Ballistic

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.

End of discussion.

Court had pressed his luck by sticking around, and now he was in the same boat as the rest of them. He leaned back against the whitewashed concrete wall around the Gamboas’ property, next to Laura. Ernesto and Diego had walked back into the house and gotten the bench from one of the backyard picnic tables, and this they put in the shade for Luz and Elena. The old woman and her pregnant daughter-in-law sat and fanned themselves with pieces of a newspaper they’d picked up from the gutter along the side of the road.

After a long speech by the black-clad cop, Laura, who had been standing at Court’s shoulder, leaned into the American’s ear. “Did you understand that?”

He hadn’t picked up a word of the men’s argument in the past minute. “No, what’s going on?”

“The federale says he is promising to tell La Arana that this army unit deserves a reward for detaining the family until he and his associate could come and take custody.”

Court thought for a moment. “La Arana? Who the hell is ‘the Spider’ ? ”

“Javier Cepeda.”

“Okay, who is Jav—”

“He is one of DLR’s top men. A Black Suit. They say he is the head of his sicarios. DLR’s assassins.”

“Perfect.”

“We are in danger, Joe.”

He wanted to say “no shit,” but he looked at the girl, down into her big brown eyes, and he caught himself. “We’ll be okay.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Then how can you say we’ll be okay?”

“I have three bullets. There are two cops. We go with the cops and we’ll be okay.”

Laura’s eyes widened. “Joe . . . Please do not kill them. We can disarm them and—”

“I won’t kill them unless they make me,” Gentry said, but he had every expectation that they would make him.

The federales’ bargain with the soldiers seemed to be working. It was an interesting dynamic to a man like Court Gentry—two lightly armed cops against nearly twenty heavily armed soldiers. The cops didn’t finger their weapons; they didn’t bark into their radios to summon reinforcements; they didn’t scream or threaten. He suspected the cops were older, more sure of themselves, intimidating to the young army lieutenant, and they pressed their authority and selfassuredness against him with polite words, like a thin glove over a metal gauntlet, to enforce their will.

Court was certain they were bad men, but he was rooting for them in this little battle.

And their browbeating worked. The lieutenant told his men to stand down, to get back in the vehicles. Within sixty seconds the three loaded army pickups disappeared towards the south, turning left off of Canalizo, behind a cloud of afternoon road dust.

The two federales watched them leave then turned around to face the family.

Instead they found themselves staring down the gringo’s pistol at a range of five feet.

The cop who had been doing all the talking spoke slowly as his arms rose in surrender. His English was excellent. “Get your gun out of my face, amigo.”

“If I was your amigo, I wouldn’t have my gun in your face, would I? Down on the street! Both of you! Facedown, arms out.”

“You need to listen to me very carefully, senor.”

“You don’t eat some dirt right now, senor, and I’m going to blow off your fucking head. Comprende?”

Both men went slowly to their kneepads and then down onto the hot, dusty street.

“You don’t understand. We are not regular federales like the men who killed the Gamboas.”

Court’s eyes furrowed. “Oh, sweet. You guys are just regular ole hit men. That makes killing you even less complicated.”

“No. We are el Grupo de Operaciones Especiales. GOPES. We worked under Major Gamboa. We came here to protect his familia from the Black Suits.”

Court held his revolver steady at the men on the street in front of him. “Bullshit. Everyone in Eddie’s team was killed on the yacht.”

“No. We survived. We went into hiding to protect our families.”

Court knelt over the talker. “So where did that blood on your pants come from?” Court had noticed a speckled splatter of red on the federale’s thigh.

The officer made to climb back up, but Gentry pressed the barrel of the revolver into the back of his head, made the man talk with his face in the dirt; his words blew a circle clean of dust and sand on the black pavement. “We were coming here in my car, but we heard a broadcast on the radio channel that the Black Suits use. Two sicarios federales were coming here to kill Elena. We killed them fifteen kilometers south of here, and then we took their bikes.”

Court did not know what to believe, but the man’s tone was extremely convincing. Even though their conversation was in a mixture of two languages, Gentry detected a tone of truthfulness. But he wanted to get an impression from the other man. He knelt next to the other masked federale, the one who had not yet spoken. He placed the revolver’s barrel on the back of his neck. “Do you speak English?” The man shook his head. Court switched to Spanish. “Bueno, so what do you have to say for yourself, cabron?”

The man did not answer, but he looked up towards Court, turned his head slowly to do so. His right hand scooted along the hot asphalt to his face, and he pulled off his helmet, his sunglasses, and then his mask.

His right cheek and jaw were black and blue, an ugly fist-sized contusion. Court thought about the man in the building under construction across the street from the Parque Hidalgo. The masked man he’d knocked out with a punch to the jaw.

“Did I do that?”

“Si,” said the officer; with the swelling his voice sounded like a tennis ball was lodged in his mouth.

“Huh . . .” Court thought it over. Could the man have really been there to provide protection for the family? There was no way for him to know; he had knocked him out cold before the fighting had begun.

Court just said, “Sorry.”

“No hay problema.” No problem, responded the man, but Gentry imagined the man’s jaw would be a problem for him for a few days.

“What’s your name?”

“Martin. Sergeant Martin Orozco Fernandez.”

Looking back to the first officer, Court asked, “How ’bout you?”

“I am Sergeant Ramses Cienfuegos Cortillo.”

“Where did you learn to speak English so well, Ramses?”