Revenge of the Assassin a-2

by Russell Blake

  He was a long way from when he’d joined the force, with high hopes and ideas about changing Mexico for the better. After the better part of twenty-five years in the Federal Police, he’d shed any illusions about his fellow man. The country, his country, ran on graft and corruption. As did most, he supposed. Some had civilized veneers and pretensions of honesty, but when it came to money, everywhere was the same. It just was a question of how much. The only difference in Mexico was that it was cheaper than in the U.S. because they’d eliminated the middle men — there were no lobbyists or influence peddlers, just wires to offshore bank accounts or briefcases of cash.

  “You want to take the first watch, or should I?” Cruz asked Briones.

  “Go ahead and get some rest, sir. I can monitor things until, what, five? That’s two hours of sleep apiece if we’re going to regroup at seven, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “Are you sure?” Cruz asked, eyeing the cot.

  “Absolutely. Too much coffee,” Briones said, although they both knew that wasn’t the truth.

  “All right, then. Wake me if the slightest thing happens,” Cruz said, with a doubtful glance at the monitors.

  The sun was already heating up the air temperature in Ciudad Juarez, even though it had only been light for fifty-five minutes. Traffic was just starting to pick up for rush hour, which made the congestion caused by the assembled police, military and television vans a major bottleneck on one of the main thoroughfares. The soldiers were visibly agitated, their weapons at the ready as they formed a protective perimeter around the cops and the reporters, who were chatting as though they were at a sporting event, waiting for the big match to begin. Two uniformed officers waved traffic around a roadblock, directing the cars to an alternative route, and the combination of having to loop around, coupled with rubberneckers straining to see what the fuss was about, had caused a vicious snarl.

  The captain of the Juarez office of the Federal Police approached the ranking officer of the army detachment, Major Trujillo, carrying a cup of OXXO coffee in a polystyrene cup. The major grinned when he saw his friend, Captain Pompa, up early for once.

  “This must be very inconvenient for a late sleeper like you, eh?” he offered by way of hello.

  “You have no idea. I was just getting to bed when I got the call,” Pompa fired back.

  The men smiled and took in the creeping procession of annoyed motorists. “What do you think it means? Another round of retribution killings going to start?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Although this is worrisome. They usually don’t target the press. Then again, why should journalists be any different than us? We all bleed the same,” Pompa observed.

  “What’s his name?” Major Trujillo asked.

  “Eligio Nerevez. Worked the crime beat at one of the local rags. Seems like he pissed off the wrong people. Dangerous line of work.” Pompa took another sip of coffee. “I don’t have to tell you that nobody saw anything last night. This was called in by someone driving, who didn’t want to identify himself. Imagine that. Wanted to remain anonymous…”

  “Nerevez? That’s him? Huh. I recognize the name. He just did that series on the bloggers who were outing politicians on the take. I thought it was an ambitious project, but you’re right. Hazardous…obviously,” Major Trujillo agreed.

  “He could have just printed a list of every elected official in the state. That would have saved time,” Pompa said, and both men laughed.

  “You want to cut him down, or should we?” the major inquired, eyeing Pompa’s coffee. He wished he’d had the foresight to get a cup before taking up his station. It was too late now, but the smell was intoxicating.

  They turned and considered the body of the young man, hanging upside down, suspended from the steel guardrail by a rope around his ankles. The blood on his face was coagulated and brown, already dried. A small amount had stained the road beneath him, its rust-colored puddle a contrast to the filthy gray. His hands were bound behind him, and half his head was gone from where a large caliber round had entered his mouth, blowing the top of his skull off. Next to him, a bed sheet with the distinctive markings of the Juarez cartel hung, issuing a warning to any good citizens who wanted to shorten their lives by focusing on the cartel’s misdeeds. It was a crude, but effective communication tool. Everyone got the point: taking on the cartels was bad for your health.

  Pompa shook his head. “Nah. We’ll do it.”

  At seven o’clock there was still no sign of activity in the apartment. Cruz slurped an oversized mug of coffee and ate an energy bar while watching the feed from the vans, and Briones used the bathroom. They’d just gotten confirmation that the tactical teams were back in place, awaiting instruction, but Cruz was unsure how to proceed. He felt better after the glorified nap, but not nearly at peak performance, and while he wanted this to be over he also didn’t want to blow their only chance at El Rey. He battled internally for a few minutes and then decided to have everyone stand down until they spotted their quarry. Better to keep the surveillance going than to rush in as they had at the machine shop. On that one, in retrospect, they should have hung back and waited for the assassin to exit the building and then taken him. He didn’t want to make a similar miscalculation on this one.

  He radioed the tactical team and relayed his orders. Remain in place. Next, he contacted the van operators and instructed them to do the same. They were also likely exhausted by now, but that was the job and it came with the territory. At worst, the two man teams could sleep in short shifts, as he had. It wasn’t his problem, but he still felt sorry for the men.

  The morning dragged by, and at noon Cruz made a judgment call. They would go in, but stealthily, only three plainclothes officers using a passkey provided by the soon-to-be-wealthy Gabriela. If El Rey was in there, he’d managed to shield the apartment from their best surveillance efforts, but that didn’t surprise Cruz.

