Here and now in Balboa Park, this meant they faced specific limitations in their use of apparel, weapons, and accessories. They could not, for example, wear form-hugging stealth suits, equipment vests, night-vision goggles, and ballistic helmets in environments where there was even the scant likelihood of a late-night stroller mistaking them for terrorist invaders out to lay siege to his home and neighborhood or, worse, of their targets nailing them for the covert personnel they happened to be.
With regard to arms, they were a bit less hamstrung. Full-sized VVRS rifles with their twenty-inch barrels were of course virtually unconcealable and consequently out. The diminutive upgrades most recently trialed by Ricci’s rapid deployment team were in, but because they were still designated as prototypical, they had been issued only to the complement of A-Team Sword ops who accompanied Ricci from San Jose that afternoon. Nevertheless, a fair range of offensive and defensive gear was available to the entire task force, from incapacitant sprays and grenades and less-than-lethal stingball guns to very lethal revolvers, automatic pistols, and compact submachine guns.
Their tactical guidelines were basically low profile: Street clothes were to be donned over mandatory Zylon bullet-resistant vests, weapons had to be easily stowable, and deadly fire restricted to an option of absolute last resort.
The civvies worn by the three-person foot team in the shadows outside the botanical building were sufficiently camouflaging to make the odds of their drawing a first glance quite slim, and sufficiently inconspicuous to make a second glance even less probable, should anyone’s eye chance upon them. One of the men had on a black rugby shirt, navy chinos, and black canvas loafers. The second wore a slate-gray sweatshirt, baggy crew pants, and black running sneakers. The female member of the team was dressed in a dark green rigger ensemble and matching jogging shoes. Their Sword identification patches were concealed beneath pull-down velcro flaps.
All three had been plainclothes law enforcement agents prior to hiring up with Sword, and were thoroughly versed in the ins and outs of surveillance.
As they passed under lushly crowned trees and wound through flourishing gardens, they strode casually side by side, one sipping bottled spring water, one unwrapping a stick of chewing gum, another pausing briefly to tie a shoelace. While attempting to remain quiet and keep out of direct light, they avoided letting it become an elaborate production. They did not walk on their tiptoes, dart between lampposts, peek around corners, or freeze in place like window mannequins whenever a head turned in their direction. The idea was to do their damnedest to stay out of view but act as natural as possible if they were sighted.
On tonight’s job, their experience yielded valuable dividends. The four Quiros soldiers they had been hastily assigned to follow had exited the breakaway Lincoln behind the Marston House at the far western end of El Prado, advanced across the gardens and meadows to the thoroughfare’s north, and then finally taken positions of hiding on either side of a thickly hedged walkway without displaying the slightest awareness that they were being tailed.
Although they couldn’t have known they were watching a trap being set for Lucio Salazar, the Sword ops did realize they had stumbled onto something important and quickly radioed Ricci and Glenn with word of their observations and position.
What would soon throw their situation into confusion, however, was the fact that they weren’t the only ones doing the watching.
In the Town and Country, the small man at the monitoring station saw Quiros’s men slip into the hedges through his optical relay with the shooter on the museum’s rooftop, who had noticed their movement while surveying the area through his long-range scope ... a stroke of good fortune for Lucio Salazar.
Had it not been for that observation, he might well be walking to his death.
Little was said between Quiros and Salazar as they left the parking area, walking south past the Spanish Village toward the green dominated by the Moreton Bay fig tree, their bodyguards following like unspeaking golems, near enough for their presence to be felt, far enough away for it to be unobtrusive. The few words they did exchange were inconsequential: Beautiful night, air’s nice and fresh, been too long, don’t see each other much these days, business, you know. Even without the duplicitous secrets they concealed, their planned or contemplated treacheries, they would have been disinclined to hurry their conversation toward matters of substance. There was a timing, a restraint, an almost formalized ritual of overtures and preambles to which they were both accustomed and that for men such as themselves was essential to the politics of survival. Talk too soon, and one could look weak or anxious. Too late, and deception or indecision was assumed.
Timing.
At the eastern border of the green, Quiros paused a beat, glanced around as if to gain his bearings, then started briskly onto a path that would take them past the side of the Natural History Museum and into the Plaza de Balboa at the east end of El Prado.
Salazar touched his shoulder, noting his quickened pace.
“Lawn’s shorter,” he said and waved a hand to indicate the area behind the museum between the big Aussie tree and the village. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to cut across it instead.”
Quiros appraised him quietly. He’d heard the mistrust in his tone, seen his reluctance to take the path. “Why not?” he said, inserting a note of hesitancy into his own voice as he moved off the path. “I picked the spot, you pick the route.”
Salazar gave him a thin smile. “I hadn’t looked at it that way, but it sounds good to me,” he said and turned right toward the green.
That was exactly where Quiros had meant to steer him all along, knowing his men were in position at its western side, hidden there in the shrubs that bordered on the walkway leading toward the reflecting pond, lying in wait, ready to spring their ambush.
