by Mark Greaney
He offered it to Gentry.
“No, thanks.”
“It will help your muscle cramps. Take it.”
Court accepted the bottle, took a tentative swig, winced, and then took a longer gulp. He fought down the shot, then passed the bottle back to Hanley. “If you’d picked up a six-pack of Tecate, we could have had a party.”
Matt swigged, laughed, and swigged again. “Nah, booze is efficient. No time for beer, Violator.”
Finally, Hanley pulled the sedan off the road, down a callejón towards the back of a construction site. He found a ramp that led down to a covered parking lot below a hotel that was only half completed. He jumped out to move a pair of orange barrels out of the way, and then he proceeded into the dark lot.
They parked the car, and Gentry popped the trunk so Jerry could get some air. They left a car door open for light and walked around to the back. Pfleger was on his back with his foot propped up. He looked up, terrified, at the two American spies staring down at him in the low light.
“Please don’t kill me. I swear I will do whatever you—”
Hanley took another long pull on the tequila bottle. “Shut up or I’ll shut the trunk.”
Jerry stopped talking.
Hanley took Court by the shoulder, walked him over to the corner of the garage, still within the low glow of the Ford’s interior lights. Together they stood; Court took the bottle and drank some more tequila, hoping like hell it would mute the shakes in his muscles.
He handed it back to Matt, and the big blond American took a long pull before asking, “So what the hell are you doing here in Mexico, duking it out with the narcos?”
“I just stumbled into this.”
“That wasn’t too bright. This drug war is crazy. Worse than Colombia. You ever seen anything as fucked up as this?”
“Yeah… I have.”
Hanley regarded Gentry then nodded slowly. “You must have done some work in Bosnia.”
“I must have,” replied Court, in semi-agreement. Hanley let it go. He did not know much about Gentry’s pre — Goon Squad work for the CIA, and he did not need to.
“Langley said you knew the GOPES commander, this Major Gamboa.”
“Yeah, long time ago.”
“And now DLR is going after his family.”
Court nodded. “That’s what I’ve been dealing with.”
“Wish I could give you some support, but officially speaking, my employer doesn’t care about Gamboa, and while they do care about you, they only care about making you dead.”
“Why did you help me?”
Matt shrugged. “You did fuck up my life, but now that it is fucked-up, there’s not much more they can do to me.”
Court didn’t understand. Hanley saw this and continued. “Look, you’d have done it for me. In the Goon Squad, you did your job and you did it well. Of course you fought back when we turned on you. I can’t begrudge you that. I’m not going to just sit and watch the fucking Daniel de la Rocha Cartel torture you to death. You may be persona non grata amongst the top brass at Langley, but I didn’t get into this line of work to watch Mexican drug lords murder American patriots.”
Gentry nodded. Leaned back against the cold concrete.
Matt said, “This isn’t the first time I’ve been sent by Denny to ID you.”
“No?”
“Couple of years ago. I was in Paraguay at the time.” He chuckled. “I didn’t know how good I had it in Paraguay. Fucking Haiti, kid. You have no idea.”
“We don’t have much time.”
“Anyway, that thing goes down in Kiev. Carmichael has my ass on a company jet from Asunción to Kiev so fast my head’s spinning. They were trying to ID you as the operator there, as if one man could have pulled that off, but we both know it wasn’t you.”
Gentry nodded. Hanley stared him down, and Court knew the other man was doing his best to read Court’s face for any reaction to his statement. Court’s face still twitched from the current that had been ripping through his central nervous system; no lie detector — type clues from his limbic system would be reliable in his current state.
Hanley gave up. “Anyway, got a free trip to Europe out of it, at least.”
Still no response from Gentry.
Matt smiled again, “You were always the quiet one. The one who did most of the work but never bitched. Hightower was the loudmouth of the group.”
“How is Zack?”
“How is he? Is that a serious question? He’s dead. They’re all dead.”
“All who?”
