“Run for the trees.”
Another shot, and a spike of searing pain cut across his hip. He spun, bringing the pistol to bear as he dropped to the ground.
The eighth guard stood by the house with an assault rifle, another car parked on the road now. He had evidently been out, but was back. He must have taken off while the assassin was dismantling the motion detectors – he’d never seen him leave.
El Rey fired five shots, methodically raising his aim with each jerk of the gun, adjusting for any drop caused by the distance.
The fourth and fifth rounds struck home and the man fell to the ground. He fired again at El Rey, but it was wide.
He debated going back and finishing the wounded guard, but decided there was no point to wasting the time. The man’s un-silenced gunfire would attract attention, so his stealth plan had just been blown, and every minute would matter.
Now it would get difficult.
He got to his feet and sprinted for the trees. Another shot, and then another, sounded from behind him, but none were even close. It was probably hard for the shooter to make out anything in the dark, especially with the fog thickening as he got closer to the tree line. And the guard had definitely been hit at least twice, so he was compromised, if not dying.
On his right, the girl stood waiting, just inside the brush.
“Follow me,” he said and then trotted through the trees, peering at his compass. She trailed him, and he grabbed her hand again, hoping to increase their progress. They crashed through the plants until he calculated they should be on top of the ATV, and then he saw the familiar shape.
“Climb on behind me,” he said, and then the silence was broken by another shot from much closer behind them. The bottom of the case on the back of the ATV shattered from a slug tearing through it. El Rey turned and emptied the pistol at the gunman standing near the tree line and was satisfied when he saw him fly backwards with a grunt.
“Come on. Hurry,” he said, hastily unscrewing the silencer and holstering the pistol. He threw himself onto the seat and pushed the starter button. The motor sputtered to life, and she swung a leg over and then wrapped her arms around his waist. He winced in pain, and she pulled her right hand away.
“You’re bleeding.”
“I know. I’ll tend to it later. We need to get out of here. The entire Guatemalan army is going to be on our asses pretty soon. I’d like to put some distance between us and the house while we can. Hang on.”
He twisted the throttle, released the clutch, and they tore off into the dark.
Chapter 20
The terrain rushed by as the ATV hurtled down the slope and onto the trail El Rey had used to approach the villa. He didn’t dare look back at the town of San Andres to see if lights had come on in response to the rifle fire, but he didn’t have to. Even in rural Guatemala, a firefight in the dead of night would attract attention. At worst, the military and police would be at the villa and find the carnage within twenty to thirty minutes – at best, an hour due to the time of night and wherever they were coming from. Once the scene was discovered, he could expect a full court press to seal the border, at least in the likeliest places he would be trying to cross.
At least there were no witnesses, unless the shooter had been able to take four rounds and could survive at least an hour, so the military would have no idea what they were looking for. The bad news was that there was a possibility that someone knew about the girl. He could disappear like a ghost, but she was another matter. Getting them both to safety in Mexico would be a challenge.
The only positive was that their pursuers would have no idea where to look. If they knew about the girl, they would suspect a run for the border, but that was a big target. The most likely crossing area, and the fastest, was the one he’d been planning to use ten miles due west – the closest point from the villa, and the easiest due to the terrain. But he couldn’t risk that crossing now. The shooting had changed everything, and he had to assume the worst.
He’d quickly run the timeline in his head. It would take him at least an hour and a half, possibly two, to get to that crossing point, even if he took foolish risks on the trails and raced to get there, by which time he could expect the military to have mobilized and be waiting for him. Then, with the four dead Guatemalan special forces soldiers, it wouldn’t be a matter of sneaking across an empty section – there would be air patrols, troop deployments, and a massive manhunt.
And that closest area would be the likeliest place to concentrate a search.
That left three choices, all of them unexpected, and therefore superior to heading straight into a killing zone. Either stay in the country for at least a few days until interest waned, go north and get across in the relatively flat area that ran from directly west of them to where the border jogged east, or head south to the desolate jungle and mountains.
His original plan had been to be out within two hours, favoring speed over subterfuge, but that was in the toilet. Going north would mean being more exposed – it was almost all farmland and sections where the jungle had been cut back, so they would be more or less in the open for the last hour of the trip, which was when the shit would be hitting the fan. That, and north wasn’t consistent with his plan once he was on the Mexican side of the border.
It was either stay in-country for however long it took for the hunt to cool, or head south into the mountains. The longer they were in Guatemala the more likely someone saw something and reported it, so he didn’t like that option. That, and he was a ticking time bomb – tomorrow would be day six, and he could expect the symptoms to begin at any moment. Best case, with the injection, he might have four days before he went terminal and couldn’t be saved, so it wasn’t an option.
He increased their speed once they were out of the denser brush and headed south, moving aggressively through the hills, the plants swatting them occasionally as they moved through the network of trails. They hit a bump and were momentarily airborne, and when they slammed down with a bone-jarring jolt the bullet wound shot a blaze of pain through his torso, nearly blinding him for a few seconds.
