Ballistic(147)

“Four teams will hit the Concordia ranch at 12:05 a.m., four separate vans will attack from each point on the compass. A fifth team will come in behind the main attack with the objective of receiving Nestor and then taking him out of the area. We will all meet back here by dawn.”

De la Rocha sipped bottled water and looked through the fifteenfoot-high windows off his left towards Bandaras Bay. He was distracted for many reasons, not the least of which was that he would not be going on the rescue mission to recover his consigliere. It was determined to be too dangerous for the organization itself to expose DLR to what was certain to be one hell of a firefight.

Spider, the leader of the armed wing, would also be staying behind. Daniel had ordered this, and Spider was not happy about it, but since the execution of Emilio Lopez Lopez, Spider had been in charge of DLR’s safety, so it only made since he would stay at the house by DLR’s side.

Both men had led forces into battle, and neither man wanted to stay behind at this palace on the beach while their soldiers fought and bled and died and killed one hundred miles north of here. But logic prevailed.

And DLR had a feeling that staying here tonight, with a relatively small contingent of twenty armed men or so, would not be without action of its own.

As the discussions of the coming operation petered out and the men who would soon head off to battle began strapping weapons and gear to their bodies, DLR stepped out of the sala and onto a raised dining room open to the great room. As soon as they’d arrived at the rented villa, he’d ordered the long table removed and his largest Santa Muerte idol erected in its place. The skeleton sat on its throne in the center of the room, behind it white curtains hung from the high ceiling down to the wood floor of the dining room, candle sconces ringed the throne and the room itself. Daniel knelt down in front of his patron saint, said a prayer for his family, and said a prayer for the death of the Gray Man.

At the end of his last prayer he looked up slowly into the face of la Santa Muerte, then called out to Spider. Cepeda shot out of the scrum of his men down in the sala and up the three steps to the raised dining hall.

“Sí, Don Daniel?”

“Do you think the gringo really got the phone number he called today from Jerry Pfleger?”

“No. Calvo gave him that number because he knew his agents were monitoring it. The old bastard is as cunning as they come.”

DLR nodded. “Yes. He is very cunning.”

Spider stood dutifully over his master.

DLR turned and looked up to him. “I want everyone staying behind ready for action tonight.”

Spider nodded. Confused. “Of course.”

Daniel stood and left the dining room through the curtains, heading for his master suite in the back of the mansion.





A cluster of small, uninhabited islands sit in Bandaras Bay, just a few hundred yards off of Mismaloya. Collectively called Los Arcos, they are named for the archlike formations carved out of the rock by centuries of pounding surf. During the day the protected marine reserve around Los Arcos was full of scuba divers, snorkelers, and pleasure boats, but one hour before midnight the only creatures in the waters around the tiny islands were fish, lobster, sleeping blue-footed boobies and other sea birds.

Fifty yards closer to shore a pair of private boats bobbed in the water. In each boat four men sat with M16 rifles in their laps. Two men in each boat had an M203 grenade launcher mounted on their M16s.

Each boat also had a radio and a two-million-candlepower flashlight to scan the calm water in all directions.

They were hardly battleships, but the two converted gunboats would certainly present an obstacle for anyone trying to make it to the back of Casa de las Olas from the water.

Court Gentry knelt waist-deep in water that was surging back and forth in the black recesses of a small grotto in one of the rocks of Los Arcos. His eyes looked past the two small boats and towards the white sand beach beyond them. A pair of men with flashlights strolled back and forth on the sand, rifles hanging on their backs. A wall of white boulders and brown shale ran up to the right of the small beach.

Past the men, past the beach, up the hill, he scanned the palatial estate. It looked a bit like a space station. It was a modern glass-andsteel structure, all hard metal edges and glass walls. The focal point of the back of the house was a balcony than ran along a gargantuan window. On the other side of the glass Court could just make out dim lighting, perhaps from candles. Much of the grounds of the property were well lit and, Court assumed, well protected. But from here the building itself seemed buttoned up and quiet.

On the highest point of the southern wing of the huge mansion, a black Eurocopter EC135 sat in complete darkness. Only the few streetlights and glowing buildings higher on distant hills framed its silhouette.