“Don’t touch anything. I want a forensics team in here as soon as possible. It looks like we interrupted El Rey and made him scramble, which means that there’s a chance we’ll pick up some valuable evidence,” he ordered. Briones fished his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and made a hushed call.
He hung up after a short discussion. “Twenty minutes, and they’ll be here.”
“Guard the room. I don’t want anyone in here until they arrive. Is that clear?” Cruz demanded.
Everyone nodded, and he stalked out. They had prevented a shooting, but missed their quarry yet again.
The elevator ride down was mercifully brief, and when he got to the ground floor he advised the front desk girl that the room was a crime scene and then interrogated her on when she had last seen the elusive Senor Gomez, as well as probing for a description. She didn’t have a lot of detail she could offer, and she hadn’t seen Gomez since yesterday afternoon. Which did them no good at all.
Cruz left Briones to finish the questions and exited the hotel, making a beeline back to where the helicopter sat.
El Rey watched the flurry of activity at the main entrance of the hotel, as the crowd of guests emptied out through the exits with looks of fear on their faces. It would just be a matter of minutes until the police discovered the weapon, and then the fun would start. He had planned a nice diversion to keep everyone occupied, and they had fallen for the bait. Now they would be less vigilant for the remainder of the mass, concentrating on their shocking new find instead. Word of the assassination attempt would spread through the gathered security, and they would ratchet their guard down, just a little. Of course, as he knew, that was when it was most dangerous — the moment everyone decided it wasn’t.
A small boy bumped his leg, jostling the long blue robe, and he looked down at him and smiled. The little tike smiled back uncertainly, and then grabbed his father’s hand. The pair continued their trip down the sidewalk, away from the church, a hundred and fifty yards across the square.
El Rey moved to his pre-planned point at a sidewalk coffee shop and took a seat, placing the briefcase he was carrying on the table. When the waitress approached him, he asked for something out of the sun, so she moved one of the tables to a position right by the building. He thanked her and ordered a sparkling water as he pulled his chair against the concrete so his back was to the wall, and he was facing the packed square.
She returned with his bottle of water and a glass, and he cheerfully paid her, telling her to keep the change. Happy with his generosity, she departed and went back inside the shop, leaving him to his thoughts.
He watched the crowd across the street in the square, already losing interest given there was nothing to see now that the president had gone inside the church, and easily picked out the plainclothes security men. It was always childishly simple to do so.
Seeing no immediate threat and satisfied that they had their hands full with the mob of humanity, he opened the briefcase and connected the cable inside to a jack on the case lid, which he’d run wire through, making the entire top an antenna. Glancing at his watch, he calculated he had another twenty minutes before the mass would be over. He softly closed the briefcase, leaving it unlatched and connected, and reconciled himself to waiting.
Reaching through a slit in the side of the heavy robe, he rummaged in the pocket of his shorts for a small smart phone, extracted it and placed it on the table. He looked around and, detecting no interested observers, pressed a series of keys.
The screen illuminated, and he was suddenly watching the ceremony taking place inside the church — an aerial view. He reached into another pocket and pulled out a cord with an earplug and plugged it into the audio jack so he could enjoy the show.
Chapter 29
The interior of the cathedral was flamboyantly ornate; a showpiece of opulence as a tribute to the place the Catholic Church had held in the hearts of the populace over the centuries. The bishop of Mexico City was saying the mass, his deep voice reverberating off the walls and the high, arched ceiling.
The president sat in the front pew, a bodyguard on either side, his wife still recovering from surgery a week before and resting easily at home. He listened attentively to the sermon, a treatise on the power of perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds and of the Lord’s unconditional love for those who accepted Jesus into their hearts. It was certainly not a new idea, but the bishop was able to infuse it with sufficient enthusiasm and poignancy to make it interesting enough to keep the faithful awake.
An occasional cough or baby’s burble echoed through the church, and clothes rustled and shoes scraped the floor as the congregation kneeled, stood and sat at the appropriate times. At least twenty security men stood on either side of the long hall, with several in the center aisle, where they could head off any hazard.
Eventually it was time for communion, and the crowd lined up behind the president at the head of the queue. Nine minutes later everyone had returned to their pews, and the bishop said his closing piece, asking the congregation to remain seated while the president made his way down the aisle and out through the front doors.
El Rey watched as the ceremony drew to a close, and the president and his group stood and began moving down the aisle. He waited a few more seconds, and then opened the briefcase and pushed a button, immediately fiddling with the joystick and other controls of the panel he’d recessed into the case.
~
The president was three quarters of the way down the aisle when something made a snapping sound in the chandelier above him, and part of it fell towards him, dropping onto the cold stone floor a few feet away. The unmistakable shape of a hand grenade clattered to a stop next to one of the pews nearest the entrance doors, causing instant panic as those seated nearest it screamed and scrambled to get away.
