Ballistic

than God’s nature had helped his body forget about such banal trivialities as the desire for a pill’s relaxation.

But there was a downside. He had come to the realization that the things which he had sought—stability, relative safety, a routine—did not satisfy him. It disgusted him to admit it, but when young Mauro came and told him about the arrival of the manhunter, he’d felt an undeniable sense of relief wash over his body.

Action. Adrenaline. Purpose.

Court Gentry did not like it, but he could no longer deny it. After the Amazon village, after the absurd relief of an attack by choppers full of gunmen, one thing was obvious to him.

Court Gentry was the Gray Man, and the Gray Man lived for this shit.

Court had been sitting on a plastic chair with his head back on the greasy wall and his feet up on his canvas bag. But he sat up to move his back, to flex and then stretch the muscles high in his left shoulder where scar tissue from an arrow wound bothered him, the adhesion of the tissue needing a good daily stretch to stay pliant.

The evening news came on the little television, and Court distractedly listened to it without looking at the screen, just picking up words here and there as he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around his body to stretch the muscles under his scapulas.

The words Puerto Vallarta did not catch his attention, neither did yacht nor explosion.

But the Spanish word asesinato caused him to turn his head. He had an acute professional interest in stories about assassination.

He watched video of smoldering wreckage in the ocean, taken from a helicopter at dawn. Then a picture of a handsome Hispanic male in an impeccable black three-piece suit. The newscaster said the man’s name was Daniel de la Rocha, and there was speculation that he was the target of a sanctioned murder by the Mexican Federal Police. Court couldn’t understand it all, but he did pick up that de la Rocha had survived and the police who had bombed the yacht had all died.

Wow, Court thought. That was a fucked-up hit. Why blow up the yacht? Why not just shoot the son of a bitch on land?

The image on the screen changed again, displayed an official photo of a man in a police uniform sitting in front of the Mexican flag. He wore a smart hat, medals adorned his uniform coat, and his clean-shaven face was serious and stern.

Court cocked his head a fraction of an inch. Blinked twice rapidly. Otherwise, he did not move a muscle. He just watched.

The newscaster continued speaking over the cop’s image, and Gentry concentrated on the words, tuned into the grammar, and did his very best to understand.

“Sources say Major Eduardo Gamboa of the Policia Federal’s special operation’s group led the attempt on the life of Daniel de la Rocha. As previously stated, Gamboa and all his men perished in the explosion of the yacht, along with four of DLR’s bodyguards and three crewmen of La Sirena. Only de la Rocha and two associates survived.”

Eduardo Gamboa. “Eduardo Gamboa.” Court whispered it softly. The image left the screen, a commercial selling mobile phone plans appeared, but Gentry still saw the face.

“Eduardo Gamboa.” He said it again softly. Then said, “Eddie.”

Court blinked again, dropped his bearded face into his hands, and thought back to the month he spent in hell.

LAOS

AUGUST 2000

Four soldiers in army green ponchos pulled the American out of the back of the truck and shoved him through the thunderstorm, up the muddy trail. He stumbled once on the pathway to the wooden shack: his manacled hands and feet forced him to move slower than his minders found reasonable, and his long, rain-soaked hospital gown and bare feet hardly promoted sure footwork on the slick stones. One Laotian prodded him in the back with his old SKS rifle to encourage Gentry to pick up the pace. Once under the porch roof of the shack, Court dropped to his knees, but the guards yanked him back up and left him teetering there while the door was unlocked. He swayed with the wind of the storm as he stood and waited; finally, they moved him inside the building.

The soldiers took off their ponchos and hung them on wall pegs while an officer came out from behind his desk and unlocked a door to a stairwell that descended into darkness. Court teetered again, nearly tipped over, but strong hands on his back and shoulders guided him down the narrow stairs. At the bottom another locked door was opened, Gentry was pushed forward onto a brick floor, and his shackles were removed. The four soldiers unlocked an iron cell and shoved him inside.

He dropped in the corner of the cell, and they left him there in his wet hospital gown, the metal bars clanging shut behind him. The soldiers slammed the basement door behind him, locked it, and then retreated up the steps.

Gentry had landed on moldy sawdust; he’d caught a mouthful of it and spat it back out as he lay on his side. He opened his eyes and struggled to look around. A folded up pair of baby blue pajamas lay on the floor next to him; he could just make them out. There was a faint light emanating from a ventilation slit high on the wall above him; only a trace of dim illumination tracked down softly to where Gentry lay, but it did nothing to reveal the room around him.

He couldn’t see an inch beyond his arm where it lay outstretched on the sawdust.

“Shit,” he mumbled to himself. “Fucking perfect.”

“English?” A man’s voice called hopefully from the dark in front of him, from inside the bars of the cell, maybe a dozen feet from the tip of Court’s nose.

Gentry did not respond.

After a while he heard movement, the sound of a person sitting up, clothing rubbing against the stone wall.

“You speak English?” The accent was American, with perhaps a foreign background.

Court ignored the question.

The voice in the blackness continued. “I’ve been here for two weeks. Spent the first couple of days checking for cameras or listening devices. Trust me, these pendejos aren’t that sophisticated.”

Court slowly moved himself into a sitting position, leaned back against the iron bars. He nodded to the dark. Shrugged his shoulders. “I speak English.” He was surprised by how weak and raspy his voice had become.

“You American?”

“Yep.”

“Same here.”

Court said, “You talk funny.”

A chuckle from the disembodied voice. “Born in Mexico. Came to the States when I was eighteen.”

“Then you’re a long way from home.”

“Yeah. How bout you? What did you do to end up here?”

“Not sure where ‘here’ is, exactly.”

“We’re a couple hours northwest of Vientiane in a military camp where they dump foreign heroin smugglers. It’s not an official prison; there is no judge or trial or Red Cross or anything like that. They bring the traffickers here to interrogate them, pull the names of their suppliers from them, and then when they’re sure they’ve squeezed out everything they have to offer, they take them to a work camp and have them build roads until they drop dead. They say in three weeks the rainy season will be over and the roads will be passable, then everyone here is off to the labor camps.”