Blood of the Assassin

by Russell Blake

  Once he was on terra firma he forced himself to listen attentively as the rotund Mexican idiot in the poorly cut suit badly mangled a greeting in Mandarin – the mayor, one of his entourage whispered in his ear. The waiting helicopter’s slowly rotating blades beckoned to him like a love-struck virgin as he endured the boob’s prattling, smiling the entire while as his eyes itched in rejection of the polluted sky.

  ~ ~ ~

  Rauschenbach watched through the scope a nano-second after the gun bucked into his shoulder, and then his quivering smile of triumph froze as the little Asian man’s expression changed, just a little, as if he sensed the approach of the bullet.

  ~ ~ ~

  The Lapua Magnum round whirled in deadly rotation as it streaked across the runway, its end point the center of the Chinese leader’s temple; and then an imperceptible shift occurred as it crossed runway number two – a gust of wind coaxing it westward, a rogue eddy toying with it like a kind of cosmic joke. And yet still it raced towards its destiny, ultimately missing the Chinese leader’s cranium by a few scant millimeters, thrown off trajectory by the shifting vagary of the mercurial breeze, and punched into the tarmac thirty yards behind him, unnoticed. The noise from the helicopter as well as the landing and taxiing aircraft all around the delegation masked the sound of its impact, the telltale whining snick of a ricochet lost on everyone as the Mexico City mayor assured the leader that they were now brothers in peace and prosperity.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Un-fucking-believable,” Rauschenbach muttered, even as his fingers gripped the back of the rifle chamber to unscrew it and eject the spent round and slip another into place. He knew from practice that it would take exactly seven seconds. Attempting to reload it any faster only caused it to take longer, as though the rifle resented his rushing and battled him accordingly. There was no point in trying to hurry it. The target would either still be standing there, or he wouldn’t, by the time the rifle was ready again.

  ~ ~ ~

  El Rey grabbed Cruz’s arm and screamed in alarm as he stared through the binoculars at the far terminal in the distance.

  “A shot. I just saw a flash on the Terminal One roof. Get the Chinese leader out of here, and radio the sharpshooters over there. He’s on the roof. The last ventilation housing before the hotel.”

  Cruz was so shocked to hear the otherwise quiet assassin raise his voice that he stood for a second, frozen. Then he leapt into action, turning to watch the delegation even as he raised his radio to his lips to sound a warning. Visions of the leader’s skull exploding in an eruption of bloody effluvia played through his head as he put out an all points alert, and yet nothing happened. The mayor continued to drone on in a stage voice, struggling to make himself heard over the helicopter’s din, but other than a small nod of the Chinese leader’s head, the ceremony continued relentlessly forward.

  “Come on. We need to get over there, now!” El Rey grabbed Briones’ arm as Cruz issued terse commands, and then the three of them were running for the roof door.

  “You! Up on the far roof, on the other terminal. Last ventilation structure on the right. There’s a shooter,” Cruz yelled at the nearest sniper, who looked at him like he was mad before turning his weapon and sighting at the building a mile across the air field.

  “Get out of my way. Now,” he bellowed, as three more Federales armed with rifles burst through the door. The startled men leapt aside as the trio ran for the exit like madmen and then disappeared down the steps in a flurry of furious activity, Cruz’s voice barking commands into the radio even as he ran down the stairwell like the devil himself was coming for his soul.

  ~ ~ ~

  Rauschenbach seated the bolt home with a final twist and cocked it before peering into the scope again, half expecting the opportunity to have passed, four million daydreams sailing away for distant shores with nothing to be done about it. But fate had smiled upon him, and the little man’s oddly shaped head, resembling a genetically warped gourd, hovered in the crosshairs as though he was posing for a portrait.

  The German sensed what had happened on the last shot, and corrected for it by pointing the rifle just a hair off center, and repeated his exhalation, this time accompanied by a silent prayer to a deity he didn’t believe in as he gently massaged the trigger. The weapon bucked again, and then his attention was pulled from the image in the scope to a federal police sniper running towards him at flat out speed, the business end of his weapon pointed in his direction.

