by Mark Greaney
“We gotta get you to a hospital.”
“They just pulled me out of a hospital, remember.”
“¡Pendejos!”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s Spanish. It’s kinda like… assholes or something.”
Court nodded. “And that was Laotian you were speaking to the guards?”
“Thai. Not exactly the same, but close enough for government work.”
“Figured a DEA agent with Mexican roots would be sent to Latin America. I guess if you speak Thai, you get sent here.”
“I get sent everywhere. Before this gig I was in the Navy for six years, in the Teams. I went all over, picked up some language on the way.”
“The Teams? You were a SEAL?”
“Team Three.”
Court nodded, as respectfully as one can while resting his head on a wall. “You’ve been here two weeks. You should have escaped by now, spent a week banging beach bunnies on the coast, and then made it back home with time to spare.”
Gamble bristled in the dark. Court could tell the man did not like the suggestion that he was soft. “Sure, I could get out of here. Two guards come down to take me to the interrogation shack every morning. I could break their necks. I could grab a sidearm and make a run for the motor pool. I could hot-wire a ride in nothing flat. I could smash the front gate, make a run for the Mekong.”
“But you just stay because you like the food?”
Gamble’s facial expression showed incredulity. “Bro… I’m DEA. I’m not a SEAL anymore, and I’m sure as hell not some secret squirrel, codeword, badass hombre like yourself. I can’t just run around killing Laotian military.”
Court nodded slowly. He worked under quite different rules of engagement, but he wasn’t going to admit that to Eddie.
Gamble asked, “What about you? Can you tell me your background? I mean, you weren’t born codeword-classified, were you?”
“I forgot everything before this job.”
“Shit, the CIA winds you singleton operators up tight, don’t they?”
Court didn’t bite on the comment. Didn’t admit he was CIA.
Gamble gave him a moment, and then said, “Okay. How bout a name? You got a name?”
Another shrug from the sick American against the wall. “My cover is blown. You can make one up for me. Anything you like.”
Gamble shook his head. Shrugged. “Okay, amigo. I think I’ll call you Sally.”
Court laughed until he wheezed and coughed until he rolled into the fetal position, wracked with pain.
EIGHT
Gentry’s mind left ancient history in Laos, came back to the here and now, and he looked down at the grave of Eduardo Gamboa, the freshly dug earth dry and crumbled around the tombstone.
Major Gamboa had been dead for eight days, it took three days to fish his remains from the Pacific Ocean, his funeral was the day before yesterday, and already people had defaced the white wooden cross with spray paint.
Hijo de puta! Son of a bitch.
Cabrón. Goat, a Spanish pejorative similar to jackass.
Pendejo. Eddie himself taught Court the meaning of the word that now adorned his grave marker.
Court’s jaw muscles flexed in anger. He did not understand. Who the hell could be angry with Eddie? Apparently, there was more to the story than he had heard on the radio at the torta stand in Chiapas. Gentry had caught a two-minute-long follow-up report about the bombing of the yacht, and Eduardo Gamboa was again mentioned as the dead leader of the operation.
No question in his mind. Eduardo Gamboa was the man he knew as Eddie Gamble.
Court had neither seen nor heard from Eddie since Laos. He had no idea the DEA man had returned to Mexico, and this fact perplexed him greatly. Why the hell would anyone want to leave the United States to come down here and fight drug carteleros and governmental corruption? Wasn’t there enough crime and bullshit in the USA to keep Eddie happy up there?
It hardly seemed like a field trip was necessary.
When Court saw the report of Eddie’s death, he’d been on his way to Tampico, on Mexico’s Gulf coast. He’d heard that a lot of European cargo ships called at the seaport there, and he wanted to find a way back to the eastern hemisphere to confront and kill his former employer Gregor Sidorenko, the man who now, along with the Central Intelligence Agency, was actively seeking his destruction.
But the second news report from Puerto Vallarta changed things. It said that Major Gamboa would be buried in his hometown of San Blas, ninety minutes up the coast from where he died.
Court felt that if he were already this close, just a one-day bus journey away, he should at least go and pay his respects.
So here he was, standing on a rock-strewn hillside a mile and a half from the Pacific Ocean. The steeply graded cemetery around him was covered with cheap mausoleums made from tin sheeting and linoleum and plastic and cinderblock. Amongst these larger monuments to the dead there were less ornate tombstones, with candles, plastic statuettes, and fake flowers lying about. Fat iguanas sunned themselves on broken rock or chased one another around massive tufts of banana trees growing wild out of the tall grass. A hot afternoon breeze blew Gentry’s long hair into his eyes as he looked down at the final resting place of his old friend.
Staring at the spray-painted curses he asked himself: Why were all the people around here so mad at Eddie?
