A real-world one from which there was little hope of escape.
Chapter 4
The assembled group of somber men in dark suits murmured hushed conversations as they waited for the guest of honor to arrive at the meeting. This was one of the private conference rooms in the complex of buildings collectively known as ‘Los Pinos’, the official seat and residence of the president of Mexico, situated at the south-west edge of the forested gardens of Chapultepec Park in the center of Mexico City.
Footsteps sounded on the marble floor of the corridor leading to the meeting spaces. The door opened and the president’s chief of staff entered, followed by the head of CISEN, the director of the president’s security detail, and finally, the president himself. They took their seats around the head of the table, and the chief of staff stood and delivered a summary of the situation.
“At roughly three in the morning, Maria De Leon was abducted from a nightclub in Mexico City after her security detail was incapacitated by a gas attack. In addition to the president’s daughter, we lost a vehicle and three men who were in pursuit of the getaway car. A blockade was put into effect as quickly as all the streets could be sealed, but there has been no trace of the kidnappers other than a telephone call that threatened to kill her if certain conditions were not met,” the chief of staff finished.
One of the men at the far end of the table raised his hand. “What were the conditions?”
“Impossible demands. The usual. Freeing prisoners, changing policy…suffice it to say, nothing that we could honor,” the president cut in.
“How the hell can something like this happen?” the CISEN head barked.
The security chief answered.
“She was adamant about going to this club, and apparently someone knew she would be there. The entire place was inspected that day in preparation for her visit, and no threats were found. She had a security team with her that should have been more than enough–”
“Except it wasn’t, was it?” the president snapped.
Nobody had anything to say to that. There were no assurances, no glib rejoinders.
“The press has not been alerted. This is classified at the highest level and will remain so until further notice. The only ones that know the details are sitting in this room, as well as the remainder of her security team, who have been sequestered while they are questioned,” the chief of staff continued.
“Do we have any idea who is responsible?”
“Yes. The call made that clear. It’s Don Aranas, the head of the Sinaloa cartel. At least that’s the claim. Whether or not it is actually true is anyone’s guess, but we’re acting under the assumption that the information is accurate.”
“Why would a cartel chief grab the president’s daughter and make all sorts of crazy demands? That’s not how these crooks operate,” the head of the security detail asked.
“I have no idea. Up until now, this would have been unimaginable. But the impossible has happened, and we need to pull out all the stops to locate Maria and get her back unharmed. Do I make myself clear?” the president asked.
Everyone nodded.
“Fortunately, we’ve identified a likely cartel stronghold in Culiacán we believe is the most likely place for her to be held captive. We are working on an assault plan as we speak and should be able to formalize a strategy shortly. The idea is to go in hard, in the dead of night, and take the compound before anyone knows what hit them.” He paused. “One of the biggest problems is that the counter-surveillance measures are state of the art and therefore will require considerable care to circumvent. But our experts assure us it can be done,” the chief of staff concluded.
“Gentlemen, I will leave you to this, but I want to make one thing crystal clear. Maria is my flesh and blood, and we cannot fail to get her back safe. There is no more pressing priority, and I am depending upon you all to figure out how to do so. This cannot be allowed to stand, and there is no resource I will not expend, no length to which I will not go, to ensure she’s home in one piece sooner than later. Don’t fail me. This is a slap in the face of the entire nation of Mexico by organized criminal syndicates that believe they are bigger than the government. That cannot stand. I will not allow it to.”
The president stood, obviously choked with emotion, and the rest of the room leapt to its feet. He moved to the door, followed by the chief of staff. The rest stayed behind to craft a response to a scenario nobody had imagined possible.
The chief of staff walked by the president’s side as they strolled to his offices.
The president leaned in to him and spoke quietly. “I want a contingency plan. All the bluster is fine, but I don’t believe that we’re going to be able to take down Aranas that easily. We’ve been hunting him for two decades with no success. Why do you have any faith that now we’ll suddenly be successful?” the president demanded.
“Well, this changes everything. The stakes have been raised, and there are likely many who want no part of kidnapping the president’s daughter. Our hope is that they will roll on Aranas to distance themselves, and that we will be able to leverage that to our advantage.”
“Fine, but I need a plan B if our first approach fails.”
The chief of staff hesitated. “What were the demands, sir? Specifically? Perhaps there’s a solution in the details that could be arranged?”
“There is nothing to be achieved by negotiating with this scum. The details are unimportant. Don’t waste any more time worrying about them. There is no way in hell I’ll ever give in to this sort of terrorism. Because that’s what it is. Plain and simple. Blackmail. The great nation of Mexico will not be blackmailed by criminals. That’s my final word on the subject,” the president declared.
The chief of staff didn’t press it, but he suspected there was something more, something that hadn’t been said. When the call had come through, it had been put directly to the president after some jockeying and uncertainty – nobody knew exactly how to handle a call on his private cell number at six in the morning, and there had been no interest in being the person who handled it incorrectly.
