by Jack Murphy
By now Nikita was almost to the top. He was using the overhand technique to scale the ladder to balance himself. With a flimsy cable ladder hanging in the air without support, it could be hellacious trying climb it because the climber's lower body would push the ladder out while the upper body pulled it in. The solution is for the climber to bring his arms behind the ladder and grip the rungs while climbing with his feet normally to distribute the weight evenly.
Once at the top he reeled the ladder in behind him and spoke into his radio headset.
“Spooky-One?” Nikita's voice came over the ear bud that Aghassi wore.
“I got you.”
“Give me one minute and then move out.”
Nikita crawled cautiously across the top of the tower. He had the best vantage point of anywhere on the entire mountain but if the aging structure caved in he was finished. It appeared that there were some lead shingles underneath the overgrowth that spilled over the edge of the tower, rather than decaying wooden beams.
Digging into his sniper tool kit he pulled free a set of garden sheers. Clipping short pieces of vegetation, he secured them to his 417 rifle with rubber bands. The Chromacamo uniform had already shifted color slightly to match the surroundings, the overall shading remained dark as it had been nighttime to begin with. He then made sure his suppressor was still fixed on the barrel properly. For this mission he had loaded a magazine of sub-sonic rounds. With the suppressor in place, each shot would be so quiet that the only audible sound would be the hammer inside the gun striking the firing pin. The bullets were great for low visibility work but only had an effective range of fifty meters or so before they lost enough velocity that they began to tumble through the air.
Extending the Harris bipod legs attached under the rifle, he set down into a position where he could cover Aghassi from.
“Ready,” he whispered into his headset.
“I'm moving.”
Aghassi began moving from the tower down the wall that partitioned the two courtyards. Down below, the roving patrolman was looking at the ground absently.
“You're clear.”
They only had time to conduct a couple rock drills before the mission, no scale model, no rehearsals, they were flying by the seat of their pants. Aghassi wasn't even sure if he had all the right equipment he would need to penetrate the drug lord's server room.
Nikita came off glass. At close range there was no need for even the three power magnification that he had dialed the scope down to. The infiltrator below moved through the shadows towards Jimenez' villa. The guard had turned around and was heading back towards the stairs.
“Stop,” Nikita whispered over the radio. “He's moving.”
Aghassi crouched, holding his pistol at the ready.
Nikita looked through his scope, the crosshairs moving on the lead edge of his target as he walked. Someone called out in Spanish from across the courtyard. Looking over, Nikita saw that someone had walked out from the one story structure that Aghassi was heading to. He carried on a conversation for a few moments and then the guard turned to walk inside. Both Samruk operatives breathed a sigh of relief when he closed the door behind him.
“They are inside,” Nikita informed him.
“Keep an eye out.”
“I will.”
The sniper watched as Aghassi hurried along the walkway on top of the wall to the opposite end of the courtyard. Once he reached the one story building he hung himself over the lip of the wall and lowered himself down. Gently, one foot at a time, he stepped onto the rooftop. Rather than enter on the ground floor where there would be the most security measures, he had opted to try the second story window into the villa which could be accessed from the adjacent rooftop as the two structures had been placed side by side.
The firm that installed the alarm and detection systems utilized layered security features but as he had found out, there were some gaps in them. The windows and doors on the bottom floor were wired into an alarm with contact strips; however, the second story windows were simply locked with a metal film embedded in the glass in case someone shattered it. Once the glass broke, it would break the circuit running through the metal film and trip the alarm.
Aghassi wouldn't be resorting to anything so crude. As their inside sources had reported, Jimenez attended religious services in the crumbling church at the front end of the compound this time of night. The lights inside his villa were turned off.
He slid a screwdriver under the widow and pressed up on the handle to make a small gap. Next, he reached into his bag of tricks and slipped a thin rubber airbag into the crack. Removing the screw driver, he connected a small hand pump to the airbag and began inflating it.
“God damned penis pump,” he cursed. It was taking too damn long.
“We got all night,” Nikita said sarcastically, having heard him on the net.
Below them, they could hear voices again.
“Maybe not.”
“What is it?”
“They changed out the guards. Hurry up.”
Reaching into the open Koala pouch, he palmed one of the metal bypass rods he carried and slipped it under the crack in the window created by the open airbag. The rod was L-shaped to come around and manually unlock door and window latches. It took a few tries but he finally managed to unlock the window and slide it open.
“He's coming up the stairs,” Nikita hissed.
Aghassi grabbed the window by the frame and threw himself inside and into the dark.
Nikita watched his partner disappear into the open window. A second later it was shut and the guard began his patrol unaware of the intrusion.
“Are we clear?”
“The guard didn't see anything,” the sniper transmitted.
“Okay. Let me know if you see any activity around the villa.”
“Roger.”
