Ballistic(36)

Slowly, the cop raised his weapon; Gentry recognized it as a Colt 635, called a Shorty, a 9 mm submachine gun. The federale lifted the barrel over the cinderblocks and pointed it down towards the crowd. Gentry still did not move, did not know what the hell was going on. Was the policeman there to protect those on the stage, and did he see some threat? Or was he planning on killing Elena Gamboa? The Colt was no sniper rifle, but a long burst from the gun could send thirty rounds of 9 mm bullets streaking one hundred and fifty feet to the podium, knocking everyone standing there dead to the ground.

Shit, thought Court. He did not know what to do. If this man was a good guy, he sure didn’t want to kill him, but if he was a bad guy, he didn’t want to sit by and watch while he blasted innocents.

He did not know, but instinct told him that the situation before him smelled bad, and his instinct had been honed and refined through years and years of danger. In a moment of semi-resolution, Gentry stood in the dark room, walked across the cement on the balls of his stocking feet towards the black-clad man. Fifteen feet, ten feet, five feet behind him. His footfalls were quiet, and what sound they did emit was drowned out by the noise from the street and the park.

Court knelt down, out of view of the open window, directly behind the crouching cop.

“Hi.”

The Mexican federal officer spun on the balls of his feet, his head whipped around only to meet a vicious left jab from the American assassin. With a pop and a crack, fist met face. The cop’s dark glasses flew off, the wide eyes of the policeman quivered, and the man went limp, a one-hundred-forty-pound sack of flour dropping towards the cement. Court caught him, more or less, and laid the unconscious man down on his back. Quickly, Gentry took his weapon.

Court looked down through the spaghetti-like mass of electric wires and telephone cables strung from his high perch here, across the street to poles down at street level by the park. Below these wires, directly under his position, he saw a fresh group of black-clad figures pushing through the crowd in the street. They were Policía Federal as well, and they’d come from the alleyway with the armored truck. They were dressed exactly as the policeman lying at Gentry’s knees.

Below Court and to his right, de la Rocha continued rambling on into the bullhorn. Twice more Elena Gamboa tried to speak, but both times the immaculately dressed man standing in the sun on the hood of the white SUV continued talking, forcing her to give up and just stand there at the podium. He said something about the lack of an indictment, something about the corruption of the special operations group of the federal police, something about how songs and action movies are merely entertainment and are no basis for judging a man guilty. He waved folded sheets in his hand, his “list” of conspirators against him, and he railed against Constantino Madrigal and los Vaqueros, “the Cowboys.”

Court peered down at the Feds pushing through the crowd. The crowd itself had begun pushing and shoving to get away from them. Five cops at least, maybe more; it was hard to count their numbers the way they moved into the pulsing and recoiling mass of civilians around them, everyone burning under the hot noon sun.

“Señor!” shouted Elena now towards de la Rocha. “I speak for my dead husband! You will allow me to finish!”

Court spoke in his cell phone’s mike. “You’ve got five plus suspicious-looking fuckers working their way towards the podium in the crowd. Federal officers.”

“Shit.” Court heard Cullen relay this information to Laura, and he saw her step behind the lectern to talk to Elena. Elena pushed her sister-in-law away gently as she continued addressing de la Rocha.

Court looked back to the federales. Civilians literally scrambled out of their way now, but the masked men moved aggressively through the citizenry, shoving with hands and arms, and then . . . yes. Guns! Where their hands before had been empty, he now saw black metal. They had drawn weapons: Colt submachine guns for some and black semiautomatic pistols for others.

Every sight and sound and sixth sense Gentry had seen or heard or felt since arriving in the plaza suddenly made sense; it all formed together into a solid mass of certainty in his gut.

He understood now.

There would be no riot.

This was going to be a massacre, and he had a bird’s-eye view of it all.

“Yank her ass off the stage, Chuck! It’s about to go loud!”

“Okay!” the old man shouted back.

Court heard the captain yell at Elena. “¡ Vamanos!” Let’s go! Court looked above and across the two-thousand-strong crowd in time to see the white-haired American with the blue ball cap take Elena by the arm.