Ballistic

by Mark Greaney

  “That’s where we’re going,” Court announced to the family.

  He was back in charge.

  TWENTY-TWO

  If it were just Court, he would have been long gone by now, within sixty seconds after the decision had been made to head to a farm up in the mountains. But it wasn’t just him; there were six others who would be making this trip, and to a guy like the Gray Man, it felt like he had a long tail sticking out of his ass, a tail that would trail way behind him, exposed and catching on everything as he moved. He couldn’t just walk out through the gate in the back garden, out into the back alleyway, and disappear in the dust. He had to wait for three women, a kid, a fat drunk, and an old man to get their shit together. He’d tried to rush them at first, but they only agreed with him that they didn’t have time to waste and then continued picking things up and putting them back down as they scurried throughout the house.

  While Court waited, he pulled guard duty; he had the revolver with three rounds in it. He kept it in the small of his back under his shirt as he stood out by Eddie’s truck. The truck was large enough for the seven of them, barely, but it was also a powerful four-wheel drive vehicle that could go off-road if necessary. It even had massive flood lamps on the roof of the cab that might also come in handy on rough mountain roads. Diego had shown Court around the cab, how to operate the controls for the lights and the winch, how to use the key fob so that he could start the engine remotely without putting the key in the ignition.

  It sure as hell was not Gentry’s first choice, driving around in a big brash vehicle known to the bad cops who might well be targeting this family, but he’d at least had Diego change out the front and back plates with Laura’s little Honda two-door. He hoped this would be enough subterfuge to get them a few hours clear of San Blas.

  As Court waited impatiently for his “tail,” he kept his eyes on the gate at the end of the little driveway. He’d only stood there a minute or two when a middle-aged San Blas municipal policewoman appeared at the gate and peered through it at him. Court remembered her from the dinner the evening before; she’d been one of the police who’d stood around in the back garden. She’d hugged Laura several times; something he’d noticed, no doubt, because he’d been staring at Laura. Court nodded at her and gave her a quick wave. She just stared back at him. Her demeanor had changed since the previous evening, and he wondered what she knew about his involvement in the events in Puerto Vallarta.

  We need to go! He said it to himself, because saying it again to the Gamboas would be a waste of time.

  The policewoman stepped away after a few seconds, but then another San Blas cop stepped up to the gate. This man soon wandered off as well, but not long after, Court heard a police radio squawk in the street on the other side of the wall, and he knew the policeman, and possibly the policewoman, were still standing out there. He hoped they were here to protect the Gamboa family, although there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot they could do with their stupid batons if the Black Suits showed up.

  A third and a fourth cop pulled up in a battered white pickup truck. The men climbed out of the cab, and like the others, they just stood out in the street. Diego came out of the house, and Gentry helped him throw two big backpacks in the bed of Eddie’s F-350.

  Two more unarmed officers pedaled up on bicycles and looked through the gate. Court felt like a monkey in the zoo with all the eyes on him through the iron bars. He detected nervousness in the mannerisms of the municipales as they looked up the drive while speaking to their colleagues. Finally, one of them, perhaps the senior man, stepped up and stared Gentry down through the bars. Court decided to find Ernesto so he could talk to them.

  He stepped back inside, walked through the entire house, was annoyed to find Laura leading everyone but Ernesto in yet another prayer in the living room, so he stormed out into the back garden. Here he found the old man just sitting in the back yard, at the table next to Eddie’s Boston Whaler restoration project.

  He was crying, sobbing in solitude.

  Fuck, thought Court, like we have time for this.

  “Perdóname, Ernesto.” His voice was soft but imploring. “The policía are out front.”

  The old man looked at Gentry. Just said, “I lost another son and two brothers today.”

  The American had no response other than, “I am sorry.”

  “My daughter.”

  “Laura?”

  “Will you protect her?”

  “I’ll do whatever I can. For all of you.”

