King of Swords a-1

by Russell Blake

  The bull was large for a pinata, over four feet long by three high, which was part of what made it irresistible as a target for the kids. Colorful ribbons hung from around its neck, and a chrome metal ring dangled from its nose. It weighed a good forty pounds due to all the candy inside, and Monica silently offered thanks to its fabricator for making it sturdy enough to withstand the pummeling from the toddlers’ searching blows. Little Stefan, especially, had already delivered substantial punishment to the effigy’s shoulders and head, and Monica cursed the little prick as she studied the cracks and gouges the pole had inflicted. She fished in her purse and withdrew a black felt pen, and worked furiously to mask the bulk of the abuse. As long as nobody got too close, it would pass muster. Now she just needed to keep little Satan and his friends from completely destroying it in the next ten minutes, and they were home free.

  El Rey yawned as the girls finished their performance to a smattering of lackluster applause. He was glad it wasn’t him having to dance like a monkey in the sweltering sun for the amusement of a bunch of suits. An elaborate linen tarp had been suspended over the seating area to fend off the worst of the June blaze, and large fans blew ventilation across the seated dignitaries, but even so, whoever had thought it would be a good idea to do this outside had been misguided to the point of delusion.

  He studied the overhead white linen billowing in the breeze and imagined what it would look like soaked in the assembled group’s blood. Now that would be something the media would remember. It was all he could do not to detonate the bull now, just to end the misery.

  The pinata had cost a fortune to create — a one inch shell of a new explosive three times more powerful than plastique. He’d sourced it from Russia, a half-inch thick coating of carbon fiber etched with grooves so that when the animal blew apart hundreds of razor-sharp shards of half-inch square projectiles were created, effectively shredding everything within the blast range to bloody smithereens. And lest that wasn’t sufficiently destructive, roughly half the candy inside was in reality carbon fiber bearings milled to match the gum balls they’d loaded the creature with, which would also hurtle outward at near the speed of light. They’d even tested a sample of the new explosive with two bomb sniffing dogs from the airport in Manzanillo, and they’d passed by the bull without interest — apparently, they didn’t know what prototypical Russian explosives smelled like.

  He’d conceived of the design himself after reading about the claymore mines used by the U.S. military, and the devastation they inflicted. The engineer who’d manufactured it had assured him that nothing would survive for a forty yard radius — and the presidents were seated ten yards away, at most. They’d be hamburger once it detonated, and the resulting carnage would be panoramic — a fitting pinnacle on which to end his already infamous career.

  El Rey shifted the M-16 to his left hand as the first grade class, dressed in white peasant pants and shirts, pranced out onto the stage, eyes glued to the pinata like it was made out of chocolate. The Mayor and Governor took the stage again, and together hoisted the bull aloft, having secured it to a wire suspended from the stage framing. They would hoist the pinata provocatively to extend the fun as the children took turns swatting it, waiting eagerly for the payload of candy to come raining down on them.

  Not today, kids.

  The miniature high frequency transmitter-triggered detonator in the pinata was the only problem he’d encountered. He knew everything coming into the area would be x-rayed, and while the carbon fiber would pass through clean, appearing to be nothing more than part of the plaster used to fabricate the creature, and the bearings would resemble the rest of the gumballs, the detonator had to be made out of metal — wires to conduct the necessary electric pulse, a tiny battery to emit it, and an antenna. The nose ring had been the designer’s suggestion, and it had worked like a charm. The pinata was ready for its denouement on stage, and nobody suspected anything.

  Overhead, on the trim at the top of the conference center, the sun’s harsh rays gleamed off the black feathers of a silent spectator, its avian eyes coldly appraising the gathered children and the bovine target of their excitement. Nobody noticed the crow in all the pandemonium — it was, after all, only a bird.

  A blast of music from the speakers startled it from its position and it took flight, emitting a cry that was lost in the hubbub from the stage below.

