Ballistic

by Mark Greaney

  Gentry woke from a sleep deeper than any he had experienced in years. He felt the sun warm the bed around him.

  She was there, wrapped up tightly against his body, her little face in the crook of his arm, her left hand flat on his chest. Her breathing, her body’s warmth, the smell of her skin. It was all amazing.

  Court had not even known that skin had a smell.

  She did not move. He looked down at her face and just saw her full lips and the tip of her nose. Her short, jet-black hair lay tussled; a small rubber band held the longest strands tight behind her ears.

  He thought about Eddie, and a panic washed over him. Was this wrong? Emotions of romantic guilt attacked him from nowhere; he’d never felt this way in his life. He thought of standing at his friend’s burial plot, just there to say good-bye, and then, three days later, screwing his friend’s younger sister, the thing in this world his dead friend had most endeavored to protect while alive.

  Her eyes opened, and she looked up at him.

  “Are you okay?” he asked tentatively.

  She kissed him. He forgot his panic.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Late. We need to get moving.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We need a car. We need it gassed and ready to go. As soon as we meet with Pfleger and get the docs, we are heading up towards the border. We’ll sleep in shifts, go straight on through the night. We should make it by three p.m. tomorrow to meet with your family.”

  “We are stealing a car?” she sighed. “You are going to have to help me find a job in the U.S. to pay back all these people for their vehicles.”

  Court realized she assumed he’d be crossing the border with her family. He’d told them he didn’t have papers, but for all she knew that was something he’d arranged with Jerry.

  Shit. He didn’t want to mislead her. But he could not tell her that he would be in as much danger in the United States as she was here in Mexico. New guilt hit him from a new angle. Did she only make love to him because she thought they would be together when this was over?

  Was there any way he could be with her when it was over?

  She squeezed him tight as she yawned and stretched.

  “Do we really have to get up now?” she asked with a smile in her voice.

  Court heard footsteps in the hallway. He tuned them out to answer her.

  “Yes, we do. Grand theft auto in an unfamiliar city is going to require a little time.”

  “Can we go across to la Iglesia de Nuestra Señora? Just for a few minutes?”

  Court sighed. He should have expected that. Somehow with all the sex he forgot about her penchant for church.

  “For fifteen minutes, no more, or we won’t be able—”

  Court stopped talking.

  “¿Qué?”

  Silently he turned his attention towards the door across the room.

  “¿Qué?”

  He sat up quickly, grabbed the Beretta pistol on the side table. Aimed it at the door. It was half hidden behind the television and the chest of drawers. He cocked his head a little but said nothing.

  All was silent for several seconds. Laura did not speak again, even her breathing stopped as she looked at the muscular back of the American sitting on the bed. She noticed a nasty scar on his left shoulder blade, but her heart was in her throat. Had he heard something?

  Court did not move. Kept his weapon trained on the door, his head cocked for noise. He stood slowly, wearing only his boxers, turned his head to the right to get a look out the window at the street below. He kept his pistol trained at the front door.

  He looked down onto Calle Donceles. A few parked cars, no traffic. No passersby. All was quiet. Too quiet for a normal—

  Black boots in his face, dropping from above, swinging towards the window. He started to raise the pistol at the threat but he heard the door explode behind him. His gun barrel was swinging still, caught between the two threats.

  The glass window crashed in; three feet from his bare chest and face, crystalline shards exploded, and the black boots swung in and hit him squarely.

  Gentry flew backwards, the pistol left his right hand and he cartwheeled back. He caught a split-second’s glimpse of the federale who had rappelled through the window; the man had landed hard on his back but he recovered quickly, sat back up, and lifted an MP5 towards the man on the floor across the room.

  To his left Court heard a second explosion, the TV and the chest of drawers flew across the room and crashed against the wall. Behind the wreckage Court saw men file into the room: two, then four, then six. Federales in masks and goggles with sub guns and body armor. They appeared more ominous through the haze of smoke from the charges that had blown in the door and the obstructions.

