Ballistic(122)

Finally, he dressed; the sun stung his scalp through his short hair as he did so. He climbed into the back of the SUV, next to the fat guy, and the Colt Python was jabbed into his ribs.

Gentry said nothing, just looked ahead, and the SUV rolled off towards the south.

They parked at a tiny airstrip at the edge of a no-name hamlet. It was flat and dry, and the farms around were perfectly square and maintained by donkeys and cheap labor. The airstrip was dirt; the aircraft at the end of it looked forty years old. It was a Cessna 210, a small prop plane that was perfect for running drugs up the length of Mexico. Due to its hardy undercarriage and high wings, it could land at the most rugged of the unregistered runways carved out of the landscape by the carteleros.

Court and the fat man boarded the plane. Along with a pilot in a ball cap with a .45 crammed in a leather holster next to his seat, there were two other men in the Cessna. They both held Kalashnikovs in their laps, and Court wondered if they’d ever even considered the difficulties in firing these weapons during flight in the tiny six-seat cabin.

Gentry’s brain worked like that. He had no reason to think he was in imminent danger, but as they strapped into their seats and the pilot fired the engine, Court devised a plan to kill, incapacitate, or disarm everyone in the aircraft around him in, he estimated, three seconds. He’d leave the pilot alive and conscious, would relieve him of his firearm, and hope the man would follow Court’s instructions to land the plane. If not, he’d just shoot the dude in the head and land the plane himself.

Court was not a great pilot; he’d put a couple of planes down in a manner that made them worthless hunks of twisted metal and smoking oil and, in one case, completely unrecognizable as an aircraft.

So he hoped like hell everyone on board minded their manners for this flight into the mountains of “Cowboy Country.”

The aircraft bounced on the runway, and then it wobbled as it struggled for the sky. Gentry could tell they were headed south; the Pacific Ocean appeared on his right some time later.

The flight remained uneventful; they landed in the mid-afternoon at another covert airstrip, this one at a small clearing ringed by tinroofed huts in the green mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidentales. Court wasn’t sure if they were still in Sonora or if they had made it down as far as Sinaloa, or even into Nayarit, where Court’s Mexican nightmare had begun at the grave of Eddie Gamboa.

Wherever they were, he was certain Madrigal’s army of Vaqueros would be plentiful.

And he was right.

He climbed out of the aircraft, the fat man followed, and they were met by a large flatbed truck full of AK-wielding men in cowboy hats. Court stepped up into the bed and sat surrounded by the men; they were driven into a village and then up into thick forest. Gentry noticed that the road, while unpaved, was in exceptionally good condition. The bumping and jostling in the back of the truck he was subjected to had less to do with potholes and more to do with machismo and an anti-gringo attitude on display by los Vaqueros.

The road was high quality because it was built and maintained by the Madrigal Cartel. This became obvious when the truck passed a bunker made from felled trees, behind which two men manned a .30-caliber machine gun that covered the road. Below the thick canopy of the Sierra Madre forest, rows of simple buildings appeared, around them men walked and worked. Bare-chested or clad in T-shirts and jeans, they all carried weapons.

This wasn’t a drug-processing facility as Court had suspected. No, this looked more like a rebel base. It was a jungle fortress of sorts, though there were no walls or guard towers; the remoteness of the location along with the sheer number of guns and gunners meant nothing less than a battalion-sized element of U.S. Rangers would be needed to take the place.

The truck stopped suddenly; Court pounded shoulders with the man next to him, suffered a few indecipherable angry comments, and then climbed down from the bed.

Court was strip-searched again, right there out in the open; children and women and the elderly around the huts stood and watched the spectacle of the naked gringo. Dogs and chickens milled around him while he waited for his clothing to be tossed back his way.

The men with the cowboy hats and the cuernos de chivos watched him dress again, and then they led him up a long narrow pathway, past gun emplacements and armed men on donkeys and horses. Men stared at Court from the woods and rocky dry streambeds that snaked along the route. Wooden steps had been added in a few places, and a razor-wire gate was manned by three men on a path. Court looked at the rocks above him, saw rifles and cowboy hats silhouetted by the sun behind them.

Once Court was through the gate, the path opened into a set of large buildings under a canopy of pines and fir trees. The structures were simple cement blockhouses with tin roofs; a road ran through the middle, and armed men guarded individual doors. Many horses and a few donkeys stood at hitching posts and water troughs. Court was led by them on his way towards a large warehouse-type building halfway up the road.