  El Rey, to all the world just another of the hundreds of soldiers chartered with keeping the world safe from the cartels, cautiously slid his hand into his camouflage pants pocket, preparing to push the button. He’d had a hacker in the Ukraine list his name two days ago on the security force’s roster and had spent the last two nights in the temporary barracks that had been erected to house the troops on the road to the airport. He was just another faceless, anonymous drudge, his appearance altered with a military buzz cut and cotton padding in his cheeks. He’d long since shaved the goatee off. To any observer he would look like a hapless Mexican serviceman from the hinterlands, albeit a sergeant — he needed a suitable cover for his age, given that most of the enlisted men were eighteen to twenty-two; and he also wanted to ensure he would have sufficient rank to be able to roam, rather than being stationed too far from the stage for the transmitter to reach.

  Steeling himself for the blast, he winced almost imperceptibly, and pushed the button, waiting for the blinding flash and then the horrified screaming.

  Nothing happened.

  Unbelievingly, he pushed it again. Same result.

  He quickly estimated the distance between himself and the stage and calculated that he was no more than eighty yards away.

  Fuck.

  He moved closer to the stage, eyes fixed on the bull, and depressed the button again.

  More nothing.

  It wasn’t going to work.

  He momentarily contemplated spraying the presidents with lead from his rifle, then dismissed the idea. The goal was not to get killed today. It was to kill. Trying to shoot them would be suicide.

  No, he had to abort.

  El Rey pushed the button one last time, and when the stage didn’t vaporize in a blinding flash, he decided to terminate the operation and live to fight another day. All he had to do was wait out the performance.

  Except of course, that once the pinata came apart and it became obvious that half the candy was in reality custom-crafted projectiles, everyone in the vicinity would be put under a microscope. Even as good as his cover was, it wasn’t designed to withstand that. No, it was time to pack it in and slip away. Or in this case, run away. He’d been assuming that the scene would be one of chaotic pandemonium, not calm, when he made his getaway.

  Which posed a problem. But not too much of one.

  He was, after all, El Rey.

  Briones listened as the girls finished up their jig and the music terminated. From his position at the rear of the building, he peered into the hills, alert for any threat. His nerves were shot after the incident with the would-be tomato thrower, and he forced himself to take deep breaths to slow the adrenaline rush. He held out his right hand, palm extended down, and considered the tremor, a byproduct of the fight-or-flight reflex he’d triggered when going after the protestor.

  Pull yourself together, dammit.

  He was chagrined by the end result of his charge into the crowd. Briones had been a split-second away from blowing the man’s head apart — he’d started squeezing the trigger before he’d registered the tomato. Just the memory of it caused the tremor to worsen. He told himself to calm down and focus on the job at hand.

  Maybe they’d gotten it wrong. Maybe the entire El Rey thing had been bullshit, just as CISEN had obviously thought. Perhaps the Capitan, wracked by grief over his family and blinded by hatred for Santiago, had invented a new crusade to bring meaning to his life. Briones was starting to doubt the entire hypothesis now, just as he was doubting his instincts after nearly killing the hippy.

  Briones wound his way around the structure, noting that
the soldiers stationed every thirty feet seemed alert and ready. Soon he was standing by the side of the stage, watching the kids trot out to do a cloyingly cute presentation — or perhaps a badly out-of-tune song, before breaking open the pinata. He wiped his face with the arm of his long-sleeved shirt, blotting sweat, and cursed his fate. There were bound to be repercussions from the tomato incident. He wasn’t looking forward to discovering what they would be; probably a shift in his career to working traffic in the desert or something similarly awful.

  Briones noticed movement on the far side of the stage. A soldier had inched towards the dignitaries, probably to get a better view of the kids, and now was moving away again. Briones’ stomach twisted. He watched the man slowly saunter back to his position, and then continue walking easily in the direction of one of the Humvees sitting at the edge of the lot. Two soldiers rested against it, scanning the hills with boredom now that the presentation was winding down.

