BLACK Is Back

by Russell Blake

  His mind flitted back to the day, two years prior, when he’d opened the container and seen his life crumble around him, his beloved family brutally butchered to send him a message. He pursed his lips and forced the images and emotions back into the ugly little box where he kept them hidden away and closed the door on that line of thought. He would extract revenge and make the bastards pay the ultimate price for their crimes, but he couldn’t do it by wallowing in despair. There had already been more than enough of that after the slaying, when he’d taken a two month leave of absence and stayed drunk for most of it in Los Barriles, over on the Baja peninsula – an area that was uniquely free of the drug battles prevalent on the mainland. The southern part of Baja wasn’t a good trafficking choice, because there was only one road north, and it had military checkpoints every seventy-five miles, making it the hardest route imaginable for drug smuggling. Whereas northern Baja, by the border, was a battle zone much of the time – the Tijuana cartel had been at war with the Sinaloa cartel, leaving hundreds dead during the last year.

  He’d crawled into a tequila bottle and stayed in a haze for six weeks, gradually emerging from the funk with a purpose. He would go back to work, and he would make those who’d destroyed his dreams of happiness pay for their savagery. He would avenge Rosa and Cass, and he would be merciless.

  El Rey? Fuck El Rey. Cruz would be the bloody sword of fury descending upon his enemies, cutting them out of life like a cancer. And he didn’t need some tarot card voodoo to do it. They would pay. And he would be the mechanism of their destruction.

  Romero Cruz was far more committed to scorching the earth, hunting down and annihilating enemies than some fairytale ninja assassin. Cruz had nothing to lose; he was already dead inside, which made him far, far more dangerous. The man who didn’t fear anything was the worst enemy you could have, and that was what Cruz had become. His was the wrath of the righteous, and he would extract his pound of flesh from the wicked, and they would pay with their lifeblood.

  That was his mantra every day.

  That was why he still woke up.

  To be an angel of vengeance.

  Chapter 2

  General Alejandro Ortega studied the features of the man sitting across from him, wondering what he needed to say to make him happy. Because the last thing he wanted was for the attorney who represented the Sinaloa cartel to be unhappy with him. That could be a quick trip to an unmarked grave, even for an army officer of his rank. It had happened before.

  Ortega didn’t intend to test the man’s patience. Carlos Zapata was one of the wealthiest lawyers in the country, and a visit from him was never a good thing.

  “I wasn’t aware that Santiago had been captured. That must have been a Federal exclusive operation. I can assure you that the army was never notified. If it had been, well, it’s unlikely he would have been apprehended, obviously,” Ortega stated in the formal-and-polite tense of Spanish.

  “Jorge Santiago is a trusted ally of my clients,” Zapata said crisply. “His incarceration is an affront to their authority, and calls into question their ability to protect those who rely upon them. I won’t bore you with how delicate the balance of trust is on handshake deals. There’s a bond, and friends look out for friends. So my question is, how can something like this happen, and how can you make it right?”

  “I can assure you I started making inquiries the moment you called and informed me of the issue. It’s not public yet. None of the television stations or newspapers have reported anything,” Ortega observed, nervously smoothing his gray moustache.

  “We need to know where he’s being held, so I can get someone on filing motions with the court for immediate consultation with him. I know how this works, and we cannot afford for him to disappear for two weeks to be ‘interrogated’ in a back room somewhere.”

  “Of course. You’ll know everything, as soon as I find out. This is deeply disturbing to me as well,” Ortega assured him.

  Zapata leaned forward. “My clients are bound to start asking what value they’re receiving for their money if friends can be attacked by government forces with no warning. And I’ll remind you that it’s not in anyone’s best interests for precarious power structures to be disrupted by the absence of a strong leader. That will lead to instability – younger rivals challenging one another for position, which inevitably leads to unfortunate outcomes.”

  “I understand. Please convey to your clients that this was an unfortunate and unforeseen result of action by forces not within my purview. And even though I had no part in today’s events, I’ll still work diligently to ensure everything that can be done, will be,” Ortega promised.

  “Start by finding out where he’s being kept. Then you can stand back and stay out of the way.” Zapata rose from his chair and fixed Ortega with a frigid glare. “You’re lucky you don’t have to go report on the bad news to my clients yourself. They don’t take these sorts of setbacks lightly.”

  “No, I wouldn’t imagine that they do. I’ll call as soon as I know something.”

  “Do that.”

  Cruz was waiting patiently in the hall, chatting with the two guards, when Briones emerged from the elevator and strode hurriedly towards them.

  “Sorry, sir. I got stuck in traffic on the way back from my house. There was an accident…,” Briones offered.

  “Forget it. We’ve all been there. Let’s get back to our shit-bag and see what we can shake out of him. You okay? Ready for this?” Cruz asked.

  “Perfect. Let’s get to it.”

  The guard unlocked the door, and Cruz and Briones entered the cell. Santiago was slumped over in his chair, still unconscious. Cruz paced over to him and jerked back his head by the hair, looking for any trace of fakery, but didn’t see any. He quickly took a pulse, which was faint and uneven.

