The commander barked orders into the radio and the men emptied from the personnel carriers and took up position to mount an assault on the ship. The men below flung three grappling hooks affixed to black nylon rope over the hull’s edge. The four-pronged hooks all found a purchase. The problem was that any men on the ropes who got caught in the fire from the remaining gunman were dead meat, so nobody wanted to be the first to climb four stories up onto the deck. Raul decided to shift his position and moved down the row of windows on the warehouse until he was more symmetrically placed and could see down the entire length of the ship.
He set his rifle tripod down, and resumed peering through the scope. There, at the farthest end of the ship, right near the stern, was the gunman, taking cover below the three foot high steel lip of the boat’s deck edge. Raul calculated the distance and an additional forty yards and adjusted accordingly, then waited for the man’s head to pop back up. It was just a matter of time, he figured – correctly, as it turned out – his vigilance was rewarded by the man’s arms and head coming into view as he prepared to empty his weapon at the commandos below. Raul took his shot, and the man’s head disappeared in a bloody puff of fragments.
The deck was now empty, although it would still be ugly fighting through the ship. Not his problem.
The commander gave the squad the all-clear signal, and within seconds men were moving swiftly up the ropes to the ship above. Raul had shifted his attention to the bridge windows again, figuring it would just be a matter of time until some bright lad figured out that he could shoot from the portholes that stretched another four stories above the ship’s deck, picking off soldiers as they climbed over the rail. Sure enough, one of the glass hatches on the side opened, and a gun barrel poked out. He waited patiently because the angle of the shooter’s barrel wouldn’t allow him to hit the deck, and sure enough, more of the weapon slowly emerged from the window until Raul also saw the arm that was holding it. The first commandos were only a few feet from the edge so he only had a second before they’d be exposed to the gunman. Raul fired, and the gun went sailing harmlessly to the deck below, taking three quarters of the man’s still attached arm with it.
That would give the rest inside something to think about.
From there on out it was a textbook incursion. They had to use explosives to blow the doors open, and for fifteen minutes, bursts of gunfire echoed throughout the boat’s hull. Eventually the commander got an all clear call from the men inside, and a status report. They’d taken out six hostiles, no survivors, and lost nine men in the process. Raul listened to the recitation impassively, his face betraying nothing. The commander glanced at him as he heard the casualty assessment, but Raul was busy packing up his gear, his work for the night finished. The commander approached him and stopped a few feet from him.
“Great shooting. You saved a lot of lives tonight,” the commander said.
Raul bit his tongue, didn’t blurt out his natural reaction, which was that if he’d been allowed to lead an amphibian team they would have likely lost only a few men, if any, thanks to the element of surprise, and that the commander had killed those commandos with his lack of flair and imagination just as surely as if he’d pulled the trigger himself. Instead, he nodded and stood, weapon in tow.
“Thank you, sir. I had some lucky shots tonight. We were all fortunate.”
There being nothing more to say, he saluted before descending the stairs to join the remainder of his team. It would be a long stretch of duty as the bodies were recovered and the drugs inventoried and he wanted to get out of the commander’s sight before his contempt for the man leaked through his veneer. It wasn’t worth it. Most of the world was composed of idiots – the commander was simply making up the numbers.
It was that night, on his first live operation, that he realized he had probably already learned everything he was going to from the military. The time had already come, after little over a year in the service, to reconsider his options.
Chapter 6
Ten Years Ago
A year and a half after joining the marines, Raul disappeared without a trace, leaving nothing behind to be remembered by except his assumed name, which he’d quickly grown to despise. He’d participated in seven more operations after his first one, and yet with each mission he became more convinced that his talents were being wasted and he wasn’t progressing any further. To make matters worse, he witnessed countless acts of bumbling bureaucracy by the ranking officers, costing the men under their command casualties for no good reason. If anything had ever convinced him that he wouldn’t do well working for someone else, his half year of active duty after completing his boot camp and all the specialized training had done the trick. When he walked off the base for the last time, ostensibly on two day’s leave to go visit his fictional family in Chiapas, it was with an audible sigh of relief.
Raul had saved almost all of his meager pay and still had a few thousand dollars from the money he’d left home with, after selling his weapons to convert his assets into cash. His identity papers had cost him six hundred dollars in Mexico City, and he’d done some odd jobs before joining the navy, but he would need to put the next part of his grand plan into operation fairly soon if he was going to avoid having to work as a day laborer. Fortunately, the cartels he’d been battling were generous employers, able to pay far more than the navy, so he could pretty much choose which cartel he wanted to approach; as an ex-marine they’d be eager to have him as part of their enforcement team. Although he had different ideas about how he could be of service to them.
He was now three months shy of his nineteenth birthday and free to do as he pleased. Yet there was some unfinished business he needed to attend to back in Sinaloa before he moved on to the next phase of his life. His departure had stuck in his craw, and he felt a pull to return. He’d learned to trust his judgment on these things, so he hopped on a bus and began the long trip from Veracruz to Culiacan. Wearing the uniform of a special forces commando, he was afforded privilege by the bus company so thankfully it cost him almost nothing to cross the nation. Two days after he’d left his naval career behind, he descended the stairs in Culiacan, blinking into the bright sunlight of an early spring day.
