Return of the Assassin (Assassin Series 3)

by Blake, Russell

  “You should meet my last couple of girlfriends,” Briones said.

  “They still alive?”

  “Well played.” Briones leaned in to him. “So what have you got for me, Carlos?”

  “First round on your man. Short story is he’s clean. A poster boy for living within his means, two kids, a wife he apparently doesn’t cheat on, modest savings, paying for a house out in Toluca that’s government sponsored. If you’re looking for a cartel snitch, this guy doesn’t fit the profile.”

  “That’s great. I have a deep-seated gut feeling that he’s wrong in some way, and you come back to tell me that he’s our next pope.”

  “Just because you put antlers on your dog, doesn’t make him a reindeer.”

  “Good to know, but I don’t have a dog. What does that even mean?” Briones asked, glancing down the bar at a couple of sad-looking older men doing shots of rotgut tequila washed down with cans of Tecate.

  “It means that just because on first blush something looks one way, doesn’t make it so.”

  “I have a feeling this is where you try to cheer me up.”

  “I think if you feel that strongly that he’s bent, we should go ahead and do the second phase of surveillance. If he’s a saint, no harm done. If we find something, then, hey, you’re vindicated, and the streets are again safe for our children.”

  “I don’t have any children.”

  “Nor will you, if all you do is work. Did I mention that this place gets jumping later on?” Carlos said, taking a long pull on his beer.

  “I can only imagine.”

  “Very judgmental. An unappealing trait in one so tender of years.”

  “I have worse ones.”

  “Then you’re not going to join me for Ladies’ Night at the world famous El Rincon?” Carlos tried again.

  “I’d rather get un-anesthetized oral surgery. With a spoon.” Briones took another gulp of his brew. “A dirty one.”

  “The bartender does that as one of his specialties.”

  “How did I know that?”

  Briones finished his beer and set down the foamy remains, throwing two twenty peso notes on the bar.

  “I’d say go ahead and wire our altar boy. You never know what you’ll find.”

  “Will do. Is that for the drinks, or do you want to buy the place?”

  “I’m feeling like a big spender today. Take advantage.”

  Carlos chugged the remainder of his beer and stood.

  “I’ll call you if I get anything on him.”

  “I know you will.”

  The pair walked to the door, shaking hands once they were at the threshold.

  “Appreciate it,” Briones said.

  “No problema.”

  “You really going to stay here?”

  “What, are you kidding? I just wanted to see how desperate you are.”

  “Try me on Saturday night. That’s when I get drunk and clean the guns.”

  “You’re on.”

  Chapter 18

  The road south was almost deserted as the old truck groaned along the fairly well-maintained Pan American highway at a moderate speed. The flat agricultural plains south of Comitán changed back to jungle at La Trinitaria before transitioning to farm fields as the altitude dropped from five thousand feet to two thousand. He was passed twice by economy cars flying down the road in the same direction, but saw no checkpoints or police. Hector had done his job, which didn’t surprise him. Everyone had a lot riding on him getting to the border without incident.

  After crossing a bridge that spanned a dark, fast moving river, the surroundings became increasingly verdant again where man’s effort to fight back the jungle had largely failed. Within another half hour, the sporadic dwellings gave way to a small town that was his final point on pavement – Ciudad Cuauhtémoc. He pulled into the meager town center and headed east along the dirt roads, muddy from the evening’s succession of cloudbursts. The surrounding hills were cloaked in fog, which would suit his purposes nicely, masking any noise.

  He found a desolate patch of ground beyond the city limits, where he pulled the truck to a stop and shut off the engine. The glow of the town lights sharply contrasted the pitch black of the nearby Guatemalan hills, only a mile and a half away. The smell of wood smoke and decaying vegetation drifted down from the mountains, but there was nothing to see beyond gloom and fog.

  Rudolfo had provided him with a rough smuggler’s map of the trails that meandered through the border jungle, and he took another glance at it to imprint it in his memory before getting underway. He’d calculated the distances and plugged them in as rough waypoints in his tiny wrist mounted GPS unit, but the visual was invaluable. He strapped the GPS to his left forearm, securing the velcro in place before powering it on. The dim backlit screen came to glimmering life. The integrated compass would also be a life saver – he knew from experience that once in the thick of the bush, it would be hard to accurately judge direction, especially at night.

  He listened intently for any hint of humanity and was rewarded with only the dim barking of a dog from the town and a distant backfiring engine. Reaching to the passenger side of the filthy bench seat, he opened the black case he’d placed next to him and extracted a pair of night vision goggles, which he pulled over his head and activated. The dark was replaced by the familiar luminescent green. He studied his surroundings with approval. It wasn’t quite like daylight, but if he maneuvered with care, the goggles would do the trick.

  The assassin next retrieved the BlackBerry and the GPS chips, and tossed them on the floor. Rudolfo had supplied another cell phone Hector knew nothing about, so there was no reason to keep the BlackBerry any longer. The usefulness of the government being able to track him had just come to an abrupt end.