Nikita was a silent sentinel at the top of the tower, gazing down on the entire fortress. In the second courtyard a dozen cartel men played a game of soccer. Stadium lighting allowed them to play all night if they wanted. One by one, Nikita stared at their faces through his sniper scope but came up empty. Jimenez was supposed to be taking his holy communion or some such at this time of night but he wanted to make sure.
When they had briefed Deckard on their mission plan just prior to heading out they had asked about the commander's intent behind the mission. Specifically the mission was to gather intelligence on the cartel but the overall intent of the operation was to destroy the cartel itself. If they had the chance to assassinate the drug lord himself as a target of opportunity, should they take the shot?
If I have to answer that then you don't need to work here, had been Deckard's reply.
“What in the good name of fuck is all of this,” Aghassi mumbled to himself.
He felt like he had just wandered onto a movie set. There were tables filled with weeping, half burned wax candles everywhere. Out of hundreds, only one or two were actually lit, making the room flicker with shadows. The air was thick with smoke and something unidentified. As Aghassi's eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw that he was in a bedroom.
Two women were passed out on the king sized bed, the sheets pulled astray. At least he hoped they were passed out. Tip toeing forward, he could see the naked back of one of the girls moving up and down as she breathed. The other lay on her back, her large breasts partially sinking into her armpits as her arms were flung over her head. Her massive chest was also moving. Bloody syringes and tie offs had been discarded over the side of the bed alongside the brown splotches of dried blood.
Mounted on the wall were various cured animal skulls, crosses, and other religious paraphernalia. A few books were laying around the bedroom by authors such as Aleister Crowley. On the dresser was a massive Smith and Wesson revolver. It looked like Jimenez was into some kind of Santeria type voodoo or something. He filed it away in the back of his head, even this type of intelligence could prove useful later on but having been raised a Baptist, he wanted to get
the hell out of the bedroom as fast as he could.
Easing open the door, he slipped out and into the hall. The corridor was cold and dark, the air conditioning blasting up from the vents in the floor. Standing with the Glock in his hand, he listened for sounds of any enemy presence. Time seemed to stand still. The infiltrator had to fight off the feeling that he was being watched, that someone was right behind him. As he had been told by his sources, the second floor had no security cameras. After a full minute had passed he pressed the transmit button on his radio.
“Shooter-One.”
“I got you Spooky-One.”
“Can you see anyone moving around through the first floor windows?”
“It's dark, I can't see shit.”
The next step was to get into the strong room on the second level, disable the cameras and motion sensors, then locate the server room. One thing at time.
The third door down on the left hand side would lead to the central monitoring room that controlled most of the security systems, at least those connected to it. Once inside, he would not be able to remotely open locked doors, but any alarm systems, cameras, and probably any other passive sensors could be shut down. It was a heavy metal door, set inside a metal frame, with a beveled bottom to prevent someone like him from slipping shims or rods through any cracks. The locking mechanism was controlled by a smart card reader.
Holstering the Glock, Aghassi went back into his bag of tricks. He had his own smart card modified with metal leads attached to the actual smart chip that ran in down the length of the card. To those leads he attached a logic analyzer with alligator clips. The other end of the cables terminated in a USB port. Reaching into the Koala pouch he removed his notebook computer, plugged in the analyzer and booted it up.
Starting up an analytical program, it quickly broke down in what sequence the card reader functioned, figured out what prompts it asked for, and what replies were expected. Once the digital recon work had been done, Aghassi packed up the card and sequence analyzer. He then plugged in a smart card reader to the notebook and stuck a blank smart card into it. Programming the card, he put it in the monitoring station's smart card reader, which picked up the false authentications and allowed him to open the door.
Dumping his kit into the open Koala pouch, he hurriedly stepped inside and shut the door behind him. He had thirty seconds to attack the alarm console inside a hard case on the wall before the alarms went off. The normal security monitor would just type in the pass code but he didn't have the code or the time to finesse that type of bypass.
Turning a key, he opened the alarm box and started pawing around through the guts of the alarm system. Using his screw driver he began disconnecting the leads, all of them just to make sure. No alarms sounded. The key had been provided to him by the kid that he and Nikita had saved from the sicarios that had threatened his family. He had been able to steal it while working on the compound the day prior to the night raid. It was one of the spares and the security monitor had left the key box unsecured for half an hour while making his rounds.
Next, he turned his attention to the monitor bank. With the alarms switched off, Aghassi simply disconnected the power cable running to the console. The motion detectors would now be shut down and the cameras would not be recording anything that could be found later on after he left. There would simply be a blank area on the tapes if someone went looking.
He took a deep breath and let it out.
He was making progress.
Back out in the hall he headed for the stairs. It was so dark that he had to go into his kit and pull on a set of PVS-15 night vision goggles. There wasn't even any ambient light for the goggles to intensify so he had to use the infra-red illuminator to create some non-visible light. With his depth perception altered by the night vision goggles, he proceeded slowly and carefully.
