Ballistic (29 page)

Only by pure dumb luck did he see the first assassin. Court ran into the dark living room along the western wall; the archway to the kitchen was just ahead and on his left, on his right the archway to the formal dining room. He'd planned on shooting past this room to hit the stairs to make his way to the landing and Laura's position down the hall.

But there in the dark, not ten feet ahead in his path, the black tip of a weapon's barrel appeared from the dining room. Gentry reacted in a single bound, let his feet fly out ahead of him, and he dropped to the cold stone tile like a ballplayer sliding into home plate. He slid on past the dining room's archway on his right side, his long shotgun barrel up high towards the threat. As he slid into the archway, he saw the
sicario
in the dark; the man had obviously heard a noise, but he had not yet lowered his weapon towards its source.

Court pressed his shotgun's muzzle into the marine's belt buckle as Court stopped there on the ground, pulled one of the triggers, and pumped nine .33-caliber rounds into and through the man's midsection, nearly ripping him in two and sending him flying backwards through the air behind the echoing boom and short, wide flame. His shredded body landed flat on the dining room table. There it bucked and spasmed as the electrical current from his central nervous system trickled out to his dying muscles.

Gentry rolled up to his knees before the man even came to rest on the table. He had not seen which way the
sicario
's weapon had flown, and he did not want to waste time searching for it in the darkness, so he got back up and ran on, reloading the smoking barrel of his big gun as he reached the staircase.

He ascended three steps in a bound.

More firing, from two locations now. At the top of the stairs he turned right, heard an incredible blast ahead in a room off the hallway. Through smoke and dust and darkness, he saw Laura Gamboa backing up quickly from the master bedroom. Her pistol was out in front of her, but Court could plainly see it had locked open after firing its last round.

Court shouldered up to her, she stumbled backwards towards him in the hallway, and he caught her before she fell to the ground. At first he worried that she'd been shot, but then he recognized the telltale effects of a concussion grenade. Her pupils were dilated, and she wobbled wildly on her knees. “How many?” He asked. Her body was small but sinewy and muscular; he helped her regain a standing position.

She recovered a little and looked at him. “I don't know.
Marinos
. They just appeared in the hallway!”

“They are in the house?”

“
¡Sí!
They are everywhere!”

Court grabbed Laura roughly by the arm, turned, and ran back up the hall, away from the
mirador
and towards the eastern part of the house, running past the landing overlooking the darkened living room.

Gunfire in the near distance did not stop Ignacio Gamboa from making one last adjustment to the carburetor. Neither did the tears fogging his vision and streaming down his face. By the light of a single red candle positioned on the engine, he finished his final turn of the screw. He shut the hood seconds later, staggered around towards the open passenger door, and pulled the half-empty bottle of clear anejo tequila off the rusted roof of the old Dodge truck.

He took a long, gulping swig.

Cracks and snaps and pops of weapons of differing calibers grew in frequency back behind him in the casa grande as the battle intensified.

Ignacio spun, threw the tequila bottle across the barn; it slammed against the stone wall and shattered into wet crystalline shards. He then climbed behind the wheel of the old Dodge and reached for the key. With a single turn the truck fired; the engine coughed and missed here and there, but the engine's power was strong enough and constant enough to trust the vehicle.

Ignacio put his head in his hands and cried.

He had known for the last hour, all along while he worked, that he would get the truck started, he would get behind the wheel, he would put the transmission into drive, and he would drive the fuck out of here and leave everyone behind.

His parents, his sister, his nephew.

His brother's unborn son.

Nothing he could do could possibly save them. And this was the only way to save himself.

He turned on the headlights.

No one survived a death warrant by the Black Suits. Staying with his family would be suicide, and suicide required a strength Ignacio Gamboa knew well he did not possess. He was not his little brother Eduardo, valiantly fighting his enemies and always providing for his family and friends.

And he was not his little sister, Lorita, giving of herself and relying on her faith.

No, Ignacio Gamboa had neither the gift of valor nor the gift of faith. He was just a man, just a weak man, and he was scared.

He was more like his brother Rodrigo. Weak, scared, looking out for himself and taking what others would give to him.

He'd seen Rodrigo shot through the forehead yesterday morning in the Parque Hidalgo, watched his brains blow apart. Ignacio was like his brother Rodrigo in many respects, but he did not want to be so much like his brother that he ended up dead.

No, Ignacio told himself. He would not die. He would run, and he would live!

