Blood of the Assassin (Assassin Series 5) (24 page)

Cruz paced, his mind searching for a way out. “I don’t want to know the details. You think you can get what we need?” he asked, defeat in his voice. And more. Hunger. Eagerness. For results. For
El Rey
to go do what he did better than anyone else. A thing that Cruz would have hunted him to the ends of the earth for if it hadn’t been to save Dinah.

Funny how the moral certitude folded when you had skin in the game, he thought. His convictions suddenly took a back seat to expediency. And now he and the most dangerous assassin in Latin America, if not the world, were discussing logistics, exactly the same way any of the cartel bosses had discussed them with him before a high-profile execution.

“I wouldn’t have offered if I couldn’t,”
El Rey
said simply.

Cruz’s compulsive walking came to a halt a few paces from the assassin’s chair. “Do whatever you need to do.”

“You’re sure?”

“As sure as I’ve been about anything in my life.”

El Rey
stood, and tossed his empty water bottle into the trash. “Then we have a deal. Leave your phone on. And try not to sleep too deeply.”

Cruz watched as
El Rey
exited his office and moved across the floor with that oddly balletic stride of his – not a hint of wasted motion, easy and effortless – and then sat heavily in his seat, pondering what he had just put into motion. He had unleashed a force of nature to do what he couldn’t, and in doing so had violated every oath he’d taken, as well as the principles he held dear. He despised the assassin for what he was; and yet now, when he was at risk of losing Dinah, he didn’t hesitate to turn him loose, and damn the consequences.

How could he hold his head up? Look at himself in the mirror? In trying to save her, had he lost himself?

Briones’ return terminated his wallow in doubt.

“I sent you the document. I hate to say it, but he makes a lot of sense in it, and definitely caught a number of holes in the security planning that could have been disastrous if the German is on his game.”

“And we have to assume that he is. I don’t get the impression that he’s a man who does things in half measures.”

“Nor does our captive assassin.”

Briones waited for Cruz to tell him whatever he would need to know.

Cruz made a few notes on the yellow legal pad on his desk and then regarded Briones with a strained expression.

“He’s going to help find Dinah. Says he should have some information by tomorrow, at the latest. Possibly as early as tonight,” Cruz said without preamble.

Briones started in surprise. “Well, that’s great! I’ll be damned. Do you mind me asking how, sir?”

“It’s probably best if you don’t know the details. But the reason I’m telling you is so that you can be ready when we get the word.”

“I’ll assemble an assault team. Only the best men.”

Cruz shook his head. “No. We don’t know who we can trust. That’s been the problem all along. If we start preparing for an incursion, it’s possible that word will leak, and then Dinah...”

He didn’t have to finish the thought.

“Then how do you want to handle it?”

“We need to be flexible. Our new friend will call when he has the information, and we’ll decide then what we’ll do. It’ll probably depend on what we’re walking into. But for now, this has to be confined to you and me. Nobody else.”

Briones nodded. “I understand. What about ordnance?”

Cruz scribbled a terse missive on a piece of his stationery and signed it with a flourish. “Here. This will enable you to get whatever you need. I’d say a couple of ARX 160s with night vision scopes, a couple of UMP 9s, extra magazines, body armor, and night vision gear for both of us. And two silenced Berettas. We’ll have to go in hard, so we’ll need all the firepower we can carry. I want to be ready for anything.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to involve a few of my most loyal officers?”

“I’d say make up a short list of five that you trust with your life, but don’t call anyone until I give the go-ahead. This might have to happen fast, and I want all the options I can get. Maybe it’s just the two of us, maybe it’s more. But for now, it’s only us.” Cruz studied him. “Are you up for this?”

“Absolutely, sir. If he can deliver the goods it’s a major break. I’m honored you would choose me,” Briones said with quiet fervor.

“You might not be so thrilled once the bullets start flying.”

“Sir, I mean it when I say that I’ll make you proud.”

