“Dante, what the hell are you doing? Let’s take the bitch back to the compound and let Alvarado interrogate her.”
The man with the mustache, the one the other driver called Dante, ignored the man and spoke to Alexa again.
“I asked you who you’re working for.”
“I work for myself!” Alexa screamed. “That bastard Alvarado killed my family.”
Dante cocked his head.
“You’re the one who’s been killing Alvarado’s men in Mexico City, aren’t you?”
Alexa kept quiet. If she had killed one of the man’s friends, it would be stupid to admit to it.
“You killed all those men by yourself and even infiltrated the compound; that’s impressive.”
The other driver spoke up again.
“Dante, stop screwing around and let’s take her—”
The driver stopped talking as three bullets entered his chest and exited amid a spray of gore from his back.
Alexa’s brain was telling her to run, but she was too shocked and curious to respond to the command.
The man in the passenger seat gawked at Dante, who had his gun pointed at the man’s head. He was a young man, with the tattoo of a cross on his neck.
“Joaquin, I’ve come to like you, and so I’ll let you live. Toss your gun as far away as you can and then start walking back towards the compound.”
“What the hell is wrong with you, Dante?”
“I’m a spy, Joaquin. I work for Sandoval.”
“What?”
“Toss the gun. Don’t make me kill you.”
Joaquin did as ordered. Once he was unarmed, Dante shot out the tires on the other jeep.
“Start walking, Joaquin. Alvarado won’t harm you, not when you tell him you uncovered a spy.”
Joaquin looked betrayed and angry.
“God damn it, Dante, I liked you.”
“Nothing’s changed, amigo, and if you’re still around when Sandoval takes over I’ll put in a good word for you.”
“Fuck you, Dante,” Joaquin said, but the voice sounded more hurt than angry, and then Joaquin ran towards the lights of the compound.
Dante called to Alexa.
“Would you like a ride, or are you waiting for a bus?”
Alexa moved towards the jeep cautiously, and once she had climbed in, Dante headed out across the desert.
“What’s your name, beautiful?”
“You can call me Anna.”
“Well Anna, I spent seven months in that shithole trying to get assigned to be one of Alvarado’s private guards, and tonight I threw it all away to save you. I so hope you know something that makes it worthwhile.”
Alexa brought her hand up from beneath the camouflage. She was holding the hard drives from the laptops.
“I took these from the computers belonging to Carlos Ayala.”
Dante stopped the jeep and looked at the drives by using the glow from the dashboard lights.
“You have the accountant’s files, and what about Carlos?”
“I killed the old pig.”
Dante laughed loudly as he put the jeep in gear again.
“Oh honey, I just earned a promotion.”
“Where are we going, to see Sandoval?”
“That’s right.”
“All the way to Matamoras?”
“No, Sandoval is in Mexico City, right under Alvarado’s nose.”
“He’s no better than Alvarado.”
“Not true, Sandoval pays better.”
“There’s more to life than money,” Alexa said, and Dante laughed once more.
CHAPTER 26 – Betrayal
The Hotel Rutherford had been closed to guests for months and sat surrounded by warehouses that were dormant in the evening, while the street itself, Randall Street, usually saw little traffic at night.
However, if anyone had been around to see the three busloads of men disembark and rush towards the front doors of the Rutherford, they might have thought that a convention was in town, when in fact, it was a cartel army on the hunt for its enemies.
Rico led the assault on the hotel as the men beside him smashed the front doors open with a battering ram. As that was happening, more men were pouring into the building through a rear entrance.
Because most of these men still didn’t recognize each other on sight, everyone was wearing a white headband with a number written on the front and back in black magic marker. If they came across anyone not wearing such a headband, that someone died.
Rico’s headband had the number 1 written on it, and somewhere among the horde of men, there was a headband with 103 scribbled on its front and back.
Two men were standing near the hotel’s front desk, and there were two rifles in sight and leaning up against the desk. Eight different men shot the pair as the men had raised their hands in protest, while from the rear of the building more gunfire sounded off.
Rico’s men flowed into the building, swept up the stairs like a reverse wave, and killed anything in their path. More than a dozen men were found inside the hotel’s rooms, and each one died from multiple wounds, which had been inflicted upon them without mercy.
“You’re going to die, Tanner!” shouted one of the men in Spanish, and it caused the others to laugh. They knew that he was in the building, and they believed he was hiding, cowering somewhere and likely pissing his pants as he contemplated the fate that would soon befall him.
After entering the building, Rico ordered four men directly up to the top floor of the sixth-story building, while the others were to search each room.
The top floor was where the suites were, and where a man had recently seen a shadow pass by a window. Juan thought that the shadow was Tanner, and he had instructed Rico to send a team to try to capture him as a gift for his father.
The men reached the top, and one of them opened the stairway door cautiously while another man peered down the corridor both ways. The conference room across the hall was brightly lit, and it was clear to see that no one was inside.
After exiting the stairwell, two of the men went to check out the bathrooms, while the other two went to search the suites.
