Blood of the Assassin

by Russell Blake

  The parachute slammed the harness into his torso as it deployed, and then he was in control, directing his glide to put him north of the airport and well out of the path of its traffic, which was a hazard at any time of night or day.

  Ten minutes later he was on the roof of Terminal One, which as expected was empty at that late hour. There would undoubtedly be snipers moving into position in the early morning, but by then he would be hidden, in position inside one of the ventilation ducts he could just make out in the dark. He had dropped north of the airport, gliding in from over the city, so the likelihood of being detected was minimal at three a.m. – nobody would be watching for a nocturnal parachute ingression.

  Rauschenbach quickly rolled the chute up, stuffed it back into the pack, and toted it to the duct. He extracted a small portable toolkit and set about removing the outer grid. Six minutes later he was done, and he moved to the next duct and removed those bolts as well, and then the next three in the line. His chore completed, he dropped the pack into the shaft and then eased himself in, and soon was lying face down on the cold steel surface. He pulled the grid closed so that if there was a cursory inspection, the missing bolts would appear to be the result of typically shoddy maintenance, same as the rest of the shafts in the area.

  He fished a small camping headlamp from his shirt pocket, pulled it onto his head, and flicked it on. The pitch black shaft, approximately five feet wide by four high, brightened. He carefully set the rifle down, the camera tripod next to it, and maneuvered so that he was facing away from the opening. Rauschenbach knew from studying the blueprint he’d found online where the shaft ultimately led, but he wanted to prepare for a quick exit after the assassination – now a little under six hours away.

  Forty-five minutes later he was back. He first retrieved the parachute and pushed it down the chute, and then returned for the rifle. If anyone bothered opening the grid in the morning they would see an air duct; and even if they bothered with an exploration, they wouldn’t be coming as far as he would be lying in wait, biding his time. The only wrinkle would be if they stationed a sniper right by his position, but that was luck of the draw. If they did, he would deal with it once it was light out. Now that he was in position, he had options, and could shoot from any number of locations.

  The hard part was over. He turned off the lamp and returned it to the breast pocket of his dark blue shirt, and then slipped the baseball cap he’d pilfered over his head and settled in for the long wait till dawn.

  Chapter 46

  Cruz had agreed to meet El Rey and Briones early at the Congress building to go over last-minute checks and to see whether there was anything that caught the assassin’s expert eye as being a hole in the security. At seven, all three were standing in front of the huge edifice, soldiers and Federales everywhere, the air overhead shredded by the blades of helicopters holding snipers, their rifles stabilized with gyro-harnesses. A kind of controlled pandemonium reigned: army vehicles formed a crude gray perimeter, wooden roadblocks painted bright yellow lay ready to be set in place, and hundreds of armed police marched from their deployment location to the surrounding neighborhoods, supported by a contingent of menacing-looking marines with black knit balaclavas pulled over their faces.

  Briones and Cruz were both in uniform, and El Rey had a Federales badge and credentials on a lanyard around his neck. His eyes were in constant motion, roving over the building silhouettes, his operational instinct clamoring a warning – the German was here, in the city somewhere, and he would make an attempt on the Chinese leader’s life this morning. He was as sure of it as an arthritic grandmother knew when rain was coming, and the certitude had him restless, nerves close to the surface and hyper-aware.

  The anxiety was contagious, and soon both Cruz and Briones were also unsettled as they moved from position to position, checking with the security teams, their Chinese counterparts already in place, having flown in on an earlier jet dedicated to their transport, their glacial eyes sharing the roaming vigilance of their Mexican colleagues.

  After spending an hour reviewing the precautions, they decided to move to the airport to check on things there – it would take a half an hour in rush hour to make it using surface streets, so they would have thirty minutes to nose around and see if they could detect anything amiss. Cruz bought a couple of newspapers for them at a café and two coffees for himself and Briones, while the lieutenant went to fetch the cruiser from the nearby lot, the assassin having declined anything, as was his custom.

