Requiem for the Assassin - 06

by Russell Blake

  “This is it. Right on schedule. At least they’re punctual,” Briones said and passed the alert on to his men. “Nobody move until I give the signal. We’ll wait until they’re busy unloading the plane. Hold your fire unless they shoot first, in which case, take them down hard.”

  The radio crackled as his squad leaders confirmed, and they waited as the small plane drifted toward the runway. It seemed to hover in the still air, and then its wheels struck the red dirt strip and it slowed as it rolled toward the two Cadillacs.

  If the information was correct, there were four hundred kilos of meth stashed in the plane, produced in a Honduran jungle lab. The airplane was a regular commuter, transporting thousands of kilos north every month, and always landed at different rural airstrips to evade detection. Four hundred kilos was a substantial haul by any measure, and the task force had scrambled to get into position with only five hours’ notice. Briones’ cell phone had awakened him in the middle of the night, and he’d raced to headquarters, assembled an interception squad, and then traveled to the airstrip under cover of darkness. They’d carefully draped tarps over the vehicles so they wouldn’t attract attention from the air, and now they were only moments from game time.

  No matter how many raids Briones participated in, his pulse always quickened in the seconds before launching into action. The same thought always occurred to him as he did his final mental check: this might be the time where his luck ran out and he ended the day in a body bag. The chance of death was a constant on the task force, but even so, a live operation always put his existence into perspective. He adjusted his vest as his eyes followed the plane’s progress toward the waiting SUVs.

  The four arrivals who weren’t toting weapons began offloading white plastic-wrapped packages and stacking them into the back of the nearest Escalade. Briones gave the signal and gunned the big truck, leading the way from the barn to the airstrip. The gunmen froze at the sight of the vehicles bearing down on them, and Briones’ voice boomed over the Ford’s public address system.

  “Federal Police. Drop your weapons. You’re surrounded.”

  Submachine gunfire greeted his warning, and he swerved as a row of bullets blew dirt fountains into the air to his right. Briones cursed and gave the go-ahead over the radio as he skidded to a halt, twisting the wheel as he braked, positioning the truck so that its side provided cover from the cartel gunmen. His men were already shooting as the dust settled around them. He dragged himself across the seat and out the passenger door while the police sharpshooters returned fire.

  Slugs thumped into the side of the truck, and one of the tires popped when a round hit it, but the cartel gunmen were badly outmatched, and the police made short work of them. The entire exchange was over in under a minute. The two surviving cartel members surrendered along with the pilot, their colleagues dead on the ground in pools of blood.

  The police approached the men cautiously and wasted no time in cuffing the survivors before loading them into one of the vans. Briones placed a call on his cell phone and gave a terse update – they’d managed to avoid any police casualties, a rarity for this type of operation, and only one of his men was wounded superficially.

  Half an hour later they’d inventoried the drug shipment, photographed the crime scene, and Briones left his men to mop up as he returned to Mexico City with a van full of meth. He took a final glance at the bodies of the gunmen already bloating in the morning sun, waved away several flies, and grunted to the driver, who eased forward down the dirt track escorted by two trucks loaded with grim-faced officers, and a second van containing the prisoners.

  ~ ~ ~

  Cruz glanced around the task force floor as he made his way to his office, a cup of coffee in one hand and his briefcase in the other. As always, the area was controlled pandemonium, made more so by the recent spate of kidnappings in Mexico City. The anti-cartel task force was theoretically focused on narcotics trafficking since that was the cartels’ primary activity, but some of the criminal networks had expanded into murder-for-hire and kidnapping to augment flagging marijuana sales. The entrepreneurial spirit being what it was, the cartels had taken to snatching high-net-worth targets and pocketing easy money for a few hours of work, resulting in a dramatic and highly visible increase in kidnappings throughout the capital.