LAOS
2000
Eddie Gamble was right about the Ban Nam Phuong Military Detention Camp being no place for a man with malaria. Court’s weakened condition deteriorated with each passing day of poor food, a cold floor of sawdust, and wholly unsanitary conditions. His mission to rescue Eddie became a joke the minute he was tossed in a cell with him, but now Eddie became the one desperately trying to rescue “Sally.”
Once a day Gentry was pulled up the stairs, taken across the small compound and into a wooden building, dropped on the floor in front of a desk, and questioned by two Laotian military officers who spoke little English and kept one eye on the full-contact Muay Lao martial arts matches broadcast on a small television against the wall. The men drank fresh water from big plastic bottles to torment their sickened and thirsty captive. They asked him over and over how he got into the country and who he’d come to meet and dozens of other questions, without any inkling he was an intelligence operative of the United States of America. Court gave no answers, just asked for medicine and a blanket and a pillow and fresh water.
Each day the interrogators refused.
Other than a few openhanded smacks to the head, they did not beat him, but they used his illness against him, promising he would get no treatment for the malaria until he signed a confession.
And each day he would be dragged back downstairs, dumped in the sawdust, and Eddie would then be taken for his turn in front of the lazy interrogators.
After one week Gentry’s physical condition had deteriorated to the point where he could barely crawl over to the metal bucket he and Gamble shared as a toilet. Eddie began caring for his “rescuer,” helping with his bathroom duties, sluicing him with water to clean him, and even giving him half of his daily rations of potato, moldy bread, and turnip, occasionally augmented with a small tin of cold broth made with animal bones. Gamble cooled Gentry’s fevers by continually dousing his scarlet forehead with a wet sock and rubbed his arms and legs when the chills came. Court protested everything that was done for him and continually encouraged the DEA agent to concentrate on finding his own way out of the camp.
Court was growing too weak to operate his body, but his well-trained brain had not lost the ability to scheme. “Look, Eddie. We’re probably just a few miles from the Mekong River and the Thai border. If you escape from here, then you have a chance of getting home. But when they take us into the labor camps, we’ll be up in the mountains, weeks from civilization, weeks from a border crossing. If you don’t get out of here before we go to the camps, it’s game over.”
Eddie just shook his hea
d. “I’m not leaving you here, and I’m not letting you go to the labor camp by yourself. You’ll die.”
“I’m dead anyway, dude. You’ve got to concentrate on what you can do. You’ve got to get out of here.”
But Eddie was stubborn; he continued tending to his weakened cellmate and did not try to escape on his own.
With twenty-two hours a day together and literally nothing else to do, Court and Eddie spent an incredible amount of time in conversation. The dialogue was hampered by Gentry’s absolute refusal to reveal one shred of information about himself, but Eddie was a talker. He talked about his life growing up in a small town on the Pacific coast of Mexico, his journey over the border into Texas as an illegal alien, his wayward couple of years in a Chicano gang in Riverside, California, and then his decision to join the military to seek American citizenship.
Eddie had joined the Navy because his father was a fisherman, but he realized quickly he himself did not want to live on a boat. He qualified for SEAL selection and excelled in the brutal training, earned the respect of the cadre and his fellow enlisted men along the way. After two and a half years of pre-deployment training and four years on Team Three, he left the military and joined the Drug Enforcement Agency. His life in Southern California had given him a hatred for drugs and drug dealers, and he worked primarily undercover in different parts of the world.
Two weeks after being brought to the Ban Nam Phuong detention facility, Court lay awake in the dark, sweat chills threatening to drive him mad, listening to Eddie drone on and on about his little sister, Lorita, and how he missed her and hated leaving her behind in the little fishing village where they grew up when he moved to the U.S. Gentry’s mind drifted off Gamble’s life history and turned to the problem at hand. He focused all his attention on remembering everything he saw each day when he was taken from his shack, dragged across the small camp, and dumped in the interrogation hut. It was always raining; there were trucks and jeeps sunk inches into the gravel and mud roads, maybe two dozen guards armed with Chinese-made AK-47s and SKSs.
Occasionally, he’d see other prisoners, mostly Hmong — an ethnic minority that had been getting knocked around for decades by the Pathet Lao, the Laotian Communist government. These guys likely weren’t any more involved in heroin trafficking than was Gentry; they had just run afoul of the local Commies in power and were suffering for it.
While doing his best to ignore Eddie’s incessant rambling — now he was talking about how, when he got out of here, he wanted to buy himself a new Ford truck to celebrate — an idea appeared in Gentry’s mind. He began troubleshooting immediately, trying to poke holes in his plan. There were holes: some he could patch with slight tactical changes, and some he had to leave open. No plan was foolproof; he’d learned that the hard way during five years in the field.