  ~ ~ ~

  It seemed as though the mayor’s enthusiastic oration was drawing to a close, and the Chinese leader smiled broadly, this time with genuine happiness at the thought of getting on with the signing. The mayor’s wife, who stood beside him like a pig that had fought its way out of a Chanel factory outlet store by putting on clothes, beamed at him like he was dessert, and he heard the clicking of shutters as the grouped media memorialized the moment for posterity.

  His eyes burned like hellfire from the smog, and he was wondering about whether one of his people could get him drops when a tickle began deep in his septum, making his eyes water, and then, in spite of his iron will, his lids automatically squeezed shut, and he sneezed.

  “Salud!” the mayor exploded, as his wife laughed and clapped her hands together, and then everyone had a chuckle as the Chinese leader grinned again, a slightly sheepish look on his face, and then pointed up at the sky and uttered the single word that would endear him to an entire generation of Mexicans, the R sound admittedly coming out sounding more like an L, but other than that, remarkably sincere.

  “Gracias.”

  ~ ~ ~

  This time the bullet flew straight and true, unhampered by stray atmospheric anomalies, and had it not been for the random interceding of an allergic purging of nasal airways, would have turned the leader’s frontal lobes into pudding. But in spite of the best efforts of the artisans who had carefully milled the rifle barrel, the countless hours spent on ballistic improvements that would enable a fingernail-sized projectile to cut through the air at near miraculous levels of accuracy, and hundreds of dedicated hours at firing ranges honing the highly specialized skill of long-range shooting, despite breakthroughs in optics that made distant objects appear to be no farther away than across the room, the most deadly working assassin in the world...missed.

  Not once.

  But twice.

  Chapter 48

  Rauschenbach jerked the Sig Sauer free from its holster and fired at the approaching sniper through the gap in the grill, both rounds catching him squarely in the chest. He didn’t stop to confirm whether or not the officer was dead or had been saved by his Kevlar body armor, and instead pushed himself away from the opening, his mind now on only one thing: escape. Nothing mattered besides getting away clean – he would read about whether or not his last shot had struck home in the evening paper, but now his imperative was thinking faster than his pursuers.

  That someone had spotted him was obvious, and it didn’t really matter how – whether it was the crack from his silenced rifle heard by one of the snipers, or the ricochet alerting them to his presence, or the tiny muzzle flash, the damage had been done, and he couldn’t turn back the clock.

  At the end of the shaft he spun and pushed himself around a bend in the ducting, and then his hands gripped the familiar shape of the mountain climbing rope he’d fastened to a protruding bolt. He didn’t even bother to listen for the other snipers arriving at the ventilation structure – he knew he would have at least twenty to thirty seconds before they got there, and then another ten to fifteen as they decided how to grapple with the darkened shaft, their foolhardy colleague lying shot only a dozen yards away. Those forty-five seconds would be enough, and would stretch longer as they timidly followed him into the shaft – by which time he would be gone.

  He briefly considered donning the light again and then dismissed the idea – might as well put an illuminated bull’s eye on his head. No, he would need to do it by touch, which he was prepared fo
r. He took a deep breath and lowered himself down the shaft. The line vibrated as it took his weight, and then he dropped a story and a half to the next connecting duct, down which he knew he would have to crawl two dozen yards before he came to another junction that would lead him further into the bowels of the airport, to the oversized fans that turned tirelessly at the end of a chute, beyond which was the equipment room, and ultimately, freedom.

  ~ ~ ~

  Briones stomped on the cruiser’s accelerator, tearing the wrong way down the perimeter road, the speedometer soaring through the digits as he pushed the big V-8 to its limits, sirens shrieking like a jilted bride, and Cruz groped for a hold in the passenger seat as he listened while the reports came in.