  Gamboa reached a hand out and ran it across the smooth hull of Eddie’s Boston Whaler. “Please, Jose. Please help me save the rest of my family.”

  “I’ll watch out for Lorita. You better go see what the cops want.”

  Ernesto stood, reached out, and took the American in a tight embrace. Court held himself stiff and wooden; he couldn’t imagine the pain residing in the old fisherman’s heart, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  Ernesto walked through the house and then out front towards the gate; Court followed him, watched his movements from behind, and saw the unbearable loss the old man had endured manifest itself in low shoulders and a hunched neck. Eddie’s dad looked physically quite robust, even at his advanced age. But mentally he was frail.

  The old man unlocked the gate and opened it; the heavy-framed mustachioed officer stood in front of him.

  “Sergeant Martinez. Have you heard what happened?”

  “Sí, Señor Gamboa. I am very sorry.” The two men hugged stiffly. Court remained back by the truck; he did not want his presence, and any suspicion it may cause, to create problems.

  Ernesto said, “It is not safe for us here. Los Trajes Negros tried to kill us today. We will be leaving immediately.”

  The police sergeant looked up the street a moment. He then said, “I’m sorry, Ernesto, but I must ask that you do not leave San Blas.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well . . . the truth is I do not know. We have received a call from the director of the Nayarit state police in Tepic; he has ordered me to ask you to stay.”

  Ernesto nodded. “I see.”

  The rest of the family filed out the front door now. They carried various packs and purses and boxes, straining the limits of what Eddie’s pickup could handle along with seven passengers. They loaded up the truck, and Laura and Elena soon made their way out into the street to stand with Ernesto. Shortly, they were followed by the rest of the clan. Ernesto and the sergeant continued to discuss the arrangement.

  The sergeant was courteous, but he requested that the family come with him and his officers to the local station, where they would await further instructions.

  Ernesto thanked him for the offer of protection, but he did not instruct his family to go along with the municipales.

  An extremely congenial standoff began to develop there on the hot street.

  Gentry stepped into the crowd, anxious to get his entourage moving. Enough with this polite bullshit, he thought to himself. Though friendly and hardly threatening themselves, these cops, by delaying their escape from the Black Suits, were quickly becoming a threat to Court’s operation. He spoke Spanish. “Sergeant. You are asking them to stay. And they are telling you no. There is nothing left to discuss. Adios.” He looked to the family. “Everyone in the truck. We are leaving.”

  The police sergeant said, “Señor, you are free to go. We were not told to keep you here, but the familia Gamboa needs to come with us to the station.” He turned back to Ernesto Gamboa. “We will protect you all there. Come this way.” The policeman smiled at them and motioned to the pickup, as if all seven of them should climb in the bed. This vehicle was barely half the size of Eddie’s big rig.

  “Are they under arrest?” Court asked.

  “Of course not. We would just like to watch over them for now.”

  “They aren’t going anywhere, except with me. Now. Get out of the way.”

  “Amigo, if you are interfering with police business, I
can arrest you.”

  “You can try.” Court stared the heavy man down, but the machismo of the officer was something that Gentry hadn’t considered. Court could stomp the out-of-shape middle-aged man into the dust without breaking a sweat, but this dude wasn’t going to back away from a physical confrontation.

  The two men held hard eye contact. Martinez said, “Let me see your papers.”

  Gentry did not blink. “I’m a little light on papers.”

  “Passport? Entry card?”

  Court just shook his head, his steely stare fixed. “Nada.”

  “How did you get in the country?”

  “I bribed one of your colleagues down in Chiapas into letting me come over the Guatemalan border. There seem to be a lot of dirty cops in Mexico.”

  The sergeant’s mustache twitched with a facial tick, but the rest of his body stood as still as stone. The two men glared at each other for a long time. Court could almost see the wheels turning in this man’s head: How much trouble is this gringo going to make?

