“Look out. He’s got a gun!” The soldier had spotted the Glock stuck in his waistband at the base of his spine.
“Easy, corporal. I’m with the Federales. I’m now going to pull my badge out and show it to you, all right? Don’t get crazy with the rifle. Everyone just calm down,” El Rey said in his calmest, most reasonable tone.
“No fast moves or you’re dead,” the soldier warned, his expression betraying that he could shoot for almost any reason, his nerves too near the surface for this duty.
“Nice and easy. Here, see? A badge. And an ID. Take a look, and lower your weapon, corporal. Show’s over. We’re on the same side.”
The soldier leaned forward and inspected the badge as his partner fingered the trigger guard of his weapon, and El Rey considered how easy it would be to disable them both before they even realized what had happened, and then stopped that line of thinking. He waited patiently for them to verify his identity, and then both soldiers relaxed.
“Sorry, sir. We’re on high alert. They told us to trust no one. And when I saw the gun...”
“No harm done. Now, I’ve got something to attend to. If you’ll excuse me...”
Cruz came puffing up just then. “Where is he?”
El Rey pointed. “Over by that door. Then Mutt and Jeff here stopped me, and by the time I sorted them out, he was gone.”
“Shit.”
They both jogged to the door, and Cruz moved to the two Federales framing it. “What happened to the man who was just here?”
“Sir? You mean the other officer?”
“Where is he?”
“He was in a hurry. Talking to headquarters. He went that way.” The policeman gestured to the right, out on the sidewalk.
Cruz called Briones and started talking when he heard the line connect.
“He’s outside. By C. We’re coming out. He’s dressed as a federal police officer. Tall. Mustache. Hat.”
“Damn. I think I see–”
Briones was interrupted by the screech of tires as one of the waiting police cruisers wheeled from the curb and accelerated.
“He’s in the car that just took off,” El Rey said, and then they both ran outside to Briones’ cruiser and jumped in.
“Don’t let him get away,” Cruz ordered, buckling up, and Briones floored the Dodge, which leapt forward and took off like a scared rabbit.
Chapter 49
They watched as Rauschenbach tore towards a security checkpoint, where two police cars were parked, blocking the road, hood to hood, lights flashing. A passel of officers standing in front of them watched with puzzlement and growing alarm as the cruiser hurtled towards the checkpoint. Cruz grabbed for the radio to send a warning, but as he pressed the transmit button the German’s vehicle blew through the blockade, knocking the cars aside and crushing his front fenders in the process. Sparks flew from beneath the front tires, but the cruiser was still drivable, judging by its minimal reduction in speed.
“He’s headed for Sonora Street. If he can lose us, he’ll be in the clear,” Briones shouted as they slammed over scattered wreckage in the road, running the newly formed gauntlet between the two cars without hesitation.
“You can take him,” El Rey said from the back seat.
“Try to get closer. I’ll shoot out his back tires. That’ll slow him down,” Cruz commanded, and then lowered his window and pulled his Glock. Briones jammed the accelerator to the floor and they gained a few car lengths. A piece of Rauschenbach’s fender tore off and skittered against the pavement. Briones reacted too late, and the errant piece of metal shattered the windshield, starbursting the safety glass and making it almost impossible to see out of it.
“Damn,” Briones swore, leaning his head out the driver’s side window so as not to lose the German.
“Hold it steady,” Cruz yelled over the wind noise, and leaned halfway out of the car, gun trained on Rauschenbach’s rear bumper. The range was iffy, at least sixty to seventy yards, but he wasn’t trying to split a mouse hair. He was only looking for one hit, and he had a full clip to gamble with.
The boom of his pistol sounded, then again and again and again, as he rapid fired in a rough pattern, his aim thrown off by the car’s bouncing on the uneven pavement.