  There was the crunching of glass as the rappeller scrambled back to his feet.

  Laura was screaming.

  Court raised his hands and spoke to her. “Don’t move! Do what they say! They’ve got us.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  It was hot on the floorboard in the back of the sedan. Three pairs of black boots on Court’s back, ass, and legs kept him facedown; the electrical tape over his mouth, the cuffs securing his hands behind his back, and the black hood over his head only added to the stifling conditions. A few times the sweat in his eyes burned so badly he cried out, muffled as it was by the tape. Each time he made this noise a boot heel in the back of his head quieted him. He felt the cuts on his chest from the window glass, felt the warm wetness of his blood and perspiration on the rubber floor mats under him. He tried to shift his weight forward to his shoulders to relieve the pain, but this just pressed his face tighter into his hood and made it nearly impossible to breathe.

  He felt the tip of the suppressor of an MP5 pressed into the small of his back; it jabbed into his lumbar with every bump in the road.

  The car radio played banda music at full volume; if there was conversation between the men above him, he could not hear it over the loud accordions and crashing cymbals.

  Court assumed Laura must have been tossed into another vehicle; he’d caught a glimpse through the window of several nondescript four-doors pulling in front of the hotel as he was being cuffed and taped up in the hotel room. He’d also stolen a glance at Eddie’s sister just before the hood was slipped on and the lights were turned off. Laura’s already big eyes were wide with panic; the men had flipped her facedown on the bed and cuffed her there.

  She was naked.

  Gentry had no idea if these were real cops or, even if they were real cops, if they were good guys or bad. He did not know where they were taking him; even a born-and-bred ciudadano of Mexico City would not have been able to discern their location after dozens of turns while hooded and facedown.

  Finally, the car stopped, and he was dragged out by his shoulders; the perspiration all over his body made the men’s gloves slip as they wrestled to take hold. Court was frog-marched forward, and he felt the sunlight leave him and heard the echoes of a large room. He continued on, stepped into what felt and sounded like a freight elevator, and went down what must have been at least three floors.

  Once off the elevator, he was pushed forward a few yards and then spun around, his hands were unfastened, and then his body was pressed up against cold metal bars. A fence, perhaps? His arms were simultaneously outstretched and cuffed wide away from his body, two men on each appendage. The insides of his legs were kicked until he spread them, and his ankles were shackled in irons, with his legs spread wide open.

  His back and arms and legs and butt pressed up against cold metal.

  A pair of long, cold sheers entered his boxer shorts. He tried to recoil from the sharp metal, but he could not get away. His underwear was cut from his body. He was totally naked now, chained spreadeagle against cold metal.

  He began to shake in the cold.

  Only then was his hood pulled off his head. Steam obstructed his view for a moment as it poured from his hair and beard; thick beads
dripped from his eyelashes onto his cheeks and tickled as they trickled down through his facial hair to his chin.

  The room was a square, stone basement, twenty by twenty, with a low ceiling and a cement floor. A bare overhead bulb in the center illuminated the middle of the room and the majority of the walls, but left the corners completely black. He smelled the mold in the room, but that was not all.

  He also smelled the unmistakable scent of death. This was a kill house, a torture chamber. There was dried blood on the walls, and the cement floor was stained with black rivulets of blood that led towards the drain in the center of the room.

  Across from Court was the wooden door of the freight elevator. Next to that was a narrow stairwell with no door.

  Four men stood around—two dressed in the uniform of the federal police. They’d removed their masks and goggles and helmets, but their submachine guns hung from their chest rigs.

  The other two men wore leather aprons. They were Mexicans; they were not cops; they looked serious and sinister. One of them was short and fat; his head was bald and covered in sweat that shone in the light above him. He was hard at work on some sort of wheeled table not more than six feet ahead and to the left of Gentry. The other was a young man, perhaps twenty, dressed the same as the older.

  These would be Gentry’s torturers; he was certain of it.