  After descending from the cab, he moved to the rear of the truck and opened the cargo hold once more, taking care to drop the ramp that had been thoughtfully provided so he could get the ATV out. He climbed into the bed and pulled the sniper rifle off the handlebars, lifting the nylon strap over his head and cinching it tight so the weapon was pressed against his back. After checking the equipment one last time to verify it was secured, he pushed the ignition button, and the engine purred to life. He swung a leg over and settled onto the double length seat, then eased the ATV forward and down the ramp. The knobby tires hit the muddy ground with a squish, gripping tenaciously as he eased the throttle open.

  By his calculations he would average five miles per hour, if lucky, through the mountains. The trails would be marginal paths that were barely passable, but he had factored that in. His timeline allowed him three hours to make it to Tzisbaj, a tiny hamlet in the hills two and a half miles south of the villa, and another hour to get to his ultimate destination. He’d plotted a course that would keep him away from the main road and in the jungle – though it would have been a cakewalk to drive over the border and be at the target in an hour. The problem was that he couldn’t get a small army’s worth of weapons across without arousing the interest of the Guatemalan military, so the jungle was the best stealthy solution.

  He pointed his wheels at the dirt road that headed towards the tree line and gave the ATV more gas. This would be the easy part. Once he was in the hills on the Guatemalan side, it would get more problematic. He encountered nobody on his trek across the no man’s land that ran along the frontier, and the entrance to the first trail in the thickening brush was within thirty yards of where he’d expected it. His plan was to head up the valley a few miles into Guatemala and then turn north until he hit the main highway where it crossed the river. He’d dart over the bridge then get onto trails again, skirting the little villages along the way – Cuatro Caminos, Yuxen, El Tabacal, Buxub. Everyone was likely to be asleep, but he couldn’t risk alerting anyone who could sound an alarm.

  As he came around a bend, he had to veer around a horse munching on the thick vegetation. The dumb beast didn’t even budge and merely gawped at him before returning to its meal. A collisi
on with a large quadruped was the sort of unplanned event that could ruin even the best laid plan, so he slowed further as conditions dictated, preferring to move along at a crawl than to collide with a ton of muscle on the hoof.

  ~

  El Rey arrived at the main road – Highway 1 – and paused when he pulled near its edge, still out of sight. This was one of the problem points on his journey. The bridge would be easily crossed, but exposed him to scrutiny while he was in the open. It was a risk, but a manageable one that would speed him to the target.

  After a few moments studying the foggy strip of pavement, he was steeling himself to race across when he heard a faint sound of metal on the far side. He stiffened as his ears strained to catch it again. A scrape of steel on asphalt.

  He backed the ATV into a tangle of vegetation and pulled a pair of small binoculars from the case on the back. He couldn’t use night vision goggles at the same time, and it was too dark to make anything out as he peered through the glasses, so it was no good. He couldn’t see anything.

  But there was the sound he’d heard. And that could only mean one thing.

  He reached back into the case and unpacked the sniper rifle’s night vision scope, withdrawing it carefully from its foam-lined housing. He hated to use up battery time, but there was no choice.

  He flicked the scope on and zoomed-in on the far side of the bridge. A Guatemalan army truck sat by the road shoulder, and four soldiers manned a darkened checkpoint. While rare, a spontaneous military roadblock was one of the variables he had no control over – but it would cause a delay because now he would need to find another way across the river, which was too deep to cross on the ATV. He replaced the scope in the case and reconciled himself to doing it the hard way.

  He glided back into the brush until he was a hundred yards off the road, then stopped again, this time to fish out a small tablet computer with the satellite footage of the region uploaded on it. He brought up the area surrounding the bridge and saw that if he could get across a smaller tributary, there was a dam or small farming crossing about a mile and a half south. That was going the wrong direction, but north of the bridge the river got wider, so getting across there was out of the question.

  It would be a rough trek because his current trail turned away from the river a half mile south of his position, meaning he’d have to do almost a mile through dense jungle, trying to find game trails to follow. Even in daylight that would have been difficult, but at night, even with the goggles it was a most challenging task. But there was no point bemoaning it – there was no other way.

  When he arrived at the bend in the trail where he would have to forge a new path, he saw a small break in the thick underbrush – perhaps cows or burros forged their way through there, or perhaps the local peasants had cut a route along the river. He inched into the breach and tried to ignore the branches and leaves scraping his face and head.

  Fifty minutes later, he arrived at the smaller stream and found an area where the water was only a few feet deep, just above what sounded like rapids. He walked gingerly through the current, testing with a branch, and once he was satisfied that he wouldn’t bog down in the mud, he gunned the ATV across, brown water spraying in arcs on both sides. He shook off the splatter and looked for another trail, but there was nothing obvious, so he inched along, ducking to avoid the worst of the undergrowth and trying to follow the less dense openings.

  A hundred yards further on, he came across what was clearly a footpath and was able to pick up his pace as he made his way to the crossing point. The GPS confirmed he was only a half a mile away, and suddenly the jungle gave way to crop fields, which explained the presence of humans in such a remote location. After the jungle, it felt like he was flying through the rows of plantings, and he reached the dam within minutes. It had been constructed of rocks and stones to divert water into the fields and thankfully had a flat top just wide enough to accommodate the ATV.

