Ballistic (49 page)

The call came at seven in the morning. It was Elena—they'd made it. The Gamboas had left the coyote behind and were on their own in Tucson, they had bus tickets to San Francisco, and she gave Court the phone number of the mobile phone she'd just purchased in the bus station. Gentry had given them a prearranged codeword. If they were safe, she would tell him they were going to find a hotel. If they were under duress, she would use the word motel. She said “hotel,” and Court blew out a long sigh of relief. Still, he made her put Diego on the line. Gentry listened hard to him for any sounds of duress, but he, like his aunt, just sounded tired.

He hung up the phone and looked to Jerry. Pfleger sat on the other bed in the small motel room. He'd not slept a wink. His foot throbbed, and his fear over his own impending death had kept him up.

Jerry looked back at the Gray Man. “You're going to kill me anyway, right?”

Court shook his head. “No. You did what I asked you to do. I'm not going to kill you.”

Jerry didn't believe him. “Right. I get up, turn to walk out the door, and you shoot me?”

Again Gentry shook his head. “No, Jerry . . . You can stay here. I've paid up through tomorrow. I'm leaving.”

Pfleger looked confused. Slowly he nodded and said, “Whatever you say.” He did not believe Court.

“I
do
want you to quit your job. You are done working for the United States. You got that?”

Jerry nodded quickly. Surprised and hopeful now. “You got it. I can't go back there, anyway. The cartels would fight each other for the chance to kill me now. But . . . What should I do?”

Gentry shrugged. “Whatever. Limp all the way to Copenhagen for all I care. I just don't want to hear about you working for the U.S. in any capacity.”

“You got it, dude. I'm out.”

“And I need another favor from you.”

“Okay.”

“Madrigal.”

“What about him?”

“I need to talk to him. Face-to-face.”

Jerry Pfleger just put his head back on the wall behind the bed. “Man, nobody talks to el Vaquero in person.”

“Bullshit. Make it happen.”

“Look. I know lots of Cowboys. Some of them are pretty high ranking
carteleros
. But I don't know anyone who can get you in front of Madrigal himself. He's a ghost. A phantom.”

“I need to talk to him. Man to man.”

Jerry just shook his head like it was out of the question. But slowly, he stopped. Looked at the man staring him down. “Let me guess. This is another thing you need me to do, or else you will shoot me again.”

“You are getting the idea, Jerry.”

Pfleger looked off into space, his eyes unfixed, for a long time. Finally, he said, “Let me make some calls.”

Gentry sat on the curb, the bright sunshine and the dust and the exhaust from the passing buses and cars insinuated itself into every pore of his exposed skin.

A boy trotted past on a horse. Looked down at the man on the curb, mystified to see a stranger in his town.

Court glanced down to his hands. They quivered. No, they
shook
. His hands had always been steady, no matter the adrenaline coursing through his body. He'd learned to control his fear, to put it in the back of his mind, to direct his energy towards the problem at hand, to believe in himself. To believe that, no matter whatever perils lay before him, he'd get through it.

But he found himself not believing now.

There was a lump in his throat.

He took a sip of his Coke and a bite of his
torta
. The pork was thick and tangy, but the bright sun of the Sonoran Desert coupled with his worry sapped him of the majority of his appetite.

And the men all around him were seriously pissing him off.

He'd been in town less then five minutes, just off the bus from Hermosillo, when the first intimidator struck. A muscled young man in a straw hat walked up next to him while Court walked towards the center of town.

“Who are you?”

Court kept walking.

“What is your name?”

Court did not even look at the young man.

“What are you doing here?”

Again, no response from the visitor to town. If Court was raising eyebrows amongst the local heavies now, how would they react when they heard his American accent?

The young man stepped on Gentry's foot.

Court stopped. Turned and looked at the guy. Instantly, he thought of the four ways he could kill the man in under two seconds.