The IR illuminator acted like a flashlight that was invisible to the naked eye but would at least allow you to see with night vision goggles when there was no ambient light.
Once at the bottom of the stairs, he panned back and forth, examining his new surroundings. There were dozens of guns hanging on the walls. Most of them looked like show pieces as near as he could tell through the green tinted night vision. The room was arranged as an entertainment area with overstuffed leather couches and chairs arranged around multiple flat screen televisions. The tables and bar area looked like they had been recently cleaned, the help having tidied up before going home for the night.
Aghassi began to think it though, trying to get inside Jimenez' head. His sources had told him that when the cartel's tech guru showed up every week or so, that Jimenez would clear the bottom floor of his villa. The technician would disappear inside for a few hours and then be escorted back off the compound. It was suspected that he was a professional flown in to maintain whatever system it was that the cartel was running for information management.
It was clear to Aghassi that the server room for the cartel's network was hidden behind a false wall or inside a concealed sub-basement somewhere. But where was the entrance? Where would someone like Jimenez hide it? The drug lord was known for his ruthlessness and brutal tactics. With what he had just seen in the bedroom, the Samruk mercenary could now add superstitious to the cartel leader's personality traits.
“Shooter-One?”
“I'm here,” Nikita answered.
“How are we doing?”
“The roving patrol moved over to the second courtyard to watch his friends playing soccer. You are clear for now.”
The former ISA operator began looking for seams in the carpet, maybe a trap door. Under night vision, his task was made about ten times more difficult. He bent over several times to run his hand along suspect areas. Unfortunately, it wasn't like the Scooby Doo cartoons where you just turn a candle holder sideways and a door pops open.
Or was it?
Looking over Jimenez's firearms collection, he came to a display case. The sign above the case read: Goat's Horn in bloody red letters. It was the nick name that cartels gave to the AK-47 rifle, referencing the distinct curved shaped magazine known by terrorists and soldiers alike the world over. Inside the case itself were gold plated Kalashnikov rifles, some embedded with jewels and other decorations. Aghassi could see large printed words behind the glass but could not read them with his night vision goggles so he flipped them up.
Activating a small red colored LED flashlight, he read the words written at the center of the displayed rifles.
The Beast.
What the hell is the beast?
At this point he had more than a hunch. Pushing on the display case he found that it didn't budge it, but when pulled, it smoothly eased open on ball bearing rollers.
Gotcha.
Jimenez hunched over the pool of holy water and began scrubbing the blood off his hands and arms.
The church had been built over a hundred years ago and nature was slowly reclaiming it as her own. Everything, even the silent stone erected by the ancestors would eventually die, perish, and crumble back into what was before.
Strong pillars at each side of the church were encased in a tangle of twisting vines and overgrowth that reached up to the vaulted ceiling. There the creeping vegetation slowly gave way to the faded images of angels that stared at those below. The golden Catholic alter had long since been picked apart by looters, now there was just stone and shattered glass. Holes in the roof allowed a steady drip of water to create a pattering that echoed through the open space.
In place of the altar was an effigy of Santa Muerta. She was what this was all for.
The black robed skeleton wore a crown upon her head, the empty eye sockets hanging down at the sacrifice laid out before her. Jimenez looked away and back at his hands, the holy water now turning pink as he scrubbed away at the coagulated blood staining his skin. Wherever he went, she was close by. Her images were tattooed across his back, the hooded skeleton figure keeping watch. Drying his hands, the drug lord slipped back into his shir
t.
Santa Muerta had not been pleased with him as of late. His blood offerings had not been sufficient. The rival drug cartel members he had decapitated, the police officers he had hung off of overpasses, the countless assassinations that kept blood flowing in the streets day and night. They were not good enough and she had blighted him for it. When would it be enough, did he have to bleed all of Mexico dry before she took pity on him?
He shed no tears when the dog Ortega met his end at the hands of the gringos but instead of going back from where they came, they instead turned on Jimenez, attempting to eat his organization alive. They had killed many of his gunmen in the city, raided their training camp across the border, and now his pet intelligence agent, Arturo had gone dark when he was supposed to be helping him defeat the gringos. The mercenaries were closing the net around him. It could only be a Yankee plot. They were defeating his rivals to the north and they sent hired guns to take care of the smaller cartels in the south.
The ten-year old boy had been purchased from a local village. The locals were also followers of her, of Santa Muerte. Not the false idols, but the one true Saint of Death. She asked and you did not dare to disagree. The boy had screamed despite his instructions. They slashed open his veins and bled him dry around the alter. Soon, his eyes had grown distant and Jimenez knew that Santa Muerte had traveled inside the boy and taken him. Her empty eyes had met his. The small body now lay sprawled in front of the altar, the offering left for her to do with what she would.
Once again, the rulers of Mexico worshiped at the blood drenched altars of murder and human sacrifice.
She would now be satisfied.
Now she would grant him control over The Beast.
