Ballistic(143)

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 mi Chingarito. He is family. Plus he’s too smart to cheat me, aren’t you, mi hijo?”

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, señor. 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 patrón’s thinking; he would not agree to a deal with Madrigal in any form or fashion.

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 sicarios after CIA men in the D.F. He is even talking with Spider about a direct attack on the American embassy. This is absolute madness!”

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.”