He slowed to give his followers a chance to get closer, and judging the timing, turned the corner onto the smaller street – empty now that the business district had closed down. He spotted the building he’d remembered and smiled to himself. The old habits came back easily. Like riding a bicycle.
~
The pair watched as their quarry rounded the block and momentarily disappeared from view. They exchanged worried glances and increased their speed. The last thing they needed was to lose him now that they were this close. One of the men pulled a stun gun from his jacket pocket in preparation for taking him down. With any luck it would be over within a few minutes, on the outside.
They turned the corner and found themselves on an empty street. There was no sign of him.
The shorter of the two hastily stabbed at his cell phone and muttered into it, “We should be on top of him, but when we made the turn, he disappeared.”
“Could he have entered one of the buildings? Maybe he lives there.”
“Anything’s possible. What do you want us to do?”
“Keep walking and see if you can spot him on the far street. Worst case, if you can’t, watch the buildings for a light going on in one of the windows. He couldn’t have gotten too far, so either he ducked into one of the buildings or he ran for it. I think we can assume he spotted you. Get moving. No need for subtlety now,” the shoelace tier instructed. “I’m right behind you, maybe forty-five seconds. Move.”
They increased their speed to a near jog. As they passed the construction site, a shadow burst from the depths and hurtled past them.
The first man clutched his midsection in disbelief, as though he could hold his organs in with his hands now that his stomach had been slit open, sliced below his ribcage through the abdominal wall. He crumpled as his intestines spilled out onto the sidewalk in a wet puddle. His partner collapsed simultaneously, dropping the stun gun to the ground, the femoral artery at the top of his leg severed, the outpouring of blood causing an immediate drop in blood pressure. He quivered as he feebly pushed against the gash in his thigh, consciousness fading almost instantly as his life seeped from him.
El Rey kicked the stun gun into the darkness and then silently moved back into the bowels of the gutted building, carefully avoiding the blood that his interaction with the first two had created. He listened for footsteps and was rewarded by the clumping of shoes approaching from around the corner, which stopped, as anticipated, in front of the two dying men. He slid out of the far side of the building and circled back soundlessly on his pursuer.
The man never saw him coming. The next thing he knew, a bloody straight razor was at his throat, millimeters from severing his carotid.
An eerily calm voice whispered in his ear, tender as a lover, “Who are you?”
The man swallowed and allowed his body to go slack, signaling submission to his assailant.
“Please. Don’t kill me. I’m here from Don Aranas. He sent us to bring you back. He needs your help.”
Aranas? The name instantly caused a flood of images. The head of the Sinaloa cartel was as legendary as he was elusive. He was as much of a ghost as El Rey and had defied decades of concerted manhunts to bring him to justice. El Rey had never met him, but he’d performed hits for his syndicate, taking sanctions against the Gulf and Juárez cartels. He’d delivered flawlessly on the contracts, and Aranas had always been punctual in payment. But how…?
“I need more than that. How did you find me? You have five seconds to convince me not to slit your throat.”
“There was an inquiry through Interpol from the Argentine secret service. One of Aranas’ contacts in the Federales alerted him, and we traced the origin to a man in Mendoza. A man who was found murdered this morning. Our sources in the police department here gave us the list of possible suspects. You were one of the names.”
“How did you know it was me?” El Rey whispered.
“We didn’t. I have five other men in town – now that these two have been taken out of the game. They’re watching other targets.”
“That doesn’t explain how you knew I was your likeliest objective.”
“You don’t look that much different than your photo, if you know what to look for. It’s a good disguise, but nothing’s foolproof. You should know that.”
El Rey felt the man’s pockets for weapons. He had a pistol – a Remington 1911 R1 .45 caliber, no silencer. El Rey took it and removed the razor from his neck, pausing to wipe the blade on the man’s jacket.
“Turn around. Slowly. Face me, and then back into the construction site so we can have some privacy. Don’t make a sound or you’re dead. We don’t have a lot of time, so do exactly as I say.”
The man did as instructed, raising his hands over his head and moving into the shadows. El Rey trained the gun on him, the barrel steady, almost casual.
“What does Aranas want with me? Why search halfway around the world for someone who has gone out of his way to disappear?”
“Aranas has an offer for you – a job. He was insistent. Money is no object to him, and he wants the best.”
“I’ve retired.”
“I don’t think so. With all due respect, if Aranas wants you that badly, it’s time to come out of retirement just this once. You know the power he wields. Don Aranas is not a man to refuse. I mean no disrespect in telling you this.”
El Rey thought about it. This was a very strange situation, and not at all what he’d envisioned. He’d been expecting almost anything, but not a job offer. He regarded the man, who was clearly extremely tough. This was a man who had faced death many times, you could tell. He was afraid of El Rey killing him, but he was also resigned to it, if that was how the night would end. Better dead than to let down his master. El Rey knew the kind. He gestured with his weapon.
“I’ll consider it. Give me a phone number to call, and when I’m ready, I will get in touch,” El Rey instructed.