“I’ll settle for not getting shot, and getting my wife out intact.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll go down to headquarters and hit the armory, then be back in a few hours. Is there anything else?” Briones asked, suddenly anxious to get going.

“No. Wait. Yes. There is. Thank you. This is way above the call of duty.”

“I’m absolutely sure you would do the same for me, sir,” Briones said, and then spun and left, leaving Cruz to his thoughts.

A soft groan escaped Cruz’s lips after the door had closed, and for a moment, his resolve wavered as he watched Briones crossing the command center floor on the way to the elevators. The lieutenant was all about honor, loyalty, and pride, and had proved his mettle more than most of the other officers on the force. He was steadfast, and his trust in Cruz was absolute. But was that trust misplaced?

Briones might have been sure, but was Cruz? Would he have done the same thing if it had been Briones being held instead of Dinah? Made a bargain with the closest thing to Satan he’d ever encountered?

He mentally shook himself. After all the rhetoric, all the sentiment faded, his career had cost him everything. He had fought the good fight, and his reward had been a dead wife and daughter, and a command chain that was willing to take everything away from him that he’d earned in order to get its selfish needs met. Cruz might not have been sure of many things, but one was crystal clear to him: He wasn’t going to lose Dinah to the same monster that had claimed his family. Unlike that time, the assassin had presented a unique option, and as much as he felt like he had embarked on a road from which there was no turning back, he was equally sure that he had to do everything in his power to save his wife’s life.

When all was said and done, and the flags stopped waving and the speeches were over, that’s all that mattered, and all he cared about.

Getting Dinah back alive.

The estate on the exclusive Paseo de la Reforma boulevard, host to the most expensive homes in Mexico City, was quiet, the dinner hour having come and gone and the privileged residents having settled in for the evening, some watching television or reading, others preparing for sleep. A massive villa with a pseudo-Roman façade stood proudly on the huge corner lot, jacaranda trees offering up their purple blooms to the gentle breeze, and its lights twinkled in the darkness behind the eight-foot-high walls topped with decorative ironwork.

Traffic still rolled past, but it was sporadic now, most of the residential area having tucked in for the night. Behind the walls, seven armed guards patrolled the perimeter, another three stood inside, and
El Rey
watched from his hidden vantage point as a cloud of smoke rose from the closest of the men – a smoker, taking a break, chatting with one of the others to kill time and make the dull duty more bearable.

Crime in the area was not unheard of, but it was rare, especially since so many of the residents had full-time security. Bodyguards were a necessary status symbol for the nation’s rich and famous, and the neighborhood boasted plenty of both – actresses, captains of industry, politicians; all called the twelve-kilometer-long boulevard home, and most had seasoned ex-police or military to safeguard them. This was rarefied air in a city known for its violence and lawlessness, an oasis from the harsh reality outside its confines. Police patrolled the area assiduously, and the response time was said to be the fastest of anywhere in Mexico.

It didn’t surprise
El Rey
that the man who was currently at the top of the city’s most wanted list was staying in the most lavish section of town. The media made a great show of how committed the government was to cleaning up organized crime and ridding the nation of the death grip exercised by the cartels, but the truth was that their leaders had lived for years without being caught, their hundred billion dollars in annual revenue buying a certain selective blindness from law enforcement – after all, nobody was paid what they were worth, and that was especially true with the police, who might average four hundred dollars a month in pay. Throw a few grand the way of a commanding officer every so often, and it was hardly surprising that they were unable to apprehend their benefactors.

It was all a game, he knew, just as it was everywhere in the world. The smugly superior U.S. played by the same rules – it just took more money to buy immunity from prosecution. But human nature being what it was, those with the gold got to make the rules, and as always, they tended to operate by a different set than the rank and file. His nemesis and former employer,
Don
Aranas, the head of the Sinaloa cartel, whose ten-million-dollar bounty for his head was still the hushed topic of cartel gunman dreams, couldn’t be caught, even though his romantic dalliances included a wife who spent much of her time in San Diego, a beloved firecracker of a pop singing star who was a pin-up sensation and the object of countless male fantasies throughout Latin America, and a shockingly gorgeous television star who defined the new breed of Mexican glamour queen in spite of her tender youth. Even with these well-known associations, the police hadn’t been able to find him for two decades, and yet he managed to operate the most lucrative drug smuggling business in the world from his numerous hideouts in Mexico.

