An Acceptable Sacrifice

by Jeffery Deaver

  The communications man on the shooting team would call the press to make sure they arrived for video and photos before the fire was out.

  Cuchillo thanked the man and disconnected, thinking of how much he was looking forward to seeing those news accounts.

  He hoped the man who had shot at him would be watching the news, too, and would feel responsible for the pain the victims would experience.

  Glancing up from his armchair, he happened to notice that a book was out of order.

  It was on the shelf above the case containing the Ulysses.

  He rose and noted the leather spine. The Robbers. How had a Schiller gotten here? He disliked disorder of any kind, particularly in his book collection. One of the maids, perhaps.

  Just as he plucked the volume from the shelf, the door burst open.

  "Sir!"

  "What?" he turned quickly to Jos .

  "I think there's a bomb here! That man with the book dealer, Davila; he's fake. He was working with the American!"

  His eyes first went to the Dickens but, no, he'd flipped through the entire volume and there'd been no explosives inside. The assassins had simply used that as bait to gain access to Cuchillo's compound.

  Then he looked down at what he held in his hand. The Schiller.

  "What is it, sir?"

  "This book ... It wasn't here earlier. Abrossa! He planted it when I gave him the tour." Cuchillo realized that, yes, the book was heavier than a comparable book of this size.

  "Set it down! Run!"

  "No! The books!" He glanced around at the library.

  22,000 volumes ...

  "It could blow up at any moment."

  Cuchillo started to set it down, then hesitated. "I can't do it! You get back, Jose!" Then still holding the bomb, he ran outside, the security guard remaining loyally beside him. Once they were to the garden, Cuchillo flung the Schiller as far as he could. The men dropped to the ground behind one of the brick walls.

  There was no explosion.

  When Cuchillo looked he saw that the book had opened. The contents--electronics and a wad of clay--colored explosives--had tumbled out.

  "Jesus, Jesus."

  "Please, sir. Inside now!"

  They hurried into the house and got the staff away from the side of the house where the box lay in the garden. Jose called the man they used for making their own bombs. He would hurry to the house and disarm or otherwise dispose of the device.

  Cuchillo poured a large Scotch. "How did you find this out?"

  "I got the data-mined information on the American in the bar, the one who was drinking with Carmella. I found records that he was making calls to the book dealer. And he used his credit card to buy electronic parts at a supplier in town--the sort of circuits that are used in IEDs."

  "Yes, yes. I see. They threatened Davila to help them. Or paid the bastard. You know, I suspected that man, Abrossa. I suspected him for a moment. Then I decided, no, he was legitimate."

  Because I wanted the Dickens so much.

  "I appreciate what you did, Jose. That was a good job. Would you like a drink, too?"

  "No, thank you, sir."

  Still calm, Cuchillo wrinkled his brow. "Considering how the American tried to kill us--and nearly destroyed a priceless collection of books--how would you feel if we instructed our people on Highway 26 not to get the women and children off before setting fire to the bus?"

  Jose smiled. "I think that's an excellent suggestion, sir. I'll call the team."

  Several hours later the bomb had been slipped into a steel disposal container and taken away. Cuchillo, the engineer explained, had unwittingly disarmed it himself. The panicked throw had dislodged the wires from the detonator, rendering it safe.

  Cuchillo had enjoyed watching the bomb-disposal robot--the same way he liked being in his parts manufacturing operation and his drug synthesizing facilities. He enjoyed watching technology at work. He had always wanted the Codex Leicester--the DaVinci manuscript that contained the inventor's musings on mechanics and science. Bill Gates had paid $30 million for it some years ago. Cuchillo could easily afford that, but the book was not presently for sale. Besides, such a purchase would draw too much attention to him, and a man who has tortured hundreds to death and--in the spirit of mercy--painlessly shot perhaps a thousand, does not want too many eyes turned in his direction.

  Cuchillo spent the rest of the night on the phone with associates, trying to find more details of the two assassins and any associates they might have, but there was no other information. He'd learn more tomorrow. It was nearly midnight when finally he sat down to a modest dinner of grilled chicken and beans with tomatillo sauce.

  As he ate and sipped a very nice cabernet, he found himself relaxed and curiously content, despite the horror of what might have happened today. Neither he nor any of his people had been injured in the attack. His 22,000 volumes were safe.

  And he had some enjoyable projects on the horizon: killing Davila, of course. And he'd find the name of the person masquerading as Abrossa, his assistant, and the shooter who'd fired the shots--a clumsy diversionary tactic, he now realized. Probably the American. Those two would not die as quickly as the book dealer. They had destroyed an original Friedrich Schiller (albeit a third printing with water damage on the spine). Cuchillo would stay true to his name and would use a knife on them himself--in his special interrogation room in the basement below his library.

  But best of all: he had the burning bus and its scores of screaming passengers to look forward to.

  FRIDAY

  At one a.m. Cuchillo washed for bed and climbed between the smooth sheets, not silk but luxurious and expensive cotton.

  He would read something calming to lull him to sleep tonight. Not War and Peace. Perhaps some poetry.

  He picked up his iPad from the bedside table, flipped open the cover and tapped the icon to bring up his e-reader app. Cuchillo, of course, generally preferred traditional books for the most part. But he was a man of the 21st century and found e-books were often more convenient and easier to read than their paper forebears. His iPad library contained nearly a thousand titles.

  As he looked at the tablet, though, he realized he must have hit the wrong app icon--the forward camera had opened and he found he was staring at himself.

  Cuchillo didn't close the camera right away, however. He took a moment to regard himself. And laughed and whispered the phrase he'd used to describe himself earlier, "Not so bad, you old devil."

