solve your problems with de la Rocha. If you don’t trust anyone here, shoot them, and then the threat of a leak will be gone. I’ll stay in here; you can tell everyone they were killed in a fight with me but you finished me off.”
Madrigal’s mouth remained open in astonishment. He looked to his son to await the translation, but Chingarito’s own mouth hung agape. His father nudged him, and then the boy spoke. While his boy repeated Gentry’s words in Spanish, Madrigal looked around at the others in the mausoleum with him, as if to see if they had seen the same incredible act by the American.
The Cowboy took the gun. Slowly, he motioned with it to his guards. “These two . . . I trust.”
He looked back to Serna. “Hector, as well. And
The Little Fucker confirmed with a nod that he was, in fact, too smart to double-cross his dad.
One of Madrigal’s men picked his pistol up from the floor; the other took his weapon back from his boss. They both looked equal parts shocked and embarrassed.
Soon the Cowboy recovered. “That was good, amigo. Very good. You could have killed me right then and you did not. I will give you your two days. Hector and I will tell no one else what our plan is. But I promise you, if I do not get Nestor Calvo delivered to me, alive, then I will send every one of my men after you.”
Court nodded. “He will be yours, senor. I promise you.”
For the second time in a week, Court Gentry swallowed all pretense of honor and shook the hand of Constantino Madrigal. It was even tougher this time than the last, chiefly because he knew that what he had just said was a blatant lie.
FIFTY-THREE
Forty-six hours later, three armored black Chevrolet Suburbans streaked west on a two-lane canyon road in southeastern Sinaloa. The lead vehicle flashed red lights on its dashboard, and the armed driver blew through tiny villas and the occasional intersection with no regard for any other traffic.
The driver knew the convoy had to keep moving—fast.
In the center seat row of Truck Two, braced on either side by two of the thirteen bodyguards brought along to protect him, Nestor Calvo Macias spoke on his mobile phone to his assistant. Calvo’s second-in-command had set up shop at the new property in Puerto Vallarta, and his job for the day was to keep DLR occupied and disinterested in Calvo’s whereabouts. Nestor was a professional, he did not like lying to his boss, but Nestor knew adult supervision was called for at the moment. He would not allow some gringo assassin, some ridiculous resin-skeleton bride in a dress, or some distracting quest for a fetus in hiding to ruin all he had built in the past years.
By going against his leader’s orders right now and meeting with Hector Serna of los Vaqueros, Calvo would stop a costly gang war, he would present the corpse of his boss’s gringo nemesis to him, and he would limit the hemorrhaging of treasure and bodies that had been going on for the past week.
The price would be somewhat heavy to end the Madrigal war, a methamphetamine laboratory in the northwestern tip of Jalisco state. But Calvo had chosen this barter item shrewdly. The lab had been costly and time-consuming to build, but it had underperformed since opening just thirteen months prior. Infrastructure in the area was poor, and access to skilled labor in the region problematic. Further, the army had concentrated on marijuana eradication efforts in the area, and the Black Suits worried constantly about the lab being discovered by some young college-grad army lieutenant who could not be bought off. So Calvo had offered to trade this potential debacle for the life of the man who was costing his organization millions of dollars a day and untold headaches.
An easy enough decision.
Meeting with Serna had been the most worrisome part of the deal for Calvo, but he now decided his concerns had been unfounded. Calvo’s security forces had sent an advance team to check out the location of the meeting, and they reported a safe house with only a few of Madrigal’s men, including Serna, and no other Vaquero forces in the area.
Nestor had ordered his bodyguards to travel light and undermanned today to decrease the chances of DLR finding out about the meeting. Calvo knew he could never tell de la Rocha about this bit of intrigue. Logic and reason would play no part into his
As the three-vehicle convoy raced through the narrow canyon on its way to the safe house in the mountains, Calvo continued speaking on his mobile phone to his second-in-command.
“DLR insists la CIA is working with Madrigal. He wants us to send
Two hundred yards ahead of the three Suburbans a large cement truck pulled onto the road from a commercial gravel pit on the left. The big black trucks closed on it quickly as the huge lumbering mixer struggled to gain speed. Its red and white rotating drum revolved as it lumbered up the road.
The driver of Calvo’s lead vehicle honked and blinked his lights rapidly as he rushed up from behind.
Calvo was unaware of this, and he continued his conversation. “The girl was never worth the trouble; the Gamboa family was never worth the trouble.”
The lead vehicle arrived directly behind the cement truck as the canyon narrowed in a turn. There were just a few feet on either side of the narrow blacktop road, which was surrounded by steep, rocky inclines that made passing impossible. The lead driver flashed his lights continuously and honked his horn. The cement mixer was increasing its speed but not fast enough to satisfy Calvo’s three expert security drivers. Words were exchanged over the radio between the Suburbans about the slowdown.
Calvo remained unaware.
“I need you to let me know if Daniel comes to you and begins asking too many questions about where I am. I can call him at any time and give him some story. Don’t try and fool him yourself. He can smell a lie just like his father could.”
The canyon narrowed further, and the cement truck accelerated to barely forty miles an hour. The lead motorcade driver leaned on his horn now, swerved his truck from left to right behind the mixer, and the front passenger rolled down his window, hefted his M4 rifle, and waved it outside so that it could be seen by the cement truck’s driver in his passenger-side rearview.
Calvo glanced up at the persistent honking as he spoke.
“Nothing, just traffic.” He looked down at a notepad on his lap. “Yes, I will give them the coordinates of the super lab. As soon as we see the
In the lead vehicle the front passenger had removed his seat belt and positioned half of his body out the window now, angrily waving the rifle in the air. The driver flashed his lights and began cursing loudly as they arrived at the most narrow portion of the mountain canyon. He reached for his radio to warn the other vehicles to be ready for—
Right in front of him, the big cement mixer slammed on its breaks, skidded to a stop. A two-foot-wide high- pressure stream of wet concrete shot from its five-foot-long chute, and the lead Suburban drove right into the gravelly mixture before braking. It slid hard into the rear of the mixer, airbags deployed, and concrete covered the hood and windscreen. Hundreds of gallons of the gray sludge sprayed the vehicle and splashed onto the narrow road around it.
The bodyguard who had been hanging out the window flew completely from the Suburban; his back snapped, and his weapon slid forward, all the way past the front wheels of the cement mixer.
Just behind this the driver of Calvo’s SUV screamed “Hold on!” Nestor looked up from his phone, out the windshield, and into the morning glare ahead, just as his truck’s brakes locked and the SUV slid into Truck One.
Calvo’s phone flew out of his hand, and he slammed into the seat back in front of him. The bodyguards on either side of him did the same.
The leader of Calvo’s detail sat in the front passenger seat of Truck Two. As he recovered from the impact, his M4 rose from between his knees, and he grabbed his walkie-talkie and shouted to the rear vehicle. “Truck Three! Back! Back! Back!”
