by Mark Greaney
The private dining area was open-air, a cool breeze blew in from the Pacific and swirled around the tiled courtyard. Daniel de la Rocha sat at a table in the back of the room, behind a tall gurgling fountain and below a latticework arch of lovingly manicured bougainvillea. Other members of the Black Suits sat at tables of four around the courtyard. This was not a business dinner; it was just a dinner. They were here to eat and then to travel east to the safe house a few miles inland. This was de la Rocha’s first visit to PV since the massacre ten days earlier; he had business to attend to in the area and had spent the day working with associates of his commuter airline, and his drug manufacture and transporting enterprise.
The mood among the men was grim because the mood of their leader was grim. He was furious about the apparent escape of the Gamboas and the gringo. He fully assumed they were north of the border, but his hunt was far from over. Right now he had his entire workforce that operated in the United States: in Atlanta, in Chicago, in Dallas, in Los Angeles, in a dozen other cities — he had them all working on finding the Gamboas and the gringo.
So far Calvo had failed him, Spider had failed him, his fiftythousand-member-strong criminal organization had failed him.
But that did not really matter. Because all that mattered to Daniel was that Daniel had failed her.
Daniel gazed across his table to a corner of the courtyard, just a few feet away. A shrine of la Santa Muerte had been brought in by his advance security team, just a three-foot-tall icon of la virgen, dressed in the finest bridal gown handmade by a master dressmaker in Mexico City who worked exclusively on creating high-quality and highprice fashion for icons of la Santa Muerte. She stood on a table festooned with devotional candles that flickered in the sea breeze; the shadows played across the skeleton’s face, creating the appearance of movement and life.
DLR stared into her eyes. To him they were not vacant sockets in the plaster; they were windows into an abyss. Viewing portals into the soul of an angry goddess.
A bottle of Gran Patrón Platinum silver tequila was placed at his table by a waiter in a white coat. Next to the bottle a crystal dish of freshly cut limes, a crystal dish of salt, a small shot glass of the same crystal.
De la Rocha ignored the accoutrements and grabbed the bottle by the neck, took a swig of the clear liquor, stared at his idol, and promised her aloud that he would give her the tribute she demanded.
The unborn Gamboa child.
The waiter stood awkwardly with a menu in his hand, waiting for DLR to finish his prayer. While Daniel was still praying, the man cleared his throat.
Emilio Lopez Lopez stood against the wall just behind his jefe; Emilio stepped forward to the waiter and grabbed him by the arm of his coat, turned him roughly, and prepared to shove him away for his poor manners. But Daniel raised his bottle of tequila.
“It’s okay, Emilio. Thank you.” He looked at the waiter. “Just have your chef prepare something light. Grilled tilapia would be perfect.”
“Muy bien, Don Daniel,” said the waiter, and he shot off to the kitchen, clearly happy to walk away from his error with his life.
Nestor came over to the table, and they talked business for a few minutes, but DLR’s heart wasn’t in it, and finally he asked his consigliere to leave him to eat his meal alone. The rest of the Black Suits got the message; they ate at other tables and talked in hushed tones, worked their mobile phones or their laptops, tried like hell to be the one who determined just where in the world their targets had managed to disappear to.
A different waiter appeared with a cold watermelon soup, and DLR slurped it while lost in thought and melancholy. He continued to sip the tequila between gulps of bottled water and spoonfuls of soup; he just gazed around in the dark, at his men, at the fountain, at his idol on the table in the corner. Decorative paper lanterns strung across the courtyard on lines above the men’s heads swayed in the breeze.
In just minutes another waiter in a starched white coat came to DLR’s table; he pushed a tablecloth-covered rolling cart with a covered dish on it. With a subservient bow the man took away the empty plate of soup from the table and then replaced it with the covered dish.
“Buen provecho,” said the waiter, bon appétit, as he removed the cover and placed it back on the rolling cart.
De la Rocha did not look at the man, did not reply. He just took his fork in his hand, then distractedly glanced down at his plate as he began digging into his dinner.
His hand jerked up and away.