He would need to evaluate how badly hurt he was sooner than later and also slow down. Crashing would end the game, and for all the obstacles, he was close to a successful conclusion.
El Rey slid to a stop near a particularly dense cluster of trees and hopped off the seat, moving to the case on the back to see how much damage had been done to the contents. Hopefully the tablet was still operating. Without its satellite imagery, he was limited to his instincts, and that would be a considerable further handicap.
“What are you doing?” Maria asked, sounding fearful.
“I need to check some things,” he whispered. He looked around and was relieved to see that the fog had blanketed the valley, which would increase their odds of being undiscovered while they cut across it.
He peered into the case and saw that the bullet had wreaked havoc inside. He pulled out the bag of grenades and felt a hole in the nylon. Opening the top, he saw that the bullet had been stopped by the metal of the explosive devices – another bit of luck that they hadn’t been blown into jelly when it had hit, he realized, even as his heart lurched.
The neoprene protective sleeve containing the syringe had been hit.
Slowly, carefully, he raised it out of the case and lifted the cover flap.
Fluid trickled onto his fingers.
The syringe had been nicked and now looked at least half empty.
He tapped on the syringe as he depressed the plunger till it had moved past where the plastic was gouged and then took the cap off the needle. He pulled at his pants waist and got the top of a buttock exposed and then drove the needle in and injected the remaining booster. Half a dose might do something, he hoped. He would soon find out.
Next, he opened the first aid kit and extracted some gauze, wetting it with alcohol before swabbing the blood away from the bullet wound. The slug had grazed his hip, leaving a messy groove, but he would live.
After rummaging around, he found a tube and cracked the top.
“You need to help me. Hurry. Come over here, and when I say now, press down on my skin while I press up,” he instructed Maria, who quickly swung off the ATV and joined him.
He squirted a thin stream of clear fluid along the bleeding gash, eyes tearing from the pain.
“Now. Hold it closed for thirty seconds.”
They held the two sides of the tear against each other, and after a seeming eternity, he relaxed. The wound was sealed.
“What did you do?”
“Super glue. It will keep it closed. Now I just need to get a dressing on it, and we’re on the road again.” He expertly taped a wad of gauze over the area and pulled his shirt back down.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll live.”
The tablet glowed, undamaged by the bullet, and he studied their options before entering a few coordinates into his GPS. He then looked at the smuggler’s map and nodded. It wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done.
El Rey placed the tablet back in the case and tossed in the grenades, noting that there were only two bottles of water left. That could be a problem. Which he would worry about later. Right now, they needed to get moving again.
As he walked back to the ATV, he noticed oil dripping from the bottom. Not a lot, but potentially a disaster. One of the bullets had nicked something, or when they’d gone airborne and landed they’d slammed something in the engine. He didn’t have any tools to repair it, so it was a moot point. They would have to hope the little conveyance lasted a while longer, or their odds would get poorer the farther from the border they were when it gave up.
They remounted the ATV and he wrenched the throttle, propelling them in the direction of the first of the myriad fields before they got to the jungle that bordered the river. Tzisbaj, the little community directly in front of them, was dark. He decided that their timing justified taking a chance and cutting around it. From there he could cross the access road, as well as the next roads by Lupina and San José el Tablón. Once clear of the little bergs it would be faster going for a while, and then they would be in the mountains. If he could make it within an hour, their chances of survival would be far higher, and even though their progress would be much slower, the density of the vegetation would make any airborne surveillance, even with night vision equipment, a non-issue. Same for infrared, especially given the fog and the thick canopy of plants.
~
Fifty minutes after the shooting, three military Humvees sat outside the villa next to two police trucks, their roof lights flashing red and blue against the concrete walls. The soldiers had surrounded the grounds, and the police were congregated near the driveway, shuffling around aimlessly while the army secured the crime scene. They were rural police, un-trained and hardly literate, making a few hundred dollars per month, so their training in crime solving was limited to breaking up drunken fights and arresting whoever had stabbed the other guy in a bar brawl. A full-blown gun battle with not only dead men armed with machine guns, but four of their own supposedly unstoppable special forces soldiers, was way out of their league, and they were relieved that the military had arrived so quickly.
The captain of the army detail pulled up twenty-five minutes later, having been roused from his sleep once the first soldiers had arrived. Based on the early report, this was a disaster. He had absolutely no idea why kaibiles were at the villa, and their commander hadn’t been reached for comment, but whatever the reason, the killing on home soil would quickly draw national attention. As he walked around the grounds, he sensed that this was something very ugly – the weapons the dead men had been toting were the ubiquitous AK47s favored by the Mexican cartels.
One of the soldiers called to the captain from the edge of the trees. “Capitan. There’s one over here.”
He walked across the expanse to where the soldier was holding his flashlight on the corpse, with yet another Kalashnikov gripped in lifeless hands.