  “Get medical down here immediately,” Cruz told Briones, who hurried to the door and alerted the guards. One of them murmured into his radio for help. Briones came back to help Cruz with Santiago.

  They un-cuffed him and laid him on the floor. Cruz walked over to the picana and gave Briones a hard look. The lieutenant hastily gathered up the cord and the wand, stuffed it back into the rucksack, and carried it from the cell. The two sentries stood impassively by. Cruz knew he could count on them to have seen and heard nothing. Loyalty was a precious currency in the force, and you watched your peers’ backs if you wanted to go very far. It could be your own ass on the line at any point, so it was always better to be discreet.

  After a few minutes, Cruz heard the distinctive sound of a gurney being wheeled down the corridor to the interrogation room. Two paramedics ran a quick check on Santiago’s vital signs, then heaved him onto the gurney like a sack of cement. Cruz ordered the two officers by the door to accompany Santiago to the hospital and stand guard in whatever room he was in – if he needed surgery, they were to take up a station outside of the operating room. He wanted to take absolutely no chances that Santiago could escape, or be broken out of captivity by his mob.

  Cruz took the elevator up to his office, accompanied by Briones, and they got their stories straight for the inevitable investigation should Santiago die. It would be a cursory formality, to be sure, given that the captive had participated in gunning down a group of police that morning, but it was better to be prepared in advance. Both men had been with the department long enough to know how the drill worked, so they agreed that it was best not to mention the picana or the battering during questioning. Any injuries could be attributed to the assault and gunfight. Nobody was going to look too closely at the rights of a violent, psychopathic drug peddler; as long as they remained on the same page, there wouldn’t be any issues.

  Cruz showed the lieutenant his interrogation summary, on the off chance he’d omitted some key element or gotten something wrong or remembered it differently. Briones read it slowly and placed it on the desk between them when he was done.

  “Really, the only thing we got from him was that he claims to have been invo
lved in your family’s execution, which is unverifiable, and he also claims to be involved in a plan to assassinate the president, as well as the American president. Which is also unverifiable. Where does that leave us?” Briones asked.

  “I think we have to assume, given the circumstances of the interrogation and when and how he blurted it out, that there may be some truth to his claim. Santiago isn’t smart enough to invent a story like that while in extreme pain. Besides, it doesn’t come across on the report, but the way he said it…you heard him – it was like he was bragging. Like he wanted me to know what he’d done, so when it happened, I’d understand the power he wields,” Cruz concluded.

  “I know. I got that, too. It’s what makes me nervous about all this. He seemed almost…I don’t know, almost happy with himself. And if he actually did hire El Rey, we have a real problem.”

  “That’s the understatement of the year. The fucking media has made El Rey’s exploits more popular than reality TV, and it will result in an uncontrollable circus if even a hint of this leaks. It has to be just you and I that know about this until I’m able to nose around and see if we can find any corroboration,” Cruz warned the lieutenant.

  “The cartels certainly have the money to hire him…,” Briones mused.

  “I know. That’s what scares me. We’ve all seen the twisted schemes these lunatics can cook up.” Cruz stopped and stared out the window. “But why kill the president? He’s only going to be in office till the end of the year, so why bother?”

  “Some kind of a power statement? To show the population who really runs the country?”

  “Could be. But I don’t buy Santiago would spend a fortune to prove a point. And it could backfire on him. I don’t know. Who the hell knows what these animals dream up while they’re high?” Cruz groused.

  “What do you think it costs to hire El Rey to do something like this?”

  “El Rey? Probably, oh, I don’t know, five million U.S.? He’s got to be the most expensive killer in the world by now. I’ll say one thing, he knows how to market – now that he’s a celebrity in the press, he can command a lot more. These cartel bosses are just like everyone else. They read the papers, too, and money is no object to them…” Cruz trailed off, considering his last statement. Santiago could easily afford five million – just as easily as he could fifty. The take on trafficking Mexican cocaine was estimated to be more than thirty billion dollars per year at wholesale prices. That was almost the national budget of North Korea. So money was certainly not an issue.

  “So how do we proceed from here?” Briones asked.

  Cruz surfaced from his ruminations. “We wait to see what’s wrong with Santiago. And then we try to follow up on any leads, and root around to see if anyone on the street has heard any rumors. A loudmouth like Santiago would never be able to keep quiet about something this big, especially if he was behind it.”

  The desk phone rang, and a terse conversation ensued before Cruz slammed the receiver down.

  “They took him to Hospital Angeles, in Pedregal.” Cruz let out a sigh. “We’d better get over there and see what the damage is. Santiago would be the best place to start if we’re going to get to the bottom of this.”

  “Traffic will be hell. It’s going to take hours to get there.”

  “Nobody said that police work was all glamour and fun, young man.” Cruz, who was only five years older than Briones, often called the lieutenant ‘young man’ as a subtle reminder of the power structure. “Hope you don’t have any plans for tonight,” he added.

  “Not anymore.”

  Even with the emergency lights on, it took them fifty minutes to get to the hospital. Dusk had set in as they pulled into the lot by the emergency room. Traffic congestion in Mexico City was infamous, especially during rush hour, and it could take close to forever to cross the city during peak periods.

