Ballistic(154)

They streaked north over Bandaras Bay; one hundred yards off their right side the lights of the Malecon disappeared and the hotel district of Puerto Vallarta came into view.

Court sucked in cool night air, his first deep breath since getting the wind knocked out of him.

He looked to his left. DLR’s all but headless body hung to the side. Blood dripped down his bare chest.

Laura was still seated behind him. “You said you could not fly a helicopter,” she said it with a smile.

“Listen, I think it would be best if we try to land on the water.”

“When is landing in the water better than on the land?”

Court hesitated. “When the pilot sucks.”

Laura looked at him. “You are not joking, are you?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“All right,” she said. And she returned to her prayers.

Five minutes later a Eurocopter EC135 came to an awkward hover ten feet above the water in the Marina Vallarta, just north of the city. Those few on the decks of their yachts at this time of the night saw the spectacle of the hesitant aircraft: it hung low to the right for a moment, then low to the left; then it dipped forward, found itself straight and level about five feet above the water; and then, inexplicably, the main engines sounded like they were manually switched off. The craft dropped straight down into the water, the propellers disintegrated on impact, and the chopper began sinking rapidly.

Within seconds of the Eurocopter disappearing under the black water of the marina, a pair of heads emerged. Soon a man and a woman could be seen swimming ashore. The figures disappeared into the black, just as the siren’s wail of a harbor police boat filled the air.





FIFTY-EIGHT



Nestor Calvo Macias lay hog-tied on his side in the mine shaft. He shook and shivered, both from the cold and from fear. All night long big rats had scurried around and even over him. They were not afraid of him, and why should they be? He could do nothing to fight them off, bound as he was, and with the hemp gag in his mouth he could not even scream out to scare them away.

So he’d spent the night in the dark, in the cold, being walked on, pissed on, and even shit on by pinches ratones.

He assumed he would die here. He would starve or die of thirst or succumb to some other ailment in the next day. And if the Gray Man did return, what then? A bullet in the head?

Nestor lay and shook and thought of the rats and the disease, and of starving or dying slowly of dehydration.

He shivered and hoped that the Gray Man would just come back and put a bullet in his head.

A light up the shaft. The sound of an engine. Soon the Mazda truck appeared in the mine shaft and stopped. The Gray Man stepped out. From the truck’s lights Nestor could see that the American looked like hell. His clothes were torn; his face showed pain in each step. He limped over to him, knelt down next to him, and then drew his pistol.

Here it comes, thought Calvo. He cinched his eyes tight.

The cold barrel of the pistol pressed into his temple.

And then the hemp gag was removed from his mouth.

The Gray Man said, “De la Rocha is dead. Spider is dead. So where does that put you?”

Calvo did not open his eyes. “I . . . I do not know.”

“I think it ought to put you in charge of the Black Suits. Don’t you?”

Now his eyes opened, but they stared ahead, at the far wall. “I . . . I don’t know.”

“I’m willing to make a deal with the leader of the Black Suits.”

“Yes?” Calvo’s voice cracked. He looked up to the Gray Man now.

“If you call off the hunt for Elena Gamboa, I will let you go.”

“Of course! Of course I will! I never had any interest in—”

“If anything happens to any of the Gamboas, either here or in the States, then I come back.”

“I . . . I understand.”

The Gray Man cut Calvo free, then he climbed back into his Mazda truck and drove away without saying another word.

Nestor Calvo Macias stood in shock, slowly brushed dirt off of his black suit, smoothed his gray hair back on his head, and began walking slowly forward towards the exit of the mine shaft.





Court sat on a wooden a pew in the sanctuary in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Puerto Vallarta. His feet shifted nervously while he looked around.

Waiting. Worrying.

Laura appeared through a side door of the sanctuary, scanned the cool bright room, and smiled when she saw him. She approached and they hugged, then she took him by the hand through a narrow archway that led into the small sacristy. Here they sat alone together on a wooden bench.

For a few minutes they talked about the various aches and pains they’d received the week before in Puerto Vallarta. They both looked a lot better now than the last time they’d seen each other: her crying at a roadside bus stop and he pulling away in his Mazda pickup. They’d had time since to clean up and tend to their wounds and figure out where they would go from here.