by Mark Greaney
Eyes of fools.
His mind raced; he thought about the impending attack and what he could do about it.
Elena said, “Joe, don’t give up on us. We may not all be soldiers, but we can all help. Everyone can do something!”
The smell of fresh bread wafted from the kitchen.
Court sighed. “We can’t fucking bake our way out of this, Elena!” Elena Gamboa’s face reddened in anger and frustration.
Ramses chuckled on the landing above.
“Other than pelting our enemies with chimichangas, does anyone have any ideas?”
Laura Gamboa held her pistol up. “Sí. I have an idea. How about we just shoot all the pendejos when they come?”
Court shrugged. “Well… yeah, that’s the plan, I guess.” He stiffened. “Everyone to your positions. You know what to do.”
Court stormed past the family towards the first set of sconces and blew out the candles there.
He passed the family again in the living room as he headed to the back door. “Buena suerte,” he mumbled. Good luck. With his hand on the latch he stopped, turned back, and looked at them one last time. They stood like stone statues there in the dark, staring back at him. Luz and Inez stepped out from the kitchen with a tray of rolls.
“Come on, goddammit!” he shouted, utter frustration at their predicament getting the best of him. “Elena, Luz, and Inez to the basement! Ernesto to the cellar hallway to guard the women; Diego and Ignacio to the kitchen to guard the basement access; Laura on the upstairs landing to overlook this room! Blow out all the candles on the way. Move! It’s not that fucking complicated! And stay away from the damn windows!”
Everyone moved off in different directions and, more or less, Court was somewhat relieved to see, in the directions of their duties.
“Fuck,” he said to himself.
He looked up at the landing; Martin had gone back to his post, but Ramses looked down at him. In the darkness the Mexican officer said, “Good luck, amigo.”
“We’re going to need it,” Court replied.
And then he stepped out the back door into darkness.
* * *
There were sixteen in the first wave. They were not elite sicarios, but they were nevertheless cold, ruthless men, trained in the use of their weapons and well “encouraged” by their leadership to fulfill the wishes of the head of their cartel.
In the nomenclature of the Mexican cartels, these men were referred to as soldados, “soldiers,” or more dismissively as estacas, in this sense meaning “fence posts.” They weren’t the top-of-the-line, but they could stand there with a gun in their hand and do their job.
Their ages ranged from seventeen to sixty-one; there were two sets of fathers and sons, and two more sets of brothers. All of them had served in the army, and one of them had been an officer, and that made him the leader of this ad hoc group of killers.
These men weren’t the best that the Black Suits had to call on, but they were the closest to the hacienda, and for that reason they would have to do. They all lived up here in the hills and mountains; most had worked together on other assignments at one time or another for Los Trajes Negros.
Three of them were judiciales, state police from Jalisco, and six more were municipales from nearby Tequila. State and local squad cars sat parked alongside the dirt track on the other side of the hacienda’s back wall, alongside two pickup trucks and three old sedans.
Spider had contacted the leader of his enforcers in this region just after eleven p.m., and it had taken all of three hours to get the muscle into the area. They’d pulled down two cell towers with a chain and a truck, and then waited for a radio call ordering them to cut the landline.
Most of them carried police issue shotguns or M1 carbines, a sixtyyear-old American rifle that is still seen all over Mexico, mostly in use by security guards at banks, department stores, and the like. Though venerable compared to any current frontline rifle, it fired a potent .30-caliber bullet from a fifteen-round magazine, and it got the job done.
Just as Gentry and the two GOPES had suspected from their inspection of the terrain, the attacking force came over the back wall, dropped down into the dark.
They moved through the overgrown grasses in pairs, kept their eyes on the dark building in the distance, still fifty yards beyond the patio and the pool. They ducked down behind the few lime and orange trees growing wild in the back, and then they ran in short, labored zigzags to the statues, and ducked down behind these as well.
They were close now; all sixteen had made it to the edge of the back patio. Seventy-five feet from the colonnade, where the rear doors to the main room sat invitingly. The teams of men began a disorganized leapfrog advancing maneuver, some nearly colliding with one another, others ducking down behind planters alongside the pool.
Fifty feet now, the former army officer, the man who was nominally in charge of this array of shooters, stood and waved all forces forward. He had not anticipated making it this far without resistance and had not planned for everyone to hit the same entry point, but the patio doors were closest, and once inside the house, his men could separate and begin the killing.
The man could already count the money that Spider would give him.
“¡Ataque!” he shouted.
Then, without warning, there was the rumble of a big engine to the right of his position on the patio, on the other side of the rectangular pool. A huge pickup truck had somehow been pulled up against the outer wall of the colonnade and covered with vines, far away from the front driveway and totally hidden from view. The sixteen men stood like the statues around them for stunned, precious seconds as the high-beam lamps and spotlight rack of the big F-350 flipped on and the entire rear patio flooded with blinding white light.
The leader spun towards the origin of the light, shielded his eyes from its glare, and raised his rifle one-handed to fire at its source.
But ten feet from the tips of his boots, in the filthy black pool, a noise and a movement caught his eye.