  Ernesto stepped forward, broke the staring contest, defused the impending encounter. “Bueno, Sergeant, everything is fine. We accept your offer of protection. We will come with you.”

  “Don’t get in that truck.” Court said it to Ernesto, but the old man and his compliant wife walked towards the police vehicle. Two local cops lowered the back gate and prepared to help the couple up into the rear. Court repeated himself to Elena as she passed him in the street. She looked nervous and confused but resigned to the fact they would not be rushing out of San Blas at the moment after all.

  Laura passed him now. She spoke to Gentry softly. “These are our friends. They have nothing to do with the narcos.”

  “But they can’t protect you. If the sicarios come, or if the federales want to take you away, they can’t stop them. If the state police or the army—”

  Just then a rumble up the street turned everyone’s heads. Three olive drab pickup trucks turned off the road from the plaza and onto Canalizo, the Gamboas’ street. Standing in the beds and leaning on the cab’s roof in each vehicle were two Mexican Army soldiers with bulky green flak jackets and large black G3 rifles. Behind them in the truck beds were two more armed soldiers facing the rear, their weapons trained on the street. Counting the driver and a passenger in each cab, Court realized eighteen guns and gunners had just arrived on the scene.

  “Or the army,” Court repeated, more to himself than to Laura.

  His three .357 Magnum bullets seemed so much worse than nothing now.

  The army vehicles pulled to a stop, and the soldiers climbed out and jumped off, began speaking with the six San Blas cops, who now seemed ridiculously unprepared to protect anyone, outfitted as they were with Billy clubs and baby blue polo shirts.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Five minutes later nothing had been settled—in fact, the situation had turned even more precarious. Another pickup full of local cops had arrived, so now eleven. San Blas municipales now lined up against eighteen National Defense Army soldiers. The police sergeant and an army lieutenant argued in the middle of the street, politely at first, but now the discussion had become heated.

  Behind them a scuffle broke out between the two sides. A soldier had leaned against one of the municipales’ pickups, and a young cop had shoved him off of it. The lieutenant shouted at his men, and they raised their weapons on the police.

  There was enough testosterone and machismo on the street to ignite a fight as big as what went down in Puerto Vallarta earlier in the day.

  Ignacio Gamboa, Eddie’s brother, had been leaning against the wall of his brother’s house, taking advantage of the slight shade there. When the guns came up, the big man raised his hands in surrender. When no one else followed suit, he lowered them slowly.

  Court discerned from the army lieutenant’s arguing that he had been ordered by his superiors at their base in Puerto Vallarta to take the Gamboas back down to PV. And the San Blas cops made it clear that they had been told by their superiors to keep the family here until the Jalisco state police could make it up the coast to pick them up and then return the Gamboas to the Puerto Vallarta police for questioning about the shoot-out at the Parque Hidalgo.

  The Gamboa family did not want to go with either group. Court saw that Ernesto and his family found it suspicious that both organizations represented here in the street claimed to be doing the bidding for the same organization down in PV, but their orders were, essentially, in direct opposition to each other.

  Yeah, thought Court, this is bullshit. At the very minimum one of the two groups here fighting for control of Eddie’s family was lying. It was not hard for him to imagine that both groups were working for narcos or the corrupt elements in their organizations, either directly or unwittingly. As the standoff turned personal between the two sides, as the intractable argument turned to threats and more shoving and angrier glares between the opposing forces, Gentry felt more and more certain this power struggle playing out in the dusty afternoon street had nothing to do with jurisdictional authority—it had to do with a bounty de la Rocha had placed on the Gamboas’ heads, and both groups, or at least their masters, were determined to earn it.

  The Gamboas and Gentry stood in the street in front of the house. The pickup was packed up and ready to go in the drive; Court even considered briefly trying to load up the family while the argument continued and simply driving away, but when the soldiers formed into squads on either side of the road, he nixed the idea. No, they would just sit here and wait to see who would win this argument, who would win the prize of the familia Gamboa.