  They had a man down on the roof, and the other officers were demanding instruction – the shooter was inside the ventilation housing, but they didn’t want to endanger themselves further with a reckless pursuit. He listened as Guzman ordered them to go in after him, and then nothing but static came over the channel.

  “Guzman. Is the Chinese leader safe?” Cruz barked as they slalomed around the gentle curve at the end of the runway, half the distance to the other terminal covered.

  “Yes. He’s on the bird. Everything’s calm there. Nobody’s the wiser.” The captain’s voice sounded strained, but under control.

  “We’re going to be at the terminal in another thirty seconds. Have all available units seal it off. He’s in there somewhere. Let’s not let him get away. If he went down the ventilation ducts, we need a plan of the system, stat,” Cruz warned.

  “10-4. I’ll get everyone there immediately. And I’m already pulling up plans.”

  “Fine. Let me know when you have them – if you can, send them to my phone. And keep some security at Terminal Two, just in case, so the area is still secure. But I could really use some serious muscle backing us up here.”

  “You got it.”

  The engine throbbed as Briones goosed the car around the final bend and then raced for the front entrance in a screeching roar of rubber and brakes.

  “How do you want to do this?” Briones asked as they skidded to a stop.

  “We’ll spread out. He’s in the ventilation system. There can’t be too many places he can get out. Dammit. I wish we had the plans,” Cruz complained. “Briones, you stay out here and watch for anyone suspicious. I’ll radio to have the parking level shut off. That way, when he tries to get out, he’ll have to come through here.”

  Briones gazed down the long expanse, temporarily empty of cars except for police vehicles and a few army trucks. “It’s a lot of ground to cover. What is it, almost a kilometer?”

  “He was on this end, so the likelihood is he’s still here. That’s where we’ll start. Damn. Why didn’t Godoy let me circulate the bastard’s picture?” Cruz stabbed at his phone’s speed dial and then ordered his assistant to get the photo transmitted to all federal police personnel. “It’s a little late now for worrying about letting the cat out of the bag. But this won’t be instant. We’re going to need to rely on you as our last line of defense,” Cruz told Briones.

  “I’ll keep an eye out, sir, and do the best I can.”

  El Rey and Cruz got out of the car, and El Rey leaned in to address Briones. “I need a weapon. Give me your sidearm. You have the shotgun. Divide and conquer.”

  Briones glanced at Cruz, who nodded impatiently. Briones un-holstered his Glock and handed it to the assassin. “It’s a .40 caliber. Glock 22. Fifteen round magazine.”

  “I know it well,” El Rey said, then hesitated. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks. You too. Good catch on the muzzle flash.”

  El Rey tried to contain a smirk, and then turned to Cruz. “You take one section, I take the other? Or stay together?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Sticking together hasn’t hurt our chances very much so far, unless you consider the German getting within a hair of killing the target a bad thing.”

  “So split up?”

  “Probably doesn’t matter at this point. And I need to be with you to get through security with a gun. Just keep your eyes open. He’s got to be around here somewhere. Order all the passengers to be held and screened. It’ll play hell with traffic, but that’s not our problem. If we continue to allow passengers to enter and exit, we’re screwed.”

  “What about departing flights?”

  “Get a one hour delay while we have your people check all manifests. And put a couple of men on each gate. You don’t want him getting on a plane.”

  Cruz relayed the order to Guzman.

  “All right. Now he can’t get out. We’ve got him,” Cruz said.

  “No, we don’t. This guy is good. Expect the unexpected.”

  “Good advice. Based on experience again?”

  “I saw it in a movie.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Rauschenbach peeked around the basement corner and then climbed the stairs to the arrivals level. The hall was crowded, thousands of people spreading through the terminal, and the overhead announcement that nobody was going to be permitted to exit had sent everyone into a tailspin, a good portion of the crowd alarmed and the rest angry at being detained. He eased a maintenance access door open and peered out, and then pulled the baseball cap down as far as it would go over his eyes and strode purposefully across the terminal, moving towards the center, away from the side of the building where the ventilation shaft was located.

