Ballistic

But he did not get far. The man ducked his head back into the room. “I am sorry.” He looked around, did not know whom to address. “But where do I tell them to go?”

DLR said, “The property in Portugal. Get them to the airport in Mexico City and have the jet meet them there tonight!”

Calvo shook his head. “No. The address of the Faro estate was in the file.”

“Motherfucker.” The drug lord said it in English. He’d learned it while serving in the Mexican military, training in the United States. “He is destroying us.”

“No,” said Calvo. “Because you will not let that happen. You will give the Gamboa woman back to—”

“No!” DLR grabbed Calvo by his lapels and slammed the older man up against the mirrored wall. “I will not!”

“Daniel, this fiasco is simply costing us too much money, too much time, too much—”

“I don’t care! I don’t care about any of that. I want Elena Gamboa and this gringo assassin dead! Now they threaten my children?”

Calvo shook his head, undaunted even under the threat of physical violence from his boss. “No one is threatening your—”

Spider got between them in an instant. “Jefe. We have friends who own entire chains of hotels, condominiums, real estate of all kinds. We can send your family anywhere; we can rent out an entire floor, an entire estate! I’ll double protection on your family, and you can tell your kids it is a holiday.”

Calvo and de la Rocha stared at each other a moment more, then the younger man let go of the elder’s suit coat. Without breaking the staring contest, he spoke to Spider. “Triple the guard on them. And notify everyone here. We will leave for Puerto Vallarta within the hour; we have more cops working for us there than anywhere else. I will fly the helicopter. Bring Laura Gamboa with us, we will take over the biggest place we can find there, and we will continue war on Madrigal until the Gray Man is liquidated and Elena Gamboa is found.”

Calvo stormed out of the room without another word. As he walked back towards his office, he decided he would do what he could to end this madness, no matter his master’s wishes. The American called him “adult supervision.” It was an insult to DLR but, Nestor acknowledged, there was some truth to the gringo assassin’s words.

FIFTY-TWO

Court arrived at the predetermined pickup point for supplies from the Madrigal Cartel. He was running low on detonators, ammonium nitrate, and fuel oil; he needed some clean cell phones, a little cash, and more ammo for the Sako.

But when he arrived at the storage unit pickup point, he saw a man standing out front. Still in his truck, one hundred yards from his cache, Court peered through his binoculars.

It was Serna, and he was alone.

He was waiting.

Court pulled up in the truck. Climbed out, looking over the intelligence chief for los Vaqueros. “Why are you here?”

“The Cowboy wants to talk to you.”

“In person?”

“Si. Immediately.”

This surprised Gentry. “I don’t have time for a face-to-face. Can’t I talk to him on the phone?”

“No. We are to take you to him.”

“We?”

“Yes, I did not want to alarm you, so I am keeping them out of sight, but I have twenty men with me. All around us.”

“What does Madrigal want to talk about?”

“I do not know.”

Court looked hard at the narco from Sinaloa, but he could not tell if the man was being truthful or not. Court weighed his options. He felt like he could take Serna right now at gunpoint and get the hell out of here, but why? There was no reason for Madrigal to be mad at him. On the contrary, Court had seriously damaged the operations of los Vaqueros’s main competitor. By all rights Madrigal should be commissioning narco corridos, “ballads,” about the exploits of the Gray Man and offering him even more help than before.

Court nodded, lifted his arms, and Serna frisked him. Serna removed four weapons, then used a small walkie-talkie to call in his team. Within seconds several massive Dodge pickup trucks appeared at both the front and side entrances of the storage lot. They pulled up the aisle and collected Serna and Gentry, and then headed in a convoy towards the north.

By noon Serna and Gentry were in a small prop plane flying northwest, and by twelve thirty they had landed on a grass airstrip in the mountains. They climbed into big Chrysler sedans and headed through a large town. Court asked Serna where they were, but the intelligence chief only admitted that they were in southern Sinaloa.

After no more than twenty minutes on the road, they entered the gates of a large cemetery. The sky was clear and cool, and Court began seeing armed men in straw hats standing around the ornate mausoleums on the well-manicured grounds. This was nothing like the cemetery where Eddie Gamboa had been laid to rest. No, these crypts were massive, expensive hand-carved cement and marble tile, gilded roofs and life-sized statues in front of the tombs.

Serna answered a question Court had not asked. “This entire cemetery is for Madrigal’s men. He comes here often to visit his old friends. It is a compliment that he invited you to meet with him here.”

Gentry was pretty sure he hadn’t exactly been “invited,” but he let it go. The Chrysler followed the winding road through dozens of crypts, some as large as small homes. Many sported framed photographs on iron shields above the doorways, other accoutrements to the mausoleums such as AK-47s carved from stone, cowboy hats carved from marble, life-sized bronze horses and even actual grilles and front ends of Cadillacs and Dodge pickups jutted from the masonry. In one case, a life-sized stainless steel Piper twin-engine aircraft had been built into the roof of a massive crypt.

And Court imagined half of the red, yellow, and blue blooming flowers in Sinaloa were used here at this cemetery.

The Chrysler pulled to a stop in front of a smaller crypt. This structure looked new, and a dozen armed men stood around it. Madrigal himself was there, with his teenage son Chingarito standing by his side. The Cowboy wore a red shirt and blue jeans, a straw cowboy hat and tennis shoes. A gold belt buckle of a horse’s head was the only frill Gentry could find on the man’s body other than the simple cross around his neck.

The Cowboy met Court as he climbed out of the car, shook his hand with a smile partially hidden under his mustache.

As he spoke, Chingarito translated. “Seven days, amigo. One week ago exactly I met you, and you promised to make trouble for Los Trajes Negros. I have to say . . . I thought you would kill a few Black Suits, destroy some product, and then die yourself. You have proven to me that you are a warrior.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you positive you were not born in Sinaloa?”

Court did not answer. The “little fucker” had nothing to translate.

Madrigal continued. “You have earned my respect. What you have done in seven days, these miserable idiots have not done in seven years.” He waved at the men standing around, and Chingarito laughed while he translated.

Gentry said, “And I’m just getting started. Another few days and he will be—”

Madrigal interrupted. “That is why I brought you here.” Chingarito struggled to keep up with the translations.

“Nine of my sicarios were butchered last night in Puerto Vallarta. Five Jalisco state police on my pay disappeared in Guadalajara yesterday. No doubt they will be found dead on a road within the next