The power of the cartels was staggering, the income from their operations an inevitable part of the economy, as hotels, markets, casinos, gas station franchises...anything that could be used to launder the tsunami of greenbacks from the U.S. was purchased by anonymous corporations and operated by front men.

And those that laundered for the cartels, whose battles in Mexico killed over ten thousand a year, including many women and children, shared the cartels’ miraculous ability to dodge the laws that everyone else had to obey. When a mega-banking conglomerate was revealed to have been acting as the laundering bank of choice, right down to where cartel soldiers were bringing in their cash deposits in specially designed containers that would just fit through a teller window, it did a deal with the American Justice Department, agreeing to a fine of $1.8 billion dollars – equivalent to roughly five weeks of its operating profit.

None of the executives or managers who had been assisting the most bloodthirsty, ruthless criminal gangs in history to launder their money were indicted. The toothless American law enforcement apparatus declared that if the mega-bank was actually charged under the law and the profits from the partnership in the illegal scheme clawed back, it would endanger the world economy. Likewise, the executives couldn’t be prosecuted for their roles because it would jeopardize the stability of the bank. Some of them had to forego a small portion of their bonuses as punishment, while kids caught with a few ounces of marijuana went to jail, and anyone suspected of being involved with trafficking at a lower level forfeited all their assets, the assumption being that everything was the fruit of illegal gains.

None of the mainstream media outlets covered the outrage, of course, just as none of the Mexican media dared highlight the mockery of justice that was the daily cartel norm. The citizenry of the United States continued on its merry way, dutifully paying its taxes and sending its children to die in undeclared wars, while its law enforcement agency made sweetheart deals with murderers and criminals.

At least Mexicans understood that their government was hopelessly corrupt, and that any claims to the contrary were lies.
El Rey
had been raised in an environment where the double standard that money bought was celebrated by his mentor, who gleefully butchered whole families while remaining impossible to prosecute. The evidence that life wasn’t fair, nor ever would be, was an accepted part of his existence. You did what you had to do to get by, and hoped that you wouldn’t get squashed when the elephants were dancing their cash-fueled fandango. It had never occurred to him to speculate that things could be any different; it was naïve and simple-minded to do so. Money bought insulation, and the greatest crime in any country was to be weak and poor. It had been that way forever: under the Spanish, the French, and then Mexico’s own rulers, just as it had been true in Europe for as long as there had been recorded history, as well as it had been in the rest of the world.

He glanced at his watch, the oversized luminescent hands of the Panerai Luminor glowing in the gloom, and resigned himself to a long night.
El Jaguar
wasn’t showing any signs of getting down early, and
El Rey
was at the mercy of the cartel boss’s nocturnal habits, which at present involved two stunningly beautiful exotic dancers from one of the most expensive clubs in Mexico City, a bottle of tequila, and a whole lot of cocaine, from what he could see through the small binoculars he’d brought.
El Jaguar
apparently liked to party. Not surprising, given the business he was in.
El Rey
just hoped that he would wear himself out sooner rather than later. What he was planning would be better carried out under cover of night; and while there were many hours to go before the first light of dawn streaked the orange-tinged sky, time could get away from him quickly, complicating things.

He watched as the drug lord whipped off his dress shirt and twirled it around his head, howling like a wolf to an unheard melody as his young companions cheered him on, fortified with alcohol and Peruvian coke. One thing was obvious to the assassin, as he watched the kingpin’s paunch jiggle: The cartel boys knew how to blow off steam.

Enjoy it, my friend
, he thought as he smiled with a humorless grin.