  Everyone got out of his way as he lifted his phone to his ear and pretended to be barking orders. Nobody wanted to cross the tall federal police officer, frowning and agitated, obviously engaged in some sort of crisis control. His footsteps sounded like small arms fire as he stormed along the line of shops, eyes roving over the glass exits for signs of a hole in the gauntlet he knew would be closing around him.

  His skin was four shades darker, thanks to a tint he had used on his face and hands, and his hair was now dyed black and he had affixed a mustache that further created an impression of his being Mexican. It wouldn’t pass close scrutiny by a trained eye, but all he needed it to do was get him out one of the doors so he could get to his waiting car, or steal one.

  Rauschenbach’s hand moved to his gun as he saw a dozen Federales deployed at the exits, stopping people from leaving, and then he forced himself to relax and dropped his hand, choosing instead to focus on finding an opportunity to escape rather than dying in a gunfight.

  ~ ~ ~

  “There are too many people. We’re wasting our time,” Cruz griped as he studied the sea of moving faces.

  “Agreed. You stay here. I’ll try over on the other end. You never know. Maybe one of us will get lucky.”

  “Kind of hard to believe based on how things have played so far, isn’t it?”

  “Hey, the target’s alive. I’d take that as a win.”

  “Not because of anything we did.”

  “It still counts as a win,” El Rey pronounced decisively, and then spun and made for the far section of the terminal.

  Cruz tried to concentrate, but his mind instantly ran to the logistics involved in trying to catch the German in a crowd this size. Theoretically they would, eventually; but he suspected that sooner or later someone would make a call to a politically connected friend, and then favors would be called in, and soon there would be an outcry over the Gestapo tactics being used at the airport. He knew how the system worked, and if they were lucky, they would get an hour or two, tops. Then Godoy would be on the line, pointing out that everything had turned out fine, and that discretion would carry the day, the assassin having failed.

  It was a crappy system sometimes, he knew.

  All too well.

  ~ ~ ~

  El Rey began dividing the arrival hall into quadrants and methodically searching for something, anything, that might be a giveaway. He fully expected the German to have changed his appearance, and possibly be in disguise – a maintenance man or a service worker. Because that’s what he would have done. Someone i
nnocuous, whose presence wouldn’t attract undue attention in the airport, who could move around unimpeded.

  Movement caught his eye to his left, and then he dismissed it – a little girl had bolted from her mother and was running towards a candy display in one of the convenience stores. He knew the primitive reptilian brain was alert to unexpected movement, and he tried to relax and harness that power. The German would be anxious to get out before the building was completely sealed, and that might make him careless. It was really their only hope – that his nerves might give and he would make a mistake, draw attention to himself.

  He registered another movement to his right and looked to see what had attracted his eye. An officer was stalking towards an exit, talking on his phone. But there was something about his gait that made the assassin take another look. He was covering a lot of ground, but seeming to not hurry. That’s what had caught his attention. He knew that rhythm. Like a predatory feline.

  El Rey withdrew his phone and dialed Cruz as he began to walk in step with the man, who was about a hundred yards away.

  “I think it may be him. He’s making for one of the exits. Warn Briones. By the C section exit.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m closing in on him. Get over here. And have Briones pull up. We can get him in a pincer.”

  “A pincer?”

  “Never mind. How far away are you?”

  “I’ll be there in sixty seconds.”

  “Try to make it thirty.”

  He picked up his pace as he watched the putative officer approach the two men guarding the exit, and then a strong grip locked on his arm.

  “Sir. Slow down. Where are you going in such a hurry? The exits are sealed. Let’s see some identification. Now.” The soldier was eyeing him suspiciously, his partner holding his gun at the ready. El Rey reached to pull the lanyard out from under his shirt, where he’d slid it out of sight so he wouldn’t arouse suspicion, and then the soldier with the rifle yelled a nervous warning.