Ballistic(90)

Ramses Cienfuegos answered on the first ring. Gentry was relieved to hear the GOPES officer had made it away from the hacienda, but Ramses immediately asked about Martin and the motorcycle engine he’d heard as he dropped over the wall. Court reluctantly confirmed that Orozco had given up his own life so that his friend could escape.

Ramses took it stoically, then said he had made contact with the American embassy man, and told him about someone who needed several sets of documents on the fly. The American consular officer agreed to a meeting at two p.m. in Mexico City, and Ramses gave Gentry the location.

Court and Laura drove on for another two hours then stopped for gas. When Court stepped out of the restroom, he began to veer off a little on his way back to the bike. Laura noticed this and offered to drive for a while. Court’s machismo would not allow him to ride on the back of a motorcycle, especially one driven by a five-foot-tall woman. He recognized how silly this was, but he also knew that Laura had likely had as little sleep in the past two days as he had, so they rode a few miles up the highway and then exited, found a thick copse of brush alongside a dirt road through a rolling pasture, and Court stashed the bike.

“Ninety minutes’ sleep. No more.” Court said it as he set his watch. They lay down next to each other in the cool grass. Immediately, Eddie’s little sister covered Gentry with part of her blanket, and she held him close for warmth.

“I’m sorry. I’m so cold,” she said as she put her head in the crook of his shoulder and rested her sinewy bare arm across his chest.

Court said nothing.

“It’s okay?” Laura asked.

“Yeah.” Court stared at the starry sky and tried to control his pounding heart.

Exhausted though he was, it took forty-five minutes for him to drift to sleep.





The Federal District of Mexico City, known simply to Mexicans as “the D.F.” (el de-efe), is one of the largest cities in the world. It is estimated that between fifteen and twenty million people live within its general borders, and many of them live in abject poverty in slumlike suburbs.

Laura and Court hit the outskirts of Mexico City at ten a.m., but with the sprawling expanse of the metropolis, they still had an hour or more ride to their first destination. It was well past eleven when they rolled into the city center. They cleaned up in the bathroom of a fast-food restaurant, and then Court dropped Laura off in front of her bank on the tree-lined Avenida Paseo de la Reforma. He hated letting her out of his sight, but they agreed Court coming in with her might have raised an alarm. He assumed the blurry images of him on TV were recent enough to draw attention to Laura Gamboa, sister of the leader of the team wiped out trying to kill one of the biggest and baddest carteleros in the country. So she’d go in alone, wait for her money alone, and then sit in the park outside and wait for Court to return from errands of his own.

He gave her Ramses’s phone for emergencies, but they did not have enough cash between them for Court to buy a phone of his own. He really had no idea who she would call if she ran into trouble, but it seemed like the right thing to do. She had the Beretta in her purse, she knew how to use it, and he was comforted by this. Court watched her disappear behind the mirrored-glass doors; he looked down at his watch and then turned away reluctantly.

Gentry had a long to-do list to take care of while Laura picked up her money. He needed to scope out the location of the afternoon meet with the embassy man, to use the last of his money to gas up the bike again, and then to find a decent location to get a hotel room. He’d need Laura and her money to get the room, but Court wanted to drive the streets to get a feel for a secure location.

He did his reconnaissance and his security sweep, gassed the bike, and made it back to the bank ninety minutes after he left. Laura was out in the park along the paseo, sitting on a park bench and drinking coffee. She’d bought one for Court, and he walked up to her, sat down, and reached for it.

She pulled the cup away quickly, regarded him like he was a crazy man, and then her eyes relaxed.

“How can you just appear from nowhere like that? You are like a ghost.”

Court ignored the comment, wasn’t going to tell her that decades of training and operational experience had made coming and going discreetly a subconscious action.

“Any trouble in the bank?”

“None at all. They were a little surprised I was taking all the money out, but they did not ask any questions. They were very nice.”

“Where is the cash?”

Laura took a small canvas backpack from a shopping bag and handed it to him.

“Here it is. You have it now. I trust you.”

Court slung the bag over his shoulder, smiled as he led her up the street to the lot where he had parked the motorcycle. “If my intention was to rob you, the past three days would have been a shitty way to do it.”