In the suite that had once been occupied by the late Bruno Heinz, they saw a man sitting on the side of a bed with a gun in his hand. The man’s hair was dark, and before he could even turn his head, the men blasted him with full magazines, shredding the man’s body with their rounds and shattering the window in front of him.
They thought they had found Tanner, and fear had overridden their orders to take him alive.
The men let out shouts of pure glee, as they believed they had killed Tanner and would share in the reward money. The other two men returned from the bathroom, and when they saw the corpse lying on the side of the bed, they moaned, for they believed that they had lost their chance to claim the bounty on Tanner’s head.
One of the men walked over to the body and flipped it onto its back. It was not Tanner, the man was older and there was white at his temples. Then, the cartel hood noticed something else, something peculiar; the dead man had been chained to the bed by his ankle, while the gun in his hand was actually glued onto it.
“Look at this,” the man said, as he gazed back at his friends.
Another man appeared in the doorway. The new man pointed at the chain on the dead man.
“Hey, that’s what I came to tell Rico, all of the men were chained, and the guns they had, they were all empty and most of them were glued in place.”
“Rico’s not here,” said one of the men, and then he made a face as if he had just tasted something nasty.
The other men wore similar expressions, and within seconds, they were all on the floor gasping for breath.
Rico appeared in the doorway wearing a gas mask. He had carried it into the building inside a bag, a bag that he had told the men contained spare ammo.
“The men you killed were the missing Russians,” Rico said. “And there were trip wires placed throughout the building to set
off the gas.”
The five men in the room all stared up at him with various decrees of distress showing on their faces, and then their expressions became blank. They weren’t dead, not yet, but only because the gas they unknowingly inhaled took sixty seconds to fully shut down the body’s nervous system.
Rico left the room, entered the hall, and went down the stairs. He encountered other dead men on his trip out of the building, while one man, one of the men he didn’t know, came rushing down the stairs. He was headed for the lobby doors, fresh air, and life.
The man was holding his breath and his eyes and cheeks were bulging from the effort.
Rico tripped him, the man went sprawling, and the gas entered his lungs. He lay near the lobby doors gasping, as he stretched a hand towards Rico in an imploring gesture, asking for help.
Rico reached down and grabbed the man’s ankles to drag him away from the door, away from the scant breeze of fresh air blowing in, and then he watched without expression as the gas took full effect and killed the man.
There were 19 dead Russians in the building and 102 Mexicans to go with them.
They had all been betrayed by Rico Nazario, but if his plan worked, he would soon be running New York City alongside Joe Pullo.
CHAPTER 27 – You don’t have to thank me
Rico left the hotel, removed his gas mask, and marched over to where Tanner was leaning against a car.
“You are a son of a bitch, Tanner! Why did you let Juan believe that you were in the building?”
“It seemed a good move,” Tanner said.
“You’re a bastard, but then again, this failure will fall on Juan’s shoulders and will make me look even better for warning against charging in.”
“He won’t have to bear the disgrace for long though, will he?”
Rico smiled.
“Oh no, I fear that Juan will die a young man.”
“Just remember the deal with Krupin; he’s mine.”
“Yes, as we said earlier.”
***
Seven hours ago, in the rear parking lot of an abandoned storefront in Brooklyn
Rico stepped from his car with his hands in the air. He was naked except for a pair of black boxer shorts and his socks and shoes.
His car was parked sideways, and he opened the doors so that it was plain to see that no one was inside. He then opened the trunk, lifted a square mirror out of it and angled it so that it displayed the empty trunk upon its surface.
The car across the parking lot drove closer and then parked a dozen feet away. A moment later, Joe Pullo, Tanner, and Bosco emerged from the car, to walk towards Rico with their guns drawn.
Bosco went over the car, just in case, and stabbed at the rear seats with a knife.
Rico laughed.
“What? You think I hid a midget with an Uzi inside the seats?”
“It pays to be careful,” Bosco said.
Joe held his gun down in front of him and stared at Rico.
“Your boy Conti said you wanted to talk, so talk.”
Rico did, and Joe and Tanner listened carefully.
Rico came to Joe with a plan to end the war. It would mean that Joe would take Krupin’s role as Juan Alvarado’s partner, but it would also mean that he would be co-ruler of New York City.
“Who authorized this, Alonso Alvarado?” Tanner asked.
Rico answered as he began putting his clothes back on.
“Alonso knows nothing about this, but I know that he would go for this plan. He despises you Tanner, but he could work with Pullo here.”
Joe shook his head no.
“I’m no one’s pawn, and we’ve been doing well in this war.”
Rico laughed.
“I’ll grant you that Tanner here has given us holy hell, but Pullo, think about it, we have thousands more men than you do, and we also have the money to recruit thousands more right here. If you anger Alonso enough he will literally wipe you from the planet. What I’m offering you is a chance to survive.”
Tanner raised up a hand.
“Let’s hear him out, but first, what do you get from this, Nazario?”
“Pullo will be taking Krupin’s place at the table, and I will be taking Juan Alvarado’s spot.”
“You plan to kill him?”
“I was hoping you would beat me to it, but yes, I will kill him and I will blame his death on Michael Krupin. Alonso will believe me when I tell him that Krupin went mad when he discovered that he was being cut out of the deal. I will blame Juan’s death on Krupin, and then Pullo and I will be in charge of New York. It is a good plan, and it will end the violence.”