“Pull to the left. Let me try,” El Rey screamed, and Cruz slid back into his seat and re-clipped his safety belt as the assassin rolled down his window and brandished Briones’ pistol. Briones veered left as instructed, providing a better angle for El Rey, who fired off ten shots in two seconds, the concussion of the gunfire deafening in the car.
Rauschenbach’s vehicle swerved as the rear tires flattened. He lost control and the Dodge skewed sideways, doing at least eighty, and then it clipped the far curb and flipped, twisting end over end in an eerily graceful somersault before rolling three, four, five times and crashing to a halt on its roof. Pieces of the vehicle flew everywhere as Briones swerved to avoid the worst of it. A heavy wheel rim smashed into the front of the cruiser as he locked up the brakes and drifted into a slow motion skid, which was abruptly terminated when he slammed into a concrete support beam. The airbags deployed, saving Briones and Cruz’s lives, but El Rey slammed into the back of the rear seat, his neck whiplashing before his head careened into the rear door panel.
Steam hissed from under the ruined hood as Cruz and Briones pawed at the airbags, blood pouring freely from the younger man’s nose and staining the front of his shirt. A small cut over Cruz’s left eye trickled a stream of crimson down the side of his face. Sirens wailed from behind them as Cruz fumbled with the door handle before releasing his belt and stepping unsteadily onto the pavement.
He slowly approached the mangled wreck, gun held by his side, and saw furtive movement from inside the twisted carcass, the lone remaining front wheel slowly spinning in the air seemingly of its own accord like a ghostly weaver’s loom. He caught a flash of the German, hanging upside down by his safety belt, the shoulder harness holding him in place, and then gunfire erupted from inside. Cruz kept walking with a measured pace as ricochets chipped chunks out of the street next to him, and then he raised his Glock and drew a bead on Rauschenbach, squinting, one eye closed, brushing sweat and blood from his forehead as his gaze connected for a brief eternity with the German’s.
The pistol bucked twice. Both rounds hit Rauschenbach in the upper torso. His gun fell from his hand with a clatter, and then he hung suspended, his arms limp, blood coursing down them onto the smashed interior panel of the roof. Cruz slowly lowered his Glock and took in the scene – gas trickling in a pool beneath the car, the assassin dead or dying, flames beginning to lick from beneath the hood. He sighed, suddenly exhausted, the adrenaline rush abruptly dropping off an internal cliff, and without a word, pivoted to return to the car to help Briones and El Rey.
Cruz didn’t even wince when the German’s car exploded, searing the air behind him, nor did he glance back as pieces of Dodge rocketed into the sky before the inexorable force of gravity exercised its pull and brought them plummeting back to earth. A part of a door landed a few feet to his left and he turned to regard it, his gaze devoid of interest, and then he realized he was still gripping his pistol so hard that his knuckles were white. He flipped open the holster with his thumb, slipped it back into place with a trembling hand, and mechanically refastened the safety strap.
He needed to get his men help. It was over.
He had done his job.
And he felt old.
Chapter 50
The helicopter set down on the parking lot of the Congress building, squarely in the center of the large yellow H painted on the black pavement, and a contingent of Chinese bodyguards rushed beneath the still circling blades and formed a protective shield around the door. After a brief pause it slid open with a crash, and two more security men stepped onto the ground before the Chinese leader poked his head out, and then was assisted from the aircraft as still more bodyguards, these Mexican, lined the area.
Grim-countenanced soldier
s stood in their gray camouflage uniforms brandishing assault rifles as he paused to wave at the crowd across the street, some cheering, some toting protest signs, many unsure what all the fuss was about but caught up in the excitement. The delegation moved up the steps to the hulking edifice’s oversized iron and glass doors, where an honor guard waited at stiff attention, in full dress ceremonial splendor, swords held rigidly in time-honored salute, their shoes so highly polished they were blinding in the morning sun.
And then the Chinese delegation was in the building. The hubbub outside lost steam, the show over for at least a time, and the excitement level visibly faded. Once in the assembly hall, the Mexican President stood in greeting from his position at the podium, behind a large rectangular hand-crafted mesquite table with only two chairs, and the room broke into cheering applause as the lawmakers welcomed their honored guest.