“My orders were to have you accompany me. We have a Gulfstream V waiting at the airport that can hit Mexico without refueling. I urge you to reconsider.”
“I don’t care what your orders were. I am retired. If I decide to meet with Don Aranas, it’s out of respect for his position, not because of any orders. Give me a number, and if I decide to, I will call and arrange a meeting within a week. It will be just the two of us. Nobody else. And the price will be very high. Twenty million U.S.. There will be no negotiation. That’s what it will take to bring me out of retirement if I choose to do so. If I decide not to, I won’t call, and you can tell Don Aranas that I have respectfully declined.” El Rey motioned with the gun. “You are still alive for one reason. I want you to take that message back to him. If you’re unwilling to, say so, and I can arrange for you to join your men in the gutter.”
The man nodded and then slowly reached into his jacket pocket for a pen and a scrap of paper – a parking stub. He watched El Rey studying him, and then, after considering it for a few moments, scrawled a number on the back of the ticket. He replaced the pen in his jacket and then held the slip out to El Rey.
“Place it on the ground and then turn around and walk out of here. Keep walking until you get to the main street and then cross into the park. Walk to the far side, and from there, do whatever you want. But be assured of one thing. If I ever see you, or any of your men, again, I will kill you like a dog, without hesitation. Nothing personal. You know how it is,” El Rey said, speaking softly, as was his custom.
The man nodded. “I’ll take him the message.”
He bent down and placed the parking ticket on the ground and then turned as instructed. El Rey slammed him in the base of the neck with the heavy steel pistol, and he tumbled to the ground. Picking up the stub, he calculated that the man would be out for at least fifteen minutes – plenty of time to get to his apartment, grab his gear, and disappear forever.
~
When the man came to, he was being shaken awake by a uniformed police officer. A blue glow flickered on the stre
et from the roof lights of the squad cars. A harsh glare illuminated the building’s battered façade from the headlights of the four gathered cars. A huddle of cops stood outside by the two corpses, which had been covered with a tarp. El Rey was gone.
He told the police that he’d been assaulted and mugged, and that the last thing he remembered was being told to move into the building. He knew nothing about the two dead men – perhaps they’d happened along and tried to help him. He didn’t know. He’d been unconscious throughout whatever had happened and vaguely remembered a pair of large men, rough-looking, perhaps homeless – he struggled to give as good a description as he could muster, but it was all blurry and had happened so fast.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have his wallet – not surprising, given that he’d just been robbed; but he could get his passport brought to him with a phone call to a colleague at the airport. The officers took him into the precinct and processed his statement, and a doctor checked him perfunctorily. No concussion – just a sore neck and a bad headache. He was allowed to make his call, and within a few minutes the shift chief got a phone call from the head of the Mendoza police force.
Four hours later, the Gulfstream lifted into the night sky and banked north, paralleling the Andes on its way up the coast.
Chapter 7
Cruz sat with his advisory team in the conference room, Briones seated by his side, as they strategized on how best to take down the bodega, which they’d been watching for a week. It was obvious to them that the facility was being used as a distribution point for drugs and arms, and the only real questions that remained were ones of timing and logistics.
Briones glanced at his notes. “As suspected, the contraband comes in during the day, apparently from two suppliers, both of which are small construction supply companies that don’t have any other customers. We haven’t been able to get close enough for hundred percent confirmation, but it appears that one of them is dropping off crates of weapons, and the other, drugs. Most likely meth, because the vehicles that are arriving to pick it up at night are well known local meth distributors who specialize in trafficking in the barrios. Could be some marijuana, too, but that’s not a big concern. Guns and meth are,” Briones summarized.
Cruz stood. “We need to coordinate taking down the two vendors as well as the bodega, preferably all at the same time. I’m not nearly as worried about the individual dealers making the pickups. There will be ten more to replace them when we drag them off the street, so the overwhelming priority has to be the supply. Cut off the supply, and most of the problem goes away.” He turned his attention to Briones. “Let’s talk about defenses.”
“It’s relatively low-key. At night, there are only three security men, and we haven’t seen any inside, so neutralize them and it’s a clean sweep. There are usually more men there during the day – workers and legitimate delivery people, so the odds of collateral damage increase with a daytime strike. I’m recommending going in just before dawn, when the night shift will be the most tired, and doing a stealth takeout of the sentries,” Briones concluded.
One of the men at the table shook his head. “It’s not going to sit well with the press if we just gun down the guards with no warning or opportunity to allow them to surrender.”
Cruz nodded. “I’d normally have a problem doing so, but these men are carrying automatic weapons that are illegal in Mexico and are playing host to known cartel street dealers. Our last operations involved considerable police and army casualties, and I’ve about had it with our men being butchered to give these animals a chance to lay down their arms. They almost never do, and all we are doing is giving them warning so they can dig in and kill our forces. I’m done with that. If you’re carrying around an AK-47 and distributing drugs that are killing kids, you don’t need a warning. You need a coffin. That’s going to be our new policy. Zero tolerance.”
The man persisted. “Will the attorney general buy off on that? Doesn’t it violate their rights?”