“Looks like he was chasing someone into the jungle, no?” the captain asked, not expecting an answer from the nineteen-year-old soldier who looked more scared of the dark than of the carnage.
He reviewed the facts and tried to piece together a scenario. Inside the house, three dead men had been slaughtered in their sleep. A lock was blown off a door. Now five dead civilians, all armed with assault rifles and two sporting pistols as well, and four kaibiles were on the grounds. A small army in the middle of nowhere, protecting something.
Some assault force had attacked and disabled the defending guards, to get whatever was in the locked room. Drugs, money, whatever.
A voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Capitan, none of the weapons were fired except for the man by the trees’ rifle.”
He turned to face the sergeant who had approached. “None?”
“No, sir.”
Stranger and stranger.
Whoever had attacked had done so in a manner that had killed all the defenders without any getting off a shot. Unbelievable. That implied a large, coordinated group of highly-trained covert forces. Which didn’t smell like cartels or the local drug gangs. They had no finesse and just used brute force and a hail of bullets. This was precise, which implied planning and expertise.
The stink of something very, very odd was growing by the minute.
When the call came in from the major in charge of the local kaibiles detachment, the captain’s unease was confirmed.
“I have no idea what those men were doing at that villa. We had been approached by one of the ranking members of the government to provide protection for a dignitary. That was all we were told,” the major said, in an entirely unconvincing manner. “But this cannot go un-avenged. Mobilize all possible resources to seal the border. If whoever did this is still in Guatemala, we must leave no stone unturned. I will be calling the general in a few minutes. Consider this a threat of the highest order.”
So nobody knew anything. The nation’s most feared commandos were standing guard alongside armed men who looked exactly like cartel gunmen, but it was all a mystery as to why.
The captain shook his head as he hung up. There were some things he didn’t want to know. He had a feeling that this was one of them. He punched a series of numbers and sent out the alert, mobilizing all available units. If the strike force was still in-country, he could at least make its life miserable.
~
El Rey edged the ATV cautiously to the planks of the suspension bridge over the river just north of La Democracia, but it was no good. It would never make it across. Perched on the hills, the homes on the outskirts were all swathed in darkness. He debated his choices. The satellite photos showed a larger bridge downstream, but that would mean another fifteen or twenty minutes of crawling along, taking them further from the border, not closer. But they didn’t have a choice. Mobility meant options, and the ATV was mobility.
The border crossing was seven miles west, but it might as well have been a thousand. The fog had thickened until visibility was down to thirty yards, slowing their passage to a crawl. The valley between the border town of La Mesilla and their position was socked in, but he discarded the idea of just tearing down the paved road and making a run for it. Even though they could have made it in ten minutes, it would be suicide. No, instead, he would have to continue sticking to tracks that wove through the mountains, and watch and wait for an opening.
They rolled across the bridge and crossed the main highway and were fifty yards past when the rumble of trucks sounded from the south. A procession of large troop transports and two Humvees roared past them towards the border, followed quickly by the distinctive beating of oversized rotor blades sounding in the distance, confirming that helicopters had been put into play.
It was frustrating to be so close and yet so far away, but that emotion was a luxury he couldn’t afford. It would be light in another three and a half hours, at which time the fog would lift and they would have to go to ground for the day, or ri
sk detection by an air patrol. He pulled to a stop and again consulted the tablet. If they could make it into the mountains south of La Mesilla, they could camp and await nightfall, then either continue their way south, or sneak across the border in that area. It would mean another day in-country, but because of the higher altitude it would be bearable. Elevation was more like five to six thousand feet if they could make it the seven or eight miles to the valley near Boquerón. That would mean averaging two to three miles per hour, which the trail map led him to believe was do-able.
They weaved through the hills, avoiding the worst of the slopes and cutting across fields when they could, the sound of the helicopters now more regular from the border. After two more hours, the little motor began to stutter and grind, and within ten minutes, seized with a shudder and died. El Rey consulted his GPS and estimated they were a few miles south of La Mesilla, in the hills. That would put them a mile and a half from the border, and around four from the Mexican village of Pacayal.
“We’re going to hike another half an hour, then get some rest.”
“Why? How far from Mexico are we? Let’s just get over the border, and then we’ll be safe.”
“Easier said than done. It will be light soon, and the helicopters tell me that there are going to be heightened patrols. No, we have to stay put, and then tomorrow, once it’s dark, we’ll sneak across. I can get help once we’re in Mexico. But the other problem is that there could well be cartel personnel on the Mexican side, watching for us.”
“Even more reason to get across now, before they have a chance to mobilize.”
“That would be wonderful. But it’s too risky. We walk, find a good place to camp, and then we do this tomorrow. Here. Take this.” El Rey handed Maria the sack with the grenades. She shouldered it. He pulled a backpack out of the case and retrieved a spare magazine for the pistol.
“You ready?”
“Lead the way.”
Return of the Assassin (Assassin Series 3) Page 18