Speeches were made, commitments heralded, cameras whirred, and eventually the two men sat down, as fate had destined them to, beneath the iron sculpture of an eagle gripping a snake, and affixed their signatures to the groundbreaking accord that would change the future of Mexico forever. Hands were clasped in symbolic handshakes and yet more speeches were made, and then the procession moved back out of the building, retracing its steps to the waiting helicopter, and within ninety seconds of their reaching it the chopper was lifting into the hazy sky, the party over, the only thing remaining the clean-up.
~ ~ ~
“Damn it. How could this happen? You assured us this was taken care of. Explain yourself. Make it very simple, so even a stupid old man like me can understand.” The speaker was in his mid-sixties, balding, his face creased with the heavy lines of stress and time. He was staring across a conference table in Langley, Virginia, at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, where he directed the group until God or the president decided that his time had passed. Five somber men sat along either side of the table, all eyes fixed on a younger man in his early forties, standing at the far end like a student being dressed down by the headmaster.
The younger man cleared his throat, aware that his career was effectively over, his high-stakes gambit having failed. And the price for failure would be high. He had known that part of the risk of playing at the big table with the adults was that something would go wrong, and he would be the one held accountable. It was the way things had always worked, and always would. Didn’t matter that he’d had twenty years of successes – one epic failure and he’d be running the bureau that dealt with Latvian militants, banished to servitude in a kind of purgatory. That was his future following this fiasco, after a brilliant run of triumphant operations. One bad one, and he was dog chow.
“Obviously, the contractor failed. The agreement was signed. There’s not a lot else to say, is there? Something went wrong. We don’t know exactly what. We hired the best in the world, and he wasn’t good enough. The end.” The younger man’s tone was conciliatory and apologetic, but also no-nonsense. He knew the drill, and he knew that he would be tarred and feathered by these men, the upper echelon of the intelligence community, who had placed their faith in him. Mistakenly, as it turned out.
“Is it, though? The end? Is there any way anyone could trace even a hint of this back to us?”
“Negative. The German was hired using a cut-out, and the money came from operational accounts that had been left in place from Exodus.” Exodus was one of the operations involving the transportation of heroin from Afghanistan into Russia and the former Soviet satellite countries.
The director nodded. “You know the ramifications. I now have a lot of explaining to do,” he groused, unhappy at the prospect of the meeting that had been scheduled for an hour later with the president – who was not thrilled with the result of the operation, which he officially had no knowledge of, but had been following closely.
“This is completely my fault. One hundred percent. I’m trying to get some intelligence so we understand why it failed, but what’s important is that it did. I take full responsibility, and will accept the consequences, which I’m sure will be severe.”
“John, that’s all well and good, but it doesn’t really save me from getting an ass reaming from the Commander in Chief, does it? And it doesn’t solve our problem. Your throwing yourself on your sword is duly noted, but I need some solutions here, not mea culpas or self-flagellation. This is a disaster, and the president’s associates are not going to be pleased. It changes the balance of power for the oil industry moving forward. The Chinese will now be the entrenched players in Mexico, which will lead other countries to view them as legitimate contenders in the region. A lot of money is going to be lost as a result. Do I need to spell this out?” the director spat.
“I suppose we can always invade. Worked when we annexed California and Texas,” one of the other men joked – the director’s oldest friend, and an assistant director.
“Yeah, and look how that turned out,” the director said, deadpan.
The gathering laughed, the tension broken, and the younger man saw a glimmer of hope for his prospects.
“It’s never over till it’s over. They still have to execute. And playing in Latin America can be difficult. Especially in a country that’s riddled with corruption and cartel violence. I could envision chronic sabotage. Pipelines blown up. Profits siphoned off. Refineries destroyed. It’s a rough world,” he suggested.
