He glanced up from his bunk and slowly complied with the instructions. Once he was standing with his nose pressed against the wall, the cell door slid open with a creak, and two of the guards entered while the third stood outside brandishing a stun gun. The warden seemed nervous, even though the prisoner was to be heavily restrained. The assassin’s reputation had preceded him, and the instructions from the federal police had been clear – to consider the man a lethal weapon, even if barehanded. He could not be allowed any opportunity to craft a weapon, from anything, and communications with other prisoners, much less the outside world, were strictly forbidden.
The guards slipped the steel shackles on the assassin’s wrists and ankles, bridging the two sets with a third chain to further hobble him. Once the elaborate restraint was complete, they turned him and led him to the cell door, the chains clanking as he shuffled along.
“Well, my little bull, you’re going for a ride today. Off to see the majesty of the judicial system at work. Enjoy your outing. It’s likely to be the last for a long, long time,” the warden taunted, feeling more confident now that El Rey was bound.
El Rey suddenly tensed and made as if to lunge at him. The warden blanched as he recoiled, blood draining from his face as he stepped back instinctively.
El Rey smiled. “Don’t worry, mi palomito. If I wanted you dead, you already would be,” he said in a gentle lilt.
The guard on his right pulled his baton and raised it to slam him in the skull, but the warden shook his head.
“We don’t want the prisoner to appear to have been harmed. Wait until his return. Then you can educate him on the correct form of polite address for his betters,” the warden instructed.
The three guards exchange glances and smiled. The lead man jerked on the chain, and they began the slow clinking procession down the block. The other prisoners jeered at the warden, but he kept his head high, pretending to ignore the curses. It was a routine part of the job and came with the territory. The guard on the right, closest to the cells, swatted at the bars with his baton, but it was halfhearted posturing, born of habit.
Once through security, they loaded the assassin into an unmarked van that had been outfitted with a security cage in the cargo area. The lead guard padlocked the chain to a large ringbolt in the floor before closing the latch on the cage. A federal policeman in full assault gear climbed into the rear after the assassin, nodding his determination as the guard closed the cargo doors. Another guard clutching an assault rifle slid into the passenger seat. The driver glanced at the prisoner in the rear, catching the eye of the guard sitting by the cage. The officer gave him a thumbs up, and the driver eased his foot off the brake.
Two other vans, identical in every respect, sat beside the one containing the assassin, waiting with engines running. On a signal from the driver they pulled away, and once through the gates, each made for a different route to get to Mexico City, where the hearing would be held.
El Rey bounced in the rear as they took surface streets to the freeway, the uneven pavement jarring him painfully against the hard metal floor.
~
“Beta, the pigeon has left the roost.” The words came over the scrambled radio.
“Copy that. We are on our way,” came the response.
The heavy delivery truck was emblazoned with a singing chicken in overalls wearing a baby-blue chef hat. The driver narrowed his eyes, rolled a balaclava over his face and put the transmission in gear. He peered at the side mirror and watched as the black Lincoln Navigator behind him rolled away from the curb to follow.
~
Chatter and bursts of static came over the police radio as the van pulled to a stop at the intersection near the bottom of the freeway onramp. As expected, there was little traffic at ten a.m.. They would be able to make it into Mexico City by eleven and be in court shortly after.
The officer watching El Rey in the rear scratched his face and then wiped it with his sleeve.
“Could you turn up the AC? It’s broiling back here,” he called to the driver, who nodded and leaned forward to adjust the controls.
~
The truck slammed into the van’s front fender at forty miles per hour, crushing the wheel and the engine area and rendering it immobile, breaking the driver’s side window in the process. Five men dressed in jeans and windbreakers leapt from the Navigator and ran to the van, weapons trained on both stunned Federales in the front. The armed officer in the passenger seat hadn’t been able to get his gun into service fast enough, and they were now both sitting ducks, the weapons pointed at their faces obvious in their intent.
“Don’t move or I’ll blow your heads off!” the lead assailant screamed at the officers, firing a burst along the top section of the van for emphasis. “Get your hands up where I can see them. NOW!”
The two men slowly raised their hands, and a second assailant tossed a small canister through the van’s window. Within seconds, the driver and the passenger slumped forward from the incapacitating gas, out cold.
El Rey instinctively held his breath when he saw the canister hit the floor. His guard wasn’t so fortunate and fell into a heap as he tried to get up to fire at the attackers in the front.
The rear doors flew open, and the assassin saw three men standing with M4 assault rifles. A fourth approached the mobile cage with bolt cutters. A few seconds later the cage lock and the chain had been clipped off, still connected to the ring in the van floor.
One of the men glanced at El Rey; blood streamed down the side of his face from where his head had banged against the metal cage during the collision.
“How badly are you hurt? Can you move?” the man asked.
El Rey nodded, ignoring the throbbing from his skull and the seeping blood.
“All right. Come on. Hurry. This place is going to be swarming with cops within another minute or two. Move.”