After forty-two hours cramped on buses, eating whatever junk he could get at the irregular stops, his first order of business was to have a decent meal. He set off in search of a restaurant that had been his favorite, back in the day. Outside the terminal, he hailed a cab, providing the driver the address as he slid into the back seat. The young man had changed since he’d last been in town, as had the city itself, growing by leaps and bounds. His carefully-trimmed goatee and closely-cropped military haircut ensured nobody would recognize him, which wasn’t much of an issue considering his long absence. He’d developed into a hardened combat veteran since leaving as a teen boy and his bearing and additional muscle weight filled out his uniform, lending him a formidable presence. The boy had left and had returned a man.
The taxi arrived at the restaurant, La Chuparrosa Enamorada, nestled on the banks of the Canal Rosales, and the young man paid the driver and hoisted his duffle. It was a Tuesday, so the breakfast business was thin, which wouldn’t have been the case had it been the weekend. The place typically had a standing room crowd on Saturdays and Sundays, due to the generous portions of mouthwatering food. He had been there a few times with Emilio on special occasions and it was one of the things that had been on his mind since boarding the bus in Veracruz. The waitress invited him to an outdoor table overlooking the water. He ordered a glass of orange juice and a plate of chicken chilaquiles in red sauce – a local favorite and one of the restaurant’s signature dishes.
When his food came, he thought about his next move, while remarking on how little things had changed in the last twenty months. In this sleepy area, things seemed to always remain the same, even as the city grew at an unprecedented rate. First thing he would need to do is secure reliable transportation. Taxis weren’t going to be an option for wh
at he had in mind, so he’d need to get some sort of conveyance sooner rather than later. With his bankroll being as thin as it was, that meant stealing something, or probably several somethings, depending on how far he decided to travel.
He munched on his food, savoring the rich, spicy sauce, and cleaned his plate as efficiently as a dishwasher would. Stuffed, he paid the bill and strolled out onto the rural road, scanning the surroundings for something he could liberate opportunistically. It took him half an hour to spot a suitable vehicle that was easy enough to break into and hot wire, but he eventually found a thirty year old Chevrolet truck with a broken wind wing. Within seconds, he was in the cab, glancing around to ensure that he hadn't been detected. It took him ten seconds to find the ignition wires and soon he was meandering down the familiar road that led to Don Miguel’s estate. The surroundings were still verdant and wild, nature seemingly impatient to encroach on the slim progress man had introduced. When he was a quarter mile from the turnoff to the ranch, he pulled the old truck onto a dirt track that led off into the wilds and parked where it couldn’t be seen from the road. He had no idea what he would find at the hacienda when he made it to the estate, but he’d learned to be cautious about everything and considered it best to err on the side of prudence.
He moved stealthily through the woods until he found one of the myriad game trails that ran through the immense tract of Don Miguel’s property, and soon was jogging along as he had in the old days. It was cool in February so he barely broke a sweat and before long, he was in the cluster of trees that ran along the side of the property, near the horse barn where he’d so long ago been set to move hay as the commencement of his training. He paused momentarily, ears straining for any hint of habitation, but he detected nothing. The main house was deserted, with none of the security men that were everywhere when he’d been living there. No matter; he hadn’t come for anything in the house. He wanted to see his mentor, Emilio, and Jasmine. For all his efforts Jasmine had survived in the place she’d carved out of his psyche, and he wanted to bring closure to a door that bulged, and threatened to burst open in his recurring dreams.
The young man continued along the perimeter and down the track until he reached the caretaker’s house that reposed several hundred yards into the woods. He knew that trail like he’d been on it only yesterday, the loosely-placed flagstone that served as a driveway all too familiar under his feet. Surprisingly, he felt a buzz of anxiety in the pit of his stomach as he neared the front door – an altogether alien sensation for him. There, sitting as it always had, was the modest colonial home, deliberately styled in a rustic, sponge-painted manner to mirror the design sensibility of the larger main house, but absent the more flamboyant frills.
Pausing on the front porch, he registered that there was something different about the home than the last time he’d been there, almost two years ago. It seemed quiet, as though nobody was living there – much like the main estate had seemed from a distance. Shaking off the sense of foreboding, he knocked on the door, and when he heard nothing from inside, he walked around the side to where Emilio parked his big navy blue Ford Lobo crew-cab truck. There it sat, unchanged, next to the small Chevy econo-box Emilio had bought for Jasmine with his bonuses from Don Miguel.
He moved back onto the porch, and knocked again.
“Emilio. Jasmine. Please. Open the door. It’s me…I’m back…” he yelled.
From inside, he heard a faint rustling, and then Jasmine’s distinctive voice.
“Go away. There’s nothing for you here.”
“Jasmine. Please. Open the door. I need to talk to your father. It’s important,” he tried again.
“He’s dead. Everyone’s dead. Don Miguel, my father, his sister and his mother. There’s only me left now, and I don’t want to see you. Please. Just leave. Go now, and stay away,” Jasmine warned.