Two of the security men grabbed the president by both arms and ran at full speed for the entry, while another threw himself on the grenade, willingly giving his life to spare the president and the crowd horrific carnage. Pandemonium erupted as the congregation stampeded towards the altar, as far from the grenade as space would allow. Women tripped and men dragged them along as they scrambled for safety. A few climbed over the pews before throwing themselves flat on the benches in the hopes that the heavy, ancient wood could protect them.
Within a matter of seconds the president was at the heavy wooden doors. His men shouldered them open, racing against time to get him out before the grenade detonated and the house of worship became a slaughterhouse.
El Rey pulled the earphone out and placed it on the table next to the phone as he watched the chaos in the church. Satisfied with the panic, he turned his attention to the hotel and craned his neck to see above the building. A lone crow stood at the edge of the hotel roof, peering curiously down at the scene below. Startled by something moving behind it, the bird took flight, spreading its wings and flapping off over the top of the cathedral. El Rey watched its trajectory with a vague sense of unease, and then returned his focus to the roof, where he couldn’t see anything but the building’s facade.
Frustrated, he stood, still maneuvering the levers in the briefcase, and then caught sight of the president bursting out of the church and moving at flank speed to his waiting aircraft. The pilot hadn’t had time to start the engine again; startled by the abrupt exodus, he began flipping switches in preparation to power up.
A muffled explosion sounded from inside the cathedral. The grenade had detonated, causing unknown casualties and damage. El Rey couldn’t take his eyes off the unfolding drama in front of the church to check the result on the phone screen.
Halfway to the chopper, the president stumbled; his bodyguards lifted him from where he’d fallen painfully against the cobblestones. Whatever it was that was taking place in the church, they were safe. They hauled him upright without ceremony. He bent down and patted his knee, where the fabric of his Canali suit pants had torn, and his hand came away with blood. One of his detail barked a few wo
rds, and he began limping to the copter, one arm around the closest bodyguard.
El Rey glanced skyward again and his eyes caught the distinctive shape of the four foot remote controlled helicopter hovering over the roof of the Gran Hotel, fifty feet above the street. He thrust one of the joysticks forward, and it made a course for the front of the church, accelerating until it covered the distance in under fifteen seconds. He twisted a knob to increase the blade pitch for maximum speed and had to adjust for a light wind gusting off the square, but quickly corrected as he brought the craft to bear.
The president was nearly at his chopper’s door when his bodyguard at the church doors screamed a warning. The president and his two men swung around in puzzlement, trying to spot the danger, and then with a look of terror the president pointed into the sky, where he’d caught movement in the periphery of his vision. One of the men tried to pull him out of the way, but it was too late. A bright orange fireball exploded a few feet from where he stood, obliterating everything for a twenty foot radius and peppering the fuselage of the presidential helicopter with shrapnel and bloody bits of flesh.
The crowd went crazy and rushed the barricades, knocking back the steel frames and causing a near riot. Screaming and cries of panic filled the air as El Rey stood and closed the briefcase, then slid by the chair and began walking down the sidewalk in the opposite direction from the church, the phone and case abandoned now that they had done their job.
Cruz had watched in impotent horror from his vantage point on the empty boulevard as the oversized model helicopter zoomed silently across the square and went into a high speed dive at the church. When the detonation came, he knew instinctively it was too late to save anyone. The police helicopters hovering overhead weren’t any good against something that small and nimble, even if given time to react.
He swung around, studying the huge square and the people panicking, eyes searching for El Rey. He had to be there. Remote controlled airplanes and cars always required the antenna for the control box to be in direct line of sight, and they were generally limited to a hundred and fifty yards of effective range. That meant the assassin had to be within a hundred and fifty yards of both the hotel and the church. Cruz did a quick mental calculation and determined that he either had to be on his side of the square midway down the block, or on the far side of the square in roughly the same area, midway between the hotel and the cathedral.
Cruz peered down his side of the square first, but didn’t see anything significant. All the windows were closed on the surrounding buildings, and there was nobody suspicious on the sidewalk. He quickly surveyed the crowd chaotically milling around the square, trying to avoid being crushed by their own panicked behavior, but it was a mess and he couldn’t make anyone out. It was unlikely the assassin was in the multitude, given that everyone had been searched and the control device would be too large to easily use without being detected, so he quickly dismissed the possibility.
His eyes scanned the sidewalk on the far side of the square, looking for any anomalies. There. Cruz spotted movement. Everyone else on the sidewalk was hurrying in the direction of the cathedral, anxious to see what had happened, except for one figure, who was making a measured move in the opposite direction. He initially dismissed his instinct and then did a double take.
It had to be El Rey.
Cruz called out to Briones to get a car and stay on his radio, then ran down the boulevard in the direction of the figure, which was quickly closing in on the corner where the hotel sat. He increased his speed, his leg muscles burning as the healed bullet wound shot spikes of pain each time he landed on that foot. He radioed to the men in the hotel as he went, but everyone was upstairs guarding the room they’d discovered. It was no good. He’d be past the hotel by the time anyone made it down to the street level.
The figure turned the corner and disappeared from sight. Cruz estimated he was now a little more than a hundred yards behind. He gasped for air and increased his effort.