  His secretary wasn’t at her desk, so he picked up his messages from a stack on her blotter and pushed through the door, set his briefcase on his conference table, and switched on the lights. His inbox had miraculously filled since last night with a small mountain of paperwork – the bane of his existence and the biggest part of his job running the largest police operation in the nation. Cruz checked his emails, listened to his voice messages, and was preparing to place a call when Briones tapped softly on his door, his face drawn, a smudge of dirt on his cheek.

  “Come in,” Cruz called out, hanging up.

  “Good morning, sir. You wanted to see me?”

  “Yes. Come, grab a seat,” Cruz invited as he rounded his desk and joined the younger man at the small round conference table. “Congratulations on a job well done this morning. A big score.”

  Briones shrugged. “I wish they all went so smoothly.”

  Cruz nodded. “Enjoy it when one does. It’s certainly rare enough.” Cruz hesitated as he studied the dark circles under Briones’ eyes. “I want to discuss an opportunity with you. A promotion.”

  Briones looked surprised. “A promotion?”

  “Yes, from second lieutenant to first. Pay raise, the whole deal.”

  “That’s…I don’t know what to say.”

  “Wait until you hear me out. One of the requirements of the new job is that you spend a significant amount of your time in the office instead of in the field. At least six months, if not more. You’ll need to delegate most of your active investigations.”

  Briones eyed Cruz’s stack of paperwork. “May I infer that this has something to do with the change in the orientation of the task force to include kidnapping?”

  “Not really. It’s just that as we’ve grown, I’ve been dealing with all the documentation, and it’s now a twelve-hour day just signing and stamping and reading. I need help. You’re the only one qualified, so you were the first name I put into the hat. The only name, actually.”

  Briones hesitated, doubt written across his face. “I do enjoy being in the field,” he said, his tone cautious as he considered the ramifications of being desk-bound.

  “So do I. But if you’re going to move up, you have to change with the times.” Cruz sighed. “The alternative is I promote Damario or Felix, and then you’ll be answering to one of them.”

  Briones’ look of distaste required no explanation.

  Cruz smiled. “I thought so. Then it’s decided. The good news is that you’ll get an office, too. And longer hours for very little additional pay, of course.”

  “I would expect nothing less.”

  “Congratulations. I’m sure you’ll adapt without too much trouble. Now let’s move on to other matters. The meth bust is a success; the survivors are being processed… What have you dug up on the Galo kidnapping?” Cruz asked. Two nights earlier the daughter of a prominent government minister had been kidnapped at gunpoint from outside one of Mexico City’s most exclusive nightclubs. Her date had been pistol-whipped by the perpetrators and was in guarded condition at Hospital Angeles Pedregal.

  Briones closed his eyes for a moment, recalling the details. “The father was contacted yesterday morning from an internet telephone that was bounced through multiple IP addresses, so untraceable. The kidnappers demanded five million dollars within twenty-four hours. The father doesn’t have that kind of money liquid and negotiated it to two million within forty-eight.”

  Cruz shook his head. “Any idea which gang is behind it?”

  “The kidnapping was organized and efficient. The boyfriend said the perps were wearing balaclavas, so he can’t identify them, but based on the M.O. and the level of information they seemed to ha
ve had, I’d suspect Los Zetas as the most likely.”

  “Four, right? Kidnappers?”

  “Correct. Plus the van driver.”

  “Anything on the vehicle?”

  “Stolen plates. We tracked them on the traffic cams, but you know how that goes. They stop working once out of the city center, so we lost them five minutes later.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “Six people. Everyone’s story is the same, so nothing there.”

  “How’s the family holding up?”

  “As you might expect. The mother’s a basket case, and the father’s scrambling to round up money from his brothers.”

  “I had a message when I came in this morning from his uncle. It wasn’t pleasant. He was acting like I was personally responsible. I was just getting ready to return his call when you saved me the grief, but it sounds like I can’t put that off. Do we have any leads?”

  “We’re rousting all the usual street sources, but so far, nothing. Which is the same pattern we’ve been seeing. They’re keeping their drug network separate, so nobody knows anything.”