* * *
The Gray Man had spent nearly three minutes under the water, had spent the previous ten with only his head and shotgun above the thick, greasy surface of rotten leaves. When he heard the faint whistle from Martin that the attackers were coming, he submerged, breathing through a bamboo reed with his eyes shut tight, just waiting for the noise from the truck to tell him it was time to act. Ramses started the vehicle with the remote key fob when the sicarios were close enough to engage.
When Court surfaced, he was careful to do so facing away from the massive flood lamps. He immediately saw targets before him like fish in a barrel, and he showed no mercy. He rose from the water, spitting the hollow length of bamboo from his mouth as he did so, leveled the long side-by-side shotgun at the first man he saw, and he fired a barrel of birds hot into the man’s ample gut.
Boom!
Above him, to his right, he heard the short belching of a 9 mm submachine gun, Ramses firing from the mirador on the second floor. Another pistol cracked from ground level, coming from the patio door of the house. Court did not know who that was; he had assigned no one to that position.
Boom!
He fired his remaining chamber, sending over one hundred tiny beads of steel shot into the lower torso of a man in a green police uniform who spun away from him on the patio.
Splashes of water stitched close to him, and he ducked back under the lily pads to reload his shotgun while submerged. He kept the shells in his front pockets. He exchanged two fresh ones after dumping the two spent rounds, and he kicked himself into the shallower end of the pool as he did so, so he could come back out of the water at a place other than where he’d gone under.
He shot up again from the black water into the cool night air, found two targets who had just passed his location as they ran towards the casa grande, and he shot both men in their lower backs, sending them tumbling forward. Again he ducked below the surface to reload and swim to another part of the pool.
* * *
Six matones were down in under ten seconds; those to the rear of the attack had retreated out of the bright lights from the truck and dived back into the tall grass. But two men, both Jalisco state police, had been advancing up the right side of the pool, near to the truck, as it was turned on remotely. They fired on the vehicle with their M1s, blew out the headlamps but not the floodlights, and then ran past it as their own men began firing in their direction.
The two men made it under the colonnade that ran along the back of the house. It was pitch-black here and free of the wayward gunfire of their own forces. They ran away from the patio doors; after nearly a minute of keeping their right shoulder on the stucco wall, they found themselves turning the corner at the southwestern edge of the building. They continued in the deep dark along the stucco wall enmeshed by thick moneda vines. Far behind them the gunfire had dropped off now to an occasional crack and an answering boom.
They arrived at a window at floor level. It was locked, but one of the men used the butt of his carbine to smash the glass. He reached in and opened the latch, swiveled the window open, and stepped inside. His partner followed behind.
It was not honor or duty or glory that propelled them. It was money. It was the money they would get from this hit and the prestige they would get around their town from having their stock go up with Los Trajes Negros.
They found themselves in a darkened space, could barely make out the large oaken furniture of a master bedroom. On the other side of the window stood a large door, and it was shut. The two cops were both reasonably certain the shattering of the windowpane would have gone undetected by anyone on the other side, especially with sporadic gunfight still going on. The men stood and began crossing the tile floor to the door, were more than halfway there, when a sudden movement on their left caught their attention.
A voice in the dark. “Guillermo? My son? Is that—”
Both men fired their M1 carbines; in the light from their muzzle blasts they saw an old man, sitting up in his bed. His chest exploded, and he tumbled off the side, rolled head over heels, and settled hunched like a heap in the corner of the room.
* * *
Ramses and Martin met up in the sala, both responding to the sound of gunfire in the house. The men shouldered up, with Martin in front, and they moved in a well-practiced tactical maneuver that would allow them to attack enemies to the front of them while protecting each other. They arrived at a right angle in the hall, and then, just around the corner, they heard two pops from a pistol and a woman’s shout.
The two special operations group officers spun around the corner as if they were attached at the hip: Martin ahead and to the left, Ramses just behind and to the right. They trained their weapon lights on the hall and found Laura Gamboa Corrales on her knees in front of an open door, her back to them, and her pistol pointed into the darkness of the master bedroom.
Just then another loud crack and a flash of light from the bedroom. Ramses Cienfuegos flew back and down to the floor with a grunt as the air in his lungs fired from his mouth.
Martin Orozco opened fire into the bedroom, spraying the doorway just above Laura’s head with 9 mm rounds. As he fired, he stepped to the right to cover his fallen partner.
His weapon emptied in three seconds, and he knelt to reload it.
But there was no more shooting from the room ahead.
Martin sprinted past Laura now, and with the light attached to his rifle he saw two dead state policemen by the open window, a wall pocked and broken and chipped from all the gunfire, and then, on the floor on the other side of the bed, the slumped form of Luis Corrales.
Laura had stepped in behind him, and she cried out as she ran past and huddled over her father-in-law.
Martin left her, returned to his partner up the hallway. He was relieved to see Ramses up on his elbows; the gringo was there, too, kneeling over Ramses in the dark. The American was soaking wet. Ramses had taken a round directly into the ceramic ballistic plate on his chest. He’d had the wind knocked out of him, but he was uninjured. The three men looked at one another and breathed a sigh of relief.