The plate was covered in slimy animal entrails, the reeking head and skeleton of a deboned fish, and other pieces of smelly waste.
“What the hell is this?” Daniel asked.
The waiter answered him in English, “That, sir, looks like shit, and this…” He held his hand out in front of DLR, showed him a device clutched in it. “This looks like a dead man’s switch.” The device was clearly a detonator, the waiter’s thumb was pressed down on a red button, and a wire ran from the device, down the man’s palm, and disappeared into his white coat.
De la Rocha looked up at the waiter.
It took a moment with the trim hair and beard, with the darker skin and the black-framed glasses, but he recognized him.
It was the Gray Man.
The American opened his coat and exposed a crude roped vest with two large bricks of yellow material coated in plastic hanging from it. They looked like bags of sand. He said, softly, “If my thumb leaves this trigger, for even one-tenth of one second, then this ammonium nitrate/fuel oil bomb will detonate, and everyone here will die. Including you.”
* * *
Emilio had been standing against the wall; he could only see the back of the waiter’s coat. He’d checked to make sure it wasn’t the same insolent bastard who had coughed while his jefe was praying a few minutes earlier. Satisfied that this was a new, and hopefully more professional, server, he’d not bothered to pay close attention to the presentation of the food. But now Emilio noticed the two men were in conversation with each other. It was not often that his patrón spoke to a waiter for so long.
Emilio stepped around the side of the man in the white coat, and when he did, he saw Daniel’s wide eyes. Immediately, he reached into his suit coat and rushed the table, recognizing the Gray Man at the same moment. He drew his Venezuelan Zamorano 9 mm pistol and knocked a chair out of the way to press it against the gringo’s head.
De la Rocha raised his hands into the air, panicked now that his bodyguard would shoot the American without hesitation. “¡No! ¡Tranquilo! Tranquilo!” Relax! Relax!
Guns appeared in the hands of everyone in the courtyard. Handguns, sub guns, a pair of pistol-grip shotguns. Some men approached the table while others stepped back and aimed carefully. No one knew what to do, but they all followed their leader’s wishes, and they held their positions.
“Everyone just take a few steps back. Emilio, lower your pistol and step away, but be ready. Spider, keep an eye on this pinche gringo and kill him if anything happens to me.”
Spider Cepeda held his Mac-10 with one hand. He stood ten feet away; the muzzle pointed at the face of the American assassin.
“You aren’t leaving here with your life, pendejo.” He said it slowly and confidently.
FORTY-EIGHT
Court Gentry was fucking freezing. He’d spent three hours in the meat locker, wearing a warm poncho but sitting still in a corner, hiding behind huge sides of beef that hung from the ceiling. He’d slipped into the restaurant at three p.m. with the produce delivery, carrying two backpacks hidden on a hand truck of boxes of fruits and vegetables, then he’d spent a couple of hours in a dry-storage room before finally moving into the walk-in refrigerator as the evening staff went through their afternoon meeting and tasting in the main dining room.
In the walk-in he’d waited until a text came for him from a police officer outside who took money from both Los Trajes Negros and los Vaqueros.
He’d waited thirty minutes more, body shivering and teeth chattering, then he l
eft the refrigerator, dressed in a uniform he’d pulled from a linen rack, and found a rolling cart and some tossed aside fish guts, with which he’d made his entree. Then, still chilled to the bone, he’d headed out into the dining room, looking for Daniel de la Rocha.
* * *
Gentry spoke into Daniel’s ear. “Have your men stand down.”
With a flick of his wrist DLR motioned the rest of Los Trajes Negros back a few steps across the courtyard; they all but disappeared in the dark.
But Court raised a hand. He spoke loud enough now for others to hear. “Not everyone.” He looked back to de la Rocha. “Which one of these guys is the real brains behind your operation?”
De la Rocha’s face flexed like a biceps muscle; Court watched the Mexican’s carotid artery flicker. He spoke through a mouth of clenched teeth. “I make all the decisions.”
