Blood of the Assassin (Assassin Series 5) (13 page)

“Change your mind. It’s too much to ask. Walk away from it. I’ll stand by you no matter what happens. But don’t do this. I’m begging you. Don’t.”

“I have to. They’ve got me in an impossible position. I can’t lose everything I’ve worked for my entire life. I just can’t.”

“What about me, Romero? What about losing your wife? Has it occurred to you that that could happen? Do you think I’m just going to stand by, barefoot in the kitchen, while you work side by side with the man who killed my father? Because I won’t. So deal with that impossible position. Figure out what’s more important to you – your job, or me. Because this is a relationship ender. There are few things I’d leave you over, but this is one of them,” she seethed, and then whirled and stormed to the bedroom.

“Dinah. Come on. Please. Take some time to cool down, to think things through.”

“Plan on sleeping on the couch. Get drunk on the wine. Do whatever the hell you want, but don’t approach me for any reason but to tell me that you’ll quit. I don’t want to hear anything else.”

“Dinah...”

The bedroom door slammed, sounding like a gunshot in the small space, and Cruz was left staring down the hall, wondering what had just happened, and whether Dinah could possibly mean what she’d said in anger and haste.

His instinct was to give her some time to cool down, to think. A day, maybe two, and she’d have perspective. Right now she was just lashing out and making impossible demands. It was purely emotional, he knew. She’d soften with some time to think.

At least, that was his hope.

He downed the glass of wine in three gulps, then rose and went to refrigerator for another one. The astringent Chablis burned on the way down, especially after the afternoon’s tequila, but he didn’t care. The only way he was going to get any sleep was if he was out of it. Hopefully he’d drift off after another bottle. And hopefully Dinah would reconsider her ultimatum. She had to.

Cruz pulled the cork and carried the new bottle to the living room, then sat on the couch and shut off the lights and muted the TV. A long pull emptied a quarter of the wine, and he frowned at the taste – he really should spend more on the stuff they drank, he thought bitterly.

He looked at the glass sitting on the table and dismissed it. More efficient just to drain the bottle directly. Eliminate the middleman. Cut to the chase.

A muffled thud came from the bedroom, where Dinah was making her displeasure unmistakable, even though he wasn’t in there.

It was going to be a very long night.

Werner Rauschenbach’s home on the Spanish coast near Moraira was spotlessly clean, furnished in a Germanic no-nonsense fashion, everything utilitarian and in its place. Rauschenbach didn’t place a lot of value on art or expensive clutter, and his home reflected that philosophy to an almost Spartan degree. That wasn’t to say that he didn’t enjoy the finer things in life – he allowed himself a few luxuries, like the sixty-inch LCD screen television mounted on the living room wall and the twelve-hundred dollar espresso machine. But he couldn’t see the point of pouring money into signature couches or designer tables – the entire exercise seemed pointless to him, the pastime of the spoiled and weak.

The other reason that he chose to forego creature comforts was because of his vocation – he could never be sure that he wouldn’t have to run at a moment’s notice, leaving everything behind. As his career had progressed, that seemed less likely, but he could never know with a hundred percent certainty that this day wouldn’t be the one when any of a dozen nations’ law enforcement agencies came through the door with guns and cuffs.

From the outside, the cottage resembled any of countless rustic vacation homes owned by prosperous Europeans with a taste for warmer weather and a more relaxed pace, but closer inspection would have revealed state-of-the-art security equipment, belying the benign exterior. Rauschenbach had hired a group from Finland, among the best in the world at what they did, to outfit the house, and they had been methodical and comprehensive in their approach. Motion detectors, hidden surveillance cameras, pressure sensors, reinforced steel doors, and bulletproof glass windows had been only the first stage in their makeover.