  When Briones pulled to the curb, emergency lights flashing, Cruz climbed into the front seat and El Rey took the back. A traffic cop waved them through the already congested intersection, rubberneckers everywhere wondering at the awe-inspiring display of firepower in the nation’s capital. Cruz handed one of the papers to El Rey and then took an appreciative sip of his steaming beverage as he studied the front page.

  “Huh. Can’t recall ever seeing that before,” Briones commented, catching the headline out of the corner of his eye.

  “What’s that?” Cruz asked.

  “Someone stealing a plane and then crashing it. Weird.”

  “The ink must still be wet. Says it only happened a few hours ago,” Cruz commented. “Computers have enabled the papers to change the cover story right up till the first run comes off the presses. Brave new world.”

  El Rey read the short article, obviously written in haste, and then flipped the page, where a celebrity TV show host was gushing about her new baby and the tribulations of living with her multi-millionaire soccer player husband. A group of protesters had already gathered across the street from the Congress, and placards announced a host of uncoordinated complaints, railing against everything from the new accord the Chinese leader would be signing to steadily rising gas prices to the loss of Mexican jobs. The chanting hadn’t started yet, the protest leaders enjoying their coffee like everyone else before the cameras started whirring, and Cruz was struck by the pre-determined formality of the scene – protestors protesting, police officers policing, killers angling for a shot, politicians grandstanding through it all.

  By the time they reached the airport, the perimeter road had been closed off, and Briones was able to park right in front of the terminal, his glower daring the local police at the curb to say anything about it. The officers on duty looked away – they had no dog in that fight.

  The three entered the huge hall and moved to the security checkpoint, their progress tracked by dozens of armed federal police carrying assault rifles. Cruz made a cell call to advise the ranking Federales officer that his party was coming through and request that he meet them at the scanners to facilitate their passage. The officer was there in a few minutes, and they repeated their walkthrough, studying the runways where military vehicles and federal police assault vans were now parked in strategic locations, in anticipation of the Chinese plane’s arrival.

  “Quite a show, eh?” Cruz said to nobody in particular, taking in the hundred or so armed men in clusters down on the tarmac, heavy fifty-caliber machine guns on the vehicle turrets manned by attentive soldiers, every one a combat veteran from the cartel wars that had been raging out of control for a dozen years. These were seasoned combatants used to taking fire and returning it, and Cruz found their presence reassuring, even if part of him knew that their presence was mostly for effect.

  Their host, Captain Gabriel Guzman, looked equally fit to his retinue, and was only a few years younger than Cruz. He walked them through the steps he’d taken, politely answering their questions between fielding near-constant inquiries over his crackling radio. Cruz and Briones listened attentively, but the assassin seemed distant, lost in his thoughts as he searched in vain for a clue as to how the German intended to pull it off.

  Forty minutes later, a charge of electrifying energy ran through the men as a Boeing 747 with the People’s Republic of China emblem on the tail dropped out of the sky and set down with the unlikely grace of an obese swan, its bloated torso defying physics
with its ungainly flight. All eyes tracked it as it slowed at the far end of the runway, barely visible through the shimmer of polluted air, and then turned its bulbous nose slowly in their direction and taxied back towards them.

  “Does anyone have binoculars?” El Rey asked, and Captain Guzman muttered into his radio. A few moments later a younger Federal came jogging up with a pair of spyglasses and looked quizzically at the group. The assassin motioned for him to hand them over, and then, without comment, he began studying everything within sight, taking his time, pausing now and again at a vehicle or structure. He could make out three snipers on the hangar roofs across the VIP area – one at each corner, facing the spot where the plane would come to rest, and one in the center.

  He turned to Cruz. “I want to get up on the roof. How many shooters do you have up there?” he asked, shifting his focus to Guzman.

  “Five at this terminal. Two more facing the staging area, and three facing the frontage road.”