  There were no Black Suits in the room, which Court initially took as a good sign, but he had to search hard for that silver lining. A few feet in front of the iron fence or grate onto which his naked body was now chained, a car battery sat on a dolly, and wires wound their way up to a metal contraption on the rolling table. More coiled wires ran from this machine and ended at large roach clips that were fastened to Gentry’s grate.

  Court had been around. He knew an electroconvulsive torture device when he saw one. And right now, he was bare-assed naked and attached to one.

  “Welcome to hell,” the fat man said in Spanish. “I will be your tour guide as we visit the horrific, agonizing, and slow end to your life.”

  Gentry said nothing.

  “They call me el Carnicerito.” The Little Butcher. The short, fat, bald-headed man said this though he was still distracted by his work; he arranged devices on the rolling table while he talked. Saws, hand drills, a stainless steel mallet that gleamed in the light of the bare bulb. Knives, forceps, kerrisons rongeurs, and other surgical tools covered the horizontal surfaces of the table. Without looking up from his equipment, he continued, “I work for Don Daniel. I produce pain, and I extract information from those reluctant to give it. I am extremely good at what I do.”

  “Your mother must be proud.” Court affected the macho comment, but he wasn’t feeling it. He pulled and kicked against his restraints, and he could tell that he would not be getting himself off of this contraption.

  In short, he was fucking toast.

  El Carnicerito just smiled. “This is my protégé.” He waved a fat hand towards the young man in the apron. Then he returned to his work at the table. He turned a dial on the machine slightly, and Court felt electricity tingle his spine. The fat man looked at a dial on the face of the black device. Apparently, it was just a test, because he inflicted no pain. He turned the dial back down and looked up at his victim.

  “The electricity is just one measure I have at my disposal. Within the next few hours you will endure indescribable suffering.”

  El Carnicerito stepped forward, close to Court’s body, and reached up with a rubber glove, began picking glass out of the cuts in the American’s chest inflicted by the federale coming through the window. Court winced with pain but tried to keep his face as impassive as possible; he did not want to encourage this sadist by showing how much it hurt.

  The man smiled; Court could plainly see that an idea had entered the butcher’s head. He turned quickly and stepped over to the protégé, and he delivered a quiet command. His subordinate nodded and hurriedly left the room via the stairwell.

  As he ran up the stairs and the echoes of his footfalls began to die off, new footsteps clicked down from above. Two men, Gentry could tell, one wearing heavy boots and the other soft shoes.

  Within seconds the two new men arrived in the dungeon. One was a Black Suit. Young and well-groomed, he wore the short hair, goatee, and mustache combo common with the leadership of the criminal organization. An HK UMP submachine gun hung from a sling over his right shoulder.

  The man’s fine suit and clean face contrasted with the sick sights and smells of this basement hellhole.

  And the man next to him contrasted with the dungeon as well. He was American. White, thin, curly brown hair. He wore a wrinkled short-sleeved dress shirt and khakis.

  Court rolled his eyes.

  Jerry Pfleger.

  Court scowled at him as he stepped into the light. Dryly, Court said, “My fellow American.”

  The young American embassy staffer looked around the room, clearly taken aback by where he found himself. He was shocked, out of his league, and frightened. He tried to mask it, but Court saw the horror on his face.

  “Why is he still alive?” Jerry asked the men in Spanish as he moved into the room.

  Pfleger kept looking around the room; clearly, he could smell the death, see the stains on the walls and floor. He knew what this place was. What went on there. He shook it off and looked at Court. “I’m a businessman, dude. It’s the American way. I insisted on coming here to . . . protect my interests in this enterprise.”

  Court said, “They are going to kill the girl; they want to kill her sister-in-law and her unborn baby.”

  Jerry nodded. Clearly, he at least suspected this if he did not know it for sure. “Sucks to be them.”

  “You did this for money?”

  Jerry nodded then shrugged. “It’s more than money, actually. I am making a statement.”