Half the basement had been converted into a high-security vault that rivaled any of the banks in the area, and this was where the assassin was now sitting, going over the satellite imagery of his target location. The Mexicans were lackadaisical in many ways, but the security for the event where he would kill the Chinese leader would be world class, with not only the nation’s finest keeping it secure but also a substantial force of Chinese bodyguards, who were not known for sloppiness. It would be a difficult hit, to be sure; but the money would be sufficient for him to retire, when added to the already substantial pile of cash he’d accumulated over his career as Europe’s foremost contract killer.

His eyes were beginning to burn from hours of poring over blueprints, satellite images, and maps, and he leaned back in his Aeron chair and stretched his arms over his head, his mind reflexively making notes even as he tried to relax. He had nine days to get into the country and confirm his choice of approaches – a heartbeat in mission timing terms, but sufficient for a specialist of his skill.

His next hurdle would be entering Mexico undetected. He’d researched it extensively, and the easiest way to get in was through the United States – entry was a mere formality, and in the Baja region, you could just drive across without any checks. The problem of course being that getting into the U.S. was considerably harder. He’d ran a number of scenarios, and it seemed that the most reliable plan would be to slip across from Guatemala or enter by sea. He had seriously considered an ocean approach, although it would take several days on board a cargo ship to make it into one of the ports – either Manzanillo or Veracruz. He could rendezvous with a tramp steamer that plied the trade between South America and Mexico and make it aboard in international waters via either a high-speed boat out of Belize or Honduras. But the time factor was too undependable, so after looking at all his options, he had decided to fly into Santiago, Chile, via Madrid, and then travel north to Guatemala City, where he had already gotten in touch with a group that could get him across the border with no complications.

The Los Zetas cartel had expanded its operations into Africa and Europe, and he knew them, if not intimately. The good news was that they were seasoned smugglers and controlled much of Guatemala, so once he was in their care the trip north would be much faster and less fraught with complications than a sea voyage into one of the Mexican ports.

His neck was stiff, and he rolled his head to loosen the muscles, then decided to call it a night. His flight was the next morning, and he would need time to get to Valencia, where he would catch the first commuter flight to Madrid, and from there to Chile. His bag was already packed, with the bare minimum he’d decided he could carry – a few days’ worth of clothes, twenty-five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, and two sets of false papers. He would be able to withdraw money from one of his Mexican bank accounts, set up when he’d agreed to take the job two weeks prior, and he’d already arranged to have a hundred thousand dollars of operational funds wired to them, waiting for his arrival, using a blind corporate account.

Getting a weapon onto the planes was a taller order, but one that he had solved with a little ingenuity, using a ruse he’d perfected over time. He stood and stretched again, then walked over to a black seven-foot-long hard tube-case. He methodically removed one end, a cap that he then bounced in his hand several times, and placed it on his work table and moved to his weapons cache. He opened a metal cabinet. Inside were a dozen guns of every imaginable variety: revolvers, semi-automatic pistols, sniper rifles, assault rifles, submachine guns. And the weapon he’d chosen for Mexico – a custom-made .338 caliber Arctic Warfare AWM rifle that he’d paid a small fortune for and which had been heavily modified, consisting of little more than a barrel, a single-shot chamber altered to accommodate longer cartridges, a tubular shoulder stock, a high-powered scope, and a hand-made silencer. He reached out and lifted the ebony matte-finished gun from its resting place and studied it for a few moments, then moved to his workbench and dismantled it into its component parts, the feel of the cool steel reassuring in his practiced hands.

Once it was nothing more than seemingly random pieces of metal, he moved to another corner of the room and returned with four fishing rods. He carefully unscrewed the butt on the first one and slid the barrel into it, the neoprene-coated interior acting as a snug sleeve inside the thin lead sheath he’d painstakingly crafted to line the cores of the rod handles. He reassembled it and placed the section on the table, then removed five CNC LN-105 .338 caliber very low drag bullets and placed them next to it. The remainder of the rifle fit into the handles of the other three rods along with the rounds. When he was done he moved to the wall, where he lifted a welding mask from a peg and pulled it over his head.