The squawks came almost back to back, one from the surveillance team that had stayed on Quiros and his walking pal since they’d appeared from behind the Spanish Village, a second from the spotters who’d watched Quiros’s soldiers move into hiding in the garden near the reflecting pond. Ricci and Glenn were jogging briskly toward the latter from the park entrance over by the Marston House at Balboa’s western extremity, not far from where Quiros’s breakaway car had been left.
“What’s your take on those sluggers that crawled into the bushes?” Glenn said.
“Same as yours,” Ricci said. “Looks like Quiros has something rotten cooking for whoever met him here.... What’s his name again?”
“Salazar,” Glenn said. “Lucio Salazar. At least that’s who my people think it is. He and his brothers in Mexico are old-time, all-purpose smugglers and racketeers. Got into dealing dope, hit the mother lode. He’s Quiros’s chief local competition.”
“Maybe not for much longer,” Ricci said.
Glenn nodded and ran on in silence a moment.
“At this pace, it’ll be a quick shot to that garden.”
“You positive we have a vehicle at every car exit?” Ricci said.
“Yeah.”
Ricci grunted, hustling along. “Be good to make the action,” he said. “Main thing for us, though, is that Quiros doesn’t slip away. Because that E-mail we got is looking righter and righter. And I’ve got a feeling that if we lose him now, we’re done.”
As soon as they got halfway across the green, Salazar slowed to halt and stood gazing at the Moreton Bay fig. “All those twists and turns, one grows out of the other, you never know which way they’re gonna go,” he said and indicated the outspread branches and root system intricately silhouetted in the partial moonlight. “I figure it’s what life’s about.”
Quiros made a meaningless sound and waited, concealing his impatience.
Salazar kept staring at the tree. “We should talk about Felix,” he said.
Quiros looked at him. This was not how it was supposed to happen. He wanted to get to the damned garden walkway.
“Let’s hold off,” he said. “The pond is a better place. We c
an sit there and—”
Salazar raised a hand abortively and faced him. “Now, Enrique,” he said. “I want to talk about him right now.”
Quiros studied his expression. It left no room for argument. So be it.
“You had a problem with my nephew, you should have come to me,” he said after a minute.
“For what? The problem, like you said ... it was never him. He wouldn’t have done that job at the tunnel if you didn’t authorize it.”
Quiros shook his head. “He was on his own.”
“No.” Salazar’s voice was at once weary and bitter. “We came all the way here, might as well be straight.”
Quiros inhaled, exhaled. “That’s what’s been wrong from the start, Lucio. You answering your own questions. Making up your mind before you know the facts. I told you the truth, and you can believe it or not. It doesn’t make a difference to me. It isn’t even the real issue between us anymore. If you’d given me a chance, I’d have put Felix on the rack, made amends. But you chose otherwise. You took things into your own hands. What you did, how could you think it would resolve anything?”
“What I did—?”
“Killing my nephew. My sister’s only son. What were you thinking?”
Salazar glared with anger. “Even here, between us, you’re trying to pass off that bullshit—”
He never got to finish his sentence.
There were four simultaneous flashes from four different points above the green, four rifle cracks that merged into one loud, echoing sound that split the night like a thunderclap. Salazar jerked with surprise and confusion as Quiros’s head snapped sideways, blood misting up around it and spurting from a hole in his chest, and then his mouth dropped open and blood was pouring from it, too, streaming over his lips and chin. Quiros went down, folded almost neatly, and lay still there in front of him on the grass.
Salazar spun around and saw that Quiros’s guard was also on the ground, his own man standing over the sprawled body.
He looked up at the roof of the museum, at the great fig tree, at the tops of the Spanish Village cottages and saw no sign of the snipers, nothing at all except shadows and pale silver moonlight.
His eyes widened with confusion. He hadn’t given the order. What the hell had happened here? He hadn’t given the goddamned order.
Ricci and Glenn were within fifteen yards of the hedges when they heard the discharge of the sniper guns smack the air up ahead.
Both had slowed to a trot to keep from scaring Quiros’s men out of the bushes. Now they came to a frozen standstill and looked at each other.
“Those were rifle shots.” Ricci removed his radio’s earpiece so he could hear more clearly. “Plural, I’m pretty sure.”
Glenn nodded. “I’ve heard synchronous fire before. You don’t forget the sound.”
Ricci reached under his sport jacket and pulled his Five-Seven out of its holster. Glenn drew his own piece, a Beretta 9mm.
“Where you think the shooting came from?” Ricci said.
Glenn started to answer, then abruptly tapped his radio earpiece to indicate he’d been squawked, and listened.
His features were stunned as he ten-foured into the unit’s neck mike.
“Let’s have it,” Ricci said.
Glenn looked at him.
“Quiros is down,” he said. He pointed eastward beyond the walkway and hedges. “The green, back of the museum.”
“Fuck.” Ricci’s breath escaped him in a sick rush. “What about Salazar and his bodyguard?”
“They’re on the go.”
“Tell our people to stay on his tail, but I don’t want anybody trying to take him, not under any circumstances. Those shooters that tapped Quiros have the overhead positions and are going to cover his retreat.”
