softly, “He’s your brother.”

“Pablito.” Martin sobbed the name. Tears ran freely from his eyes as he muttered, in Spanish, “Oh my God, the sons of whores killed my little brother.” The federal commando’s face flickered between rage and horror and utter despair. “He is just… he was just a merchant in Cuernavaca. He was not a soldier… He was nothing to them.”

Ramses Cienfuegos hugged his compadre with his uninjured arm, shook his head in sadness and disgust.

“But you are something to them,” said Court. “You are here.”

Martin nodded, his face distant.

“They know you are alive.” He turned to Ramses. “Which means they probably—”

“Know I am alive, too,” Ramses said it gravely. Court could only imagine what was going on in his head. Surely, he was thinking of a wife, brothers, sisters, parents, children.

Times like these Court Gentry appreciated being alone.

“Those pendejos are going to pay,” Martin said, still looking at the photo of his young brother’s torn face.

Gentry thought over the situation for a moment as he took back the cell phone. He quickly made a determination and put his hand gently on Martin’s shoulder. “Listen carefully, amigo. I need you to leave. I need you to go protect the rest of your family.”

The Mexican shook his head forcefully. “No. I am here to protect Major Gamboa’s—”

“You know that you are compromised. If they can get to one member of your family, they can get to them all. I can’t have you in here, thinking about what’s going on out there. I can’t worry they will do something that will make you turn on us—”

“I will never—”

“I believe you. I believe you believe. But I will not allow you to stay in this operation. You can best help this operation by getting away, taking away the leverage of the enemy. You know that, my friend.”

Martin understood. Nodded slowly.

“You need to try and escape immediately,” Court said.

Martin nodded. His eyes remained distant. “Thank you.”

Court looked to Ramses now. “You, too, amigo. If they know Martin survived the yacht explosion, then they probably know you did, too. They can’t patrol the entire perimeter all the time; if you can make it to the wall without being seen, if you guys go to opposite sides of the hacienda, you can wait for the right moment to climb over and make a run for it through the agave fields.”

Ramses shook his head. “Joe, you and the Gamboas won’t survive one hour after nightfall. No one else has any training or ability to—”

“It doesn’t matter. Look. They’ll go after your family if they haven’t already. They will kill them, torture them; you know how these fucks operate.”

“I will not leave you to die.”

“I need you to make a run for it.”

“What are you going to do?”

Gentry said, “I have a plan, but I can’t tell you in case you get caught by the Black Suits.”

Ramses thought it over, nodded slowly. He took a phone out of a pocket of his chest rig. He winced with the movement, the bullet wounds in his arm clearly painful. He handed his phone to Gentry. “I want you to keep this with you. If I get out of here, I’ll get to a phone. I’ll make contact with the guy at the American embassy who can get the Gamboas visas into the United States. If you can get to Mexico City, I will set up a meeting.”

“Perfect.”

“But you will have to get them out of the hacienda, away from all the sicarios out there, by yourself. How the hell are you going—”

“I’ll get it done.”

Martin had not been part of this conversation. He’d just looked blankly at the tile floor in front of him. His gaze unfixed; his thoughts, Court assumed, were on his young brother Pablo. Court got Martin back into the discussion by going over ideas for the two of them to sneak out of the hacienda in broad daylight. Court thought it unlikely that they would both make it out, but they all agreed, if they went in opposite directions at the same time, one of them would stand a decent chance.

Of course, using their motorcycles would be suicide. There was over two hundred yards of driveway from the casa grande to the front gate, and the enemy would know of the escape attempt in plenty of time to assemble there and kill the biker before he could get away.

So they would have to try and escape on foot, they’d have to do it simultaneously, and all three decided, Martin and Ramses needed to go right now.