Ignacio hadn't mentioned it to the others, but he knew a place to go where Los Trajes Negros would not get them. He had friends who lived up in Durango, in Madrigal country. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of villages there where DLR and his Italian-suit-clad soldier boys would not dare go. Yes, if Ignacio made it up into the Sierra Madres of Durango, he'd have to work for los Vaqueros, he'd have to grow pot or coke or opium, or traffic pot or coke or heroin or meth, or kill others over pot or coke or heroin or meth, but what was the big deal? Better that than ending up like Rodrigo or Eduardo.

He did not tell his family before, because they would not go with him. And he did not tell them now, because they would not go with him.

He'd go alone.

He wiped tears from his eyes with his hairy, sweaty, meaty forearm, and he shoved the vehicle into gear.

He'd planned on just smashing through the closed double doors at the front of the barn, but they creaked open in front of him. Two men appeared in his headlights.

They raised weapons towards him.

“No!” Ignacio Gamboa stomped on the gas.

The two
sicarios
opened fire with MP5s, blasting the windshield and the hood and perforating the heavy man behind the wheel, riddling his spasming, convulsing body with brass-jacketed lead as the truck rolled forwards and past them, veered to the left as his face slammed down on the steering wheel, slowed as his dead foot slid off the gas pedal, and came to rest gently against the stone fountain in the center of the driveway's roundabout.

The
sicarios
reloaded their rifles and fired again into the fat man's twitching body.

Inez Corrales was not where she was supposed to be. Thirty minutes earlier she and Elena and Luz had been in the cellar, as directed by the gringo, lying on bedding, and by the light of a single
veladora
, they had prayed and talked of their lost loved ones. But after an hour there she told the other ladies that she needed to use the bathroom, so she walked down the hallway, past Ernesto Gamboa, who was dozing on the stone steps. At the top of the stairs she passed young Diego, lying on the kitchen floor but awake, and she told him she would be right back. But she entered the living room, crossed it to a long hallway that led to the western wing of the casa grande.

She passed through a small open-air courtyard, walked down a colonnade of cool stone walls, entered a dusty storeroom on the far side, and made her way in the dark towards a doorway leading to the outside.

The night was still save for a gentle cool breeze; she followed a stone footpath overgrown with weeds and moneda vines, took this disused trail to the old chapel. She opened the rotten wooden door slowly; she dared not make a sound that would alert the American or the policemen that she had left the casa, lest they come and take her back to the cellar. When she stepped inside, she closed the door tight so that it would block out any candlelight.

She'd brought a lighter, and she used it to light a
veladora
, which she took to the little altar there on the far wall, and she knelt, slowly so that the knee rest did not creak or even snap from her weight.

She lit a few more
veladoras
, just enough to illuminate the brass crucifix in front of her. Slowly the scent of candle wax and burning wick blended with the mold and dust in the air, and seventy-nine-year-old Inez Corrales Jimenez began to pray.

Gunfire erupted outside soon after. She turned back towards the door, eyes wide in the low light, but she calmed herself.

Turned back to her duty.

She had come alone to the chapel, to pray for her husband, dead now just three hours. She would pray for him here, in the chapel where he had been christened as a boy, where they had come to light candles right after their wedding in 1957, where their own boy, Guillermo, had learned to love Jesus.

The guns outside did not change the beauty and importance of this place in her life, to her family.

She turned back to the crucifix, began praying aloud, a tall glass
veladora
clutched in her hand.

The door flew open behind her; the draft of air whipped the candlelight in the small chapel, sending long shadows across the walls in a back-and-forth jolt.

She stiffened in surprise and fear, but she did not turn back to look. Only lowered her head and quickly made the sign of the cross over her body.

A marine
sicario
shot her once in the base of the skull with a Colt .45 pistol. Her tiny, aged, frail body lurched forward across the altar, came to rest at the foot of the crucifix, the candle in her hand spun through the air and extinguished with the movement.

Diego and his grandfather lay at the top of the staircase into the kitchen, and they fired their carbines at a figure in the living room. The man had shot at them first; Diego knew with certainty neither
tía
Laura, the bearded gringo, nor the two
federales
who'd worked for
tío
Eduardo would do that, so he determined this man in the dark behind the sporadic muzzle flashes to be their enemy.

The sixteen-year-old boy and the seventy-year-old man did not have any training in such things, so they did not space themselves apart properly. Their shoulders literally touched as they fought, affording their attacker the luxury of a single target at which to shoot. Also, they did not know to cover for each other as they reloaded; instead they just fired when they saw fit, stopped when they saw fit, and reloaded when they needed to do so. This created long, dangerous lulls in the fight, during which their enemy could creep closer to find a better angle of fire.