Court had been sitting on a plastic chair with his head back on the greasy wall and his feet up on his canvas bag. But he sat up to move his back, to flex and then stretch the muscles high in his left shoulder where scar tissue from an arrow wound bothered him, the adhesion of the tissue needing a good daily stretch to stay pliant.
The evening news came on the little television, and Court distractedly listened to it without looking at the screen, just picking up words here and there as he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around his body to stretch the muscles under his scapulas.
The words
Puerto Vallarta
did not catch his attention, neither did
yacht
nor
explosion
.
But the Spanish word
asesinato
caused him to turn his head. He had an acute professional interest in stories about assassination.
He watched video of smoldering wreckage in the ocean, taken from a helicopter at dawn. Then a picture of a handsome Hispanic male in an impeccable black three-piece suit. The newscaster said the man's name was Daniel de la Rocha, and there was speculation that he was the target of a sanctioned murder by the Mexican Federal Police. Court couldn't understand it all, but he did pick up that de la Rocha had survived and the police who had bombed the yacht had all died.
Wow,
Court thought. That was a fucked-up hit. Why blow up the yacht? Why not just shoot the son of a bitch on land?
The image on the screen changed again, displayed an official photo of a man in a police uniform sitting in front of the Mexican flag. He wore a smart hat, medals adorned his uniform coat, and his clean-shaven face was serious and stern.
Court cocked his head a fraction of an inch. Blinked twice rapidly. Otherwise, he did not move a muscle. He just watched.
The newscaster continued speaking over the cop's image, and Gentry concentrated on the words, tuned into the grammar, and did his very best to understand.
“Sources say Major Eduardo Gamboa of the PolicÃa Federal's special operation's group led the attempt on the life of Daniel de la Rocha. As previously stated, Gamboa and all his men perished in the explosion of the yacht, along with four of DLR's bodyguards and three crewmen of
La Sirena
. Only de la Rocha and two associates survived.”
Eduardo Gamboa.
“Eduardo Gamboa.” Court whispered it softly. The image left the screen, a commercial selling mobile phone plans appeared, but Gentry still saw the face.
“Eduardo Gamboa.” He said it again softly. Then said, “Eddie.”
Court blinked again, dropped his bearded face into his hands, and thought back to the month he spent in hell.
Â
Â
Â
LAOS
Â
AUGUST 2000
Â
Â
Four soldiers in army green ponchos pulled the American out of the back of the truck and shoved him through the thunderstorm, up the muddy trail. He stumbled once on the pathway to the wooden shack: his manacled hands and feet forced him to move slower than his minders found reasonable, and his long, rain-soaked hospital gown and bare feet hardly promoted sure footwork on the slick stones. One Laotian prodded him in the back with his old SKS rifle to encourage Gentry to pick up the pace. Once under the porch roof of the shack, Court dropped to his knees, but the guards yanked him back up and left him teetering there while the door was unlocked. He swayed with the wind of the storm as he stood and waited; finally, they moved him inside the building.
The soldiers took off their ponchos and hung them on wall pegs while an officer came out from behind his desk and unlocked a door to a stairwell that descended into darkness. Court teetered again, nearly tipped over, but strong hands on his back and shoulders guided him down the narrow stairs. At the bottom another locked door was opened, Gentry was pushed forward onto a brick floor, and his shackles were removed. The four soldiers unlocked an iron cell and shoved him inside.
He dropped in the corner of the cell, and they left him there in his wet hospital gown, the metal bars clanging shut behind him. The soldiers slammed the basement door behind him, locked it, and then retreated up the steps.
Gentry had landed on moldy sawdust; he'd caught a mouthful of it and spat it back out as he lay on his side. He opened his eyes and struggled to look around. A folded up pair of baby blue pajamas lay on the floor next to him; he could just make them out. There was a faint light emanating from a ventilation slit high on the wall above him; only a trace of dim illumination tracked down softly to where Gentry lay, but it did nothing to reveal the room around him.
He couldn't see an inch beyond his arm where it lay outstretched on the sawdust.
“Shit,” he mumbled to himself. “Fucking perfect.”
“English?” A man's voice called hopefully from the dark in front of him, from inside the bars of the cell, maybe a dozen feet from the tip of Court's nose.
Gentry did not respond.
After a while he heard movement, the sound of a person sitting up, clothing rubbing against the stone wall.
“You speak English?” The accent was American, with perhaps a foreign background.
Court ignored the question.
The voice in the blackness continued. “I've been here for two weeks. Spent the first couple of days checking for cameras or listening devices. Trust me, these
pendejos
aren't that sophisticated.”
Court slowly moved himself into a sitting position, leaned back against the iron bars. He nodded to the dark. Shrugged his shoulders. “I speak English.” He was surprised by how weak and raspy his voice had become.
“You American?”
“Yep.”
“Same here.”
Court said, “You talk funny.”
A chuckle from the disembodied voice. “Born in Mexico. Came to the States when I was eighteen.”
“Then you're a long way from home.”
“Yeah. How bout you? What did you do to end up here?”
“Not sure where âhere' is, exactly.”
“We're a couple hours northwest of Vientiane in a military camp where they dump foreign heroin smugglers. It's not an official prison; there is no judge or trial or Red Cross or anything like that. They bring the traffickers here to interrogate them, pull the names of their suppliers from them, and then when they're sure they've squeezed out everything they have to offer, they take them to a work camp and have them build roads until they drop dead. They say in three weeks the rainy season will be over and the roads will be passable, then everyone here is off to the labor camps.”
“Bummer,” Court said after another cough.
“How much dope did they catch you with?”
Court closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the cold brick wall. He shrugged. “I wasn't running drugs.”
“Sure you weren't, homes. Just tell them it was a misunderstanding.”