  “Let’s get up there,” Cruz said, and the four men made for the elevator to the upper level, where a guarded stairwell led to the roof.

  “How’s it been going?” Briones asked, making small talk as they moved across the floor.

  “Hectic, as you can see. They can’t just close down the terminal, so with the passenger traffic it’s been juggling a lot of balls. And the plane scare last night didn’t help.”

  “Why did that affect you?”

  “It flew by us, just a few miles east, so I got woken up in the dead of night. My fault for telling my subordinate to call me if anything unusual happened. Stupid bastard wound up crashing up by Pachuca. Got what he deserved.”

  El Rey followed the conversation without comment, and then stopped, just for a brief second, something nagging at his awareness. Then it flitted away, a ghost dancing at the periphery of his consciousness, too insubstantial to solidify.

  “What’s eating you? You look like someone just walked across your grave,” Cruz asked him, taking in his agitation.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just looking for meaning where there isn’t any. Something about the plane scare... it’s probably nothing.”

  When they opened the rooftop door they were immediately struck by the stench of jet exhaust, which had bled an amber stain across the skyline. Supposedly the smog was far better than a decade earlier, but it was hard to tell that morning, and everyone’s eyes began watering within five minutes of being outside. El Rey took a few steps away from the group, his attention pulled to something on one of the nearby equipment enclosures – movement. A large black bird – a crow – was grooming itself, but seemed to sense the assassin’s scrutiny and abruptly stopped before fixing him with a beady eye. A chill ran up the assassin’s spine, and then the bird flapped into the air, away from the men and their airport, leaving them to their mundane duties.

  He returned to Cruz’s side and they did a circuitous tour, nodding at the snipers, who were slowly panning their rifles, watching for any signs of a threat through their scopes. Briones nudged El Rey and motioned to the binoculars, the impulse to join them in their vigil too strong to resist. The Chinese jumbo jet had coasted to a stop in the designated area and made a half turn so that the doors would be facing away from the city – a common-sense measure that put the plane’s bulk between the nearby buildings and the spot where the helicopter would land. Everything seemed to be under control, the security impenetrable.

  Perhaps they would get lucky, and the German had decided to skip his date with destiny.

  Cruz looked at his watch. Twenty more minutes, and the helicopter would be there.

  Chapter 47

  Rauschenbach squinted through the ventilation grill louvers at the plane in the distance. Only a few minutes to go now. Hundreds of hours of effort and planning would all culminate with a man he’d never met dying a mile away so that he could retire four million dollars richer. What a strange and wonderful world it was.

  He’d watched the snipers take up their positions after a hurried reconnaissance of the roof, and fortunately the closest was at least fifty yards away. That solved a lot of problems for him, because he could shift the grill open a few inches, which would afford him just enough room to slip the rifle barrel out and sight the scope through the gap. Once the jet had drawn to a stop, he’d pinged it with the laser range finder, which read fifteen hundred and ninety-six meters – farther than he’d hoped, but not by much, and still doable. The variable now was the crosswind. It had been impossible to get an accurate reading on the velocity from inside the shaft, so he had to guess – he figured it at seven miles per hour, but couldn’t reliably judge what it was out in the middle of the field, on the runways.

  Wind had always been a risk, but he’d seen no other viable alternatives. The damned Mexicans had put measures in place unlike anything he’d ever seen. He now had a grudging admiration for their acumen – several other options he’d considered had been cut off as he’d watched the preparations, so they had at least one person who knew what he was doing.

  His digital watch made an almost inaudible beep and he became more alert. The door to the plane would open at any moment, the stairs would roll forward, and then the great man would step out into the Mexican sun and move down to the tarmac, where he would be greeted by the mayor and a row of suited dignitaries, and then be whisked off to the helicopter and up, out of the German’s reach. His chance would come either at the top of the stairs, or once the target was standing, being greeted by the government wonks.