“Sure you do, genius. But you and I need to talk business, and I bet there is a guy in this crowd that you would like to have sit in on our little discussion.” Court motioned with his free hand at the skeleton doll ringed by candles in the corner. “Unless, of course… your little Barbie doll can take transcription.” He shook his head and smiled. Displaying a relaxed and “in charge” demeanor. “Seriously. What the fuck is that?”
Somehow Daniel’s fury found a new gear. His face was red, even in the low glow of the paper lanterns hanging from the lines over the courtyard. He hesitated a few seconds, then looked into the dark crowd of men. “Nestor, sientate.” Sit down.
Nestor Calvo sat at the table next to de la Rocha. His salt-andpepper beard sparkled with the sheen of perspiration forming at the skin.
Court looked the older man over for a moment. “Cool. Adult supervision.”
The Gray Man sat at the table, the rolling food cart to his right. De la Rocha asked him, “What did you do to the guy from la CIA?”
“I killed the guy from la CIA.” Gentry shrugged like it was no big deal.
“And the gringo from the embassy? Jerry? He helped you escape, didn’t he?”
“Forget about Jerry. He is an American asshole. You have enough assholes here without importing. I think you’ve taken NAFTA just a step too far.”
“I thought you would be far, far away by now. If you had any brains, you would have run. Why are you here?”
“Let me explain what is about to happen to you, Daniel. And Nestor, pay attention, because I’m counting on you to be the reasonable one. Daniel, I am going to destroy your business. I am going to ruin you. Burn your drugs, kill your middlemen, scare off your suppliers, smash your boats and planes and cars and trucks. I will tear all the profit away from your organization, little by little, bit by bit.”
De la Rocha just smiled. “You do that, and I will kill that little Gamboa bitch.”
“No, you won’t, and I will tell you why you won’t. Because I am not going to touch your family. That is the one thing you can count on. I want Laura back, and all this blowing shit up that I’m about to do is my audition; it’s my proving to you that I can go where I want, do whatever I want, whenever I want. You need to think long and hard about where I might go and what I might do if you do something to Laura. Something to really make me mad.”
“You are doing this all for the girl? ¿En serio?” Seriously?
“Yes. If you return her to me, all the bad stuff stops. You can go on being a crystal meth — trafficking piece of shit to your heart’s content, and I will no longer be in your way.”
De la Rocha’s face was red with anger. After a long time he spoke. “You are dead, maricón. You are dead.”
Gentry shrugged. “Call ten of your top lieutenants and tell them the same thing, because within seventy-two hours it’s a good bet that a lot of them will be.”
“Do you know who we are, Gray Man? We are Los Trajes Negros. We were one of the best-trained units in the Mexican Army. Trained by your military, in fact. I am not just some carterlero from the mountains with ostrich boots and a cuerno de chivo like that cabrón Madrigal. I trained at Fort Benning and Fort Bragg.”
“When you were at Bragg, did you see all those paramilitary forces training there?”
“Yes, and I trained with them. The best commandos in the world.”
“Badasses, one and all. But remember this. Every single one of those special ops organizations has killing me right at the top of their to-do list… They’ve been after me for years, and yet here I sit. You have never been up against someone like me, Daniel. You would do well to keep that in the forefront of your consciousness.”
Nestor Calvo had not spoken. Now he shook his head, leaned slightly forward. Said in Spanish. “But señor, you are just one man.”
Court leaned closer to Nestor. Made long and severe eye contact. “With nothing to lose.”
DLR looked down at the dead man’s switch in the American’s hand. “You think I’m scared of you?”
Gentry smiled, genuinely pleased he had been asked the question. “I think you are fucking terrified. I see straight through that macho image. You are thinking of your family, and you are thinking of the men you left around Laura, and you hope to God you can call them and tell them to stay away from her before they do something that they cannot undo. Because you know what I have done, and you know what I am capable of.
“Everything just changed in your world. You’re no different than thousands of other shitheads around this planet. Your influence, your success, your power — it all comes from fear. If you can’t fill people with fear, then you are nothing. You cease to be. Well, guess what, amigo? You aren’t the scariest thing around here anymore.”