  There was something wrong. He couldn’t place it, but he knew, just as he’d known there was something off about the vagrant in the alley. What was it that Cruz had told him? Trust that instinct.

  Casting aside his doubts, he set off in pursuit, cautiously, so as not to arouse suspicion or create a scene if he was wrong yet again. The soldier was three-quarters of the way to the vehicle now, so Briones picked up his pace to a fast walk. As he closed on the man, he called out to him, his hand on his holstered pistol, ready to draw, but not doing so yet, remembering the admonition from Cruz. The man didn’t hear him, so he called out louder.

  “Oye. You. Wait up. Federales. Just a second,” he yelled now that they were far enough from the stage he wouldn’t disrupt anything with his exclamation.

  The soldier turned, gun pointed at the ground, his posture relaxed. Briones got within twenty feet of him, then saw the man’s eyes. It was the vagrant — but his face was different somehow, fatter and heavier. He jerked his pistol free and prepared to fire.

  Chapter 22

  El Rey heard the call from behind him but ignored it. Every foot closer to the vehicle was a foot closer to safety, so he kept moving, subtly increasing his speed by lengthening his stride. The call came again, and he turned, resigned that the game was up. There was only one reason someone would be following him, and it couldn’t be good.

  He watched as the man in the distinctive blue uniform strode towards him, and then their eyes locked, and he watched the man pull his gun.

  Two shots exploded out of his combat jacket pocket, catching the cop in the chest and the shoulder, knocking him off his feet, his gun clattering uselessly beside him. The silenced compact automatic pistol was almost soundless, and he turned and trotted the remaining twenty yards to the two soldiers by the vehicle — thankfully, both privates, and both relatively green.

  “Men. Quick. Over there. That man — the Federal Policeman. He’s down. Help him. I’ll get the truck. We need to get him to a hospital.” El Rey saw the confusion in their eyes. “Now!” he bawled at them. “That’s an order. He’s been hit. Get a move on!” They sprang into action, and jogged over to where Briones lay.

  El Rey climbed into the driver’s seat and cranked the engine, jamming it into gear and tearing straight to the hills. He only needed a half minute head start, and he’d be golden. It would be just like if he’d been successful, only with more pursuit. The wind dried the sweat on his face as he bounced along, the massive four wheel vehicle’s heavily knobbed tires gripping the steep slope as it climbed towards the peak above.

  The soldiers made it to Briones, who was bleeding heavily from his shoulder. His vest had stopped the shot to the chest, and though there would be a painful bruise, it wasn’t a deal breaker — but the arm was: the bullet had nicked an artery, and blood spurted freely from the wound. He tried to speak, but found himself disoriented and momentarily unable to do so. Cruz, having noticed the downed man, came running with a lopsided gait. He leaned over him, putting his head close to his ear.

  Briones struggled to talk.

  “El Rey. There…”

  He used the remains of his energy to point in the direction of the Humvee, now three quarters up the hill and throwing out a cloud of dust. Cruz looked back down at him, and Briones’ eyes rolled back into his head as it fell limp against the pavement.

  “Get an ambulance. Run. Hurry. Where’s your commanding officer?” Cruz demanded.

  “Over there.” the soldier pointed to the group of soldiers in front of them, thirty yards away.

  Cruz debated for a split second, and then abandoned his initial instinct, which was to commandeer one of the other Humvees and give chase. He moved to the officers, and quickly explained what had happened.

  “He’s out of range, and I don’t think we want to shoot up the hills and cause an international incident. Get the helicopters loaded with some crack shots, and take off. I’ll go after him with some men in one of the trucks,” Cruz directed.

  The officers were taken aback for a few seconds, gawping at the blood surrounding the fallen policeman before snapping into action. The general trotted over to a man holding the rank of major, and gave him direction. The major quickly held his radio to his mouth and barked a sequence of orders.

  They were losing time. It would take several more minutes to get the choppers into the air, best case. That was too long.

  Cruz limped over to the nearest Humvee and slung his rifle next to him, calling to the three soldiers who had approached him.

