Rage of the Assassin: (Assassin Series #6)

by Russell Blake

  Cruz’s mouth fell open as the commissioner continued, “To head the effort, I’ve appointed the best man for the job: Eduardo Godoy, whose expertise navigating complicated political waters and experience with police work should serve the group well.”

  Cruz said nothing. The plus side of the selection of Godoy was that he would be the sacrificial lamb when the administration needed a public face for the government’s failure to recapture the crime lord. Godoy was too unseasoned to appreciate that he was being set up, which a part of Cruz delighted in even as he loathed the idea of working with the pompous imbecile.

  Godoy stood, as though ready to address a class of junior students. “Gentlemen, a pleasure to see so many familiar faces. Together we’ll get to the bottom of what happened, and we’ll pick up the scent of Aranas and follow it wherever it leads. I’ve already commandeered working space for a strike team, and the president has given his personal assurance that we’ll have anything we need.”

  “How?” Cruz asked, his voice mild. Godoy stared at him like Cruz had asked the question in Swahili.

  “Pardon me?” Godoy sputtered.

  “How will we achieve all this?”

  Godoy waved a careless hand. “Through perseverance and tireless police work.”

  “I see. Such as?”

  Godoy’s eyes narrowed. “Capitan Cruz, may I remind you that this is a time of national emergency? It would be best to put aside personal differences and focus on the job, don’t you think?”

  “Couldn’t agree more. How do we do that, exactly? Who’s in charge of what, what are the first steps we should take, what approach should we use?”

  The commissioner rescued Godoy from being forced to admit that he had no idea how to do anything he’d assured them they would accomplish. “The group is new. Your job is to figure out the best way to proceed. I want you all to hand off your current workload to subordinates, requisition whatever staff you need, and get to work on this. Godoy will act as a liaison between the group and the government, as well as manage the media. I need you to cooperate with each other,” he finished, staring directly at Cruz.

  Cruz looked away. “I understand, but honestly, I have a full docket of active investigations that require my personal attention. It is therefore with regret that I must respectfully decline the opportunity. But I’ll be happy to recommend a worthy replacement.”

  The commissioner’s expression hardened. “I’m afraid this isn’t an invitation. We need our top people on this, Cruz. You’re our best. We can’t afford a substitution. I hope you understand.”

  Cruz was ready for the bulldozing. “My ongoing operations could potentially thwart conflicts involving hundreds of casualties. How could locating one man, who was no doubt running his cartel quite handily from inside the prison, be more important than stopping–”

  Godoy cut him off. “We’re not here to question why we’ve been chartered with this manhunt. Orders come from the highest levels.” He stared Cruz down. “The highest. Capitan, I recognize that we’ve had our disagreements; however, I’m willing to put them behind us for the good of the mission. I ask you to do the same.”

  Cruz realized that for all his dismissal of Godoy as a fool, he’d been outflanked by the man. There was no way to refuse other than resigning, and if he did over disliking one of the members of the group, he’d have a hell of a time collecting his pension – nobody appreciated pettiness, even from a national hero, and he was sure Godoy would lobby for some loophole to be found that delayed his payout indefinitely.

  Cruz sighed. “Very well. But it will take some doing. I have a number of sensitive cases in play. To just drop them in someone’s lap could cost police lives.”

  Godoy offered a patronizing smile. “Of course. We’ll all do our best to accommodate you, Capitan.”

  When the meeting finally concluded, Cruz returned to his office lost in thought. There had to be some way to sidestep Godoy and foist his involvement off on someone else.

  He just needed to figure out how.

  But in the meantime, he had investigations to transition to his second-in-command, Lieutenant Fernando Briones. Cruz tapped his subordinate’s extension into his phone and called him over. When Briones was seated, Cruz paced in front of his window as he explained the new situation.

  “The most pressing operation is the child slavery ring. We’re only hours from their next shipment from Guatemala, and if we’re lucky, our informant knows where the girls are arriving,” Cruz said. His group had been investigating the New Millennium Cartel’s push into child prostitution in the capital, a widespread problem that had drawn the outrage of the media. Girls, barely adolescents, were kidnapped or sold by their parents to traffickers in impoverished Central American countries like Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, transported to Mexico City, and put to work as sex slaves while strung out on drugs. The average age of children in the ring they were investigating was twelve years old, but their informant had revealed that there were girls as young as ten routinely shipped north. Predators from the United States paid handsomely for sexual tourism where they could engage in illegal behavior with children, and the cartels were all too ready to capitalize on that market.

  “I can run the interception. Shouldn’t be anything but routine. The hard part’s done – now we just need to keep surveillance in place and be prepared to move,” Briones assured Cruz. The younger man eyed his superior. “You don’t look happy with the new assignment.”

  “I’m not. It’s bullshit and we both know it. They have a boob running it, and it’s all for political theater purposes anyway. If they’d really wanted to stop Aranas from escaping, they’d have locked him in solitary on the second floor and checked his cell daily, rather than providing luxury accommodations and free access to anything he could think of. The whole thing’s a bad joke for the papers. Waste of time.”