  Once on the other side he studied the smuggler trail map, searching for the nearest trail. There wasn’t much, so he again powered on the tablet and saw several small roads nearby. Clearly access ways to the fields for the local farmers, which meant that at half past midnight there wouldn’t be anyone on them.

  Resuming his trek, within a few more minutes he was on hard-packed dirt and sped north in an effort to make up the hour he’d lost avoiding the military. He only hoped that there wouldn’t be any more surprises – if he was going to make it to the villa with suitable time to do reconnaissance and get the girl out, he needed to be there within two more hours. With ten more miles to go, that would be a challenge.

  ~

  Don Aranas was sipping an añejo tequila – one of his favorites, Don Julio Real – while running his fingers through the vanilla-scented hair of his young companion seated next to him on the leather sofa. They were watching a movie on the seventy-five-inch flat-screen television in the study of his Honduras villa when one of his men knocked lightly on the door. Aranas looked at his watch. It was almost midnight. He paused the film.

  “What?”

  The heavy mahogany door opened and his head of security made a subdued entry.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Jefe. I know the hour is late, but I felt you would want to know about this as soon as we got the news,” the man apologized.

  “Fine. What is so important?”

  “We just heard from a source in the Federales. El Rey has escaped from prison.”

  Aranas nudged the girl next to him. “Go find something to do. Use the bathroom, or take a shower or something.”

  The girl unfolded her long legs from beneath her and pulled her silk kimono closed, ignoring the security man as she rose. She brushed past him, high heels clicking a staccato beat on the polished Italian Carrera marble tiles all the way to the bedroom, where she shut the door just a little harder than usual.

  “Tell me the details. What do we know?”

  “There was a breakout at the beginning of the week.”

  “A breakout? At Altiplano?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Damn it, spit it out. El Rey was being held there. I should know. I offered top dollar for his head. What happened?” Don Aranas demanded.

  “Apparently he was being moved. He must have coordinated an escape. The vehicle he was in was overwhelmed, and he escaped.”

  “How can that happen?”

  The security man shifted nervously. “Money will buy many things.”

  “Yes, but some of the richest cartel bosses in Mexico are in Altiplano, and their money hasn’t gotten them sprung.” Aranas stood up and proceeded to pace in front of the floor to ceiling window, beyond which the lights on the mainland glimmered like dim stars. “Do we know anything more?”

  “An investigation was started, but apparently it stopped or was moved to a different department, which has further complicated finding him.”

  “Who was running the investigation? Was it an incompetent?”

  “I don’t think so. Romero Cruz. The head of the cartel task force.”

  “Shit. Why do these names always keep coming up? Maybe I should have killed him when I had the chance,” Aranas fumed. “For all his failings, he’s competent. Why was it stopped, and who took it over?”

  “That’s unknown at this time. Our source is trying to get more information, but he hasn’t been able to discover anything more.”

  Aranas sighed. “What’s your assessment for security? Do you believe we’re at risk from El Rey?”

  “No – I mean, if I had just escaped, I’d be a million miles from Mexico by now. Remember last time. He was in Argentina. There aren’t many places farther from Mexico than that. Maybe he’ll turn up in Russia. Or China. But he has no reason to come after you. He’s already got the money from the hit on the president, and he’s a pro, which means he knows that the contract you put out on him was obligatory – there was no way you could allow him to take your money and not deliver. In the end, I think he disappears, never to be heard
from again.”

  Aranas swirled his tequila in the brandy snifter and took another sip. “You’re probably right. He didn’t strike me as a stupid young man. If he managed to escape from Altiplano, he’s done what nobody has ever been able to do. Another first for El Rey. I have to hand it to him. Even if he failed to kill the president, I’ve never seen anything like him.”

  “Well, as we’ve discussed, technically he did accomplish the hit.”

  “Yes, but it’s not my problem if the president used a double. I didn’t pay for his double to be executed. That didn’t solve anything. No, I paid for results, not best efforts. He failed to deliver, and that’s that,” Don Aranas stated menacingly.

  “No question, Jefe.”

  “Very well. Is that it?”

  “The footage of Isidro being acid-washed has caused outrage in the media and loud calls for the government to clamp down on cartel violence.”

  “Big deal. What else is new? You think they’d be sending me a medal or naming a street in my honor for ridding the world of the filthy shit-stain? I presume nobody is asking the obvious question – how I found him but the whole weight of the government law enforcement machine couldn’t?”

  “No, Don Aranas.”

  Aranas laughed – a dry, humorless sound. “Fine. It’s of no consequence. Send the girl back in. I want to finish the movie.”

  The security head nodded and turned, closing the door behind him softly. Aranas drained the remains of his tequila as he considered the news.

  El Rey had escaped.

  Why didn’t it surprise him?

  Chapter 19

  The ATV purred up the side of the hill, chewing up the muddy terrain as El Rey finessed the throttle like a lover. Snowy tendrils of fog crept down the dark slopes, settling in the deeps of the valleys. The sliver of moon beamed a paucity of light, which worked in his favor – the blacked out vehicle was nearly invisible in the gloom, as was he, dressed in camouflage.