El Rey registered the federal policeman running down the middle of the boulevard in his direction, but figured that by the time he made it around the corner to follow, it would be over. Once he rounded it he increased his pace to a run and sprinted for an alley thirty feet up on the right. Several of the pedestrians who were hurrying towards the square leaped out of his way in surprise, giving him momentary pleasure.
After all, how often did they see a nun running the four minute mile down a busy sidewalk in the historic district?
The decision to carry out the assassination posing as a nun had been a natural, and to him, brilliant bit of subterfuge. In the square, any young or middle-aged men would have drawn attention given the manhunt in place for El Rey. And there was no way to take the president out with a shot — not with as many eyes on the windows as he’d expected, which had been borne out by the hotel fire drill. That left either a bomb or gas in the cathedral, which would have been impossible to reliably conceal given the size required to ensure the job got done. So he’d needed a method of conveyance that would deliver oblivion to the president at high speed, that was unstoppable and too small to bring down with ground fire.
He’d initially toyed with a number of other possibilities, including secreting a small cobalt source in the pew where he knew the president would sit — after an hour spent within a few feet of the radioactive source he would be dead of radiation poisoning within seventy-two hours — but it would be impossible to ensure it evaded detection. Even his grenade gambit had been iffy. He’d posed as a repairman two weeks earlier and appeared with a work order to replace the lights in the massive chandeliers and repair anything that was broken, enabling him to conceal the grenade, a small fiber optic camera, and a radio controlled release mechanism in its heart, but he’d actually been surprised that they hadn’t been found. It had never been intended to kill the president — too many variables, and it wasn’t nearly powerful enough to guarantee that the job got done. But it had promised to be effective in dividing his security detail and forcing him out into the open.
The remote control helicopter had been an intriguing possibility, and when he’d bought it on eBay before having it shipped to a freight forwarder in Mexico, he was certain he had found the solution to his problem. He’d sneaked up onto the hotel roof at five a.m. and placed the craft at the far end behind a ventilation duct, where it wouldn’t be discovered if an errant maintenance man went up for some reason. He knew that the roof would be locked the day of the president’s visit, and leaving the helicopter in place overnight in standby mode was a calculated risk he’d had to take — one that had paid off, in the end.
From that point it had been simple. The modifications he’d made to the remote console had increased the effective range to a hundred and seventy yards, which was more than enough for his purposes. He’d taken it out and practiced with it for a week in a deserted area outside Puebla, and had gotten so good with the controls he could fly it with his eyes closed. Effective flight time was under ten minutes before the battery ran down, but he’d calculated that three minutes was sufficient. Even with it sitting in standby mode overnight, he’d had five minutes of power left. More than enough for his purposes.
The explosive had been key. A concentrated, extremely powerful variation of C-4 manufactured in Iran; it had three times the explosive power, which meant that six to eight ounces would create the desired lethal blast zone. All he needed was to get it within fifteen feet of the president to vaporize him. Mission accomplished.
With a little makeup and special attention to a close shave that morning, he could pass for a woman, albeit not a beauty. Then again, nuns didn’t typically win pageants, so he felt that he’d fit right in.
El Rey ducked into the alley and jumped on a Vespa motor scooter, straddling it with the nun’s garb now pulled up around his waist. The engine turned over with a puff of blue smoke, and he gunned the gas, then slammed the scooter into gear and roared off in the opposite direction from where his pursuer would be withi
n twenty more seconds. As he approached the far end a police car pulled across the alley, blocking his way. Without hesitation he did a fast turn and set off, full speed in the direction he’d come. Better a cop on foot than two in a car, probably with shotguns.
He slowed as he reached the alley mouth and then executed a tight right turn, catching a glimpse of the pursuing police captain just rounding the corner. El Rey opened the throttle wide, putting distance between himself and Capitan Cruz, who had his gun drawn.
A navy blue car came swerving out of the next street, sending the Vespa skittering from underneath him as he bounced off the hood and then crashed head first into the windshield.
The last thing he saw as he blacked out was a vaguely familiar face nearly obscured by the white balloon of an airbag — the officer he’d shot at the summit — gripping the steering wheel with one hand as he stared in shock at the nun he’d just run down, blood streaming freely from his nose.
Chapter 30
“I don’t give a shit. I want my men here, twenty-four seven. Two in the room, two outside, and if he tries anything, they shoot,” Cruz said to the doctor, who was obviously annoyed with the quasi-military presence of the tactical squad members in full assault gear, toting sub-machine guns and looking menacing. “And he will remain cuffed to the bed. Both hands. And his feet shackled to the rail. This man is easily the most dangerous man in Mexico, so I want no more discussion about what is or isn’t good for his convalescence or pain management.”
“Captain, I understand, but this is most irregular. He’s got a concussion, and a cerebral hemorrhage we’re managing now, after the surgery, and two fractured vertebrae, as well as several broken ribs. He won’t be going anywhere or trying anything. I really think this is unnecessary…” the doctor complained.
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