Nestor drummed his fingers on the table. He leaned forward, towards the American. “I suppose you have a plan to get away now?”
“I do.” Court reached into the pocket of his waiter’s coat, pulled out a small mobile phone.
“Four more pounds of ANFO is stashed under a table in this room. As I walk away from the restaurant, I only have to push one button”—he held up the phone—“and every one of you dies. As soon as I disappear from view, you might want to think about running out of here, because I have not decided if this is all worth the trouble. Maybe I’ll just turn you into dog meat tonight and hope your men let Laura go because there is a new law in town.”
De la Rocha looked like he was going to explode from anger. Gentry turned away from him, directed his next words to Calvo, as if the head of Los Trajes Negros was not even there. “You’ll have to keep this guy on a short leash. He’s going to want to tear up the country to find me. That’s fine; he can waste his time and his energy. But you need to keep letting him know how much my reign of terror on your organization is costing him. All I want is the girl. Handing her over to me will not cost you a dime. You can see how that is in your best interests, even if this dumb fuck cannot.” Court stood. “Hopefully, he will listen to you”—he motioned to the Santa Muerte statue in the corner—“and not to that creepy bitch.”
And with that Gentry raised the dead man’s switch high in his left hand, and the mobile phone high in his right. “Tell these assholes to let me walk out of here.”
De la Rocha only nodded slightly; his eyes remained locked on the American. Calvo rose from the table, headed past the fountain and towards the armed men in the courtyard, telling them all to let the gringo leave unmolested.
“I will see you again, Gray Man,” de la Rocha said softly.
“If you do, Daniel, you will end up like your poor friend.”
De la Rocha cocked his head, but Gentry turned away, walked out of the courtyard, past the phalanx of bodyguards. Seconds after that he left the restaurant, both his hands still high in the air.
* * *
“What did he say to you while I was gone?” Calvo asked Daniel upon returning to the table. The rest of the inner circle of the Black Suits closed on their leader.
“Something about me ending up like my friend.” De la Rocha and Calvo looked at each other without speaking for a moment. “What did he me
an by that?” Daniel asked his older employee.
Together, slowly, their heads turned towards the rolling cart.
“Emilio. Check that.”
Emilio stepped to the other side of the rolling cart then used the barrel of his pistol to lift a corner of the linen tablecloth. His eyes narrowed as he squinted. “It’s a head, jefe.”
“A gringo who decapitates.” Calvo said it with his eyebrows high. “He is showing us he can play by Mexican rules.”
“Whose head is it?” asked DLR.
Emilio looked again. Knelt down lower. “I… I think it is Xavier Garza Guerro.” Garza was the highest-ranking police officer in Puerto Vallarta controlled by the Black Suits and a former army colleague of Daniel’s. DLR had known the man for sixteen years. He knew his wife, his kids, his parents.
“Get it out of here.” De la Rocha stood and stormed over to Spider, grabbing him by the lapel of his jacket. “Listen to me! I want him followed, I want him captured, and I want him tortured like nothing you have ever done to anyone!”
“Sí, jefe. I have men in the street ready to follow him until we get you out of here, then we will take him.”
“I swear to you; I want you to have nightmares about what you did to him. I want you to be sick!”
“Sí, jefe.”
“Now go! And do not show your face to me until you have the Gray Man. ¿Me entiendes?” Do you understand me?
“¡Sí! ¡Sí!” Spider Cepeda shot out of the room, his phone rising to his ear as he did so.
Then DLR looked around the room, found Emilio right on his shoulder. “The men on tonight’s advance security team?”
Emilio Lopez Lopez raised his chin. “I have already disarmed them and put them under custody. Tonight I will have this building burnt to the ground, and the manager and maître d’ shot.”
“Fine. But this is your failure.” His finger jabbed the leader of his security forces hard in the chest.
“I understand, mi jefe.” Emilio said it with his head low.
De la Rocha turned around towards Calvo now, who was already speaking on his mobile. “Call the house. Tell them to keep their hands off the Gamboa bitch.”