The battle was over — for now.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Court sat with Martin and Ramses on the southern mirador, all eyes were trained on the rear of the property. Court had removed his soaked shirt and replaced it with a denim jacket taken from Luis’s closet, but there were no dry pants anywhere in the house that fit him. The acrid smell of gun smoke hung in the air still, soon to be replaced by the smell of the dead bodies on the patio. Court had already decided that he’d tie stone planters to the bodies and roll them all into the pool if it looked like he and the Gamboas would still be here after dawn. The sight and stench of dead adult humans no longer bothered him in the least, but morale would soon suffer amongst the uninitiated civilians here in the casa grande if they had to operate around sun-bloated cadavers crawling with bugs and iguana.
Back in the house he could hear the women crying, then praying aloud, then crying some more. Laura had fallen to pieces when she found Luis’s dead body. She was obviously blaming herself for his death. Inez and Luz and Elena had covered the man with a blanket where he died, and as far as Court knew, he was still right there.
Court knew the old man’s body would begin to smell by noon.
As soon as the shoot-out was over and the surviving sicarios disappeared again into the darkness out towards the southern wall of the hacienda, Court checked on Eddie’s truck. His hopes for a quick escape were dashed when he found three of the four tires flat from the barrage of gunfire the vehicle endured after he’d turned on the lights. There were holes in the hood and grille and left front quarter panel, but the engine still ran, for the time being at least.
But that hardly mattered on a truck with only one inflated tire.
Between her sobs and prayers and moments of catatonic staring into space, Inez Corrales had told Court that the barn to the east of the casa grande held an old farm truck. The engine of the truck had not been turned over in years, but as far as she knew, the pickup was operational. Ignacio, while shit-faced drunk, was also an auto mechanic, so Ernesto sent his son out to the barn to check on the potential of the vehicle to help the ten of them escape.
Court positioned young Diego on the north mirador to watch the front of the property; he’d outfitted the boy with a carbine retrieved from one of the dead cops, told him to hold it to his shoulder, point it at the target, and just pull the trigger over and over until one of the professionals showed up at his side to take over.
Ramses spoke softly to the American. “We did good. We lost one out of eleven. They lost eight out of, I don’t know, fifteen or twenty maybe. Plus we got rifles and ammo.”
Court didn’t see the glass quite so half full. “Yeah, but the survivors got all the intelligence they need. They know there are just a few of us; they know we can’t cover all the points of entry; they know the general layout of the house. These dudes would have been the guys DLR could get here in a couple of hours. This wasn’t their A-team by any stretch of the imagination.” He sighed. “We need to get the hell out of here. We aren’t going to make it through another attack.”
“Where do we go?”
“I’m open to suggestions,” admitted Court.
Neither of the federales spoke.
Court was tired, frustrated beyond belief, and completely without a plan, and his frustration manifested itself in his next comment. “So, other than yourselves, you are saying there is not one motherfucking trustworthy Mexican in Mexico?”
The accusation hung in the air for a moment.
Ramses Cienfuegos answered back finally, with the unmistakable tinge of anger in his voice. “I know lots of trustworthy people. Soldiers, cops, civilians, government employees. There are many of my fellow countrymen who can and do die fighting against the narcotraficantes. But involving them in this will put them at risk. Corruption exists in all levels of every institution in this country, thanks to the si
xty billion dollars you gringos spend each year to fuel that corruption.”
Court shrugged. “Don’t blame us for your civil war.”
“Like you Americans would never have a civil war yourselves, right?”
Court ignored the comment, but Ramses was not finished.
“If there was no demand, amigo, de la Rocha and men like him would have to become wheat farmers or some shit. Talk to your fucking drug addicts in the United States; they bear much of the responsibility for all this death and murder. More of my countrymen would be trustworthy if only more of your countrymen weren’t worthless sons of bitches who break your own laws and, by doing so, destabilize our nation!”
Court nodded in the dark. He got the message, and the message was that he was being a dick. “Sorry, dude. I’m just pissed off.”
After a moment, Ramses said, “It’s okay. We all are.”
The three men fingered their weapons and looked into the night.
They heard the sounds of Ignacio trying to crank the engine of the truck in the barn, fifty yards off to their left. Eddie’s alcoholic brother had the starter spinning up, but so far the machine would not turn over.
Court sighed. If they couldn’t get the truck running, they were fucked. Even if they could, he had no idea where they could escape to here in Mexico. He wasn’t from around—
Wait. An idea entered his head. “That’s it.”
“What’s it?” asked Ramses.
“You said the U.S. needed to take some responsibility. What if we could get Elena and her family into the U.S.? De la Rocha doesn’t own the institutions up there.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“It can’t be that hard to get into the USA. Your countrymen manage to do it all day long.”
Ramses nodded. “Last year I was in Mexico City, attached to the AFI, the federal detective force. It’s like the FBI in los Estados Unidos. We discovered a gringo who worked in the U.S. Embassy’s consular office who was selling papers to get into the States. We had everything we needed to arrest this gringo and stop it, but the operation was shut down. We didn’t even tell the Americans what we learned.”