“All the Goon Squad guys. You killed them all, buddy. You put both barrels of a.44 Derringer into Zack Hightower’s chest, sent him cartwheeling out a window. He died at the scene.”
Jesus, thought Court. Matt Hanley really was out of the loop. Zack had survived the shoot-out, and Court had run an op seven months earlier in North Africa with him. Zack had been wounded badly in the Sudan, and Court did not know for sure whether or not he’d survived, but clearly, he knew a hell of a lot more than Matt Hanley did about what had been going on at the upper echelons of the Special Activities Division.
The CIA had a shoot-on-sight directive out against the Gray Man, yet the Gray Man was not as much of an outsider as Matthew Hanley.
“Who put the shoot on sight out on me?”
Hanley looked at the tequila bottle, like he was measuring his consumption. “Denny Carmichael was the one who contacted me. Told me you had to go.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“Bullshit.”
“Carmichael knows. Others at the top. I was told you were the enemy, to execute the shoot on sight. I was shown a presidential finding to that effect; it mentioned something about a foreign nation’s involvement, and I asked Denny what that was all about. He told me a deal had been worked out between folks way above my pay grade, and I needed to shut the hell up and execute the finding. I told Denny the only way to be sure to wax you was to drop a JDAM on your head, but he ordered me to use the team to liquidate you. I told Zack, he told the others, and now they are all dead.” Hanley took an exceptionally long pull of the clear liquid. Court saw him wobble a bit from its effects.
He laughed a moment. “You didn’t hear any of that from me.” He laughed some more. “I am so fired.”
Court looked at his former boss incredulously. “Matt… for what you did back there in the basement, you aren’t just going to get fired.”
“Federal prison? A wet squad at my door? Nah, I’ll convince them you got away somehow. I’ve made a decent living bullshitting my friends and coworkers.” He smiled, but Gentry saw that he was nervous. “It was worth it to waste those carteleros.”
“Matt… Langley will kill you for saving me.”
Hanley shrugged. “I’ll have to sell it. You shot your way out of the basement, took me as a hostage, beat me up, and dumped me by the side of the road as you made your escape with that embassy douche.” He paused. “We’re going to have to make it look good. I’m thinking a pair of black eyes, maybe a cracked rib.”
Court just shook his head slowly.
“You have something else in mind?”
“You said it. We’re going to have to make it look good.”
Hanley blew out a long sigh, nodded as if he expected this. He drank another three swigs of tequila in rapid-fire succession, then backed up to the wall of the parking garage. He tossed the bottle underhanded, away into the dark. It shattered. Then he pointed to a place high on his shoulder. “Right there. Do it, Violator!”
Court pulled the Bersa Thunder .380 from his pants pocket. Took a few steps back and raised the weapon. Hanley watched him through eyes squinted in anticipation of the pain and agony that would come. “Please don’t miss, kid.”
Then Court looked away from his weapon’s sights and into the man’s tight eyes.
“Sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
The pistol lowered.
“No!”
Court shot Matthew Hanley in the stomach. Hanley brought his hands to the searing pain in his right side. Warm blood oozed through his thick fingers. Softly, he gasped, “For the love of God, Court.” The heavyset case officer lowered to his knees, fell to the cold cement, rolled onto his stomach writhing in pain.
Court fired again, shot Hanley in the back of the right shoulder.
“Jesus!” screamed Jerry Pfleger. He’d sat up in the trunk and could see the action against the wall. Court turned to him, stormed over to the car with his pistol up, and Jerry ducked back into the trunk. Gentry slammed the trunk lid, then returned to the man rolling around on the bare concrete. Hanley was on his back now; he tried to scoot away from the Gray Man but could not.
As he stood over the big man, Court said, “Nobody was going to buy a textbook bullet hole in your shoulder. Not from a guy like me.”
“I could have sold it, you fuck! I could have made them believe!”
“C’mon, stop crying. The shoulder is through and through, and the gut shot is lodged in a shitload of fat. Are you the only guy in Haiti putting on weight these days?”
