Ballistic (28 page)

“No, he doesn't.”

“It can't be that hard to get into the USA. Your countrymen manage to do it all day long.”

Ramses nodded. “Last year I was in Mexico City, attached to the AFI, the federal detective force. It's like the FBI in los Estados Unidos. We discovered a gringo who worked in the U.S. Embassy's consular office who was selling papers to get into the States. We had everything we needed to arrest this gringo and stop it, but the operation was shut down. We didn't even tell the Americans what we learned.”

“Why not?”

“Why do you think? Mexico makes a ton of money from people going over the border. There was no reason to stop this guy. I figured we would probably try to help him.”

“Okay. So, you guys are shitty neighbors. How does that help us in our—”

“I know who this guy is. You can buy visas for the Gamboas, get them up into the USA.”

Court thought it over for a moment. “What if we don't have any money?”

“I have money.” It was Laura. She'd entered the
mirador
from the second-floor hallway, sat down behind them, listening to three men she did not know forty-eight hours earlier now discuss the fate of her family.

Court turned to her. “You do?”

“There is an army pension for Guillermo, my late husband. I am given a little money every year. I can take it all out at once if I want to, although there is a penalty.”

“How much can you get?”

“Five hundred thousand pesos.”

Court did the math in his head. “Sixty grand?” He looked to Ramses. “Is that enough?”

The
federale
shrugged. “For eight people? No idea. But I'm sure it's enough to get the embassy man's attention.”

Court looked back to Laura. “You would do this? You would give up all that money for Elena and your parents and—”

“Of course I would.” She seemed offended. “This is my family. I would do anything for them.”

“And you'd go to the U.S.?”

She shook her head. “They should go. My mom and dad, Elena and Diego. But not me. My home is Mexico. I do not want to leave.”

“Why not?” Court asked, incredulously.

“I just can't pick up and leave everything behind.”

“Why not?” he repeated himself, then added, “I do it all the time.”

She looked at him a long time in the night. “Then you will not understand what it means to belong somewhere.”

Down below them the truck tried to crank again. Gentry could hear the battery weakening, losing more and more of its charge with each failed turn of the key. After a third long and futile attempt to start the truck, those on the
mirador
heard Ignacio cussing loudly.

“Well, first things first, we're still a long way from getting out of here,” said Court.

Ramses and Martin moved off to other parts of the casa grande; there was an entire west wing surrounding a courtyard near the chapel that needed an occasional patrol, as no
mirador
covered that side. But Laura sat next to Court on the veranda; they drank strong black coffee and looked out together over the back patio.

“This house is something, isn't it?” Laura said after a time.

Gentry chuckled, looked out on the unkempt estate. “Yeah, it's a fucking shithole.”

He felt Laura looking at him for a moment, then she turned away. “I love it. Guillermo and I were going to live here when he finished his tour with the army.”

Dammit, Court. Some time, some day, some
how
, just
try
to say something right. “I mean . . . it's nice . . . just needs to be straightened up a little.”

He heard her laugh softly; it even echoed behind them in the bedroom. It was beautiful to hear, though it somehow did not fit her sad, serious, and reverent personality. “You're right. It would have taken years to fix it up. But Guillermo wanted to take care of his parents, to restart the farm, to have kids here, and to turn it into a happy place.”

“I'm sorry about everything,” Court said.

“Me, too,” she replied.

Two hours later Ignacio was still in the barn working on the truck. Court had relieved Diego at the second-floor window above the front door on the north side of the house. Court lay prone, looking out at the tree line and the windy, rocky drive that snaked down and then disappeared past the dim moonlight's reach on its way to the front gate, a hundred meters or more to the north.

He fingered Luis's old shotgun lying on the tile beside him. He'd given the M1 carbines to the others, had taken some double-aught buckshot shells from one of the shotguns taken from a fallen Tequila
municipale
, but left the man's weapon out on the patio because the barrel had been damaged in the gunfight. Court had found another pump shotgun dropped by a fallen Jalisco state policeman but had been happy with the feel and function of the long, heavy, two-shot relic, so he decided to keep Luis's shotgun as his primary weapon.

He was sleepy, but Luz had just delivered him some more violently strong black coffee, and it would help him along for a few hours more.

He'd need it for the jolt as well as the warmth; it was below fifty degrees, and he wore nothing more than the denim jacket and his damp pants as he lay exposed to the night breeze on the balcony.

Damn, he wanted to get the fuck out of here.

