A new resolve grew inside of Court. A resolve to . . . to salvage something for Eddie Gamble. And for Chuck Cullen. Some tiny victory, some simple bit of retribution, some finger in the eye of those who took everything from these two good men.
TWENTY-FIVE
When Court and the GOPES men returned to the casa grande, they checked the building to find the best places to position sentries to look out over the property. Old Spanish architecture, like that built in Mexico in the 1770s, borrowed much from the Moorish buildings dotting the landscape of Ottoman Spain. One common feature was the mirador, or “overlook,” a balcony or atrium usually covered and usually adorned with an archway, that gave a vista of the property. This building was built in a horseshoe shape, with the concave portion facing south and surrounding the expansive patio and rectangular pool. There were three miradores on the second story of the casa grande, giving view to the front drive, the patio and back wall, and the overgrown fruit tree orchard that ended at the wall by the pond.
Overwatch itself would not be hard here.
The men did a quick inventory of their weapons. Between the eleven people in the home, the grand total of the arms at their disposal were the two Colt SMGs carried by the GOPES, Luis Corrales’s ancient double-barreled shotgun with a box of birdshot loads, two Beretta 9 mm pistols with a couple of magazines each, and a big .357 Magnum revolver with three live rounds.
They had no night vision equipment, only a couple of shitty dimestore flashlights, and no weapons that could really reach out and touch someone at a distance.
Yeah, Gentry realized, if the bad guys came, it could get ugly. If they came hard, it would be over in minutes.
A second meeting was held in the big sitting room at ten thirty. Luis Corrales had gone back to his bedroom to sleep, but everyone else was present and accounted for. Elena lay on the couch with her swollen feet elevated on a pillow and her mother-in-law rubbing them, and the rest of the group either stood against the wall or sat on dusty chairs or tables. Court passed off Martin’s pistol to Laura; the police academy and her badass, overly protective brother had taught her how to shoot, and Court recognized from her actions in Vallarta that she had no problem killing bastards who needed killing. The other pistol went to young Diego. He’d never fired a weapon, so Laura took him aside and gave him a quick primer on the location of the safety and the concept of the magazine and the sights. Ignacio had not stopped drinking tequila since the first offering two hours earlier, so Court and the two federales decided he’d be no help in a fight. Ernesto angrily sent his forty-five-year-old son to a bedroom on the second floor.
They talked about the security situation for a while, though the Gamboas seemed to think it highly unlikely that they would be in any danger here at the hacienda. But Court insisted they needed to do their best to be ready, and after Court questioned Inez about secure places around the property, she showed the entourage a door off the kitchen that led to a steep and narrow stairwell down to a dark subterranean hallway. The hallway ended at a long stone cellar where, back when this was a working hacienda, casks of tequila had been stored. The women moved enough bedding down there for everyone, creating a hiding place and a dormitory, but only Elena, Luz, and Inez bedded down immediately.
Court approved of the cellar as a last-ditch defensive position; he saw the benefit that it was somewhat hidden and any attacking force would be forced to send all their number up a hallway that could be turned into a fatal funnel of fire from those defending the cellar.
But he also saw there was no other way out, no possible means of escape.
Fuck it, he decided. It was the best they could do here in this humongous dark house of horrors. They did not have the luxury of choice in picking their defensive positions.
Court took Luis’s shotgun and kept his stolen revolver. Before heading back to bed, the old man had wandered around for a while, calling Court Guillermo several more times. In the morning who knew what he would think of what was going on around his house? Gentry was not going to let the confused old man roam the hacienda with a twelve gauge. Court had enough potential problems on the outside of the hacienda.
The shotgun was old and simple, and the loads it fired would only be effective at very close range, but it was better than nothing. He’d asked Martin for his submachine gun, and the Mexican officer looked at the gringo like he was out of his fucking mind.
“I’m not giving you my gun,” he mumbled through his swollen jaw.
Court didn’t blame him, and he didn’t bother to ask Ramses.
There was one more security issue, and it was big, and it was one that Court saw no good way to deal with. In order for them to find a way out of this mess, to get reporters to come help or honest people in the army or somebody with some authority somewhere to save them, the Gamboas were going to have to use a telephone. Elena would, by necessity, be calling people who the narcos, either directly or through intermediaries in the corrupt police, would be monitoring. He worried someone might accidentally say something to give away their location, might tip off the bad guys that Elena was laying low somewhere and that this big dead hacienda owned by her sister in-law’s in-laws just might be that somewhere.