Ballistic(127)

“So the guy who makes kiddie porn isn’t responsible as long as there is someone who wants to buy it?”

Garza looked at the kidnapper. “You know nothing. You are just a rich American. You don’t understand our culture!”

“Actually, I’m getting the hang of it. I’m going to chop off your head and put it in a bag. Does that sound a little like your culture?”

“Go to hell!”

“Most likely. But in the meantime . . .” Gentry sat on a brown box in front of his victim. “Names and numbers.”

“What?”

“Names and numbers. You give me others in your organization, and I’ll do it quick and fast.”

“You will kill me quick and fast?”

“That’s the best deal I can offer you.”

“And if I don’t give you names and numbers?”

Court looked at his watch. Shrugged. “Buddy . . . I got all damn day.”





FORTY-SEVEN



The Puerto Vallarta police cars parked in the street at nine p.m. The officers left their vehicles and began directing traffic, forcing it on, ordering it to continue to the next intersection. One minute later the first in a long series of armored white SUVs pulled up in front of the beautiful seaside restaurant.

The Black Suits working the advance security detail went about their rounds in the restaurant. A stern-looking but polite man went with the maître d’ to each table and collected mobile phones while letting the stunned patrons know that their food and drinks would be taken care of. A group of four in the security detail moved through the kitchen with the restaurant manager, checked coolers and freezers, hallways and pantries, bathrooms and loading doors. They frisked the staff from head to toe. A pair of guards armed with .45-caliber Mac-10 sub guns stood in the doorways, two more junior members of the unit patrolled out back with AK-47s.

Daniel de la Rocha sat in an armored SUV with the commander of his bodyguards and his own close protection officer by his side. Emilio Lopez Lopez received the radio call from his advance team unit leader that the restaurant was locked down and secure, so he nodded to his boss, and the driver of the Yukon opened the back door of the vehicle. A team of Emilio’s best guards formed around their leader, and they entered the restaurant. Emilio had his right hand on his pistol in his jacket, and his left hand on his patrón’s lower back. An earpiece connected to his radio gave him updates from his team, and any threat would have Emilio Lopez Lopez shielding his boss, turning him around, and hustling him back to the SUVs in seconds.

Close behind the main scrum of the principle protection force was Nestor Calvo Macias, speaking into his Bluetooth earpiece. Javier “Spider” Cepeda, the leader of the Black Suit’s assassins, was in the crowd, as were a number of local dealers, enforcers, logistics managers, the chief pilot of Daniel’s many aircraft, and a few manufacturing and procurement executives.

Fourteen bodyguards on the premises ensured their leader’s safety, and nineteen other Black Suits all but filled the private dining area in the center of the building.

The private dining area was open-air, a cool breeze blew in from the Pacific and swirled around the tiled courtyard. Daniel de la Rocha sat at a table in the back of the room, behind a tall gurgling fountain and below a latticework arch of lovingly manicured bougainvillea. Other members of the Black Suits sat at tables of four around the courtyard. This was not a business dinner; it was just a dinner. They were here to eat and then to travel east to the safe house a few miles inland. This was de la Rocha’s first visit to PV since the massacre ten days earlier; he had business to attend to in the area and had spent the day working with associates of his commuter airline, and his drug manufacture and transporting enterprise.

The mood among the men was grim because the mood of their leader was grim. He was furious about the apparent escape of the Gamboas and the gringo. He fully assumed they were north of the border, but his hunt was far from over. Right now he had his entire workforce that operated in the United States: in Atlanta, in Chicago, in Dallas, in Los Angeles, in a dozen other cities—he had them all working on finding the Gamboas and the gringo.

So far Calvo had failed him, Spider had failed him, his fiftythousand-member-strong criminal organization had failed him.

But that did not really matter. Because all that mattered to Daniel was that Daniel had failed her.

Daniel gazed across his table to a corner of the courtyard, just a few feet away. A shrine of la Santa Muerte had been brought in by his advance security team, just a three-foot-tall icon of la virgen, dressed in the finest bridal gown handmade by a master dressmaker in Mexico City who worked exclusively on creating high-quality and highprice fashion for icons of la Santa Muerte. She stood on a table festooned with devotional candles that flickered in the sea breeze; the shadows played across the skeleton’s face, creating the appearance of movement and life.