Some progress
had
been made to that end. The battery from Eddie's F-350 had been pulled and brought to the barn by Ernesto and Diego; fresh gas had been siphoned out of the newer vehicle and transferred to the older. It was just a matter of time now before they all piled in like sardines in a can, raced for the front gate with Martin and Ramses leading the way on their motorcycles with their Colt Shorty's blazing, and hoped for a lot of luck to get out of here alive.

Court rubbed his burning eyes, fought sleep for the third time this minute.

He looked down at his watch: 4:06. He knew that if the Black Suits could get another crew assembled in time, then they would come before dawn. There was no way they would not; they had no reason to wait for the light of day.

It was well past the prime time for an attack in normal situations. At first the American was pleased; he hoped that by repelling the first wave his little force had caused the enemy to back off, to leave the hacienda for a while in order to regroup.

But no, that was not it at all. The three a.m. time for normally hitting an enemy position was based on standard guard rotations.

His enemy knew there were not enough here to guard this entire complex in the first place, much less rotate in and out for rest and food.

Yeah, Court realized, his enemies were smarter than he was. He had not even considered the possibility until now. They would hit again before first light. No matter how many or few there were.

There were only twelve in the second wave, but they had better training, better equipment, better intelligence, and a better plan of attack than that first failed attempt. All twelve were
marinos
, Mexican marines, and they'd driven up to the hacienda from their base in Guadalajara on orders from Spider Cepeda himself.

Though they were regular military men, they moonlighted as
sicarios
for the Black Suits. They were well trained in small-unit assault tactics and armed with HK MP5 submachine guns, flash-bang grenades, body armor, and olive drab uniforms that blended well into the green black predawn landscape of this part of the Sierra Madre Mountains. They'd debriefed the survivors of the first assault over the back wall of the casa grande. The shell-shocked “fence posts” who'd scrambled back over the wall to safety without shotgun pellets or 9 mm rounds embedded in their bodies had been ordered to stick around to tell the next crew what they were up against. The marines began gearing up alongside their two-ton truck while the cops nervously smoked and told them all they had seen.

The military men had then given their weapons and radios a final check, broken into three four-man squads, excused themselves from the exhausted and overwhelmed amateurs, and began walking towards the walls of the hacienda.

The four men of Team A, “Antonio” in the Spanish phonetic alphabet or “alpha” in the English phonetic alphabet, breached the hacienda by climbing over a chained gate on the western wall, deep in the tall grass and wild blue agave. They bound towards the darkened house in teams of two, with one pair covering for the other pair while they moved. They made it to a broken-stone grain silo and approached the chapel that jutted out from the western side of the casa grande.

Team Barcelona scaled the rear wall, near the area where the first wave had gone over three hours earlier. Once inside the hacienda grounds, they pivoted to the right, climbed through the wooden fence of the corral, moved behind an old stable of rotten wood, picking their footfalls carefully to keep from stumbling over the stone and lumber and refuse.

Team Carmen breached the hacienda to the east, landed inside the grounds behind the willow trees near the pond. They moved around to the side and then to the front of the building, directed their attention and their progress towards the old stone and wood barn from where they heard an internal combustion engine desperately trying to internally combust.

Within minutes Barcelona had arrived at the trellis that ran along the eastern side of the patio. They checked in by radio with Antonio and found them in position to the west of the casa grande. This team had sent one of its men towards the freestanding chapel near the house to investigate a light that could be seen through cracks in the old stone.

Seven minutes after breaching the wall, three teams of four men were ready to hit the hacienda's defenders simultaneously from three positions.

Court rubbed his eyes again. Started to look down to his watch.

A shout from the other side of the house. A man—
Martin?

The crack of a rifle.

Gentry's discipline allowed him to keep his position and to watch the trees and the driveway in front of him.

Only the tips of the pine trees swayed. There was no more movement on this side of the house.

Damn, damn, damn. All his training told him to hold his ground, not to turn, to trust his plan and his fortifications and his fellow defenders to each stay responsible for his or her field of fire.

If Martin's sector was attacked, Ramses and Laura would be on either side, they could see what was going on, and they could respond much better than he, here on the opposite end of the building.

Trust them. Don't leave your post. Just trust your plan
.

Another shot. And then a full automatic burst from a submachine gun.

Gentry focused his worry, turned it to a concentrated stare into the dark before him.

Nothing. No movement, no attack. Nothing at all.

More gunfire, more shouting behind him.

An explosion. A flash-bang grenade detonating inside the house on the second floor.

Then Laura Gamboa's voice. A shout.

A scream.

Court Gentry rose to his knees, leapt to his feet, hefted the heavy shotgun in his right hand, and he turned and ran back into the house as fast as he could, leaving his post behind.