  “How long do you think it’ll take before you can bow out?”

  “Probably a week or two. After that, there will be some other crisis to occupy the public’s attention – the president might get a new haircut, or some celeb might not wear panties to a nightclub.”

  Briones perked up at the idea. “I’m available to handle that investigation, Capitan.”

  Cruz smiled sadly. “Anything for the job, eh, Briones?”

  “I’m a career man.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  Chapter 7

  Dust motes swirled in a beam of light that streamed from the loft apartment’s skylight. The area was silent except for the whir of a high-revolution power tool at a workbench at the far end of the expansive space. A hulking figure sat on a high-back barstool at a workbench, safety glasses in place, hunched over a project, his brow furrowed with concentration as he went about his chore. After a few more refinements, he held one end of the metal casing up to a lamp mounted to a shelf in front of him. He squinted at the furrow he’d made along the edge and inspected his work as he hummed atonally to himself.

  He nodded in satisfaction and retrieved a package of orange foam earplugs. He tore the plastic open with his teeth and compressed the plugs before wedging them into his ears, and then activated a small vacuum, taking care to clean up the fine metal dust his labors had generated. He moved the nozzle in a geometric pattern, tracing squares, his movements as methodical as a robot’s, cleaning until the work area was spotless.

  When he was done, he toed the vacuum off, hung the nozzle back in place, and removed the plugs. Everything was going well. Perfectly, in fact.

  A bell chimed, startling him, and he cried out involuntarily, his voice tense. He looked in disbelief at the digital clock blinking on the bench. He’d placed it there so he didn’t lose track of his hours and work through the night, as had been his practice before his benefactor had suggested the simple preventive measure.

  12:30 on the nose.

  He gently set the casing he’d been grinding on a pad and laid the tool beside it, checking to ensure it was off even
though it clearly was. When he stood he was easily six feet – tall for a Mexican, pudgy from lack of exercise, but reasonably proportioned. He slid the safety glasses over his brow, placed them on a rolling tray by his side, and then moved to the intercom, which was equipped with a closed-circuit camera and screen. He activated the camera and peered at the black-and-white image of a young man waiting impatiently at the main door downstairs.

  “Be there in a minute,” he said into the speaker, his voice flat and toneless, and felt at the keys he kept on a lanyard around his neck. It wouldn’t do to go out without them. He needed to lock up. Danger was everywhere.

  He crossed the room to the kitchen, glanced up at the light from the overhead dome, and flipped a switch labeled “K-1.” LED lamps blinked to life. He switched them off, muttering to himself.

  “On. Off.”

  He repeated the process and the quiet words, and then moved to the next switch and performed the ritual until he’d flipped every switch in the room twice. When he arrived at his front door, he left the final lamp illuminated and twisted the top deadbolt with delicate fingers. A surgeon’s hands, someone had once said, or a pianist’s. The clank as the first lock sprang open caused him to wince, as did the sound of the second, and the third. Each time his shoulders shuddered as though gunshots were echoing through the room, but he continued until the door swung open.

  Out in the hall he closed each lock with his keys, different shapes denoting which fit which deadbolt, the process as familiar as bathing or brushing his teeth – something he was guilty of doing obsessively, sometimes twenty times a day. After trying the pewter knob to confirm that the door was indeed secure, he walked to the stairs. Motion lights turned on as he approached the stairwell, which brightened as he neared.

  At the street-level lobby below, he approached the front entrance, which at one point had been glass but which he’d long ago replaced with steel. Welded lateral bars reinforced the half-inch plate, outfitted with industrial hinges to support the heavy weight. He checked the intercom screen mounted by the side to verify the man waiting outside was the same one he’d seen when he was upstairs. It was. The man was watching something on the street, something outside of the security cam’s field of view.

  The occupant unclasped two bolts that secured a rectangular hatch mounted to the door at shoulder level and slid it to the side, wincing again at the sound the metal made as it moved. It was time to oil the groove, he reminded himself, and this time he wouldn’t forget – as he had the last few times.

  The man on the front porch looked up at the slot and held up a plastic bag. “Delivery. Pancho’s. The usual. Just the way you ordered.”

  “Pass it through.”

  The delivery man did as asked, and after a long moment a tray slid out through the gap with a small wad of twenty-peso notes neatly wrapped with a rubber band. “The tip’s included,” the occupant’s voice said from within the building, and then the tray retracted, closing the portal to the outside world and leaving the delivery man holding the cash.

  He pocketed the money and retraced his steps to his motorcycle parked on the sidewalk and shook his head. Every day the exact same delivery, the exact same ritual, without variation, for the eight months he’d been working for the restaurant. Enough food to feed a family of four, always prepared the same way, the order sent online with detailed delivery instructions – as though someone might err and get it wrong, or forget that the customer wanted exactly three packets of salt and one of pepper, measured amounts of various salsas, and plastic utensils with an extra knife, just in case the first was dull.

  Always the same.