  “Smart. But it makes our life harder.” The solve rate on kidnappings was at an all-time low, and the accepted wisdom was to simply pay the ransom and move on. Victims were usually returned unharmed, making the prospects of cooperation between the families and the police unlikely. Cruz couldn’t fault the thinking – if he had a child, he wasn’t sure he’d roll the dice with their lives by bringing the authorities in. To do so changed the game, and the first condition kidnappers insisted upon was always no police involvement, on pain of death. The only reason they’d been alerted was because Cruz had promised not to make a move without consulting the father. But now that his uncle, one of the top heavyweights in the president’s party, was involved, the situation was even more precarious, and Cruz was dreading the report he’d have to deliver along with the recommendation: pay the ransom.

  It ran counter to everything he stood for, but there was no other way to ensure the girl’s safety, so that was their best option. Kidnappers wanted the money, not a nationwide manhunt on murder charges, so in all likelihood half an hour after making the exchange she’d materialize in some alley, dazed but unhurt. Exceptions were rare, but those were usually when amateurs were involved, and from the description of the crime, they were hardly dealing with neophytes.

  Cruz’s life was even more difficult of late after a sensational series of reports on suspected police involvement with the kidnapping gangs. Long on innuendo and short on facts, they had nonetheless been successful in convincing the public that the cartels were operating with official involvement – a conclusion that Cruz publicly dismissed, but privately believed was probably correct. His task force was clean, but the Federal Police were notoriously corrupt, their larceny only exceeded by that of the local Mexico City force, some of whom had been recently charged with organizing their own extortion and kidnapping rings as sidelines to their formal duties.

  “What are the chances of cooperation on the handoff?” Cruz asked.

  “You can float that, but I’d say unless we can guarantee no screwups, the father’s not going to play ball. Do you blame him?”

  Cruz didn’t. Several times the families had allowed the police to try to set up stings, and those had invariably backfired, resulting in either increased ransom demands or dead victims.

  “Well, that’s not how I was hoping to start the day. What else?”

  Briones took him through the other active cases – a suspected drug lab location in one of the barrios; rumors of a large arriving shipment of cocaine in the warehouse district; seven kidnappings; and three bodies found beheaded in a dumpster outside a chain restaurant downtown, one of them a teenage girl who’d been helping her boyfriend skim drug profits from his street-dealing operation, the other two the boyfriend and his seventeen-year-old brother. In other words, standard fare in the largest city in North America.

  Cruz tried not to let the sense of futility get to him, but every day brought a relentless tide of brutality that sapped his will. The cartels were infinitely better funded, were unbound by any legal constraints, and could afford to co-opt politicians and police alike with a tsunami of cash that rolled in from the U.S. drug trade. What twenty years ago had been a handful of regional players, unsophisticated thugs with little but guns and violence as assets, were now transnational criminal networks that banked at some of the largest firms and washed their cash through the stock and real estate markets, in addition to a web of hotels, retail outlets, casinos, and nightclubs around the world.

  It was an unwinnable war that nobody had any real desire to fight, but for appearances the Mexican and U.S. governments went through the motions, and Cruz was part of that effort, regardless of his personal feelings. Even if the larger battle couldn’t be won, he could make a difference at a smaller level, which was where he focused.

  “Close the door behind you,” Cruz said as Briones rose, his report finished. “I’ll call you later once I dig out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cruz moved back to his desk and sat heavily, staring at the phone for a few moments before reaching out and making the call he’d been dreading to the uncle, who was every bit as dirty as any of the cartel kingpins. It was the nature of the beast, and the man would want to throw his weight around now that his family was on the receiving end of the lawlessness he silently profited from. Cruz’s job would be to listen, sympathize, and make assurances neither of them would believe.