The president had spoken with the kidnappers for sixty seconds, and then the call had been terminated. He had been uninterested in sharing much of the discussion, but had been agitated ever since.
“Sir, we’ve known each other a long time. Is there anything, no matter what it is, that you can tell me that will further shed some light on their motives? Why this, why now? Anything at all you can think of?”
The president slowed, and appeared to fight an internal battle before shaking his head and picking up the pace again. “You know everything you need to in order to deal with the situation. Find Aranas and you’ll find my daughter.”
The chief of staff frowned, but quickly hid his reaction. He knew when his boss was leaving out information. Why he was doing so was an unknown, and he was the president, after all, but it didn’t bode well. Operating in a vacuum was dangerous even at the best of times, and with his daughter’s life on the line, he was playing a deadly game.
Still, he was el jefe, and it was his call.
He just hoped that the president hadn’t misjudged the situation.
For everyone’s sake.
~
The Culiacán airport had been closed early, and roadblocks erected on the access road to keep the curious away. Huge military transport planes landed in the still of night, as did several private jets, all taxiing to a far section off the main runway. Army trucks waited as men deplaned and were handed weapons and ammunition before loading into the vehicles, and at least forty federal police assault squad members emptied out of a Boeing 727 with the federal police insignia on the side.
Dark blue Ford Lobo trucks sat expectantly near the army vehicles, and a grim captain handed each officer a Kevlar vest and an M16 assault rifle, along with three magazines of ammunition, a pack with flash bangs and fragmentation grenades, as well as night vision goggles. These were the elite of the federal police force,
men whose sole job was to go into armed conflicts and do maximum damage. All had seen dozens, if not hundreds of battles with the cartels, and none was over thirty years old.
The strike force had been briefed on its target – a group of buildings on a ranch an hour east of town, in the hills near the Durango border – a desolate spot with little other than vegetation and the odd burro to intrude on the tranquility. It was an area where locals didn’t venture, certainly not after dark. There was a suspicious trend of disappearances for those showing too much interest in the goings-on of the very private residents of the massive ranches in the region, and nobody wanted to tempt fate. In Sinaloa, curiosity was generally bad for your health, and never more so than in the remote hinterlands.
The trucks wheeled off the tarmac and onto the road, moving east, leaving the city behind within fifteen minutes. The men checked and rechecked their weapons and gear, partially out of habit, and partially to keep busy during the interminable wait while they convoyed towards their destination.
An occasional hushed phrase would crackle over the radios, but beyond that, the men were quiet. There was no way of knowing who would be walking back up the stairs to board the plane tomorrow morning, and who would be going home in a body bag. The pre-operative tension silenced even the most gregarious, leaving each man alone with his thoughts, attempting to focus on the challenge to come.
~
Only a few lights were on at the main house, with the surrounding casitas darkened and virtually invisible against the cloudy night sky. The dirt track leading to the ranch forked off the main road three miles away; the string of vehicles crept towards it with lights extinguished. Once they were several hundred yards from the main gate of the perimeter wall, the convoy stopped, and the armed commandos leapt from the vehicles, prepared for massive resistance.
The information on the ranch had come from one of the top Sinaloa cartel lieutenants who was now serving a life sentence for his role in multiple murders, extortion, assault, drug trafficking and kidnapping. In return for favorable treatment, he’d come forward during questioning and volunteered that the most likely place Aranas would be holding a captive would be at this facility which, while owned by an obscure company that trafficked in fertilizer and farming chemicals, was in reality one of the Sinaloa cartel’s strongholds.
This had been a major break for the federal police, who had never been able to tie the cartel to any noteworthy properties other than business fronts. The web of underlying corporations that owned cartel assets was ridiculously convoluted, and nothing was ever in any of the kingpins’ names. No doubt by design – the Mexican cartels had access to the most expensive and sophisticated attorneys to handle their holdings, so no matter how many layers of the asset onion were peeled, there were always more to stymie investigators.
The army’s role in the night’s assault was to provide backup support for the federal strike team and to block the road leading to the ranch to ensure that no reinforcements could come to the aid of the defenders once the battle got underway. Ideally, the federal force would be able to move in stealthily and avoid detection until it was too late for the ranch’s occupants to react effectively. A lightning strike was best if the girl was to have any chance of survival.
Dense vegetation shielded the federal force from prying eyes and killed any sound traveling from the road. The team moved at a jog, weapons at the ready, wary of any watchers. Sentries would be customary, and their orders would invariably be to shoot first and ask questions later, so the men were prepared to engage at any moment.
Upon arriving at the entrance, the leader made a hand signal. The men fanned out. The second in command pointed at a security camera mounted atop the gatepost, and an officer quickly ran forward and snipped the feed cable with wire cutters. Another man moved to the gate with bolt cutters and made short work of the heavy padlock securing it in place, before returning the unwieldy tool to his backpack and swinging his rifle back into his grasp. The second in command hastily sprayed the hinges with WD-40 to eliminate any sound when it opened.
