Ballistic (9 page)

Court wanted to protest more, but he could not deny he could use something good to eat. With what remained of his cash he had just enough to make his way across the country to Tampico and buy a few
tortas
or tacos from street vendors along the way. He wouldn't fight Eddie's wife on this.

He motioned at the graffiti. “Who did that?”

“Cabrones,”
she said, then looked up at Court with an apologetic smile. “Just people who are fans of Daniel de la Rocha.”

“The drug lord has a
fan club
?” Court asked, somewhat taken aback.

“Oh, they say he is an honest businessman. They say that he has done much good for this area. They say my husband acted without permission. But Eduardo knew all about de la Rocha; he would not have gone after him if he were a good man.” She finished her work. A few bright splotches of white had dripped on the broken brown dirt below the tombstone. “We will get him a nice headstone. Once the messages stop. It's not worth the trouble now.” Then she stood. She let Court take the paint can and the brush, and they began walking towards the exit of the cemetery.

 

 

 

LAOS

 

2000

 

 

Flies and roaches and rats found the basement cell; the hot, sick stench of human waste saw to that. Court became weaker by the day: he'd lost twenty pounds since the hospital, and his skin was now dry and coarse from the lack of fluids and vitamins. Other than the daily journey to the interrogation shack, he had no exercise and no natural light or fresh air. At the end of the second week the interrogators told Eddie he and his fellow prisoner would be taken to the labor camps in three day's time. Eddie once again angrily demanded that his cellmate be hospitalized or at least given medicine for his malaria, but the Laotians showed no concern whatsoever for a young Western drug trafficker. Eddie flew into a rage, attacked his interrogators, and was only fought off with the butts of two big SKS rifles that were driven into the base of his skull. He was returned, unconscious, to the basement with a fat, bloody knot on the back of his head. Then Gentry was dragged up for his “session.”

When Court was told about the impending journey north to the work camps, he stunned his interrogators.

“Okay, I'm done with this shit. I'll give you the names of my contacts in Vientiane, bank account numbers, tell you where we pick up the poppy and how we get it over the Mekong into Thailand.”

Both men's eyes turned away from the Muay Lao match on the TV and locked on the gaunt, sweat-soaked man sitting in front of them.

“Yes. You talk now!” ordered the senior man.

“No. It's better I write it all down. Easier for you to understand.”

Both men nodded. “Yes.”

“But I want some things from you.”

“What you want?” Fresh suspicion dulled the pleased expression on the men's faces.

“My friend is hurt. I want his head bandaged.
Carefully
bandaged.”

The senior man waved a hand through the air. “No problem.”

“I want a warm, dry blanket. I want a bottle of that water you guys are drinking.” He pointed to a plastic two-liter jug on the table. Again, the interrogators nodded. “What else?”

“I guess some paper and something to write with would be good.”

The guards bandaged Eddie with Court lying nearby in the cell and admonishing them with his frail voice and weak gestures, ordering them to use more gauze and more tape. At first Gamble tried to push them away, insisting that the knot on his head did not need to be mummified in order to heal. But Court was adamant, and finally Eddie relented and let Court take charge of his medical care.

Court had his pad and his pen and a fresh wool blanket, and he wrote down notes throughout the afternoon and evening. During the night he opened the bottle and drank most of the clean water himself, only passing the last few swigs over to the man who'd been keeping him alive. Eddie took it and polished it off greedily, but only after Court assured him he'd had all he wanted.

When the daily ration was brought the next morning, Court surprised Eddie. “I'm taking all your food.”

“No, I'm giving you half. Holding your sweaty ass up over the shitter burns a lot of calories, amigo.”

“Look, I need some extra strength today.” Court pulled both tin plates over in front of him as he spoke.

“What for? What's going to happen?”

“If it doesn't work out, I'd rather you didn't know. It might be better for you that way.”

Eddie looked worried. “C'mon, Sally. You aren't in any condition to try anything. Let me talk to the guards today; if they think you are giving up some intel and I offer up some disinformation, then maybe they'll come through with that medicine you need.”

“No . . . This isn't about me getting medicine. It's about getting the hell out of here.” Court began eating from both plates. Gamble looked on hungrily. Between bites of turnip and slurps of bone broth, Court said, “Oh yeah, one more thing. I need all your bandages.”

Slowly, with no idea what the hell was going on, Eddie Gamble took the gauze and the tape from his head and handed it over.

Court spent the next half hour lying on his side under his blanket, his back to his fellow prisoner. Eddie asked over and over what was going to happen, but his cellmate would not answer.

The guards came to take Eddie to his interrogation. As they left, Court called out. “Tell them that I need another pen. This one ran out of ink. If they bring it before I go up, then I'll have my list ready.”

Eddie looked at him a long time before relaying the message. It was obvious that he could tell something was about to go down, and he was more worried than excited.

When the door shut on Eddie and the two guards, Court used all the strength the bottle of clean water and two full meals had given him to crawl over to the cell door. He pulled out the pen he'd been given the day before, cracked it open, then removed the ink reservoir from the plastic grip. He reached through the bars, slid the ball of the pen into the lock, and felt his way through the tumblers with a shaky but practiced hand. He'd played with the lock for several days running while Eddie slept, had used lengths of straw to feel into its recesses to reveal its secrets. Using one of the broken plastic pieces as a tension wrench, he turned the cylinder. He'd accomplished this feat literally thousands of times in his training at the CIA's Autonomous Asset Development Program in Harvey Point, North Carolina, and this lock was actually much easier to defeat than most of the ones he'd been trained on.