“I’m going to bleed to death!”
“No, you’re not. Listen, nobody at Langley is going to question whether or not you were helping me when they find out I shot you three times.”
Hanley was fighting shock. Still his eyes widened.
“Three times?”
Court stood, quickly pointed the pistol again, and shot his former boss in his left thigh.
“Motherfucker!” The thick man screamed, rolled to his side, and grabbed his leg.
“Listen, Matt. I am doing you a favor. Carmichael knows I don’t punch people in the jaw who are trying to kill me. I didn’t hit any organs, any arteries; you are going to be fine. Better than fine considering what Denny would do to you if he thought you and I were in cahoots. Put some pressure on your gut; don’t worry about your leg or shoulder. I didn’t hit anything vital.”
“That’s fucking easy for you to say! Fuck, Violator! I saved your ass!”
“And I’m saving yours! Okay, Matt, I’ve got to run.”
“You are leaving? I’m fucking bleeding to death!”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to be a stud around Langley. You survived a shoot-out with the Gray Man. How cool is that?”
“It’s not cool at all, you mother—”
Court knelt, patted him on the head. “You’re going to thank me, I swear.” Another quick pat. “Gotta go. Thanks again.” Court stood back up and pulled Jerry’s phone from his pocket, checked it for a signal. “Two bars. Call the embassy.” He tossed the phone on Hanley’s big gut, climbed behind the wheel of the Ford, and drove out of the parking garage.
Hanley lay in the dark, holding on to his stomach and his shoulder. “Fucking Violator!” he screamed it at the top of his lungs; it echoed back to him in the empty garage.
Then he took his hand from his shoulder to dial the cell phone with his bloody fingers.
FORTY-ONE
Just after nine p.m. Daniel de la Rocha sat on the sofa of his living room in a suburb of Cuernavaca, some forty-five minutes from Mexico City. Next to him, in his lap and up and down the length of the sofa were his children. His wife sat on the floor at his feet. The family watched the huge plasma television, a league match between Chivas de Guadalajara and Cruz Azul, two of Mexico’s best soccer teams.
DLR’s phone chirped in the front pocket of his black sweatpants, annoying him greatly. He’d instructed his men not to bother him tonight under any circumstances.
The chirping phone caught his wife’s attention as well, and she looked angrily at her husband.
“You said no one would—”
He looked at the phone. “I’m sorry, mi amor. It’s Nestor; it must be important.”
“I asked for one night of peace with my family.”
DLR’s oldest daughter, nine-year-old Gabriella, hushed them as she tried to watch the match.
“Daniel… the American has escaped. He killed Carlos, el Carnicerito, something like six or seven federales; he shot up the CIA man, and he escaped with Pfleger. Apparently, one of them is wounded; there was a blood trail all the way out of the building to the—”
“Wait! Nestor…” Daniel stood, his nine-month-old son nearly tumbled out of his lap onto the sofa. De la Rocha shot out of the living room, ran in his socks to his study, and shut the door.
“You are telling me that the chingado gringo who I saw in the Tepito death house, chained like a piece of meat to the wall, half-dead and surrounded by a dozen armed men, has somehow managed to get away.”
“Sí, patrón. I am working a lead right now. Pfleger’s car is missing; I assume they took it. I have everyone in the D.F. canvassing the—”
“What is going on? He did not do that alone. Someone rescued him.”
“Maybe so.”
“No maybe. Madrigal! It must have been los Vaqueros!”
“I’ll look into it, patrón.”
“I want you to call the CIA right now and tell them that the Vaqueros shot their man!”
“We don’t know yet, Daniel.”
“I know it! I know Constantino Madrigal is behind this!”
Calvo sighed into the phone. “I will look into all the leads, especially any information that Madrigal’s network is involved.”
“Well, we know where they are going, then, don’t we? Tijuana!”
“Jerry Pfleger did not create the visas.”