“Dead? How? How is that possible? What’s happened since I left? Tell me, Jasmine. Please. Just open the door. I don’t want to have this conversation through a slab of wood. I just travelled over a thousand miles to see you…please, Jasmine. I’m begging you. I need to see you.”
“No you don’t. You left without a word to anyone, and now death has come to the valley, and it’s only me left alive – and you. Do yourself a favor, and leave now, while you can,” Jasmine implored him.
“If you don’t open the door, I’ll break in. You know I can find a way. Jasmine, please. This has gone on long enough. Open the damned door so we can speak like adults. I need to know what happened…and I need your help,” he finished starkly.
The lock creaked and the door swung open. It was dark in the small living room, all the drapes pulled, he saw as Jasmine padded in bare feet to the chair in front of the television and sat. She was wearing a nightgown even though by that point it was noon. It was so dim that he could barely make her out.
“Can we turn on a light or open a window? I can’t see my own hand in front of me.”
“I…I’m comfortable with it like this. This is my house now, so I keep it the way I like. If you have a problem with it, leave,” Jasmine advised in a monotone.
What the hell was going on here? Even after two years, people didn’t change that much. What had happened?
“Jasmine. No problem. You want it dark, I like it dark. Can we start over? Tell me what happened to your father, Emilio. Please. Start at the beginning. I haven’t had any news since I left.”
“I see you have a uniform. Marines. Is that what happened to you? You ran away and joined the navy? That’s classic. A total cliché,” she exclaimed with a bitter laugh.
“It’s a little more complicated than that. But tell me about your father.”
Jasmine let out a long sigh, and sank further into the large, padded easy chair – one of Emilio’s few luxuries; a place he could relax at the end of a long, hard day and watch some television in peace.
“When you left, you got out just in time. Someone executed Don Miguel, as well as one of his lieutenants, either that same day or the day after. I don’t really remember now, so much happened so quickly. Anyway, nobody knew what to do, and it was chaos here. But word traveled fast, because before Don Miguel was in the ground, his rivals where fighting over how his empire would be divided up. It quickly escalated into the usual blood feud, and soon Culiacan’s streets were littered with the dead,” Jasmine explained.
“And your father?”
“One night, several trucks showed up at the house, and we heard gunfire. The main contender for the Don’s position, Armand Altamar, had decided to eliminate anyone who was still loyal to the Don, in a bid to seal his position as the new jefe for this region. He executed the few remaining staff at the house…and then he came for us. My father had several guns and he tried to defend us, and even killed three of Altamar’s henchmen, but in the end it was for nothing. There were too many of them, and they shot him to death, out in front of the porch…like a dog. He died there for no reason other than for loyalty to his new boss – which was you since the Don’s execution. He wasn’t even in the business. He just ran the horses, and raised you…” her voice trailed off.
“Jasmine, I’m so sorry. I…I don’t know what to say…”
“There’s nothing to say. After killing him, they broke down the door, dragged my grandmother and auntie outside and shot them in head.”
“Good God. I…thank God you escaped…”
“But I didn’t, don’t you see? I tried to shoot them but I was shaking too much, and my first shot missed. So then they came for me…and the rest…is history,” she said flatly.
“What happened, Jasmine. You can tell me.” He didn’t know how to react to the horrible story and was afraid to hear the rest but he couldn’t help himself.
“What happened? What happened? With nobody here to protect me, with you gone and my family killed? They took turns raping me, is what happened – over and over, for half the night. I passed out, and when I came to, they were raping me more. It went on for hour
s.”
“I…Jasmine. I know nothing I can say or do will make anything better. But I’ll find these men and punish them for what they did to you. They’ll pay, with interest added.”
“Just go. I don’t want your help. My life is over before it had a chance to really begin. It’s not your fault but I don’t want to see you ever again. You remind me of before…when I had hope…”
“Jasmine, listen to me. There’s still hope. I know what happened was horrible and will stay with you forever but there’s always hope. Always. I’ll make this right, or at least avenge your family and you,” the young man promised.
“No you won’t. And no, there’s no hope. Trust me. None.”
“There’s always hope, Jasmine–”
“You’re an idiot. For you, maybe there is, but not for me. I didn’t finish the story. You didn’t let me. After they were done with me, every orifice brutalized and bleeding, the leader, Altamar, went into the barn and got some of the acid they used on the glass tiles in the fountain – to remove the calcium deposits, as I remember. They’d always wear gloves, and mix it fifty parts water to one part acid. It was the only thing that would remove the buildup. Altamar didn’t wear gloves, and he didn’t mix it. He just poured it on my face, laughing as my skin fizzed with screaming pain. Last thing I remember was trying to make it to the kitchen to rinse it off my face with water. That probably saved my life.” She stopped and peered at him through the gloom. “I wish they’d killed me. I’ve sat here many times, ever since they released me from the hospital, wishing I was dead. I’d kill myself but it would damn my soul to hell forever, according to the priest who stops in occasionally to mitigate my torment. So I sit in the dark, and pray to an unlikely god to end my misery. So far, he’s ignored me, just the same as he ignored my family.”
Night of the Assassin: Assassin Series Prequel Page 8