The attackers dragged him unceremoniously out of the van and two of the men set him on his feet while the bolt cutter severed the chain connecting his ankles. Once the restraint had been cut, they ran as a group to the Navigator and climbed in, El Rey being directed to the rear seat while two of the men climbed in the cargo area and two slid in next to him. The leader jumped into the passenger seat, and El Rey watched as the delivery truck backed away from the van and moved off in the opposite direction as the Navigator tore towards the onramp.
“Who are you?” El Rey asked, then he felt a pinprick on his arm. He jolted and tried to squirm away, but the grip of the man next to him prevented it. The leader in the passenger seat swiveled around and stared at the assassin as he lost consciousness. The last thing El Rey saw was the cold brown eyes of his rescuer studying him from behind the black knit mask as they rolled onto the highway towards freedom.
Chapter 6
Captain Romero Cruz was briefing his team in the situation room of federal police headquarters in Mexico City when the call came in. His secretary knocked on the door, interrupting the proceedings, and apologized for the intrusion before telling him that there was an urgent call waiting for him in his office.
He shook his head at the dozen men assembled at the large conference table and excused himself, instructing his second in command, Lieutenant Briones, to continue with the meeting. Cruz grabbed his notepad and coffee cup and strode through the maze of cubicles in the large main room before arriving at his private office. He stabbed at the blinking amber light on one of the buttons on his desktop phone and raised the handset to his ear.
“Cruz,” he said.
“Captain Cruz. This is the warden at Altiplano prison.”
“Yes, Warden, what can I do for you?” Cruz asked, the hair on the back of his neck prickling with premonition.
“It’s El Rey. He’s escaped,” the warden said without preamble.
“Escaped? What are you saying? How the hell does someone escape from the most secure facility in Mexico? Is this some kind of a joke?” Cruz barked into the phone.
“No, I’m afraid
it isn’t. He didn’t escape from the prison. He was broken out of a vehicle transporting him to the court for a hearing. Three federal officers were incapacitated in the attack, and he got away.”
Cruz’s mind raced at the impossible news. “Have you contacted anyone else yet?” he demanded.
“Of course. This just happened ten minutes ago. I’m getting word in from the field as we speak, but I wanted you to know the instant I did. I remembered that you were the head of the El Rey task–”
“Who else have you called?”
“The head of the detail that was transporting him, who committed to notifying all the appropriate agencies.”
Cruz took a calming breath. “Were there any witnesses? What happened?”
“Yes, a couple in a car saw a big truck ram the transport vehicle, and then an SUV pulled up and armed men got out. The man says he thinks it was a Lincoln Navigator or a big Ford SUV. Neither of them are sure, and there were no plates on the truck…”
“Are there helicopters in the air? What’s being done? They couldn’t have gotten very far,” Cruz observed.
“Of course. But there isn’t much to go on just yet. The guards are still groggy. The attackers used some kind of gas.”
“Shit. All right. I’m going to get on the road. Who is the officer in charge?”
“Lieutenant Abrijo. He indicated he’d be in touch within a few minutes.”
“Got a number for him?”
Cruz was already moving back to the conference room as he dialed the number on his cell phone. He burst through the door as it started to ring.
“Listen up, people. Major emergency. El Rey’s broken out of prison. Happened just a few minutes ago. Briones? We’ll take your car. I want to get to the scene immediately,” he announced, and then a voice came on the line.
“Lieutenant Abrijo? Captain Cruz, head of the El Rey task force. What the hell happened?” he demanded.
“We’re still trying to figure it out. There was a collision, and some sort of an extraction team got him out of the cage in the back of the transport van. From what we can tell, it was sophisticated, coordinated, and perfectly executed. They were in and out in under two minutes, if that. This was a pro group…”
“Fine. But how could they have known he was being transported?” Cruz asked.
“That’s part of the mystery. That, and how they knew which vehicle was being used. There were two decoy vans in addition to the primary, and they only went after the real one,” Abrijo exclaimed in frustration. “This stinks. They must have received detailed inside information.”
“I tend to agree, although it’s too early to speculate. Abrijo, I’m headed over to the prison now. Where exactly are you? Give me a breakdown of what’s being done,” Cruz ordered as he and Briones made for the elevator.
“We’ve got the armored division mobilized, an APB out on the suspect vehicle as well as the truck, and birds in the air. But they have a head start, so unless they’re stupid or careless, you know as well as I do that every minute we don’t find them decreases the odds…”
“Are you at the prison?”
“No, I just arrived at the crash site.”
Abrijo gave him directions.
“Set up roadblocks and checkpoints in a perimeter ten miles from the prison. I don’t want anyone in or out of the area without being searched. There’s no way this prick is going to escape justice. It came at far too high a price,” Cruz reminded him.
When the elevator arrived, Cruz signed off and told Briones where they were headed.
His day had just gone from mundane and unpleasant to catastrophic in the blink of an eye.
~
The Navigator pulled into a veterinary supply warehouse, followed a few minutes later by the truck, and the gunmen divided up after changing into business attire. One man gathered the weapons and other equipment and placed them into two large rucksacks, which he stowed in the rear of a local police cruiser. Next to it, a dark blue van with a red cross on each side sat by the entry, its bank of roof-mounted lights glittering in the artificial luminescence from the overhead lamps.