But no. He wanted to move to his destination in as low key a manner as possible. Killing folks wouldn't do.

Court walked on. Soon enough a small heard of local men followed him. Many had guns. One yanked Court's ball cap off and threw it like a Frisbee into the dirty street. Another, a teenager, ran up behind Gentry quickly and kicked him hard in the ass with the toe of his cowboy boot. Court stumbled forward but caught himself and kept walking on.

Now he sat on the curb in front of a
tienda
in the center of this little town. The men who had surrounded him had just melted away. No doubt someone got a call or a text, and the order was passed through the locals to hit the road. Court had not heard anyone speak; he imagined a look or a gesture was all it took to get those assholes moving on up the street and out of the way.

His hands shook when he held his drink to his mouth. The burns on his wrists from the electricity weren't bad, mere sunburns, but the entire experience had left him rattled, even four days later. And now he was about to put himself back at the mercy of merciless men, which added to his shakes and his nerves.

A sedan approached slowly. A brown four-door pulled into the gas station across the street, rolled on past the pumps, and stopped. Two men stepped out,
cuernos de chivos
in their hands. They were dressed like cowboys. Pointed boots, white shirts with red piping. They wore thick mustaches but no beards, and their boots were made from gray ostrich hides.

They
were
Cowboys. Los Vaqueros. They were henchmen of Constantino Madrigal.

The two riflemen crossed the street, approaching the gringo, who stood slowly, his hands away from his body.

A municipal police car drove by, slowed slightly, but kept going.

It was that kind of town. Dudes with assault rifles crossed a busy street and pointed guns at a man whose arms were raised.

But that was not an affair that interested the police around here.

After all, this was the city of Altar, in the Sonoran Desert, the turf of the Madrigal Cartel.

Los Vaqueros held their weapons at the hip, but the barrels were pointed at Court's chest.

In minutes Court was searched and piled into the sedan; he was driven south, out of town; and the car pulled into a gulley off the side of the road. Here Court was told to get out, and he did so. The car shot off to the south, leaving him there in a cloud of dust.

The dust had not cleared away before a Cadillac Escalade pulled up; it had obviously been trailing them from the city. A back window rolled down; Court thought this might be Madrigal, but no, it was just another Cowboy. This guy was fat and young; he wore Ray-Bans, kept his straw cowboy hat in his lap, and waved a huge Colt Python revolver up by his face so Gentry could see it.

He spoke English. “I want to see some tan lines, gringo.”

“Excuse me?”

“Take off your clothes. All of them.”

Court shoulders slumped. “Of course.” He stripped to his underwear, but the fat guy flicked his gun at Court's underwear. He took it off, stood in the hot dirt in his socks, until the fat guy ordered him to remove his socks. He then bounced on one foot and then the other; he had enough burns on his wrists and ankles, he didn't want them on the balls of his feet as well.

Three men climbed out of the SUV, and they went through his clothes like they were checking them for lice. After each garment was examined thoroughly by all three men, it was tossed back to Gentry so he could get dressed. But they searched the clothes out of order, his underwear was the last item to be returned to him, so he just held the lump of dusty clothing in his arms while he waited.

Finally, he dressed; the sun stung his scalp through his short hair as he did so. He climbed into the back of the SUV, next to the fat guy, and the Colt Python was jabbed into his ribs.

Gentry said nothing, just looked ahead, and the SUV rolled off towards the south.

They parked at a tiny airstrip at the edge of a no-name hamlet. It was flat and dry, and the farms around were perfectly square and maintained by donkeys and cheap labor. The airstrip was dirt; the aircraft at the end of it looked forty years old. It was a Cessna 210, a small prop plane that was perfect for running drugs up the length of Mexico. Due to its hardy undercarriage and high wings, it could land at the most rugged of the unregistered runways carved out of the landscape by the
carteleros
.