“On this mission, we will be presenting it as a fait accompli. It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. If you have a problem with that, then you can be the one to go visit the families of the dead officers when these bastards gun them down after they’ve gotten their warning, and explain why the killers deserved a chance. We’ve identified all three as low-level enforcers for the Sinaloa cartel – men who are known killers. These men are butchers. We know it. I’m saying we cut them down before they can do more damage. If you’re uncomfortable with that, I can have you re-assigned to a different group. Make up your mind,” Cruz warned.
The man backed down, shaking his head. “I just don’t want any fallout that could hurt us later.”
“Let me worry about that. Now, Lieutenant Briones will take over and go through the plan for the attack. We’ll hit it tomorrow morning and then get the area cleaned up so that we can take the day crew captive and arrest the delivery trucks as they arrive with their cargo.”
~
A drowsy rooster crowed in the distance, sensing that dawn was approaching. The guards at the bodega lounged around the back of the building, weary after yet another long night of inactivity, their weapons by their sides as they sat playing cards. Only two more hours to go, and then they’d be off until eight the next night for another eleven hours of tedium.
Two hundred yards away, a pair of marine snipers stealthily moved through a vacated junkyard to a position where they’d have a clear line of fire. Their weapon of choice for the exercise was the M-16 rifle, with an accuracy that was perfect at such a range. They had the guns set to single fire, confident in their ability to dispatch the three men sitting around a white plastic Pacifico beer table near the bodega’s main entry.
Their earbud com lines crackled and a quiet voice told them to be ready to fire if the men moved for their weapons. They steadied their rifles against an old Dodge Dart’s rusting fender and prepared to engage.
A loud voice boomed from the public address system of an armored Federal Police truck that roared around the corner on the dirt road that led to the bodega, followed by three police cars with their lights off.
“Do not move. Do not attempt to reach for your guns. This is the Federal Police. We have you surrounded.”
The men froze momentarily, then dived for their rifles. The first man’s head exploded in a froth of blood and brains, spackling the wall behind him. The second man’s chest shredded in seconds, peppered by smoking holes, the dark stain of exsanguination spreading before he hit the ground. The third guard made it to his weapon as the slug intended for him missed by scant millimeters, and taking cover, fired a burst in the direction of the police truck before a sniper round tore his esophagus apart, taking most of his C3 vertebrae with it.
The assault was over almost before it started. The three corpses lay immobile in the sticky dirt. Briones got out of the lead vehicle, approached the lock with bolt cutters, and made short work of the chain securing the gate in place. A squad of combat-equipped Federales jogged into the storage yard, followed by the coroner’s van. The instructions were clear. Photograph the carnage, then get the bodies out of there and clean any trace of the battle up so the day crew had no idea there was a problem until it was too late.
Half an hour later, the scene had been sanitized, and the only evidence of the slaughter was the hanging gate chain and the line of police vehicles preparing to pull away. A small group of curious locals had gathered up the road, drawn by the gunfire, but the officers quickly dispersed them, warning them to stay away from the area. Most were night watchmen at other buildings, although a few lived in the ramshackle hovels that were a perennial on the periphery of any rural industrial area in Mexico – squatters whose desperation had forced them to construct meager shelters from discarded or pilfered materials, and who lived without the benefit of water, electricity or plumbing.
This human flotsam shuffled back to wherever it called home, driven by the warnings of the police. Nobody wanted to bring any more trou
ble down on their heads than the universe had already visited upon them, so their curiosity took a back seat to self-preservation.
One man, a security guard at a plumbing supply warehouse a block from the yard, made a surreptitious call on his cell as he made his way back to his lonely watch, murmuring a summary of what he’d seen into the phone before terminating the call.
The day crew never appeared that morning, and neither did the delivery trucks.
As the day wore on, it became obvious that the raid had somehow been leaked to the higher-ups in the scheme, who had taken appropriate measures to cut their losses and terminate operations. It was always a risk for the police, in any incursion, because the industry was always on guard and lived with the expectation that it would have to fold up its tent and move to greener pastures at any moment.
In the end, Cruz and Briones were both stymied by the exercise because while they’d seized thirty-five kilos of methamphetamine, two hundred pounds of marijuana, eighteen automatic Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles and twelve FN Five-seven pistols, they’d failed to stop the driving force behind the operation – the cartel lieutenants who had set up the bodega in the first place. And so, within a few days, the operation would switch to another warehouse somewhere close by where more of the insidious cargo would be distributed, and aside from a few dead enforcers, nothing had changed.
It was frustrating, but all part of the job, and both men tried to keep it from getting to them. They had achieved a good outcome – they’d stopped a local drug and gun distribution scheme with zero police casualties, and dealt a blow to the forces of evil. All in all, not a bad day’s work, although when Cruz made it home that day he’d seemed somewhat dejected to Dinah. She’d sensed his frustration and suggested dinner at one of his favorite restaurants, followed by a bottle of passable Mexican cabernet from the Guadalupe Valley.
Revenge of the Assassin Page 7