The leader and his helper moved into the back of the building and emerged a few minutes later wearing federal police uniforms. They each took one of El Rey’s arms, and after removing the prison chains and dressing him in clothes brought for that purpose, he was also transformed into a federal policeman.
The unlikely metamorphosis complete, they placed him on a gurney which they wheeled into the back of the police ambulance. The leader jumped in the back with him, and the other man climbed behind the wheel, starting the engine with a rumble before hitting the flashing lights.
They pulled away, leaving the rest of the team to disperse and find their way in the three other vehicles in the warehouse. The Navigator and the truck would be dealt with later. That would be somebody else’s chore, to be taken care of once the heat had died down and the roadblocks had been lifted.
~
El Rey came to with a start, but couldn’t move his arms or legs. He had the sensation of movement and knew from the vibration he was in a vehicle. He tentatively tried to shift one arm, and then the other, but it was no good – straps held him secure to whatever the padded surface was that he was lying on.
He opened his eyes and found himself staring at a federal police officer, who was filling a syringe from a small glass bottle with a clear fluid in it. The man regarded El Rey impassively and then leaned towards the front of the vehicle.
“He’s awake. Let me know when you can pull to a stop.”
El Rey raised his head and registered a tube trailing from his left arm up to a bag of fluids on an IV pole mounted to the gurney upon which he was strapped.
“Okay. We’re at a light. You got thirty seconds,” the driver called over his shoulder.
“Who are you?” El Rey’s voice sounded foreign, ethereal, the coarse whispered rasp something alien.
The policeman ignored the question, instead reaching up with the syringe and emptying it into the IV line before reconnecting the bag.
“Your savior and guardian angel. Nighty night,” he said as he patted the assassin’s chest.
Almost instantly, the interior blurred, and then everything darkened and faded.
~
The scene of the assault and subsequent breakout was chaotic by the time Cruz and Briones got there. Helicopters hovered near the army and police roadblocks in the distance. Everyone was agitated and jumpy.
Cruz opened the passenger door and strode over to where the ranking federal police officer was dispensing instructions to his men.
“Lieutenant Abrijo?” Cruz guessed, seeing his insignia, and extended his hand.
Abrijo shook it. “You must be the famous Captain Cruz. Glad you could make it.”
“What have we got? Anything new?” Cruz probed.
“The officers in the van remember being hit by a truck, then some men approaching them in a professional formation, but beyond that, nothing. The emergency medical tech says that the amnesia is probably due to the gas. We retrieved the canister and sent it to the forensics lab for analysis, but whatever it was, it isn’t helping us find the perps right now,” Abrijo explained.
“Any theories on how they knew that El Rey was in this van?”
“Negative. Even if someone had been watching when he was loaded, which is impossible given that it took place behind the prison gates, there would be no way of knowing for sure which of the three vans had him once they all hit the road. None of them have plates for that exact reason.”
“Hmm. And yet they obviously not only knew which van, but also the route. Am I correct that’s impossible?” Cruz asked.
“Yes. It’s never happened before. This is a first. Then again, prisoners awaiting sentencing aren’t usually incarcerated in the prison. Usually they’re held downtown in jail. Nobody has ever broken out of this facility. It’s considered impenetrable. But one of the reasons is because they don’t transport prisoners bey
ond the walls…”
Cruz peered at the prison van’s crumpled front end. “Anything you can glean from the evidence?”
“The problem is, what evidence? We have a few shell casings from where the attackers fired a warning burst into the top of the van, and the gas canister, and some paint from where the truck pinned them. Beyond that, nothing,” Abrijo lamented.
“Tire tracks? Footprints? Fingerprints? What about the witnesses?”
“Tires were BF Goodrich All Terrains judging from the impressions in the dirt by the shoulder. That narrows it down to half the SUVs in Mexico. We’ve taken impressions of the footprints, but unless we have a suspect, that’s unlikely to lead to anything. They’re dusting the van for prints, but if they were as pro as the breakout suggests, I’d bet they were wearing gloves.” Abrijo shook his head. “The witnesses are over there.” He gestured to a gold Nissan Sentra where a couple was nodding and speaking with two officers. “But they don’t have much more to offer than what I told you on the phone. Black SUV, men in masks, no plates, in and out in two minutes or less.”
“Where were they when it happened?” Cruz asked.
Abrijo pointed at the street that connected to the main artery.
“Pulling down that road, getting ready to swing into the turn lane to get on the freeway. They stopped when they saw the truck slam into the van, and the husband backed away up the hill when he saw the armed men. Smart, actually. I wouldn’t have stuck around with a kidnapping in process.”
“Could they describe the guns?”
“No need. The casings are 7.62 mm. That says AK47 to me.”
“Any prints from the casings?” Cruz asked.
“As you’d expect in an operation like this, the shells are clean. They were wiped, then loaded using gloves, no doubt.”
Return of the Assassin (Assassin Series 3) Page 5