“And if I say no, what then? You’ll keep coming?”
“I won’t like it, Pullo, but Alonso will order your death, and he is not above killing your loved ones as well.”
“What about Mike Conti,” Tanner said. “Where does he fit in to all this?”
“Conti sold Pullo out, as you must have realized when he reluctantly arranged this meeting. He will wind up with nothing.”
“You know where we’re staying?” Tanner said.
“You are at the Hotel Rutherford; Conti placed a GPS device on one of you and tracked you there. He sold you out; if you want to kill him for it I will have no problem with that.”
Tanner stared at Rico for several seconds and then smiled.
“And what is my role in all this?”
“Unfortunately Tanner, you will have to be sacrificed, but in all honesty, you’ve brought it on yourself.”
“Sacrificed in what way?”
“Pullo has to cut ties with you, and the sooner the better. I will tell Alonso that it was Pullo who came to me, that he saw how unwinnable his situation was and that he considered you a... what’s the phrase? A loose cannon, yes? Once Pullo is no longer tied to you, I can get Alonso to accept him, in fact, he would much rather deal with The Giacconi Family than Krupin, and at this point, Krupin barely has an organization left.”
Joe shook his head again.
“Take this deal of yours and hit the road.”
Tanner moved in front of Joe to face him.
“We need to talk alone.”
“I’m not taking this deal.”
“Will you talk?”
Joe let out a sigh.
“We’ll talk, Bosco, keep a close eye on this guy.”
“Right, Boss.”
Tanner and Joe walked back to stand near the trunk of their car.
“Take the deal, Joe. It will end the war and keep Laurel safe.”
“Are you crazy? They want me to cut you loose. Do you know what that means? It means that my guys will be gunning for you along with the cartel.”
“No, it doesn’t, because I won’t be here. I meant what I said the other day. I won’t rest until The Alvarado Cartel is destroyed, and that means chopping off the head, Alonso Alvarado. Take the deal, and when I kill Alvarado, Rico there will be a king without an army to back him up, but you’ll still control New York City, all of New York City.”
“Or,” Joe said. “You’ll be gunned down somewhere and I’ll be stuck with this dirtbag and the cartel as partners.”
“I won’t fail, but you’re right, if they kill me, you’ll be stuck with them, but you’ll be alive, Laurel will be alive, and there will be peace. What Rico said, it’s true, if Alonso Alvarado really wanted to, he could wipe The Giacconi Family off the planet. Take the deal, tell them we’re through, and bring Laurel home.”
Joe reached out and gripped Tanner’s arm.
“They’ll kill you, buddy, you might last a while, you might even kill hundreds, but the cartel will kill you.”
Tanner’s intense eyes blazed.
“I’ll make it to Mexico and kill Alvarado.”
“And if you die?”
Tanner reached out and gripped Joe’s other arm.
“Then I’ll die knowing that you and Laurel are safe, and that’s not a bad way to go... saving your friends. Take the deal, Joe. Take the deal.”
They walked back over and Joe sent Rico a curt nod.
“I’ll take the deal.”
Rico grinned.
“Excellent!”
“There’s one condition,” Tanner said.
“What’s that?” Rico asked.
“Juan Alvarado thinks we’re at the Hotel Rutherford, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you have men watching the building now, right?”
Rico held up a hand.
“I see where you are going with this, and yes, the men you have in that building will be allowed to leave, that is, once Juan and Pullo have made an agreement.”
“The men in that building aren’t Joe’s men, they’re Krupin’s.”
“The missing Russians?” Rico said, and then he got it. “Ah, you were setting up a trap. What was it, a bomb?”
“Gas, a type of homemade nerve gas, we moved the Russians after knocking them all out with a harmless gas and then chained them inside the Rutherford. But you, you were going to walk your men right into a death trap, and once you killed the Russians for us, then the nerve gas would be released.”
“I might have fallen for it, but I was suspicious from the start.”
“One more thing, Joe and I didn’t place those men in there. Mike Conti and I did it, understand?”
Rico laughed.
“You’re setting Conti up. He’s the one that said you were in that hotel, but Pullo will say that he was never there.”
“Right, Joe will claim that we argued at Sophia’s funeral because he decided to make peace and I wanted to keep waging war. That’s when Conti and I joined forces to lead you into a trap.”
Rico stood quietly for a moment as he considered things, and as a realization struck him, he looked sickened.
“Oh God,”
“What is it?” Joe said.
“Juan Alvarado, that fool will send me inside the hotel even though he suspects a trap.”
“He won’t,” Tanner said. “Not once he knows that Joe’s not there and that Conti was trying to betray him.”
“Yes, he will. I know the men inside that building are the Russians, but I can’t tell him that, and neither can Pullo, not if he wants Juan to trust that he really wants peace. Juan will order me to lead an army of men into that building even if he suspects a trap, because the simple fool will believe our sheer numbers will be enough.”
The TANNER Series - Books 7-9 (Tanner Box Set Book 3) Page 35