  The customer was a nutcase, obviously, he thought as he kick-started the ancient Kawasaki. But he tipped well, and that was all the delivery man cared about. Always twenty percent, whereas many of the cheapskates on his route gave him a measly five or ten like they were doing him a favor.

  The occupant stood by the door until he heard the motorcycle rev and pull away, and then he checked and rechecked the bolts, feeling to ensure they were properly seated several times before turning and mounting the stairs. The building was empty save for his loft, but he still listened apprehensively for any sign of life when he arrived at the upstairs landing. You never knew. Not with complete certainty. Nothing in life was certain. One couldn’t be too careful.

  After a long pause he strode back to his door and unlocked the deadbolts, taking his time, humming. He was hungry, but the food would have to last until tomorrow’s delivery. He could pace himself; the meals were individually wrapped so he couldn’t mistakenly eat too much and be left starving tomorrow morning, a constant fear of his after he’d done so once, exactly nine hundred and seventeen days ago. That wouldn’t do. He still remembered it vividly and hoped to never repeat it. Any trip outside his world required preparation, and that took time and planning. When he’d realized he had no food, he’d panicked, and it had taken the remainder of the day to recover from the anxiety he’d experienced walking the two blocks to the market.

  No, that would never do at all.

  Across the street, two men watched the delivery with boredom from the window of the apartment they’d occupied for four years. Both had prison tattoos that ran the length of their arms, and their faces were scarred from long-forgotten fights. The stouter of the pair grunted.

  “El Maquino will dine well another day,” he said.

  His companion grinned. “The boss will be pleased to hear it.”

  AKM assault rifles leaned against the base of the window, spare magazines by their sides. They’d never been used. But that wasn’t the point. The daily delivery was one of the risk points in their twenty-four-hour vigil. The men would be replaced by the evening crew in another eight hours, who would sit watching the screens that displayed images of the building from every angle, sent by infrared and night-vision-equipped cameras discreetly mounted for thorough coverage. Their instructions were simple and unvarying: protect at all costs the building’s occupant, whom they knew only by his moniker, El Maquino. Protect him from what, they didn’t have to ask.

  Danger. Adversaries. Those who would do him harm.

  Whether El Maquino knew they were there, watching the street and providing additional protection to the fortress-like building, they could never be sure. They simply knew their orders, which they followed to the letter. Failure to maintain vigilance would be greeted harshly, they’d been assured, and they believed it.

  And so they watched and waited, passing the time telling each other stories and lying about conquests, never taking their eyes off the entrance. Another pair did the same at the rear of the building, monitoring the smaller alley and the array of motion detectors that lined the roof of the four-story structure. Two more sat in vehicles strategically positioned on the street, the drivers similarly armed and watching for anything suspicious.

  “I wonder what he does in there all day. I mean, don’t you? Tell me it isn’t creepy.”

  “Mind your own business, and it’ll be better for your health.”

  The first man nodded. Wise words from his elder.

  Words to live by.

  Chapter 8

  Carla took an appreciative final sip of coffee and beamed at El Rey.

  “I have a surprise.”

  One of his eyebrows rose, and he sat forward. “I thought we already covered that. We’re leaving.”

  She laughed. “No, I mean another one.”

  “Good or bad?”

  “Good, I think. I just got a job offer. A big salary hike.”

  “Really? Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. The only problem is that it’s in Spain. Madrid. Working for the network there.”

  “Do you want to take the job?”

  She nodded. “Absolutely. But I want you to think about coming with me.”

  They sat wordlessly for a few moments. “To Spain,” he repeated.

  “There are worse places. And it’s not like you’re doing a lot here. You have no rea
son to stay.”

  “Only one,” he agreed, and raised his cup to his lips.

  Carla registered a tremor in his hand and shot him a look of concern. “What is it?”

  “I’m due for my final shot. The antidote I told you about.”

  Her expression hardened. “Then get it.”

  “I’ve been trying. CISEN has been putting me off for a week.”

  “That’s unacceptable. You kept your end of the bargain.”

  “Yes, although not completely unexpected. They’re weasels. You have to be to take up that line of work. Nothing’s ever as it seems.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That they don’t seem to be in a big hurry to help me now that my usefulness is at an end.”

  She frowned. “Then you have to make them.”

  “Oh, I know. I’m way ahead of you. I always have at least one contingency plan.”

  “You think they’re going to try to screw you? You have the president’s word…”

  It was his turn to frown. “A politician. A talking head who does what the ruling elite tell him to do. His word’s worth about what any politician’s promise is – which is not a hell of a lot.”

  “So what are you going to do? Are the symptoms getting worse?”

  “They started six days ago. Just a few tics and a little muscle soreness. The shaking is new.” His expression softened as he saw her obvious concern. “Don’t worry. I’m not dead yet.”

  “I hate when you joke about it.”

  He shrugged. “We all go out the same way.”

  “Hopefully a long time from now.”

  El Rey nodded. “Hopefully. I’m thinking I’ll pay an unexpected visit to CISEN today since I can’t get anyone to return my calls. They always seem to enjoy it when I drop in unannounced.”