  Five hundred yards from Cuchillo's compound, Alejo Diaz and P.Z. Evans were sitting in the front seat of the big Mercury. They were leaning forward, staring at the screen of Evans's impressive laptop computer.

  What they were observing was the same image that Cuchillo happened to be basking in--his own wide-angle face--which was being beamed from his iPad's camera to the laptop via a surveillance app that Evans had loaded. They could hear the man's voice too.

  You old devil ...

  "He's in bed, alone," Evans said. "Good enough for me." Then he glanced at Diaz. "He's all yours."

  "Si?" asked the Mexican agent.

  "Yep."

  "Gracias."

  "Nada."

  And without any dramatic flair, Diaz pressed a button on what looked like a garage door opener.

  In Cuchillo's bedroom, the iPad's leather case, which Evans had stuffed with the potent incendiary explosive last night, detonated. The explosion was far larger than the American agent had expected. Even the bullet-proof windows blew to splinters and a gaseous cloud of flame shot into the night.

  They waited until it was clear the bedroom was engulfed in flame--and all the evidence of the attack was burning to vapors, as they'd been instructed to do by Washington--and then Diaz started the car and drove slowly through the night.

  After ten minutes of silence, looking over their shoulders for police or other pursuers, Diaz said, "Have to say, amigo, you came up with a good plan."

  Evans didn't gloat--or act shy with false
modesty, either. It was a good plan. Data-mining had revealed a lot about Cuchillo (this was often true in the case of targets like him--wealthy and, accordingly, big spenders). Evans and Diaz had noted not only his purchases of collectable books, but his high-tech acquisitions too: an iPad, an e-reader app and a number of e-books, as well as a leather case for the Apple device.

  Armed with this information, Evans duplicated the iPad and filled the case with the deadly explosive. This was the actual weapon that Diaz smuggled into the compound and swapped with Cuchillo's iPad, whose location they could pinpoint thanks to the finder service Evans had hacked into.With Diaz inside, holding the iPad to show Davila's latest inventory of books, Evans had fired into the windows, scattering everyone and giving his partner a chance to slip into the bedroom and switch the devices. He'd fired into that room's windows, too, just in case Diaz had not been alone there.

  The bullets would also serve a second purpose--to let Cuchillo and his security people believe the shooting was the assault they'd heard about and lessen their suspicion that another attack was coming.

  Lessen, but not eliminate. The Knife was too sharp for that.

  And so they needed a second misdirection. Evans let slip fake information about himself--to Carmella, the beautiful woman who was part of Cuchillo's entourage at Ruby's Bar (phone records revealed he called her once or twice a month). He also fed phony data-mined facts that suggested he and Diaz might have snuck a bomb into the library. He'd hollowed out a copy of Schiller's The Robbers--Sorry, Fred--and filled it with real explosives and a circuit, but failed to connect the detonators.

  Cuchillo would know his library so well it wouldn't take much to find this out-of-place volume, which Diaz had intentionally planted askew.

  After finding this device, they would surely think no more threats existed and not suspect the deadly iPad on Cuchillo's bedside table.

  Diaz now called Jose, the security chief for the late drug baron, and explained--in a loud voice due to the chief's sudden hearing loss--that if any bus attacks occurred he would end up in jail accompanied by the rumor that he had sold his boss out. As unpopular as Cuchillo had been among the competing cartel figures, nothing was more unpopular in a Mexican prison than a snitch.

  The man assured them that there would be no attacks. Diaz had to say goodbye three times before the man heard him.

  A good plan, if a bit complicated. It would have been much easier, of course, simply to get a real bomb into the library and detonate it when drone surveillance revealed Cuchillo inside.

  That idea, however, hadn't even been on the table. They would never have destroyed the library. Aside from the moral issue--and P.Z. Evans did have his standards--there was the little matter of how such a conflagration would play in the press if word got out about the identity of the two agents who'd orchestrated it and who their employers were.

  You can kill drug barons and their henchmen with impunity; 20,000 destroyed classics were not acceptable sacrifices. That was the sort of mar from which careers do not recover.

  In a half hour they were back at the hotel and watching the news, which confirmed that indeed Alonso Maria Carillo, known as Cuchillo, the suspected head of the Hermosillo Cartel, was dead. No one else had been injured in the attack, which was blamed on a rival cartel, probably from Sinaloa.

  The news, Evans was surprised to note, wasn't the lead story, which Cuchillo probably would have taken hard. But, in a way, it was his own fault; he'd contributed to the ubiquity of the drug business in Mexico, which made stories about death in the trade unnewsworthy.

  Evans supposed it was something like book collecting: the bigger the print run for first editions, the less the interest, the lower the value.

  He shut the set off. They decided to get a little dinner and a lot of tequila--though definitely not at Sonora Steak or Ruby's bar, Cuchillo's favorite hangouts. They'd go somewhere across town. They'd probably be safe; the Hermosillo Cartel had been neutralized. Still, both men had their weapons underneath their untucked shirts. And extra magazines in their left pockets.

  As they walked to the big old Mercury, Diaz said, "You should have seen all those books in the library. I never saw so many books in my life."

  "Uhn," Evans said, not particularly interested.

  "What does that mean, that sound? You don't like books?"

  "I like books."

  The Mexican agent gave a fast laugh. "You no sound like you do. You read at all?"

  "Of course I read."

  "So, what do you read? Tell me."

  Evans climbed into the passenger seat and counted three pickup trucks pass by before he answered. "Okay, you want to know? The sports section. That's all I read."

  Diaz started the car. "Si, me too."

  Evans said, "Could we get that A.C. going, Al? Does it ever cool off in this goddamn town?

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright (c) 2012 by Jeffery Deaver

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