While Gentry’s mind raced, Gamble talked about his family. “I send two-thirds of my check back to my mom and dad, been doing it since I enlisted. Still I wish I could do more for Lorita. She’s nineteen now, a great kid; lookin’ at me you wouldn’t believe how beautiful she is. I want to get her up to the States, but she doesn’t want to come. Says she wants to go to college and find a job down there.”
Eddie paused, long enough to where Court looked over at the rare silence. “We’ve got to get out of here, Sally. I got too many people counting on me back home.”
“You’ll get home. I promise.”
“I’m not leaving you, amigo. I told you that.”
Court changed the subject to follow his stream of conscience. “Hey, you said you could hot-wire a car, right?”
Eddie was surprised by the change in the conversation, but he rolled up onto his arm, smiled broadly and proudly. “Back in Riverside they called me Fast Eddie because I could boost any ride in under sixty seconds.”
Gentry nodded. “Fast Eddie. Can you still do it?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t that long ago. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious.” Court let it go. He went back to working on his plan.
NINE
“Señor?”
A woman’s voice from behind startled Court, took him away from that night in the highlands of Laos, and brought him back to the warm, breezy afternoon on the Pacific coast of Mexico.
Not surprisingly, she spoke in Spanish. It was a dialect Gentry found difficult to understand. “If you want to write something, will you please do it now so I can paint over it? I’d rather not have to come back later today. It is a long walk back to the road for someone in my condition.”
Court turned to the woman’s voice. She stood behind and below him, down the hill a few feet on a dirt path that wound its way from the cobblestone road that ran down to San Blas.
She was alone, her dark hair was pulled back tight, her white cotton dress blew in the warm breeze. She carried a small white paint can and a brush in her hands and a large purse on her shoulder.
She was thirty-five or so. Very pretty.
And very pregnant.
“I’m sorry,” Court replied in Spanish. He stepped down off the hill towards the dirt path. “I thought this man was someone I knew. I was mistaken.” He made to pass the woman with a slight nod, no eye contact, but she stepped in front of him. She held her head high and her shoulders back, boldly challenging him.
Court stopped.
“Who are you looking for? It’s a small town. I’m sure I know most every family interred in this cemetery.” Clearly, she knew he was lying, and from the look of her confused expression, Court’s accent had caught her attention.
He hesitated. He was busted, no sense in drawing out an obvious lie.
With a shrug he said, “I knew Eddie. I was just in the area. Thought I’d come by. Sorry. I have to catch a bus. Excuse me.” He tried to move past her again, and again, she shifted into his path.
“Eddie? You are American?” She had switched to English.
“Yes.” She remained wary; she did not smile or nod. But slowly she extended a small hand, and Court took it. “You are Eddie’s wife?”
“My name is Elena. Sí, I was Eddie’s wife.”
“My name is Joe.” He pulled the name out of the air.
He regarded the woman for a moment. “Eddie was going to have a baby?” Court winced even as the words came out of his mouth.
“He is going to have a baby. A boy.”
He said nothing. Just nodded.
“You were with Eduardo in the Navy?”
“No.”
“Ah, Drug Enforcement Agency?”
“No.”
The soft features of her caramel-colored face scrunched up as she thought. “You knew him back in California or something?”
He hesitated. He hated telling people the truth. It was not how he operated. He determined to remain vague. “A long time ago, your husband saved my life, risked his own to do it. That’s really all I can tell you.”
He felt her eyes on him for a long time. Twice he glanced to her and found her staring at his face; both times he turned his head back to the gravesite.
She smiled. Said, “He saved many lives, I think. Here and in the United States. He was a good man.”
“I’m really sorry—”
“Are you here for the memorial?”
“The memorial?”
“Tomorrow, in Puerto Vallarta, there will be a commemoration of the eight officers who died in the bay. We are expecting a large turnout of locals who will come to honor their sacrifice. Will you be there?”
Gentry hesitated. “I’d love to. But I have to get back on the road.”
“What a pity.” Elena looked as if she did not believe him, which to Court meant she had a pretty decent bullshit detector. “I need to paint the cross again.” She stepped up the hill and knelt down, unsteady with the change in her center of gravity. As she opened the can of paint, she looked back over her shoulder, smiled, and extended a new invitation. “You must come home with me now. Eduardo’s entire family will be there, some friends, and the rela
tives of three of the other men killed. Everyone is at our home tonight for a dinner; in the morning we are all going together to the memorial. Eddie’s mother and father will be so pleased to meet a friend of Eduardo’s from the United States.”
“I wish I could, but I’d better be heading back to—”
“You have come all this way. You and Eduardo were friends. What would he think looking down on me from heaven if I did not take you home and give you a meal for your trouble?” She knelt and began working as if the matter were decided — she covered the black graffiti with the clean white paint.
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.”