  The moment he had been waiting for arrived. The door swung wide, and a few seconds later the mobile steps that were waiting nearby lumbered forward and pressed against the fuselage in an almost lascivious manner, west meeting east, the thrusting stairs unmistakably phallic to his eye.

  A winsome young woman looked out from the plane doorway and then moved onto the platform, followed by a coterie of hard-looking security men in matching navy blue suits, their jackets bulging with weapons, ear buds discreetly in place, eyes no doubt scanning automatically from behind the darkened lenses of their sunglasses. They were small even in the high-powered scope’s lens, but he felt increasingly confident as one, then two, and then finally two more stepped onto the landing, turned outward to face any attack, their job to give their lives to shield their charge from harm.

  Not this time, boys. It’s not your lucky day.

  A portly functionary moved onto the platform and then slowly down the stairs, followed by six more bodyguards, who stationed themselves at the base of the steps, facing the waiting Mexicans like life-sized pawns in an elaborate chess game. Four more members of the Chinese delegation then exited the plane and descended, and Rauschenbach’s pulse slowed as he focused upon modulating his breathing, every iota of his awareness now concentrated on the image in the scope. The procession seemed to go on forever, and then the Chinese leader’s distinctive profile emerged from the gloom, a politician’s smile plastered on his face with all the warmth of rigor mortis, ferret-like eyes darting to and fro. For a fleeting moment it was hard for Rauschenbach to believe that the largely unremarkable doughy-soft features, the man’s butter-faced expression tinged with distaste, were those of the second most powerful man in the world.

  The Chinese leader stood just outside the doorway, frozen in a photo-op moment, waving at a non-existent crowd for the cameras, and Rauschenbach began exhaling his carefully metered final breath, his finger caressing the trigger with a familiarity born of intimacy; and then his Zen-like calm was shattered when an Aero Mexico jet’s engines roared as it began its takeoff run, momentarily blurring across the scope’s field of vision and disrupting his concentration.

  “Shit,” he cursed; and the first opportunity was lost as the Chinese leader edged forward and descended the steps, his bodyguards having taken up position in front and immediately behind him, a slow-moving Asian conga line inching down the stairs as the bemused Mexicans waited in a kind of suspended animation.

  Rauschenbach gathered hims
elf and returned to trailing the crosshairs on the target’s head, following the leader’s movements until he arrived at the base of the steps. There he paused, but only briefly – not long enough for the slug to cover the distance. That was the tricky part about a long-range shot: You needed the target to be stationary for at least several long seconds, or by the time the bullet reached him, he could have moved.

  He watched as the Chinese leader stepped forward to greet his Mexican hosts, and then stood stock still as the mayor made a few ceremonious statements of fellowship and greeting – the second moment the German had been waiting for. Every fiber of his being seemed to synthesize down to the scope, and his pulse beat in his ears as he exhaled his lungs’ accumulated air and pulled the trigger.

  ~ ~ ~

  The Chinese leader was irritable, but trying not to show it – the trip across the Pacific had been bumpy, and he’d lost a night of sleep as they’d continually changed altitude, trying to find comfortable air. Thankfully, he only needed to sign the document and nod agreement, and then he would be out of this stinking city, the air a travesty, the smell of toxicity as plain as if he was standing in front of a mass grave.

  Not that China was any better, but he didn’t have to go out in the soup, and his residence and the party headquarters where he conducted his business were filtered and purified and climate-controlled. Now, standing under the sun’s glare, a blanket of amber filth stretching as far as the horizon, it was getting to him after the long flight and the drying effect of the jet’s processed atmosphere. His eyes burned as he stood grinning at the group assembled on the tarmac, doing his obligatory courtesy wave to demonstrate how warm and inviting the misunderstood Chinese pseudo-communists really were, and he had already begun counting the seconds until he could get back in the plane and take off as he took the first red-carpeted step leading to his waiting hosts.