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Gentry also held a folder in his hand, and he looked down to it. He said, “Carlos Felipe Contreras Medina. Hey, congratulations, tomorrow is your twenty-sixth birthday.”
The woman next to him said, “Mazel tov,” but Carlos didn’t know what that meant.
Gentry now looked back down to the sheet of paper in his hand. “From Monterrey, originally. Former member of the Jalisco New Generation cartel. Two arrests. Neither stuck, probably because your bosses thought you were worth buying out of custody. This tells me you are a big fish, amigo.”
Contreras was a big fish, he told himself, but these idiots didn’t even know he’d left the cartel a year ago.
The bearded man said, “You left the cartel a year ago, you’ve done some odd jobs for criminal syndicates all over Latin America and the U.S., and now you work for an organization that has been conducting assassinations of innocent scientists and engineers all over the world.” Stepping over to the rusty tools on the table, he spoke softly. “Pays well, does it?”
Zakharova stepped around behind the seated man. “It doesn’t pay nearly enough for what’s about to happen to you.”
Contreras looked ahead. The bitch was bluffing, he was certain.
He’d been tortured before, by the cartel. This gringo couple wasn’t going to do shit to him that would make him talk.
Gentry looked up from the table now. “Who do you work for?”
Contreras said nothing.
After a few seconds, Zakharova, still behind him, said, “Did you know you were taking orders from the Chinese?”
Contreras suspected this, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “Can I have a cigarette?”
The woman stepped around and knelt in front of him now. She was hot, Contreras had noticed this almost immediately. But angry. Mean. Crazy. She said, “You just quit.” With a hard stare she added, “For life.”
Contreras smiled a little at this. They were trying to act so tough. “You are with the American government.” He said it as a statement.
Gentry replied, “Actually, we’re not. I get your confusion, of course. The man you were trying to kill today is from the American government.” He stepped closer. “And that’s why he’s not here right now. He and his coworkers got into their cars and left you here. It’s just us. Alone. With you.”
The Mexican smirked, then nodded to the table full of tools.
“Is that supposed to scare me?” He laughed angrily. “You aren’t going to use those tools on me like we’re in a bad movie.”
Gentry turned back to the table. “This stuff? Yeah, you’re right. It’s here to intimidate you. The CIA guys thought that might frighten you into talking. But they don’t know you like I do.”
“What does that mean?” he asked, surprised by the American’s honesty about the staged torture devices.
“It means they don’t know how mentally strong you are. How prepared you are to keep your mouth shut, since you think we’ll give up and take you to the U.S. and file some charges on you that probably won’t even stick because we’d have to reveal classified intelligence information at your trial, and CIA is not about to say they were down here spying in Cuba.”
This was exactly everything that Contreras was thinking. Again, this gringo had surprised him, but he’d also confirmed that Contreras had nothing to worry about right now.
“So…” Gentry added, putting his hands under the ledge of the wooden table with the devices on it. “This stuff isn’t going to do us a bit of good.” With a single, swift motion he heaved up, the heavy table flipped into the air, the fifteen kilos of rusty farm tools went flying in all directions, and everything crashed down on the dirty concrete floor.
“So, how about we just forget about all that,” Gentry said after everything came to rest. “That stuff takes time. And I’m not here for a long time.” He turned back around, looked Contreras in the eye. “I’m here for a good time.”
What?
The woman in front of him looked up at the tin roof now. “The rain is loud enough to where no one will hear anything in twenty-one seconds.”
Contreras was on the back foot now; he thought these gringos were crazy, but he still wasn’t scared by them.
“What happens in twenty-one seconds?”
“You scream.”
“Why would I scream in twenty-one seconds?”
Zakharova smiled. “Because in twenty seconds”—the woman rose from her crouch—“I am going to set you on fire.”