  Cruz turned to brief the men he had selected, who had arrived a few minutes earlier.

  “Guerrero, you, Simon and Roberto do the entry. Use whatever force is necessary. You have my permission. And make sure you have vests on under your jackets. I don’t want to have to call anyone’s family and tell them daddy’s not coming home.”

  Guerrero pounded his chest with his fist, thumping the bulletproof vest for emphasis. They were ready.

  The men made their way to the apartment complex, scanning the sidewalk reflexively. They stopped in the well-kept lobby and got the key from Gabriela, then took the elevator to the sixth floor. The building was a medium luxury property, where the rent on a two bedroom apartment would run three month’s salary of any of the officers; when they exited the elevator they stepped onto polished marble tiles.

  El Rey’s apartment was the last on the left. The officers moved soundlessly on rubber soles, pistols ready, safeties off. Guerrero, as usual, was in the lead, and he moved to the far side of the doorway, with his two partners taking the opposite wall. He gingerly slipped the key into the lock and turned it with the delicacy of a neurosurgeon. Their ears strained for any hint of movement inside, but heard nothing. Guerrero nodded at Simon and Roberto, holding each man’s gaze, and then with a deep breath, he turned the knob and eased the door open. Under Guerrero’s holding fire cover, Simon lunged into the foyer, doing a lightning scan of the small entryway with his weapon but detecting no threat.

  Roberto and Guerrero followed him, guns sweeping, and they moved as one into the darkened space beyond the entry. As their eyes adjusted to the paucity of light they could make out a kitchen on the right and a larger area straight ahead. Guerrero moved past them into the living room, his Beretta M9A1 now pointing at the master bedroom doorway, and then he stopped, sniffing the air.

  What the hell?

  He turned to Roberto, who was reaching for the wall switch to give them some light, and screamed, “Nooo…!”

  It was too late.

  A blast erupted through the apartment door, blowing out all the windows, showerin
g the street below with glass and debris as the fireball shot through the apertures. The crude five gallon gas can had been augmented by leaving the stove propane running with the pilot light off and the automatic shutoff disabled, creating a massive bomb. Rigging a simple electrically-activated detonator had been laughably simple. The three men were instantly incinerated, the air sucked out of their lungs almost as quickly as their skin melted and their bones seared.

  Cruz watched the firestorm erupt through the apartment’s facade on the monitors and realized instantly that somehow, the assassin had trumped them.

  He threw back his chair and slammed his coffee cup down against the table, shattering it with a crash. Briones pushed back from his vantage point and moved to help and then thought better of it when he saw the look in the captain’s eyes.

  Cruz licked away a rivulet of blood from his hand and wrapped a paper towel from the coffee tray around it, seemingly oblivious to the pain. He collected himself with a shudder and then took another glance at the screens, watching black smoke belch from the front of the complex. He didn’t need to wait for the report from the team that was rushing towards the building.

  That afternoon, he would be making the visits he dreaded to the three spouses.

  Chapter 25

  Cruz exited the conference room where he’d been meeting with the president’s security people, frustrated at their conviction that El Rey couldn’t get to him. He understood that they believed they were good at their jobs, but he knew that the assassin was better — which wasn’t to say that the president’s detail wasn’t dedicated or good, they just weren’t El Rey. He’d already proved he could get past them once. And not only them, but also the American Secret Service, considered the best in the world.

  He’d said as much at their get-together, but met with blank stares and polite assurances, except for the president’s chief of staff, who had seemed to get it. Then again, his career was predicated on his boss continuing to breathe, so he was probably more motivated than the rest. He’d taken Cruz aside on the way out and slipped him his card, and asked him to call whenever he had more information or any breakthrough ideas on how to handle the mess. That had given Cruz hope, even if it was a slim reed upon which to rest optimism.

  He walked to his car, waiting in the secure lot, and thought to himself that they were in serious trouble. If it had been him, he would simply cancel any appearance that could create an opportunity to execute the president. He really didn’t understand how these men’s minds worked. They’d blithely told him that they had every confidence in his abilities, had listened politely as he’d detailed the story of the threat, as well as the latest series of miraculous escapes, and then thanked him for his time. It was like everyone was in denial — like El Rey’s existence, if they acknowledged it, challenged their competence, and so it was better to ignore him.

  And there was the question of how the assassin had escaped, which still lingered in Cruz’s mind — as well as how the Sinaloans had known that the arms dealer had been the leak.

  Cruz mentally went down the list of everyone who had been privy to the task force’s moves and dismissed them one at a time as potential traitors. Briones had proved his loyalty with blood, as had many of his group chiefs. They put their lives on the line every day to combat the cartels and had all lost more than their fair share of men to the bastards. There was no way they would sell him out for money. Even if some of them were corruptible, and he didn’t deceive himself that they were altar boys, passing information to El Rey went beyond anything they would risk. It was high treason, especially if it resulted in the death of the president. Even the most larcenous and greedy man drew the line somewhere, and that was not a line — it was a twenty-meter-high wall.