“That’s true. But it’s a longer term play. We were all hoping for a quicker fix.”
“Why didn’t we just shoot the bastard’s plane out of the sky? Do a TWA on his ass?” the assistant director demanded.
“We looked at that, but the risks were too great. It sets a bad precedent to eliminate a head of state in that public a manner,” the younger man explained reasonably. “This was deemed to be our best option.”
“And tell me again why we couldn’t get our first choice? The Mexican contractor?”
“He’s out of the business. No longer accepting contract work. He’s now CISEN’s asset, and we couldn’t very well go to them for this, now could we? I mean, they’re as broad-minded as any of us, but sanctioning a hit that runs directly against their national interests...that wasn’t an option. Frankly, that’s a shame, because his abilities were as good as anything we’ve seen. They don’t build them like that every day. Made Carlos the Jackal look like a piker. But the German was always a reliable and skilled operator for us.”
“Until he wasn’t. Your report says he’s dead?”
“Correct. At the airport. Fireball. Not much left but some dental records, and barely enough to fit in an ashtray.”
“On the sabotage end, can we use our cartel partner there to help with it?” the director asked in a thoughtful tone.
“There are positives and negatives to that. I’d recommend that we farm it out, create a new ‘insurgent’ movement that’s anti-Chinese or pro-Mexican or whatever the hell plays best. Keep the trafficking thing completely separate. Besides which, our man has lost ground this year against a rival. Los Zetas.”
“Why the hell aren’t we dealing with them, then? If they’re kicking his ass, aren’t we betting on the wrong horse?” the assistant director asked.
“They’re too volatile. Our man is old school, and he’s stable. These guys are cowboys. Way too violent. And we’re not sure they’d even be willing to play ball. Frankly, they don’t need us. They’re expanding all over the world and doing just fine without our help.”
“I hear what you’re saying. But maybe there’s a play there. Maybe they can be used against the Chinese. Think about it. I want creativity on this. We need to scramble and put something in place – at least something tentative I can float today so I don’t get corn-holed by our glorious leader. His buddies are going to be righteously pissed – he made promises. And you don’t want them angry. They’re large supporters. Significant players.”
The meeting went on for another half hour, and by the time it ended they’d cobbled together a rough plan. It needed re
finement, but it was as good as any they’d fielded, and the agency had certainly backed worse ones. The Chavez screw-up was still fresh in many of their minds. They’d backed the leaders of the failed Venezuelan coup d’état, and the president had jumped the shark and come out supporting the new government before it had actually taken power – a mistake, given that Chavez repelled the attempt and emerged victorious, proving to the international community that the U.S. was still meddling in Latin America’s affairs through government overthrows and assassinations. It had been a classic blunder, and no matter how much spin the U.S. had put on it and how compliant the media had been in spinning the story, most everyone other than the American public had seen the operation for what it was.
The younger man breathed a sigh of relief when the meeting broke up and the attendees rose and hurried off to issue instructions to their staff. He wasn’t out of the woods yet by any means, and it might take years to live this one down, but everyone seemed willing to let him have another inning; and with that, he was still in the game and could turn it around.
He closed the red file marked Top Secret and stood at the foot of the table, studying the walls for a few moments, considering his next move, and then nodded to himself.
Time to put together a good destabilization plan for our neighbors to the south.
It had worked before elsewhere, and it could certainly work again.
Now he just needed to tweak it and sell it.
His specialty.
Chapter 51
The nurse dabbed at Cruz’s cut with an antibiotic pad and he winced from the sting, his legs swinging as he sat on the exam table. A knock sounded from the door and a doctor entered, sporting crisp physician whites and carrying a clipboard, trailed by Briones, who looked like he’d been mule-kicked in the head.
“Well, Capitan, you’ll live. Just a few bruises and that cut. Cosmetic. Your associate here will have a slightly harder time of it. Couple of black eyes and a sniffer that might need some work down the road.”
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