“Actually I came to rescue some dipshit DEA dumbass who got himself captured by the boneheads running this place.”
An extremely long pause. Then a fresh chuckle. Then a hearty laugh that seemed utterly out of place in this black dungeon. Then the sound of movement in the dark. In the low light close to Court's face, a bearded man appeared. He looked Mexican, late twenties, and several inches shorter than Court. He wore baby blue pajamas, and the skin around both of his eyes was tainted with fading bruises, obvious even in the deep shadow. He stuck out a hand. “Eddie Gamble. DEA, Phoenix Field Office, on special assignment to the Bangkok Field Division.”
Court shook the hand weakly. “Hey, Gamble? How's that special assignment of yours working out?”
“How's
your
assignment working out,
ese
?”
Court smiled; the muscles in his jaw hurt. “No better than yours, I guess.”
“So you are here to save me, huh?”
Gentry nodded.
Eddie Gamble swatted a bug from his forehead. “Is this the part where the rest of your unit rappels down from the rafters and we all blast out of here with jet packs?”
Court looked up towards the low ceiling. “God, I hope so.” Nothing happened. He looked back to Gamble. Shrugged. “Guess not.”
Eddie asked, “Who are you with?”
“Can't say.”
“I'm cleared top secret.”
“Chicks dig that, don't they?” quipped Gentry; his eyes were becoming accustomed to the low light, so he scanned the cell now, found nothing but a shit bucket and a water trough and a couple of tattered blankets as furniture.
“I mean . . . I'm sure you can tell me who you're with.”
“Sorry, stud. I'm codeword-classified.”
Codeword-classified
meant only those who knew a specific code could be privy to a set of information.
“I bet chicks dig
that
.”
“They would if I could tell them, but they'd have to know the codeword.”
Gamble laughed at this, and at the situation. “You can come rescue me, but you can't tell me who you work for?”
“The DEA is looking for you. I just happened to be in the area, sort of, so I was sent by my people to nose around.”
“And then?”
Court shrugged. “Bad luck. I got sick. I was meeting with some contacts, and I passed out. I woke up in the hospital. I had cover for status only; my papers weren't good enough for the scrutiny of the hospital, so they called the cops. My papers weren't even close to good enough for the cops, so they called military intelligence. Military intelligence wiped their asses with my papers, basically, so here I am.”
Gamble reached out and put his hand on Gentry's forehead. “You get stung by any mosquitoes?”
“I crossed over the Mekong about a week and a half ago. Damn bugs ate my ass up. Guess they don't get a lot of white meat around here.”
“Backache, muscle aches, stomach cramps, dizziness?”
“Fatigue, joint pain, vomiting,” Court finished his list of symptoms.
“You have malaria,” Eddie said gravely.
“Thanks, doc, but I already figured that out.”
Gamble looked at Gentry a long time before saying, “Brother, that's a death sentence in a place like this. You need meds. Clean water. Solid food that doesn't have
cucarachas
crawling in it. You aren't gonna get that here.”
Court shrugged his shoulders. “I'll be okay.”
Eddie stood quickly, so quickly Gentry flinched. Gamble moved to the bars and started shouting for the guards up the stairs. Court couldn't understand a word of it. The guards did not come down, and after a moment Gamble sat back down, visibly angry.
“We gotta get you to a hospital.”
“They just pulled me
out
of a hospital, remember.”
“¡Pendejos!”
“What does that mean?”
“It's Spanish. It's kinda like ...
assholes
or something.”
Court nodded. “And that was Laotian you were speaking to the guards?”
“Thai. Not exactly the same, but close enough for government work.”
“Figured a DEA agent with Mexican roots would be sent to Latin America. I guess if you speak Thai, you get sent here.”
“I get sent everywhere. Before this gig I was in the Navy for six years, in the Teams. I went all over, picked up some language on the way.”
“The Teams? You were a SEAL?”
“Team Three.”
Court nodded, as respectfully as one can while resting his head on a wall. “You've been here two weeks. You should have escaped by now, spent a week banging beach bunnies on the coast, and then made it back home with time to spare.”
Gamble bristled in the dark. Court could tell the man did not like the suggestion that he was soft. “Sure, I could get out of here. Two guards come down to take me to the interrogation shack every morning. I
could
break their necks. I
could
grab a sidearm and make a run for the motor pool. I
could
hot-wire a ride in nothing flat. I
could
smash the front gate, make a run for the Mekong.”
“But you just stay because you like the food?”
Gamble's facial expression showed incredulity. “Bro . . . I'm
DEA
. I'm not a SEAL anymore, and I'm sure as hell not some secret squirrel, codeword, badass hombre like yourself. I can't just run around killing Laotian military.”
Court nodded slowly. He worked under quite different rules of engagement, but he wasn't going to admit that to Eddie.
Gamble asked, “What about you? Can you tell me your background? I mean, you weren't
born
codeword-classified, were you?”
“I forgot everything before this job.”
“Shit, the CIA winds you singleton operators up tight, don't they?”
Court didn't bite on the comment. Didn't admit he was CIA.
Gamble gave him a moment, and then said, “Okay. How bout a name? You got a name?”
Another shrug from the sick American against the wall. “My cover is blown. You can make one up for me. Anything you like.”
Gamble shook his head. Shrugged. “Okay, amigo. I think I'll call you Sally.”
Court laughed until he wheezed and coughed until he rolled into the fetal position, wracked with pain.
EIGHT
Gentry's mind left ancient history in Laos, came back to the here and now, and he looked down at the grave of Eduardo Gamboa, the freshly dug earth dry and crumbled around the tombstone.
Major Gamboa had been dead for eight days, it took three days to fish his remains from the Pacific Ocean, his funeral was the day before yesterday, and already people had defaced the white wooden cross with spray paint.