Ballistic (15 page)

He was a
federale
, or dressed like one at least, but his skulking movement and mannerisms were not those of a cop here to keep the peace.

Gentry froze, willed the man not to look up the dark hallway as he passed and just continue to the stairs.

The man did
not
look, he
did
walk on, and just before disappearing from view, Court saw a squat black submachine gun in the
federale
's left hand.

Then Court heard a vehicle pull into the alleyway behind him. He looked back and saw a black armored Policía Federal SWAT van stop directly under the archway by the pet store from where he had just come, essentially blocking him in unless he could find another open exit.

Court stood alone in the hallway for nearly half a minute, not sure what to do. Ahead of him, somewhere up the stairs, an armed man who seemed to be up to no good. Behind him, who knows how many more shady cops showing up a block away from the event.

“Cullen, you read me?”

The reception was shit in the hall. Court heard an echo of the man speaking into the public address in his phone's earpiece, but he couldn't hear Chuck.

Damn. He began heading towards the staircase.

The second-floor door was locked, and Court didn't think the man had gone through it, as Court would have heard the latch echo down the stairwell to the hallway. He whispered into his mike, again trying to raise Captain Cullen, but the reception in the stairwell was even worse than in the hallway.

He slipped off his tennis shoes so that he could move without footfalls echoing up the stairwell, and he began walking up the concrete stairs in his stocking feet.

On the third floor Court left the stairwell and entered the construction area of the building, looking for the lone
federale
with the sub gun. The unfinished floor provided open windows out to the Parque Hidalgo and the streets around. He half expected to find the masked policeman here, amidst the darkness and the building materials, but there was no one. Gentry stepped forward to check the crowd.

The plaza below was packed tight; from this vantage point he could better see the incredible congestion in the space. The speaker finished his comments and turned the lectern over to Elena Gamboa; clapping and cheering drowned out the yelling and cursing, but Court could make out the differing camps reflected in the gathering. Shoving, finger wagging, and other animated gestures expressing displeasure were sprinkled in amongst those clearly here to honor the fallen men.

Then loud car horns began honking below and to his right, drowning out the applause. First one, then two, and finally five large white SUVs pushed their way slowly through the mass of humanity. They moved in the wrong direction up the one-way street. The big trucks continued honking, and the angry waving of the SUVs' drivers out the windows encouraged the crowd to part. Finally, the big white trucks stopped, and men began filing out. So dramatic was their entrance to the event that even Elena Gamboa paused her opening comments from the riser to see what was going on.

Court wondered if this was part of the memorial, but one look to the dais dispelled that notion. The families and other speakers standing up there looked confused by the new arrivals.

Puerto Vallarta police hung around the outskirts of the crowd, but they did not move on the vehicles or the men. They just stood about like all the other spectators.

Tentatively, Elena Gamboa began speaking again, thanking the organizers of the memorial for putting the event together and thanking the audience for coming to pay tribute to the work of her husband and his fallen comrades. But Court kept his eyes on the SUVs. A man in a goatee and a black suit and tie emerged from the second truck. Court watched him take a bullhorn from a similarly dressed man and climb atop the hood of the big vehicle. Immediately, before he even spoke, both cheers and gasps of horror emitted from the crowd.

“
Damas y caballeros!
Ladies and gentlemen! Your attention,
por favor
,” the man said, his voice tiny and hollow compared to the PA system Elena's voice had passed through.

Court spoke into his headset.

“Hey, Chuck, can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Who's this asshole?”

There was a pause. Gentry looked across the park, picked Cullen out of the people lining the back of the stage, standing on his toes to get a look at the white trucks and the man atop the hood. Soon the older American exclaimed, “Holy hell! It's him!”

“
Him
who?”

“
That
is Daniel de la Rocha.”

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.

“Somebody just whacked de la Rocha.” Court said it into his mike, but a burst of gunfire ahead to his left turned his head again. The black-clad
federales
fired into the crowd as they pushed towards the podium, shooting at the civilians in their way.