Ballistic(116)
He had a plan, sort of. It was paper-thin, but it was action, and at times like these, Gentry preferred action to sitting around and hoping for the best.
He thought of Lorita again, and he wondered if he loved her.
Then he thought of Eddie, of Elena and the baby, and of the life that Eddie had left behind.
Court wondered if he even knew what it meant to love.
He looked around the church. There were only a few faithful here, but he regarded them, wondered about their capacity to love.
No, Court decided. He was not like them. He was not trained to love.
He was conditioned to hate.
And now he was ready to kill.
He stood slowly and left his pew. He had not prayed. He did not cross himself; he did not step up to the altar to kneel before it.
But he did address the crucifix. From the center aisle, before turning for the door, he spoke softly. It wasn’t a prayer. It was a demand. Delivered in a threatening tone by someone who, like he had told Laura the day before, did not know how this all worked.
“She trusts you. She is one of your people. You need to help her. To take care of her. I can’t do it by myself.”
After the side trip to the church, the Gray Man was all business. He drove to Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez; just a few minutes before arriving, he had Pfleger use the store-bought cell phone to rent a car in his name from the Hertz office in the airport. They parked Jerry’s car in long-term parking, picked up the rental, and drove to another part of the airport. Then they took a taxi back into town, into the Reforma district, and here Court and Jerry took a city bus to el Zócalo. Two long blocks south of the main square, with Gentry helping the hobbled Pfleger walk upright, they found a hotel parking lot that was unattended, and here the American assassin hotwired a Ford Mustang.
At two forty-five in the morning, Gentry and Pfleger left Mexico City behind them and headed northeast to Pachuca, a ninety-minute drive. They ditched the stolen car in Pachuca, waited on a park bench across from the main bus terminal until it opened at six a.m., and then took the first bus heading north to Juárez. They would get off before Juárez and take a regional bus to Tijuana.
Twenty-four hours on the road.
As they sat together in the back of the bus, Jerry spoke his first words in hours that were not complaints or curses. “Why did we do all that?”
“All what?”
“We’ve been jumping on and off vehicles for a dozen hours. My foot is killing me, dude. I need a doctor.”
“We burned our trail. There is no way the Black Suits are going to find us. They’ll look for your car and find it at the airport. They’ll think we wanted them to think we got on a plane, but they’ll be smart enough to see that you rented a car. They will find the rental there at the airport, and they might think we did, in fact, fly out of Mexico City, but if they are good, they’ll check with the taxi company and see that we tried to throw them off. Then if they are good and they are lucky, they might even find out about the Mustang stolen several miles from where the cab dropped us off, but I seriously doubt it.”
Pfleger rubbed his calf with a grimace as the swelling caused the nerves to flare up.
“Even if they managed every bit of that, they’d have to be more dialed in than the FBI to find the Mustang in Pachuca, and even if they did, there was no video security at the terminal there, and we paid in cash, so there is no chance in hell they will track us now.”
“But won’t they still guess that we are going to TJ?”
Gentry nodded. “Oh, yeah,” he said, as if it were obvious. “They’ll be all over Tijuana when we get there, scanning the border, ready to kill us all.”
“That’s great,” Pfleger said. “And then, even if they don’t, you are going to kill me when this is all over.”
“Not if you do what I say.”
“Bullshit. I saw what you did to the CIA guy, the guy who saved your ass. You fucking murdered him.”
Court shrugged. Smiled wearily. “It had to be done.”
“Right. You’ll say that about me in a couple of days.”
“Only if you try anything cute.” Gentry pulled a pair of zip ties from his pocket. He’d picked them up at a grocery store back in the capital. He made a two-link chain with them, with his left hand in one of the links and Jerry’s right hand in the other. He tightened the bindings. Court found a small sleeping blanket that the bus provided, and he tossed it over his and Jerry’s laps. To anyone looking it would appear as if the two men were holding hands. An old woman sitting across the aisle noticed their apparent public display of affection and clucked disapprovingly.