He couldn’t see an inch beyond his arm where it lay outstretched on the sawdust.
“Shit,” he mumbled to himself. “Fucking perfect.”
“English?” A man’s voice called hopefully from the dark in front of him, from inside the bars of the cell, maybe a dozen feet from the tip of Court’s nose.
Gentry did not respond.
After a while he heard movement, the sound of a person sitting up, clothing rubbing against the stone wall.
“You speak English?” The accent was American, with perhaps a foreign background.
Court ignored the question.
The voice in the blackness continued. “I’ve been here for two weeks. Spent the first couple of days checking for cameras or listening devices. Trust me, these pendejos aren’t that sophisticated.”
Court slowly moved himself into a sitting position, leaned back against the iron bars. He nodded to the dark. Shrugged his shoulders. “I speak English.” He was surprised by how weak and raspy his voice had become.
“You American?”
“Yep.”
“Same here.”
Court said, “You talk funny.”
A chuckle from the disembodied voice. “Born in Mexico. Came to the States when I was eighteen.”
“Then you’re a long way from home.”
“Yeah. How bout you? What did you do to end up here?”
“Not sure where ‘here’ is, exactly.”
“We’re a couple hours northwest of Vientiane in a military camp where they dump foreign heroin smugglers. It’s not an official prison; there is no judge or trial or Red Cross or anything like that. They bring the traffickers here to interrogate them, pull the names of their suppliers from them, and then when they’re sure they’ve squeezed out everything they have to offer, they take them to a work camp and have them build roads until they drop dead. They say in three weeks the rainy season will be over and the roads will be passable, then everyone here is off to the labor camps.”
“Bummer,” Court said after another cough.
“How much dope did they catch you with?”
Court closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the cold brick wall. He shrugged. “I wasn’t running drugs.”
“Sure you weren’t, homes. Just tell them it was a misunderstanding.”
“Actually I came to rescue some dipshit DEA dumbass who got himself captured by the boneheads running this place.”
An extremely long pause. Then a fresh chuckle. Then a hearty laugh that seemed utterly out of place in this black dungeon. Then the sound of movement in the dark. In the low light close to Court’s face, a bearded man appeared. He looked Mexican, late twenties, and several inches shorter than Court. He wore baby blue pajamas, and the skin around both of his eyes was tainted with fading bruises, obvious even in the deep shadow. He stuck out a hand. “Eddie Gamble. DEA, Phoenix Field Office, on special assignment to the Bangkok Field Division.”
Court shook the hand weakly. “Hey, Gamble? How’s that special assignment of yours working out?”
“How’s your assignment working out, ese?”
Court smiled; the muscles in his jaw hurt. “No better than yours, I guess.”
“So you are here to save me, huh?”
Gentry nodded.
Eddie Gamble swatted a bug from his forehead. “Is this the part where the rest of your unit rappels down from the rafters and we all blast out of here with jet packs?”
Court looked up towards the low ceiling. “God, I hope so.” Nothing happened. He looked back to Gamble. Shrugged. “Guess not.”
Eddie asked, “Who are you with?”
“Can’t say.”
“I’m cleared top secret.”
“Chicks dig that, don’t they?” quipped Gentry; his eyes were becoming accustomed to the low light, so he scanned the cell now, found nothing but a shit bucket and a water trough and a couple of tattered blankets as furniture.
“I mean . . . I’m sure you can tell me who you’re with.”
“Sorry, stud. I’m codeword-classified.” Codeword-classified meant only those who knew a specific code could be privy to a set of information.
“I bet chicks dig that.”
“They would if I could tell them, but they’d have to know the codeword.”
Gamble laughed at this, and at the situation. “You can come rescue me, but you can’t tell me who you work for?”
“The DEA is looking for you. I just happened to be in the area, sort of, so I was sent by my people to nose around.”
“And then?”
Court shrugged. “Bad luck. I got sick. I was meeting with some contacts, and I passed out. I woke up in the hospital. I had cover for status only; my papers weren’t good enough for the scrutiny of the hospital, so they called the cops. My papers weren’t even close to good enough for the cops, so they called military intelligence. Military intelligence wiped their asses with my papers, basically, so here I am.”