  The municipal police could not possibly win in a fight, but the big, angry Sergeant Martinez was nothing if not an alpha male, and he would not back down.

  Then the distant drone of finely tuned engines rolled in from the north and filled the air. The sound continued, grew; the machines sounded like nothing else in this little town of old cars and beater trucks with slapdash motors and dirt bikes that spewed more gray smoke than a locomotive. The riflemen standing in the pickups turned their gun barrels towards the north in the direction of the approaching machines but looked to one another and their commanding officer for guidance.

  Court knew that if he were an outsider, it would have been comical to watch thirty-six people, none of whom had any idea who was coming or what they would do when they got here, just stand around, trying to look resolute and tough, knowing that any new attendee to this party might just change everything.

  Two motorcycles turned onto Canalizo Street from Sinaloa Street, the road in front of the Plaza Mayor. Even at one hundred yards Court recognized the uniforms, the helmets, the masks, and the dark goggles of the Policía Federal. Their bikes were white with green trim, and Gentry saw they were powerful Suzuki crotch rockets; the men rumbled quickly and confidently towards the crowd that had gathered there in the street in front of the Gamboa home.

  It was obvious. Even though the two federales were vastly outnumbered, as far as these two dudes were concerned, they were in charge.

  Gentry had little doubt these ninja-dressed bastards were from the same unit of men he’d shot up three and a half hours earlier in Vallarta. He wondered if these two were the very same sicarios who had stood on the top of the stairs gunning down the GOPES families trying to escape from the park.

  He thought it a good bet that they were.

  “Hooray, we’re saved.” He said it sarcastically under his breath. For a moment, a brief moment, he considered slipping away, backing into the Gamboas’ driveway, and then ducking out the gate of the rear garden. He could leave this all behind; he could get away.

  He could run.

  But he did not run.

  The two men parked their vehicles in the middle of the road. They wore Colt 635 SMGs on their backs, muzzle down, and black pistols in drop-leg holsters. Their boots were black and shiny; they wore sunglasses and helmets and ski masks obscuring 100 percent of their faces. They lowered their kickstands as one, tu
rned off their engines simultaneously, and stepped off their bikes in perfect unison. They moved into the scrum of pueblo police and regular army enlistees with a calm confidence and an undeniable air of authority.

  First the federal cops walked right through the soldiers, right past the Gamboa family, and right up to the sergeant in charge of the municipal police. One of the new arrivals did the talking; he spoke softly to the heavyset cop. Martinez started to argue back, but the federale silenced him, placed a friendly gloved hand on the man’s shoulder, and continued speaking.

  Martinez tried again, puffed his chest out this time, but the smaller federale just shook his head, continued speaking softly but authoritatively.

  After no more than sixty seconds in conversation, the municipale sergeant nodded, turned back to the other men and women in the polo shirts and ball caps, and ordered everyone to return to their previous duties. This matter was settled.

  The Feds were taking over.

  It was no surprise to Gentry that the San Blas police were the first to back down. The sergeant seemed disappointed, either because he knew how angry his bosses would be with him or because he knew he would not be receiving the bounty he’d been promised by the Black Suits, but he appeared nonetheless thankful that a higher authority had come to relieve them from the standoff that had been brewing between themselves and the soldiers.

  But the departure of the poorly motivated guys and girls with the sticks did not exactly fill Court Gentry with confidence. He kept his eyes on the heavy battle rifles waving in his direction.

  The pickup trucks and the bicycles and the foot patrolmen melted away quickly, and the more loquacious federale now turned and began talking to the army lieutenant. There was arguing and shouting on the part of the soldier, but only a calm and assertive voice on the side of the law enforcement officer. Court could barely understand a word of either end of the conversation, but he could tell the ninja was saying that the Gamboa family and the gringo were to be taken back to PV, and he and his colleague would be escorting the family and the gringo there.