It seemed farfetched that the connection could be made, but Court had learned in his time working both for and against drug merchants that there was enough money and murder in this industry to motivate absolutely limitless amounts of labor. Enough men tracking down enough leads would, eventually, lead the enemies of the Gamboas to Casa Corrales.
And the Gray Man knew his side could not possibly win a pitched battle, so he hoped like hell he and those he would die to protect would be long gone when the bad guys came.
But that was a problem for tomorrow. He forbade anyone to use either their cell phones or the landline in the hacienda before morning, because a nighttime attack on this dark place would be a slaughter.
Nestor Calvo spent the entire afternoon and evening on the back patio that he had converted into a makeshift office. The twenty Black Suits had been picked up by a pair of helicopters owned by de la Rocha and ferried from Puerto Vallarta to a stately mansion thirty minutes southwest of Guadalajara. Here, just like at all of the fifteenodd safe houses owned by the cartel’s leadership, the building and grounds were patrolled by dozens of armed guards, all with special operations military training. An outer cordon of security, all infantry trained and their fidelity to the organization proven by years of employment, drove the highways and back roads in pickup trucks. On the roof of the casa a team of guards even kept watch with antiaircraft missiles, lest anyone—police, military, or competing cartel—try to hit the property from the skies.
Calvo smoked a Cuban cigar and sipped warm Dominican rum as he typed notes on his laptop, stayed in constant phone contact with his intelligence contacts back in PV, and kept both eyes flickering up to the large television that had been brought outside from a bedroom and wired to the satellite through a bathroom window.
The intelligence chief of Los Trajes Negros monitored international reaction to the massacre, the official government response in Mexico City, and the back channels to the military and government and police that kept him in the know.
All this was the work of ten men, but Calvo kept up, and truth be told, this is what he loved. The intrigue, the negotiations, the public media stance, and the backroom threats. This was his world, and he found it intensely satisfying.
But he had another duty today, and that irked him to no end. Young Daniel, his boss, was unequivocally more interested in finding a fetus and ending its life in order to satisfy the perceived whim of some stupid idol. De la Rocha put more stock into the gaze of a plastic figurine on his bedside table than he did in the reports of his intelligence chief, and he ordered Calvo to focus on doing the bidding of the statuette, instead of doing the business of running the second-largest cartel in the region.
To this end, for this stupid fool’s errand, Calvo had made and taken over fifty phone calls in the previous three hours. And even though his heart wasn’t in this task, even though he found it an idiotic, unprofessional, and reckless waste of time to divert his attention, the Black Suit’s men, material, and political capital to such a trivial task as the life of one unborn child—well, Nestor Calvo was nothing if not a professional, and he did his job.
And he did it well, as evidenced by the fact that he had, in fact, determined the general location of the Gamboa family.
De la Rocha shot out the back door. It was one in the morning, but he still wore his suit and his tie; his face around his trim mustache and goatee had been shaved clean for dinner with his men, so he still looked as fresh as he had when Calvo had first seen him at eight a.m. the previous morning.
“Emilio said you wanted to talk?”
“Sí, Daniel.”
“Tell me you have found something!”
“I have found something.”
Daniel moved closer, sat on a leather and wicker settee next to the desk. He poured himself a shot of rum from the Waterford service next to his intelligence chief, leaned back in the sofa, and crossed his legs.
“What is it?”
“You already know that the two Policía Federal sicarios who survived the gringo at the Parque Hidalgo were killed in Nayarit on the way to eliminate Elena Gamboa.”
“Yes.”
“Witnesses of the attack on the road said two men in PF uniforms killed our men.”
“Federales killed the federales?”
“Sí.”
“Madrigal’s men did this?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So, if it was not los Vaqueros, what do you make of it?”
“I have a theory.”
Daniel smiled. “Of course you do, consigliere.”
Calvo nodded. “On La Sirena—Colonel Gamboa’s assault force was how many men?”
“Eight.”