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.
Hijo de puta! Son of a bitch.
Cabrón. Goat, a Spanish pejorative similar to jackass.
Pendejo. Eddie himself taught Court the meaning of the word that now adorned his grave marker.
Court’s jaw muscles flexed in anger. He did not understand. Who the hell could be angry with Eddie? Apparently, there was more to the story than he had heard on the radio at the torta stand in Chiapas. Gentry had caught a two-minute-long follow-up report about the bombing of the yacht, and Eduardo Gamboa was again mentioned as the dead leader of the operation.
No question in his mind. Eduardo Gamboa was the man he knew as Eddie Gamble.
Court had neither seen nor heard from Eddie since Laos. He had no idea the DEA man had returned to Mexico, and this fact perplexed him greatly. Why the hell would anyone want to leave the United States to come down here and fight drug carteleros and governmental corruption? Wasn’t there enough crime and bullshit in the USA to keep Eddie happy up there?
It hardly seemed like a field trip was necessary.
When Court saw the report of Eddie’s death, he’d been on his way to Tampico, on Mexico’s Gulf coast. He’d heard that a lot of European cargo ships called at the seaport there, and he wanted to find a way back to the eastern hemisphere to confront and kill his former employer Gregor Sidorenko, the man who now, along with the Central Intelligence Agency, was actively seeking his destruction.
But the second news report from Puerto Vallarta changed things. It said that Major Gamboa would be buried in his hometown of San Blas, ninety minutes up the coast from where he died.