Ballistic

assassination attempt. “Who knew of the attack on La Sirena?”

Ramses shrugged. They’d reached a large pond that came almost to the edge of the property; they moved under weeping willow trees along its far side, putting their right hands on the estate’s vine-covered wall for balance on the narrow bank. “Only Major Gamboa and the two of us, the other five on our team, plus those higher than us, not in the GOPES but in the federal government.”

“And who would that be?”

“Only the attorney general, and the special prosecutor assigned to the project.”

“So one of those two men?”

Ramses chuckled a bit while they walked. “I can narrow it down further. Major Gamboa felt that the attorney general was working all this time for Constantino Madrigal.”

Court stopped in the dark for a moment. “Eddie knew his boss was ordering him to do the bidding of the Madrigal Cartel?”

Ramses shrugged, but it was clear he wanted Court to understand their position. “Major Gamboa always said, ‘we will never get to the last guy, because the last guy is the one who is setting all this up.’ He was . . . what is the word? Fatal, about this.”

“Fatalistic,” corrected Gentry.

“Si. The intelligence was so good, he knew the carteleros were using us as a proxy force. He knew that Madrigal and his Cowboys were to be last on the list of cartels, so he assumed Madrigal was pulling our strings. But we never expected to be double-crossed on the de la Rocha hit. The only thing I can think is that, maybe, the special prosecutor was in the pocket of Daniel de la Rocha.”

“So what you are saying is, the attorney general is working for Madrigal. And the special prosecutor is working for de la Rocha.”

“And we’re stuck in the middle,” confirmed Ramses.

“Exactamente,” muttered Martin through his swollen jaw. He’d picked up enough of the English to give his take on the matter.

“You can’t trust anyone in power, can you?” Court said it aloud but to himself.

Ramses chuckled without mirth. “You just figured this out? Well, my friend, now I can say it. Welcome to Mexico.”

Damn, thought Court. He had worked some dicey ops in his life, had dealt with some shady motherfuckers waving the flag of freedom or justice or honor or anything else to conceal their own nefarious objectives, but he had never encountered corruption so completely ingrained into a society. If all of what Chuck Cullen and Ramses said was true, which seemed pretty damn likely considering what he had witnessed and experienced in his thirty hours in western Mexico, the Gamboas had no one they could trust.

Court thought it cynical of Eddie to knowingly work under these conditions, to take intelligence from corrupt bosses with their own agendas in order to execute his assassinations. But Court understood. Those were the rules around here.

The rules sucked, but those were the rules.

Eddie had known all along that he was in peril, that he was in too deep. Court wondered if his old friend had even expected to live long enough to meet his son. There was no way to know, but it depressed Court greatly to think about that heavy weight on the mind of his lighthearted friend.

A new resolve grew inside of Court. A resolve to . . . to salvage something for Eddie Gamble. And for Chuck Cullen. Some tiny victory, some simple bit of retribution, some finger in the eye of those who took everything from these two good men.

TWENTY-FIVE

When Court and the GOPES men returned to the casa grande, they checked the building to find the best places to position sentries to look out over the property. Old Spanish architecture, like that built in Mexico in the 1770s, borrowed much from the Moorish buildings dotting the landscape of Ottoman Spain. One common feature was the mirador, or “overlook,” a balcony or atrium usually covered and usually adorned with an archway, that gave a vista of the property. This building was built in a horseshoe shape, with the concave portion facing south and surrounding the expansive patio and rectangular pool. There were three miradores on the second story of the casa grande, giving view to the front drive, the patio and back wall, and the overgrown fruit tree orchard that ended at the wall by the pond.

Overwatch itself would not be hard here.

The men did a quick inventory of their weapons. Between the eleven people in the home, the grand total of the arms at their disposal were the two Colt SMGs carried by the GOPES, Luis Corrales’s ancient double-barreled shotgun with a box of birdshot loads, two Beretta 9 mm pistols with a couple of magazines each, and a big .357 Magnum revolver with three live rounds.

They had no night vision equipment, only a couple of shitty dimestore flashlights, and no weapons that could really reach out and touch someone at a distance.

Yeah, Gentry realized, if the bad guys came, it could get ugly. If they came hard, it would be over in minutes.

A second meeting was held in the big sitting room at ten thirty. Luis Corrales had gone back to his bedroom to sleep, but everyone else was present and accounted for. Elena lay on the couch with her swollen feet elevated on a pillow and her mother-in-law rubbing them, and the rest of the group either stood against the wall or sat on dusty chairs or tables. Court passed off Martin’s pistol to Laura; the police academy and her badass, overly protective brother had taught her how to shoot, and Court recognized from her actions in Vallarta that she had no problem killing bastards who needed killing. The other pistol went to young Diego. He’d never fired a weapon, so Laura took him aside and gave him a quick primer on the location of the safety and the concept of the magazine and the sights. Ignacio had not stopped drinking tequila since the first offering two hours earlier, so Court and the two federales decided he’d be no help in a fight. Ernesto angrily sent his forty-five-year-old son to a bedroom on the second floor.

They talked about the security situation for a while, though the Gamboas seemed to think it highly unlikely that they would be in any danger here at the hacienda. But Court insisted they needed to do their best to be ready, and after Court questioned Inez about secure places around the property, she showed the entourage a door off the kitchen that led to a steep and narrow stairwell down to a dark subterranean hallway. The hallway ended at a long stone cellar where, back when this was a working hacienda, casks of tequila had been stored. The women moved enough bedding down there for everyone, creating a hiding place and a dormitory, but only Elena, Luz, and Inez bedded down immediately.

Court approved of the cellar as a last-ditch defensive position; he saw the benefit that it was somewhat hidden and any attacking force would be forced to send all their number up a hallway that could be turned into a fatal funnel of fire from those defending the cellar.

But he also saw there was no other way out, no possible means of escape.

Fuck it, he decided. It was the best they could do here in this humongous dark house of horrors. They did not have the luxury of choice in picking their defensive positions.

Court took Luis’s shotgun and kept his stolen revolver. Before heading back to bed, the old man had wandered around for a while, calling Court Guillermo several more times. In the morning who knew what he would think of what was going on around his house? Gentry was not going to let the confused old man roam the hacienda with a twelve gauge. Court had enough potential problems on the outside of the hacienda.

The shotgun was old and simple, and the loads it fired would only be effective at very close range, but it was better than nothing. He’d asked Martin for his submachine gun, and the Mexican officer looked at the gringo like he was out of his fucking mind.

“I’m not giving you my gun,” he mumbled through his swollen jaw.

Court didn’t blame him, and he didn’t bother to ask Ramses.

There was one more security issue, and it was big, and it was one that Court saw no good way to deal with.