Glenn nodded and conveyed the message.
Ricci was forcing himself to think. “We have to get over to Quir—”
There was a loud stirring of vegetation to his right.
They might have started out of the bushes a second or two earlier, Ricci wasn’t positive. In his momentary crushing distraction, his effort to pull his wits together, he could have missed hearing them right off. But he’d heard them now.
He wheeled toward the sound of tossing branches, spotted Quiros’s men spotting Glenn and him, remembered a couple of them from the Golden Triangle office. One was the bulky door-opener, Jorge.
Just doing his job, Ricci thought.
And all within a heartbeat he saw the recognition in Jorge’s eyes, saw Jorge notice the Five-Seven in his hand...
And then Ricci saw Jorge start to point his own gun at him.
Glenn reacted to the disturbance in the shrubbery in near unison with Ricci, pivoting on his heel, whipping his Beretta toward the hitters as they appeared from cover.
“Team One, move in!” he called into his throat mike.
They were already moving.
By the time he saw the gun coming up in front of him, Ricci was on automatic pilot: his position, movement, and firing seamlessly integrated, the large figure outlined against the bushes objectified to his trained eye, a target with specific aiming points.
The Five-Seven in a firm, two-handed grip, his arms extended, feet apart, he dropped into the slight crouch of a police shooter’s stance and fired three rounds into the darkness, catching Jorge dead on with every one of them.
Clouted off his feet, Jorge collapsed backward, a yawning hole briefly visible in his chest before he crashed heavily down into a clump of shrubbery.
Ricci didn’t pause to think. You didn’t pause at these moments, didn’t think; at these moments you were the tip of an arrow.
Leading with his Five-Seven, he swiveled to the right, where another slugger had advanced from the bushes, his pistol a blur as he brought it up toward Glenn. Ricci took a quick breath, sighted, pulled the trigger on his exhalation. Glenn’s Beretta spurted flame at the same instant. The slugger did a grotesque shimmy on his feet, then pitched over sideways.
Ricci sought more movement, listened for more rattling in the hedges. There, over to the left, a third man raised his gun. A fourth beside him.
And then from farther back in the darkness, a female voice called out, “Don’t try it! Toss your weapons, hands up in the air. Now!”
Ricci focused on the spot from which the command had been shouted and saw a woman in a rigger’s outfit with a semiautomatic pistol in her right hand. The luminescent Sword ID on her breast identified her as one of his own.
A moment ticked by.
Two more figures had rushed out of the night to either side of the woman and formed up in a semicircle around the hedges. Men in dark civvies, firearms held out, glow-in-the-dark Sword insignias seeming to float over their chests.
Ricci kept his Five-Seven on the sluggers, saw Glenn doing the same with his Beretta from the corner of his eye.
Both men waited to see if the sluggers would pick smart or dead, their choice here, no lifelines, no polling the audience.
They dropped their pieces, raised their hands.
Smart.
Ricci sprang out of his crouch toward Glenn, leaving the frisk-and-cuff to their foot team.
“The green,” he said. His hand on Glenn’s arm. “Take me over there.”
Ricci had known Quiros was down but had hoped to a God he’d never been sure existed that Quiros wasn’t out. What he found on the lawn would not make a religious man out of him.
One brief glance at the body on the grass was all it took to establish there wasn’t a spark of life remaining in it. Whatever part of the head hadn’t gotten scattered aross the lawn was a gaping, bloody mess. Ricci guessed it should have seemed odd to him that Quiros’s glasses had stayed on his face, that they weren’t even askew, but he’d been around violent death enough to know it often had a sardonic touch.
He knelt over the body, searched through its pockets, and found nothing of use. Then he just knelt there feeling numb.
Far across the lawn, he could
see Glenn looking up at the tops of the buildings around them, standing with his gun loosely at rest against his leg. The roofs looked empty. The monster tree looked empty. Not much risk to being here, the snipers were probably gone by now. If they were still in place, they weren’t a threat. Their work showed they’d been top-tier pros, and the job they’d been hired to perform was finished.
Glenn raised a hand to catch Ricci’s eye and signaled that he wanted to do a walkaround, pointing toward the front of the museum. Ricci waved for him to go ahead and watched him turn the building’s corner, leaving him alone with the body.
Ricci knelt over it, looked down at it, the night feeling very deep around him, its chill penetrating his clothes.
“You got away from me,” he said to Quiros’s un-hearing ears, his voice flat and husky. “Got away, you son of a bitch. And I don’t know what to do.”
He never heard anyone slipping up on him. Never heard a sound. Despite his natural alertness, his finely keyed senses, not a sound until the voice spoke out of the darkness mere inches behind his back.
“Shazam,” it said.
“Jesus Christ, what’d your guys think they were doing?” Lucio Salazar barked into his cellular.
Shaken and baffled, still clueless about why his hired triggers had opened fire, he was speeding from the park in his Caddy, unaware he’d just passed the spot where Sword’s roadblock for Enrique Quiros had been lifted moments earlier.
Bio-Strike (2000) Page 31
