Ballistic(17)

Eddie had joined the Navy because his father was a fisherman, but he realized quickly he himself did not want to live on a boat. He qualified for SEAL selection and excelled in the brutal training, earned the respect of the cadre and his fellow enlisted men along the way. After two and a half years of pre-deployment training and four years on Team Three, he left the military and joined the Drug Enforcement Agency. His life in Southern California had given him a hatred for drugs and drug dealers, and he worked primarily undercover in different parts of the world.

Two weeks after being brought to the Ban Nam Phuong detention facility, Court lay awake in the dark, sweat chills threatening to drive him mad, listening to Eddie drone on and on about his little sister, Lorita, and how he missed her and hated leaving her behind in the little fishing village where they grew up when he moved to the U.S. Gentry’s mind drifted off Gamble’s life history and turned to the problem at hand. He focused all his attention on remembering everything he saw each day when he was taken from his shack, dragged across the small camp, and dumped in the interrogation hut. It was always raining; there were trucks and jeeps sunk inches into the gravel and mud roads, maybe two dozen guards armed with Chinese-made AK-47s and SKSs.

Occasionally, he’d see other prisoners, mostly Hmong—an ethnic minority that had been getting knocked around for decades by the Pathet Lao, the Laotian Communist government. These guys likely weren’t any more involved in heroin trafficking than was Gentry; they had just run afoul of the local Commies in power and were suffering for it.

While doing his best to ignore Eddie’s incessant rambling—now he was talking about how, when he got out of here, he wanted to buy himself a new Ford truck to celebrate—an idea appeared in Gentry’s mind. He began troubleshooting immediately, trying to poke holes in his plan. There were holes: some he could patch with slight tactical changes, and some he had to leave open. No plan was foolproof; he’d learned that the hard way during five years in the field.

While Gentry’s mind raced, Gamble talked about his family. “I send two-thirds of my check back to my mom and dad, been doing it since I enlisted. Still I wish I could do more for Lorita. She’s nineteen now, a great kid; lookin’ at me you wouldn’t believe how beautiful she is. I want to get her up to the States, but she doesn’t want to come. Says she wants to go to college and find a job down there.”

Eddie paused, long enough to where Court looked over at the rare silence. “We’ve got to get out of here, Sally. I got too many people counting on me back home.”

“You’ll get home. I promise.”

“I’m not leaving you, amigo. I told you that.”

Court changed the subject to follow his stream of conscience. “Hey, you said you could hot-wire a car, right?”

Eddie was surprised by the change in the conversation, but he rolled up onto his arm, smiled broadly and proudly. “Back in Riverside they called me Fast Eddie because I could boost any ride in under sixty seconds.”

Gentry nodded. “Fast Eddie. Can you still do it?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t that long ago. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.” Court let it go. He went back to working on his plan.





NINE



“Señor?”

A woman’s voice from behind startled Court, took him away from that night in the highlands of Laos, and brought him back to the warm, breezy afternoon on the Pacific coast of Mexico.

Not surprisingly, she spoke in Spanish. It was a dialect Gentry found difficult to understand. “If you want to write something, will you please do it now so I can paint over it? I’d rather not have to come back later today. It is a long walk back to the road for someone in my condition.”

Court turned to the woman’s voice. She stood behind and below him, down the hill a few feet on a dirt path that wound its way from the cobblestone road that ran down to San Blas.

She was alone, her dark hair was pulled back tight, her white cotton dress blew in the warm breeze. She carried a small white paint can and a brush in her hands and a large purse on her shoulder.

She was thirty-five or so. Very pretty.

And very pregnant.

“I’m sorry,” Court replied in Spanish. He stepped down off the hill towards the dirt path. “I thought this man was someone I knew. I was mistaken.” He made to pass the woman with a slight nod, no eye contact, but she stepped in front of him. She held her head high and her shoulders back, boldly challenging him.

Court stopped.

“Who are you looking for? It’s a small town. I’m sure I know most every family interred in this cemetery.” Clearly, she knew he was lying, and from the look of her confused expression, Court’s accent had caught her attention.