She had just managed to flip the rope onto the other side of the wall when a rifle retort sounded, and she felt something tug at her camouflage cape.
Before the tower guard could take another shot, she was heading down the rope away from his view, but before she reached the bottom, lights blazed on, and an alarm began blaring. The lights lit the darkness out to a distance of sixty feet from the wall before the night reclaimed the desert. Despite knowing that the guards in the towers would be looking for her, Alexa ran out into the light.
Two tower guards had a view of the area she ran in and either of them might cut her down. She had to risk it, because their guns would soon be joined by many others, then she would die for sure.
She weaved about as she ran, trying to make herself harder to hit. She had prepared for this, for the eventuality that she might have to flee under pursuit, but to activate the precautions she had taken Alexa first had to make it away from the wall.
One round passed between her legs a second before the blessed darkness swallowed her. She kept weaving as the guards kept firing, but their shots were going wide as she veered right, to stay parallel with the wall.
They would be expecting her to run away, to get distance, so their shots sailed far over her head.
She was looking back at the wall as she ran, while using it as a guidepost. Lightning had struck it at some point and scarred a section forty feet from the center tower.
In one of her many prior excursions to the compound, Alexa had set up several traps. They were all hidden beneath the sand and covered by more camouflage material. They had taken her many nights of hard work to complete.
When she was in position and lined up with the scar on the wall, she turned and ran deeper into the darkness. There were no plants to trip over, no cacti to run into, not if she was running in the right direction.
Alexa counted as she ran, knowing that time wasn’t on her side. When she reached the count of fifty, she got down and began to crawl.
She had been crawling forward for several seconds and starting to fear that she was in the wrong area, when her hand dipped into something soft. It was the camouflage she’d left in place over her first trap.
She skirted around it and had just made it to the other side when the dogs came, as she knew they would.
There were four of them altogether, each a great slobbering beast weighing over a hundred pounds. As they ran onto the camouflage netting, it sank into the ground. The tapered pit was ten feet deep and the dogs went down into it, even as the weighted edges of the netting followed and covered them up. Their growling became fierce and mixed with whimpering, but Alexa had placed no stakes at the pit’s bottom. The dogs were pawns. They needed to be handled, but she hadn’t the heart to kill them. However, the men approaching in the Jeeps were another matter.
Alexa positioned herself behind a cactus and became nearly invisible within her camouflage cape.
Two Jeeps came toward her, with one in the lead and two more that were just leaving the compound. When she was at the very edge of the first Jeep’s headlights, she dropped the hood on the cape and let them glimpse her face, which must have looked as if it were floating alone in the dark above her camouflaged body.
She caught the attention of the driver of the nearest Jeep and then let the hood swallow her up again. Someone in the Jeep fired several shots, but Alexa had already dived to the right and lay flat, so the bullets passed overhead.
The driver had lost sight of her, but he stayed on course for her last position, and although the ditch he drove into wasn’t nearly as deep as the one the dogs were trapped in, it still bogged down the vehicle’s front tires and caused the men inside to slam their heads against the windshield.
Alexa raced toward the vehicle and killed the stunned men before they knew what was happening, as she slashed open their throats.
She took one of the men’s guns, an AR-15, and raced off as the second Jeep approached. It sped past the disabled Jeep for twenty feet before its right front tire found another ditch and fell into it. Alexa opened fire with the AR-15 and killed both men. She then turned and ran as fast as she dared in the scant moonlight, as the other two Jeeps came on.
As she hoped they would, the men stopped to assess what had happened to their comrades. They would see the ditches, the dead bodies, and would think twice about continuing their pursuit.
That had been the plan, but the bastards in the Jeeps weren’t willing to play by her rules. The last two Jeeps came on, and fast.
Alexa shook her head. Were they fools? Had they not seen the ditches? But then she realized they feared losing her more than they feared crashing. If she escaped, they would likely be killed for their failure to capture her, while the ditches might only break their arms and grant them an excuse. But there were no more ditches, just open desert, and Alexa’s van was still far away.
The sound of the Jeeps grew louder, as Alexa ran for all she was worth.
380
The Spy Who Loved Me
Juan Alvarado screamed in Rico’s face. They were inside Juan’s suite and had just received word that Tanner had been spotted at the Hotel Rutherford.