“If he’s working with them, maybe he did, and he just didn’t tell you.”
“That’s true, Don Daniel,” Calvo replied wearily. “We will have everyone focusing on the border and the highways to get there.”
“Good. You stay on Madrigal, Nestor. You understand me?”
“Sí, mi patrón.”
De la Rocha disconnected the call then pressed a button on his desk. “Emilio. Bring the cars. We are leaving immediately.” He turned back to the living room. His wife stood in the doorway.
“What is it?”
“Work. It is always work, mi amor.”
“You are leaving again?”
Daniel nodded. “Sí. I am sorry, but I have to go.”
* * *
Court sat in la Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Pilar, in the same pew as the day before. But Laura Gamboa Corrales was not by his side. He stared at the altar, at the crucifix, at the devotional candles. He smelled the incense and the wax.
And he thought of her.
Jerry Pfleger was bundled in the trunk of his own car now. They’d spent two hours dumping the Ford, taking a taxi back to Pfleger’s apartment in la Zona Rosa, getting a few changes of clothes, the twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of pesos Court had given Jerry as a down payment, a mobile phone, and some other odds and ends. They packed all this into Jerry’s car. Court strapped a bag of ice onto Jerry’s foot to keep the swelling under control, but Jerry limped so badly Court was forced to help the skinny American everywhere he went.
On the way to Highway 85 to head northeast, Gentry took this detour to the church. Operationally, it was unnecessary, no doubt a little dangerous, even though he doubted the Black Suits would still be hanging around Donceles Street.
He could not say for sure why he was here or what he was doing. But he wanted to come here, to sit, to think, just for a few minutes.
He thought about Lorita, wondered what she was being subjected to, what she thought about him right now.
His muscles still hurt, but the twitching was gone. His ankles and wrists were burned and blistered, but he’d survive it. The cuts on his chest burned. They needed some treatment, but they weren’t deep enough to worry about blood loss, and the sting would help him focus and stay awake for the next few hours. After that… after that he’d think about medicine.
He had a plan, sort of. It was paper-thin, but it was action, and at times like these, Gentry preferred action to sitting around and hoping for the best.
&nbs
p; He thought of Lorita again, and he wondered if he loved her.
Then he thought of Eddie, of Elena and the baby, and of the life that Eddie had left behind.
Court wondered if he even knew what it meant to love.
He looked around the church. There were only a few faithful here, but he regarded them, wondered about their capacity to love.
No, Court decided. He was not like them. He was not trained to love.
He was conditioned to hate.
And now he was ready to kill.
He stood slowly and left his pew. He had not prayed. He did not cross himself; he did not step up to the altar to kneel before it.
But he did address the crucifix. From the center aisle, before turning for the door, he spoke softly. It wasn’t a prayer. It was a demand. Delivered in a threatening tone by someone who, like he had told Laura the day before, did not know how this all worked.
“She trusts you. She is one of your people. You need to help her. To take care of her. I can’t do it by myself.”
* * *
After the side trip to the church, the Gray Man was all business. He drove to Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez; just a few minutes before arriving, he had Pfleger use the store-bought cell phone to rent a car in his name from the Hertz office in the airport. They parked Jerry’s car in long-term parking, picked up the rental, and drove to another part of the airport. Then they took a taxi back into town, into the Reforma district, and here Court and Jerry took a city bus to el Zócalo. Two long blocks south of the main square, with Gentry helping the hobbled Pfleger walk upright, they found a hotel parking lot that was unattended, and here the American assassin hotwired a Ford Mustang.
At two forty-five in the morning, Gentry and Pfleger left Mexico City behind them and headed northeast to Pachuca, a ninety-minute drive. They ditched the stolen car in Pachuca, waited on a park bench across from the main bus terminal until it opened at six a.m., and then took the first bus heading north to Juárez. They would get off before Juárez and take a regional bus to Tijuana.
Twenty-four hours on the road.