Court and the fat man boarded the plane. Along with a pilot in a ball cap with a .45 crammed in a leather holster next to his seat, there were two other men in the Cessna. They both held Kalashnikovs in their laps, and Court wondered if they'd ever even considered the difficulties in firing these weapons during flight in the tiny six-seat cabin.

Gentry's brain worked like that. He had no reason to think he was in imminent danger, but as they strapped into their seats and the pilot fired the engine, Court devised a plan to kill, incapacitate, or disarm everyone in the aircraft around him in, he estimated, three seconds. He'd leave the pilot alive and conscious, would relieve him of his firearm, and hope the man would follow Court's instructions to land the plane. If not, he'd just shoot the dude in the head and land the plane himself.

Court was not a great pilot; he'd put a couple of planes down in a manner that made them worthless hunks of twisted metal and smoking oil and, in one case, completely unrecognizable as an aircraft.

So he hoped like hell everyone on board minded their manners for this flight into the mountains of “Cowboy Country.”

The aircraft bounced on the runway, and then it wobbled as it struggled for the sky. Gentry could tell they were headed south; the Pacific Ocean appeared on his right some time later.

The flight remained uneventful; they landed in the mid-afternoon at another covert airstrip, this one at a small clearing ringed by tinroofed huts in the green mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidentales. Court wasn't sure if they were still in Sonora or if they had made it down as far as Sinaloa, or even into Nayarit, where Court's Mexican nightmare had begun at the grave of Eddie Gamboa.

Wherever they were, he was certain Madrigal's army of Vaqueros would be plentiful.

And he was right.

He climbed out of the aircraft, the fat man followed, and they were met by a large flatbed truck full of AK-wielding men in cowboy hats. Court stepped up into the bed and sat surrounded by the men; they were driven into a village and then up into thick forest. Gentry noticed that the road, while unpaved, was in exceptionally good condition. The bumping and jostling in the back of the truck he was subjected to had less to do with potholes and more to do with machismo and an anti-gringo attitude on display by los Vaqueros.

The road was high quality because it was built and maintained by the Madrigal Cartel. This became obvious when the truck passed a bunker made from felled trees, behind which two men manned a .30-caliber machine gun that covered the road. Below the thick canopy of the Sierra Madre forest, rows of simple buildings appeared, around them men walked and worked. Bare-chested or clad in T-shirts and jeans, they all carried weapons.

This wasn't a drug-processing facility as Court had suspected. No, this looked more like a rebel base. It was a jungle fortress of sorts, though there were no walls or guard towers; the remoteness of the location along with the sheer number of guns and gunners meant nothing less than a battalion-sized element of U.S. Rangers would be needed to take the place.

The truck stopped suddenly; Court pounded shoulders with the man next to him, suffered a few indecipherable angry comments, and then climbed down from the bed.

Court was strip-searched again, right there out in the open; children and women and the elderly around the huts stood and watched the spectacle of the naked gringo. Dogs and chickens milled around him while he waited for his clothing to be tossed back his way.

The men with the cowboy hats and the
cuernos de chivos
watched him dress again, and then they led him up a long narrow pathway, past gun emplacements and armed men on donkeys and horses. Men stared at Court from the woods and rocky dry streambeds that snaked along the route. Wooden steps had been added in a few places, and a razor-wire gate was manned by three men on a path. Court looked at the rocks above him, saw rifles and cowboy hats silhouetted by the sun behind them.

Once Court was through the gate, the path opened into a set of large buildings under a canopy of pines and fir trees. The structures were simple cement blockhouses with tin roofs; a road ran through the middle, and armed men guarded individual doors. Many horses and a few donkeys stood at hitching posts and water troughs. Court was led by them on his way towards a large warehouse-type building halfway up the road.

At the front door the man on Court's right put the tip of his pistol to Court's right temple. The man on the left put the tip of his pistol to Court's left temple. A third man stepped in front of Court and placed his revolver's muzzle on Gentry's forehead, and a fourth gun prodded him in the back of his head.