  His driver opened his door for him, and he gratefully sank into the seat, feeling exhausted by the presentation as well as the course of the last few days. He’d attended a memorial service for the men he’d lost at the apartment — there was literally nothing left of them after the explosion, so it was the best they could do — and had tried to comfort the wives and children of men he’d known only in a professional sense, and even then, not particularly well. His words had sounded hollow to him even as he’d uttered all the usual cliches. It was disheartening — the assassin was winning every round. Which meant that the trend wasn’t Cruz’s friend.

  As much as it pained him, he would need to begin a quiet investigation into his group leaders, to see if anyone had recently come into some inexplicable money or had bought a car or home outside of their pay range. He couldn’t just discount the possibility someone had rolled, as improbable as it was to him. Harsh experience had long ago taught him to expect the worst, and then be happy if the outcome turned out anything less than horrible. While he was now happy with his new life with Dinah, there were still nights where he awoke in a cold sweat, dreaming of his family’s final moments, or reliving the day he’d opened the special delivery box to find the heads of his wife and young daughter in it, with a scorpion in each of their mouths. He hoped that eventually he could keep the horror at bay, but during times of stress their ghosts came back to haunt him.

  Thank God for Dinah. They were building a life from nothing, and she was a perfect partner. He felt guilty talking shop with her — he’d never told her that El Rey had been responsible for her father’s death, preferring to leave the fiction in place that it had been some sort of crazy, or a robbery gone horribly wrong. Better to let the dead slumber in peace than allow them to ruin the lives of the living. Knowing the truth wouldn’t have helped Dinah get over the heartbreak of a murdered parent, so there was no point to sharing it with her.

  As the car wound its way through traffic on the way back to headquarters, Cruz remained silent, lost in his thoughts. They only had a few days to go until the president’s speech, and he didn’t like their chances. Barring a miracle, Cruz dejectedly realized that he wouldn’t be able to catch the assassin in time, which meant that the only thing that stood in the way of El Rey murdering the president was his security detail.

  That wouldn’t end well.

  El Rey put the final touches on the device he had so painstakingly assembled and smiled at the thought of the seemingly near escape from his apartment. He’d caught the cleaning woman paying just a little too much attention to him, and she’d been a hair too quick to avert her gaze when he’d noticed her. The effort to appear uninterested had appeared almost comical to him, and he’d quickly determined that his days in the apartment were over. That night he’d moved his few belongings out under cover of darkness and had rigged things to provide a nasty surprise for anyone breaking into his place. Which he had no doubt would be the police.

  He’d seen the news coverage of his old photo and had thought that he’d sufficiently altered his appearance to be in the clear, but the woman had somehow matched him. It happened, occasionally, and rather than dwell on it he’d cleared out. But he wasn’t worried. It had been a fluke, plain and simple.

  He stepped back from the work table and inspected his project with pride of craftsmanship. It would do.

  Now all that remained was to get it within range of the president, and the rest would be history in the making. Then he could go back into retirement and savor the life of a rich man in South America — a future that in no way seemed bad. It would all be concluded soon enough, and then he would disappear, never to be heard from again.

  Don Aranas greeted his guest, Estaban Mareli, and offered him a seat at a small table in the open air of the courtyard. This particular home was built in a typical hacienda fashion, around a private central court with a fountain, with Saltillo tile underfoot and rustic sponge painting in bright orange and purple hues splashing color on the walls. The water tinkled in a pleasing way, creating a kind of Latin Zen effect.

  “Coffee?” Aranas offered to Mareli, gesturing at the white clad man waiting in the wings by the dark alder and stained glass French doors.

  “Please.”

  Aranas
held up two fingers; the man nodded before turning to enter the house.

  Mareli studied Aranas’ face for a few moments. “How are you, my friend?” he asked.

  “Ah, you know. Things could be better. We’ve lost a number of shipments on the Mexican side of the border over the last few months. An irritant, although in the end, not material,” Aranas replied.

  “Yes, I’ve seen the numbers. I agree it’s unfortunate. But sometimes a necessary cost of doing business, eh?”

  “Perhaps. But I liked our luck better under the last two regimes. This one seems to be favoring groups that aren’t aligned with our interests, and that is causing complications.” Aranas rubbed his chin. “I thought we had it taken care of, but it appears not.”

  “Well, the only thing that is sure is that nothing will remain the same. Change is everywhere. We adapt or we perish,” Mareli offered.

  The coffee arrived, and neither man spoke until the steward was out of earshot again.

  “Yes. Change. Speaking of which, we had another regrettable occurrence recently. Our mutual acquaintance, Carlos Herreira, was passing information to the Mexican authorities. Steps had to be taken,” Aranas said.

  Mareli feigned surprise. “The authorities? Jesus. What are people thinking these days? I don’t understand it. He was always dependable, and then one day he goes and does something like this…?” He put one hand on the table and studied his nails, as if for guidance. “What is there to say? When a dog goes rabid, you have to put him down, even if you love him. I’m sure you only did what was necessary.”

  Mareli had known this was going to be the subject of the discussion, but figured a show of indignation was obligatory. He lifted his fine china cup and took an appreciative sip of the rich brew.