  “What statement?”

  “The statement is, dude, I hate it here.”

  “You hate Mexico?”

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  Gentry did not respond.

  “Yeah, well, you’re banging a hot little beaner, so you’d like it, wouldn’t you?”

  “You are a trained diplomat? Christ.”

  “Have you ever been to Denmark?”

  Court lied. “No.”

  “Denmark is the shit. I went to college in Denmark; I speak Danish, know the backstreets of Copenhagen like the back of my hand. I get hired by State, and where do those idiots at Foggy Bottom fucking send me? Denmark? Finland? Norway? Fuck no! Mexico! Are you kidding me? Four years punching visas for beaners. Fuck that! As long as I’m stuck down here, I’m going to make a little dough along the way.”

  “And you’re making money by handing Laura over to de la Rocha?”

  Jerry smiled. “Oh . . . you don’t get it, do you.”

  “Get what?”

  “I’m handing the girl to DLR, yeah. But that’s a freebie. I’m making my money handing you to the CIA.”

  Gentry shook his head. Slowly, he said, “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. Think about that for a second. What is Langley going to do when they find out a consular affairs officer is working with the Black Suits? You’ll never get that posting to Copenhagen.”

  Jerry smiled again, like he was one thousand times smarter than the naked man in chains.

  “Los Trajes Negros do the handoff to the CIA, and then they give me the reward. I get the reward, and I’m outta here. Outta Mexico, outta the State Department.”

  “You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?”

  “I have a deal with the man himself. DLR.”

  “Deals with the devil usually don’t pay off in the long run, kid.”

  “He’s a businessman. I’m a businessman. It’s all good.” Then he looked to the Little Butcher, who’d been standing patiently as the men spoke English. In Spanish Jerry said, “That some sort of electricshock machine?”

  El Carnicerito nodded.

  “Then juice this pendejo once for me, boss
.”

  The Little Butcher smiled and grabbed an old leather wallet from the table. “Open your mouth, please. We cannot have you biting your tongue off when we still need you to talk.”

  Court did as he was told; he knew what was coming, and he knew the leather in his mouth would help. He moved his tongue away from his teeth, bit down hard, and the Little Butcher turned the dial.

  Current ripped through Court’s body, from his toes to his anus to his neck. His back arched, his eyes protruded, and a vibrato cry emitted from deep in his throat behind the wallet.

  After a few seconds the dial was rotated back down. Fresh sweat shone on the prisoner’s face and chest.

  The torturer stopped for just a moment. Pulled the wallet from his prisoner’s mouth. “Where is Elena Gamboa?”

  “¿Cómo se dice ‘fuck you’?”

  The wallet was returned to Gentry’s mouth, and he bit down. Electricity pulsed through his body again. His head slammed backwards uncontrollably, slamming his skull into the iron grate behind him.

  The torture was stopped. The wallet removed. The question repeated.

  “Where is Elena Gamboa?”

  “Kiss my—”

  The wallet was put back in place. The shocks grew stronger, the pain more intense; the muscle spasms wrenched his body in all directions.

  The Black Suit and the two federales looked on.

  Jerry Pfleger looked away.

  Minutes later a technical glitch in the machinery allowed Court a respite from the agony. The Little Butcher worked on his electroconvulsive device, and the protégé returned down the stairs with a bag of groceries.

  Gentry’s blurred vision followed the young man’s movements as he stepped to the table and pulled items from the bag.

  An empty plastic pitcher, a large bag of salt, a bottle of rotgut tequila, and a large bag of limes.

  Court groaned and let the now shredded leather wallet fall from his mouth to the floor. Immediately, he regretted his show of dread. It would only bolster the fat man. The Little Butcher turned his attention from the machine, and he began slicing the limes in half. The protégé sliced as well; together they looked like a couple of bartenders in a beachside cabana bar. Helped by his assistant, together the two men squeezed the juice into the pitcher and then tossed the peels in behind the juice.