“Take the men there now!”
“Was the man certain it was Tanner?”
“He swears it was, and we’ll never get another chance like this. Take every available man, storm that hotel from all sides, and kill anything that moves.”
“What if it’s a trap?”
“It’s no damn trap. What’s wrong with you, Rico, are you scared of Tanner?”
“I don’t fear him; I respect him.”
Juan’s phone rang. When he looked at it, he saw that his father was calling.
“Hello Father, I’ve got more great news.”
Juan listened to the phone for a moment as his father told him the compound had been breached.
“How many men? And was this an attack by Sandoval?”
“We don’t know yet,” Alonso told his son. “But the guards will find them.”
“Oh, so the guards are tracking them down, that’s good. But listen, we know where Tanner is. I’m sending Rico and the men after him, so soon all our worries will be over.”
“Excellent, Juan, I knew you could handle things there.”
Rico held out his hand. “Let me speak to him.”
Juan made a face. “Rico wants to talk to you, Father; I think he’s afraid to face Tanner again.”
Juan handed Rico the phone, and he spoke to Alvarado.
“I am not afraid. You know me better than that, Alonso, but this Tanner is a devil. I do not trust how easy this is.”
Rico listened for a moment, and then sighed. “As you wish, but remember that I wanted to wait and check things out further. Yes, here’s Juan again.”
Juan took the phone, and then glared at Rico. “What are you waiting for? Take the men and kill Tanner.”
“Yes sir,” Rico said, and he held in the curses until he was sure that Juan couldn’t hear them.
Alexa dived behind a cactus and laid flat before the headlights of the pursuing Jeeps could spot her. Although they knew she was in the vicinity, they didn’t know where, or else they would have fired on her.
As the Jeeps grew closer, they slowed, almost as if the men inside them sensed her. That’s when the searchlight came on from the Jeep on the left. Whether it was luck or the man had spotted her, whoever had control of the light hit her square in the eyes with it and blinded her.
Alexa fired the remaining rounds in the AR-15 even as she rolled to her left. Luck was with her as well, as she heard a man scream above the sound of breaking glass. The searchlight was out, but then the shooting began, and Alexa braced herself for the impact of the bullets.
“Stop firing!”
It was a deep voice giving the order and it came from the Jeep on the right.
“We know where you are. If you want to live, walk toward us slowly with your hands in the air.”
Alexa wanted to tell the man to go
to hell, but she also wanted to live. She stood slowly from where she lay, her hood had fallen back, and she saw the surprise on the men’s faces when they saw she was a woman.
The deep voice spoke again, and this time Alexa could see its owner’s face. He was a large man in his forties with a bushy mustache. His gun was pointed at her middle.
“You’re the one who went over the wall?”
“Yes,” Alexa said.
“Why? Who are you working for?”
The driver, a survivor from the other Jeep, stepped out of his vehicle and walked over to stand by the other men.
“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, so I’ll let you live. Toss your gun as far away as you can and then start walking back toward 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. “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, then Joaquin ran toward the lights of the compound.
Dante called to Alexa. “Would you like a ride, or are you waiting for a bus?”
Alexa moved toward the Jeep cautiously. 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?”
“Yes.”
“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.
381
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 toward the front doors of the Rutherford, they might have thought a convention was in town. 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 person 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 rear.
Two men were standing near the hotel’s front desk, and there were rifles in sight, leaned up against the desk. Eight different cartel members shot the pair as the men had raised their hands in protest. From the rear of the building more gunfire sounded off.
Rico’s men flowed into the hotel, 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 that had been inflicted upon them without mercy.
“You’re going to die, Tanner!” shouted one of the men in Spanish. It caused the others to laugh. They knew 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. 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, the two men 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. They believed they had killed Tanner and would share in the reward money. The other two men returned from checking out the bathrooms. When they saw the corpse lying on the side of the bed, they moaned, for they believed 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 glued onto it.
“Look at this,” the hood 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 no
t 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. 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, 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, for 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 toward Rico in an imploring gesture, asking for help.
Rico reached down and grabbed the man’s ankles to drag him away from the door, and the scant breeze blowing in. 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. If his plan worked, he would soon be running New York City alongside Joe Pullo.
382
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.
The Tanner Series - Books 1-11: Tanner - The hit man with a heart Page 120