  The pair approached the marble-floored lobby of the pristine edifice and took the elevator down one floor to the operating rooms. Cruz had spoken with one of the officers sent to guard the prisoner, and he’d reported that the doctors had rushed Santiago into surgery after a hurried evaluation. The officer had called for backup, and there were now eight heavily armed tactical squad members lining the hallway to the surgical theater. Cruz walked purposefully to the officers guarding the polished steel operating room doors.

  “What are they doing in there?” he demanded.

  “Some kind of procedure for his brain,” the officer replied.

  “His brain? What’s wrong with it? Did they tell you anything?” Cruz asked.

  “No, they just said that his pupils had a problem, so something was wrong with his brain. He never regained consciousness; that’s all we know right now.”

  Cruz stalked the hallway, mind racing. A few minutes later, a green-gowned doctor emerged from surgery, blood splattered down his front, and removed his mask to speak with Cruz.

  “I’m Dr. Consera. I presume you’re running this show?” he asked Cruz.

  “Captain Cruz. Yes, this is my prisoner. He shot four of my men this morning and was taken after a considerable struggle,” Cruz informed him, for the record.

  “Well, that explains the contusions and bruising…”

  “Why are you operating on him? Was he hurt by the blows he sustained?” Cruz asked.

  “Not really. We did a CT and an MRI, and this man has an abnormal heart. An area is enlarged, which is typical of victims of chronic atrial fibrillation.” The doctor flexed his hand, trying to get the muscles to relax. “No, what happened is that something, probably the morning’s events, caused a bout of fibrillation, and a clot formed in his heart and then traveled to his brain. Your man had a massive stroke. We went in through his leg and removed as much of it as we could so blood flow could return to the affected area of the brain, but it’s anyone’s guess how much permanent damage he’s experienced. In these cases, you just don’t know,” Dr. Consera explained.

  “So he’s in a coma?”

  “Precisely. His brain has been deprived of blood for at least an hour and a half, maybe more. Blood carries oxygen. Human tissue requires oxygen to live. If it was totally deprived of blood for that long, or longer, it doesn’t look good for him.”

  “Then what’s the prognosis?” Cruz asked.

  “Poor. It would be a miracle if he ever regained consciousness. But in the end, we’ll just have to wait and see. I’d normally do a positron emission tomography scan of his brain to see what level of activity the area the clot-affected portion retains, if any, but it would be a waste of time at present. Maybe in a few days, but right now, he’s in God’s hands,” the doctor concluded.

  “Or the devil’s. The man is a major narcotraficante, Doctor, and probably snorts kilos of cocaine every week.”

  “That would make the chronic heart condition much worse, of course. It would explain a lot.”

  “One thing I don’t understand. How does the clot form – from his heart beating, what, faster?” Cruz asked, genuinely curious.

  “Atrial fibrillation isn’t necessarily tachycardia – a racing heartbeat. It can also be where the heart skips a beat, sometimes a lot of beats, which has a tendency to allow blood to pool in the enlarged heart chamber instead of pumping through. A little sticks to the valve, and then a little more, and pretty soon you have a clot the size of a pencil eraser headed for your brain, and, bam, game over. Once it lodges, more blood begins to clot behind and in front of it, so it’s a downward spiral from there. We went in through the femoral artery into the brain and sucked out as much as we could get, and pumped blood thinners through him to get the remaining clotting to dissolve, but the damage already done after such a long period without oxygen…well…” The doctor held out his hands in a show of helplessness.

  “Then there’s nothing that could have prevented this?” Cruz asked, seeking to clarify how the stroke would be reported by the doctor.

  “Not really. If he was on medication, and he didn’t take it, that could have ca
used problems as his blood thickened over time. Of course, the shock of being in a gun battle and being captured and, er, questioned…my official position is that this was just an unfortunate occurrence that was the result of an underlying medical condition, and couldn’t have been realistically prevented.” The doctor assessed Cruz frankly. “Although you might want to avoid putting cigarettes out on prisoners, or bludgeoning them,” the doctor said quietly, glancing at the guards to ensure they hadn’t heard him.

  “Thank you for all your help and explanation. What happens to him now?”

  “We’ll transfer him to a private room in the intensive care wing, and watch and wait. That’s all we can do.”

  Cruz joined Briones, who stood talking quietly with several of the other officers.

  “He’s in a coma. Probably forever. But I still want a guard on him in case there’s some kind of divine intervention and he comes to. I do not want this asshole having a miracle escape on our watch, do you read me?” Cruz ordered.

  “Loud and clear, sir.” Briones stepped away from his companions, and they wandered a few feet down the hall. “Do they know what caused it?”

  “He’s got a bad heart, and it shot a blood clot to his brain. He stroked out. Nothing we could have done about it, the doctor tells me,” Cruz said, holding Briones’ gaze.

  “He seems awfully young to have a bad heart,” Briones observed.

  “Santiago’s two years older than I am. But this was a congenital condition. So it’s not the same as a heart attack, or coronary artery disease. It’s a combination of Hoovering coke, and God knows what else, and inheriting lousy genetic material.”

  “So yo – we’re in the clear.”