Ballistic

by Mark Greaney

  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 relatives 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.”

  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.

  TEN

  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 p
leasantries 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?”