Twenty minutes later he was finished. The rifle had been sealed into the rod stocks, which were covered in cork for a more convincing cosmetic grip, and featured reel seats that were now undetectable as being segmented for the weapon’s storage. He inspected his work with satisfaction. While it was entirely possible that he would be able to source a weapon in Mexico, this eliminated the need – and his custom-made gun of choice for this assignment would be accurate at ranges most couldn’t even imagine. Of course, there was always the chance that once he was on site and had physically evaluated the location he’d chosen for the execution he would opt for some other approach than a gun, but it never hurt to have your own tools in the field.

Unlike his usual contracts, where he would have a special-purpose one-time-use weapon he would buy in-country and then discard once the job was done, on this one he was going into an area of the world where he’d never worked before, so his resource base was limited. For anywhere in Europe or the former Soviet Union he could make two phone calls and have a weapon waiting for him, but not in Mexico, and this was far too high profile a sanction to trust to an unknown.

The reel case was purely for theater, and he would discard it along with the four reels once he was in Mexico City. It would take an hour of painstaking work with a metal file to dismantle the rods and extract the rifle, but he wasn’t worried. The delicate part of the operation was passing through airport security – although he knew that the fishing gear would pass with flying colors and receive only a cursory, obligatory inspection.

He wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead and slid the case strap over his shoulder, and then stooped to pick up the reel box before moving out of the vault room, taking care to shut the door and spin the combination lock. He’d never had a breakin at his home, and it was unlikely that he would while he was gone on his fishing holiday to Central America, but he was naturally cautious – underscored by the papers and photos he’d put in his pockets, to be burned upstairs before he left. He had memorized what he needed to know, and there would be no trace of his intent when he departed for the airport in Valencia at five the next morning.

His tickets had been bought online using credit cards linked to three shell corporations, and he’d carefully chosen the carriers and the routes to avoid in-depth scrutiny of his passport. The one he was traveling on was in the name of Edgar Simms, native of Canada. Nobody ever suspected the Canadians, he’d found.

He hummed the Canadian national anthem as he mounted the stairs, a small smile playing across his face. He would have a nice glass or two of an excellent Rioja he’d been saving for a special occasion, and then get his customary six hours of sleep before embarking on his trip. His preparations were complete, and now he could unwind over dinner and a good red.

Upstairs, he did a quick check online and noted that the first half of the sanction funds had been deposited into his Austrian account – a formality, to be sure, but an important one nevertheless. He’d had no doubt it would be there, but it was nice to see all the zeros, and the sight brought another smile to his lips.

It would be eight days, and then he would be retiring a comfortable, if not rich, man, who could indulge his pursuits in peace somewhere he could disappear into the woodwork. Perhaps Australia, or maybe Vietnam. He was in no hurry to choose. There would be plenty of time for that once his last job was finished.

The CISEN-supplied offices were nondescript, a three-story building in a commercial area that would raise no eyebrows. After spending a fitful night of scattered sleep on the couch, Cruz rose early and was behind his new desk in his headquarters for the next eight days, already making calls at seven-thirty. He had carefully considered whom from the
Federales
he wanted to work with, and had a short list of fewer than a dozen men who were able, talented, and entirely dependable. He called each at home and gave them the new address, swearing them to secrecy and ordering them to hand off whatever they were actively working on to others on the task force, and report to the new offices by ten.

The lingering after-effects of the wine had his head pounding, and he dry swallowed three aspirin as he dialed the last of his picks for the team – Lieutenant Fernando Briones. The younger man answered on the third ring, and was as surprised as any of the others when Cruz gave him a series of precise instructions, ordering him to stop by the headquarters offices before coming, to set up a direct link from the new digs to the
Federales
’ servers.

“What’s the new assignment,
Capitan
? And why work from a remote location?” Briones asked, the sound of the television droning in the background.

“I’ll tell you everything when you come in. Just get the link taken care of and clear the boards. We’re going to be working round the clock until further notice.”