  He dialed the number and waited as the phone rang, counting the minutes until he’d be able to have Briones take over some of these noxious tasks. Not a minute too soon, he thought as the uncle’s abrasive rasp grated over the line and the unpleasant dance began, one of an endless string of encounters in a day wholly absent of meaning or satisfaction, as obligatory as prayer and, ultimately, as useful.

  Chapter 9

  Sunlight streamed through the blinds and washed across the hardwood floor of the condo El Rey leased in one of the upscale Mexico City districts. Privacy and safety were his primary concerns – not so much out of fear for himself as for the attendant drama that would accompany his dealing with any burglary attempts. He kept to himself, but not so much so that it would arouse the attention of his neighbors, whom he’d met and who thought he had some sort of web design or technical support consulting company that he ran from home.

  He rubbed a hand across the dusting of stubble on his jaw as he studied the image on the computer monitor: Rene Bolivar, the archbishop of Tijuana. El Rey studied the man’s face – distinguished, at forty-six relatively young for so prominent an ecclesiastic position, a full head of curly hair, and a worldly air that seemed to jump off the screen.

  Bolivar had been the top church official in Baja for four years, during which time nothing of note had transpired on his watch, other than a near miss during a savage outbreak of cartel violence close to the cathedral, when his car had been caught in the crossfire as two gangs had shot it out. Fortunately neither he nor his driver had been hurt, but there had been three bullet holes in the Chrysler sedan to show the press, who had declared his escaping unscathed from the attack a minor miracle. El Rey smiled as he read one of the accounts – it would have been a greater miracle if the bishop had progressed another block before the shooting had started and thus avoided any exposure to danger, but that wasn’t how the newspapers worked.

  The good news was that he had negligible security and would be the easiest of the targets. The admiral was still in intensive care due to his wounds and, per CISEN’s poached military hospital records, was likely to remain there for some time, his age and his precarious cardiovascular condition complicating his recovery. But unfortunately he was being guarded like a head of state, the botched attack having been all the warning the navy had required, so getting to him would require considerably greater skill and planning than the cleric or, hopefully, the actor.

  El Rey had quickly prioritized the two easiest, saving the adm
iral for last. Based on the physician’s reports, there was a better-than-even chance he would expire on his own, not requiring the assassin’s help to cross over to his eternal reward, so for the time being El Rey would concentrate on the younger targets.

  Figuring out how to end their lives was a challenge, but well within his abilities. Creating the appearance of accidental deaths would be harder than a straight kill, but only marginally so.

  The only part of his research to give him pause was that nothing in Bolivar’s background even hinted at involvement in anything but doing the Lord’s work. A member of the clergy since a young man, one of nine siblings, three of whom had been drawn to the cloth, his official record had been distinguished by piety and devotion through a series of appointments that had culminated in his present position, an unexpected upset within the Church, but a concession to its loss of influence and relevance among the younger generations. Bolivar was moderate in his views compared to the prior archbishop, whose stance had been only slightly softer than that of the Inquisition – and whose legacy had been one of alienation and separation from the flock as he’d grown increasingly reclusive and reluctant to appear in public before ultimately being called back to Rome to serve out his final years in study and introspection.

  If this was a man who was moving tonnage of methamphetamines through Tijuana as CISEN had asserted, he was more deserving of an academy award than the American, Robert Perry, a vain, arrogant playboy with the slouching swagger and perennial sneer of the twenty-something slackers who idolized his mediocre performances.

  Perry fit with CISEN’s assessment of a U.S. distribution mastermind. The nephew of a prominent actress who’d had a long career in films and later on two popular dramatic television series, he’d never done an honest day’s work in his life, having won early forgettable roles due to his aunt’s contacts. A breakthrough supporting role had blossomed into his current box office celebrity due to a paucity of genuine talents for Hollywood to market as well as his smarmy good looks, which mainly consisted of a habitual smirk, chiseled abs, and the airheaded blue-eyed stare of an underwear model coupled with a bad boy reputation underscored by a mildly stoned demeanor.