  “Get in. Now.”

  They exchanged furtive glances, then hopped aboard. Cruz roared pell-mell up the hill in full-on pursuit.

  Back at the stage, the kids were still whacking at the pinata with all their might, the drama taking place on the perimeter off to the rear side of the building invisible to the attendees. The roar of the diesel motors was muffled by the linen shade element and the blaring fiesta horns blaring from the speakers.

  When the two large military helicopters lifted off, the pinata festivities had grown tiresome, and the dignitaries were restless and hot. When the infernal creature hadn’t fallen apart after ten minutes of determined swatting, that part of the summit entertainment was concluded by the Mayor, and the assembled attendees moved gratefully into the building interior, where refreshments and arctic air-conditioning waited to greet them.

  El Rey’s Humvee slid to a stop by an old shed two hills away from the conference center. He studied the dust cloud from a pursuit vehicle, and calculated that it had to be several minutes off. He tossed his helmet into the truck and shrugged out of the uniform, beneath which he wore black cargo shorts and a T-shirt.

  He hurried to the shed and disappeared inside the abandoned structure. Emerging a few seconds later, he pushed a heavy-duty off road motorcycle to the side of the Humvee and jumped on the kick start. The motor roared to life. He kicked the gear selector and tore down the slope into an even more remote area of uninhabited brush.

  Cruz came over the hill and saw the motorcycle leap into the air, landing with a puff of dirt as it raced into the wilds.

  “Shit. We’ll never get him in this,” Cruz lamented. “How does this radio work? We need to let the helicopters know what direction he’s headed, and that he’s on a bike.”

  One of the soldiers jabbed at a button and turned a dial — within moments a voice crackled over the air. Cruz grabbed the microphone from him and barked directions to the pursuers before stomping on the gas and rocking down the hill, past the shed, to the arroyo down which the assassin had disappeared.

  El Rey was enjoying the pursuit. The men in the Humvee had to be hating life right now, as they fought a losing battle to keep up with the nimble motorcycle. They didn’t stand a chance.

  He sped along the dry wash for several minutes and then swung up a tributary gulch that led to the uninhabited mountains that bisected the peninsula. Part of him wondered what had gone wrong with the bull. Everything had been so perfectly planned, and then it didn’t explode. What the fuck. It was his first failure ever,
which annoyed him more than being pursued by half the Mexican army.

  Spotting the cactus with the streak of yellow paint on it, he made another right turn, and thirty yards farther, pulled to a stop. All the planning was worth it, he reasoned with satisfaction. They’d never catch him, and even though he hadn’t succeeded in his attempt to kill the two presidents, this escape would be spoken of in hushed awe by police for generations.

  He killed the motorcycle engine, dropped his mount and walked into a small cave that had been eroded by centuries of flash floods from the mountains. He couldn’t help but grin at the thought of his pursuers’ plight.

  Cruz saw the motorcycle tire tracks careen off to the left, and he spun the wheel, nearly flipping the burly vehicle. As they tore up the arroyo, they heard a sound from above. Cruz slowed, and the men searched the sky for the source of the clamor.

  An ultra-light flew off into the distance, a single man at the controls. It was already five hundred yards away, so out of rifle range, leaving Cruz and the soldiers to gape at it in disbelief.

  It banked over San Jose, and made for the coast and the sparsely inhabited East Cape area.

  Cruz watched it disappearing from view as he radioed to the pursuing choppers. A few minutes later they chucked by overhead, a pair of gunships after little more than a kite with a lawnmower-sized engine propelling it.

  A large part of him wanted to celebrate at the prospect of nailing the son of a bitch, but a tiny voice inside him countered that they wouldn’t. El Rey may be a homicidal psychopath, but stupid or careless he obviously wasn’t. Cruz watched the helicopters disappear in pursuit, and then, finding himself suddenly purposeless, turned the wheel and headed back to the convention center, his part in the chase over.