They were ready.
As the barrier swung open with a low moan, the men surged through the opening and raced the hundred yards from the wall to the main house, the only sound their breathing and the soft clumping of their rubber-soled boots. Groups of three broke off from the central formation and moved to each of the four outlying structures, all of which were unlit. When the leader reached the front porch of the main house, he paused for breath, waiting for the rest of the team to join him.
“Take four men and circle round the back. I don’t want anyone sneaking out the rear while we’re coming through the front door,” he whispered.
His subordinate nodded, pointed at several of the officers and moved off.
~
The radio crackled, and Jorge Balentoro, the director of the raid, listened in disbelief from his position on the main road.
“What do you mean, there’s nobody there? That’s impossible…” he replied, depressing the talk button on the handheld microphone as he spoke.
“Maybe so, but we just spent an hour securing an empty complex. Other than a sixty-year-old caretaker and his wife, who were scared out of their wits. They said that nobody has been to the house in almost a year.”
Jorge’s mind raced. What the hell was going on here? Was their intel that badly flawed? And what would he tell the president’s chief of staff? This was the best lead they had, and it had led to nothing.
“You’re sure. No hidden rooms, no escape tunnels…”
“No, sir. Just an old man who was up late reading and about had a heart attack when we broke down the front door.”
What now?
“I want the caretaker brought in for questioning. Maybe he knows something,” Jorge ordered, knowing he was grasping at straws.
“Uh, yes, sir. But on what grounds? What is the charge?”
“I don’t know. Resisting arrest. Interfering with an investigation. Make something up. But I want to know what he knows…”
Shutting down the airport, night flights, the army, men flown in from Mexico City, the president waiting for a report real time…all for nothing. They hadn’t even been close.
Jorge dreaded making his next call.
~
The president’s chief of staff set down the phone, his face pale. The president looked at him expectantly, his brandy snifter of tequila paused midway to his lips. The executive director of CISEN sat across from him and was already shaking his head based on the few words he’d overheard.
“There was nothing there. No sign of Aranas, his men, or your daughter, sir,” the chief of staff said.
“God damn it! What the hell was this all about, then? I thought this was our best lead?” the president blurted, struggling to compose himself. “What now? What’s the plan to get my daughter back safely? I want to hear some options, and I don’t really care what the cost is. It’s impossible for me to believe that with all the resources at my command, we can’t do better than this.”
The director of CISEN finished his glass of Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia tequila and set the glass down carefully before speaking. “This situation is unlike any we’ve ever encountered, sir. It’s really an act of terrorism more than a simple kidnapping. When dealing with terrorists, it pays to think outside of the box. You have to think like they do, and you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to achieve your objective. Terrorism is first and foremost about will. Will is the terrorist’s greatest weapon. The will to kill themselves, to murder innocents, to threaten or do the unimaginable.”
“Yes, yes. Agreed. But how does that help us?” the president barked, exasperated that the night’s mission had ended in ruin.
“There are options we haven’t explored,” the CISEN head began.
The chief of staff swiveled to stare at him.
The president was obviously hanging on every word.
“Difficult and uncomfortable options, but perhaps, our best o
nes…”
The meeting broke up an hour later, the president exhausted, the director of CISEN and the chief of staff moving to a more private location to discuss logistics.
Nobody was happy about the direction things had taken, but the president had been clear. They were to do whatever it took.
In this case, that would mean the hardest choice of his administration.
Chapter 5
The drab gray of the prison walls was sporadically punctuated by puke green paint which had been daubed in a lackluster manner throughout the high security wing. The overall effect was depressing and run down, even in a facility where no money had been invested in niceties or aesthetics other than the exterior, which was deceptively modern and bright.
Guards watched over the meter-thick reinforced concrete walls with automatic weapons while patrol vehicles cruised a road that circled the perimeter. An armed assault on the prison was always a very real possibility, and one the government took seriously. Any of the cartels had the means to muster a small army to break out one of its leaders, and that eventuality had been safeguarded against by clearing the fields surrounding the walls, basing an armored group within stone’s throwing distance, and otherwise fortifying the area like it was an outpost in enemy territory.
Inside the solitary confinement wing, three guards approached the end cell with shackles. The warden accompanied them, presumably to ensure that the prisoner didn’t trip and fall down a flight of stairs while bound. Today was a rare occasion. El Rey had been summoned to appear in court – a formality requested by the lead judge, who was probably just curious to see what the notorious killer looked like.
“Back away from the bunk and stand against the wall by the sink, facing the wall. Now,” the main guard growled.
El Rey had been given a set of clothes earlier, so the outing wasn’t a surprise. Jeans, a simple button up cotton shirt, slip-on canvas shoes with rubber soles. Nothing that could be used as a weapon.
Return of the Assassin (Assassin Series 3) Page 4