The cell door popped open in seconds.

Court walked with Elena for nearly a mile through San Blas; the pregnant woman looked perfectly comfortable with the effort, though sweat covered her light brown skin. They passed roadside restaurants, the bus station; they strolled past stray dogs sleeping in the town square, chickens pecking for bugs in a garbage dump. Turning south, Elena went through an open-air vegetable market and bought a few bags of yams and mangoes. Court had questions for her; he could not help it. He learned that she was from Guadalajara, had met Eddie when he was a DEA agent working there, and they'd married shortly before he re-emigrated to Mexico to join the Policía Federal five years earlier. They'd bought a house in San Blas to be near his family, as she had no close relatives of her own.

Court and Elena left the market, turned down a dirty narrow street called Calle de Canalizo. Though unpaved, it was lined with midsized gated properties, and after a few minutes of strolling, Elena stepped through an open gate. Court followed her up a short driveway towards a two-story gray cinderblock home surrounded by bougainvillea and vine. Eddie's house. Dogs ran and played in the front garden amidst several locals; policemen and policewomen wearing yellow polo shirts and batons on their belts strolled around the driveway and the front yard.

A big, silver Ford F-350 Super Duty pickup sat in the driveway. It was decked out with tinted windows, a rack of floodlights, a big winch in front, chrome all over, and a weathered U.S. Navy sticker on the back window. Eddie's truck, Court had no doubt. He remembered Gamble talking about his love of big Ford pickups, and seeing the idle vehicle made Court sad.

Elena led him inside the plain dwelling. In the front family room a dozen people stood and sat, chatting together as loud accordion music played from a boom box on the floor. Court stood behind Elena as she greeted an older couple; she then introduced them as her husband's parents, Ernesto and Luz. They spoke no English, so Court introduced himself in Spanish as an old friend of their son from the United States.

Luz Gamboa was in her sixties, short and thick with a wide face that showed at once a friendly smile and a deep sadness in her eyes. Her husband was taller and thinner, maybe five years older, with deep, dark creases covering his face. A lifetime on a small fishing boat in the Pacific Ocean with the wind and sun had left salt-etched evidence of the years and the sea on his skin. He seemed a little suspicious of the American standing in his dead son's family room, but the two men shook hands and Ernesto welcomed “Jose” to San Blas.

Elena handed the produce she'd bought in the market to a boy of sixteen, a nephew of Eduardo's, she said as an introduction, and the boy disappeared towards the back of the simply furnished but spacious house. Then the pregnant woman took the American around, introducing him to aunts and uncles of Eduardo, a few more nephews and a niece, two brothers, and several friends from the area.

Cesar Gamboa, one of Eddie's uncles, put a cold bottle of Pacifico beer in Court's hand and exchanged pleasantries with the American in the hallway at the back of the house, while Elena disappeared to greet more guests. As they talked, Court looked around at the pictures in the hall. The walls were adorned with Eddie and Elena's wedding photos. Court remembered that wide grin from Laos—back then he found it amazing that the guy could have smiled at a time like that. There were also several pictures of Eddie with a white-haired American man on a fishing boat. Together they held a massive marlin in one picture. Suntans, Ray-Bans, and smiles covered their faces.

Then Gentry scanned the framed pictures of a much younger Eddie with his SEAL team. The men posed with their weapons. Eddie looked impossibly young and fit, and though the rest of the men with him were a head taller than the Mexican American, Eddie Gamble looked comfortable and “in charge.”

Elena tapped Court on his shoulder from behind. Court turned around to find himself standing in front of the old man he'd just seen in the picture with Eddie and the marlin. He was short, seventy or so, and he wore a blue U.S. Navy cap.

Fuck,
thought Court.
A gringo.

Elena spoke in English. “Jose, I would like to present you to one of Eddie's dear friends, Capitán Chuck.”

“Chuck Cullen, United States Navy, retired,” the old man said as they shook hands. His grip was long and fierce in an obvious attempt to intimidate; his eyes were anything but trusting. He was old, but he was trim and fit, and he sure looked like he took damn good care of himself.

Elena continued speaking, perhaps sensing an initial mistrust between the two men. “Jose was a friend of Eduardo's.”

Cullen's craggy suntanned face wrinkled in a sour smile. “Well, any friend of Eddie's is a friend of mine,” Cullen said, but Court could tell he didn't mean it. Gentry considered his own appearance, knew he looked too much like the roadie of a heavy metal band to garner the respect of a seventyish ex–naval officer. With the overt suspicion on display now, Cullen asked, “How exactly did
you
know Eddie?”

“I met him when he was in the DEA.”

“So, you are DEA, or did he arrest you once?” Cullen asked with a smile as if it were a joke, but Gentry sensed the old man considered the “long hair” in front of him to be a human being worthy of suspicion. Cullen began to say something else, no doubt another chiding remark. But Elena returned and interrupted the conversation.

“I almost forgot. Come, Joe. We have more people to meet. You two can talk at dinner.”

It was a short walk down the narrow hallway to the kitchen. Here a half dozen women of various ages prepared the meal; they used every possible flat surface in the small room to slice fruits and vegetables, ice down beer, stir large pots of soups and rice, and butter bread fresh from the oven. Two were introduced as Eddie's aunts, another as a sister-in-law.

At the sink a woman with short black hair washed sweet potatoes; she wore an apron and her back was to Court and Elena, but she turned to ask Eddie's wife a question.