Rage Of The Assassin (24 page)

“I don’t have the key.”

“What? I was told I would have access. Who does?”

“The shift supervisor.”

“Damn. Well, get him up here, now.”

“I’m not supposed to leave my post.”

Cruz softened his tone. “Son, I’m a captain with the Federal Police. I’ll stand watch. Just some advice, though – if a Federal officer tells you to do something, the correct answer is ‘Yes, sir,’ not ‘I can’t.’ Do you understand?”

The guard nodded. “Yes. I mean, yes, sir. I’m sorry. I’ll go find him.”

“Good man.”

He returned ten minutes later with an older man, perhaps thirty-something, who looked like he might pose a problem for Cruz. That impression was confirmed when the man stopped in front of him and spoke.

“My orders are that nobody goes in or out of there.”

“Correct. Except me. I’m giving you a modification of the original order. I’m in charge of the group that’s handling this emergency. I need to retrieve a patient and take her downstairs for questioning. Now open the door.”

“How do I know this is legit?”

Cruz exhaled with frustration. The man obviously wasn’t very bright. “Have there been a lot of high-ranking Federales walking the halls today, issuing orders? Are you confused about what authority a captain in the Federal Police has compared to a private security supervisor?” Cruz’s tone hardened. “Now open the door, keep your mouth shut, don’t let anyone out except me and my prisoner, or I’ll place you under arrest and you’ll spend a month in jail for your insolence.”

The man tried to stare Cruz down and then looked away. “For the record, I don’t like this one bit. You guys order us around and expect us to jump when you want.” The supervisor hesitated, obviously working himself up. “And that’s no way to speak to anyone. I’ve been on duty since before this started. I’m just trying to do my job, which is pretty miserable right now.”

Cruz didn’t push it. He wasn’t looking to prove any points, just get his wife out.

“Very well. We’re all pulling long hours. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute. I just need to find this prisoner.” He stared down at the door lever and raised an eyebrow, his hand on his pistol, just to underscore the real authority in the hall.

The man fumbled with his keys while Cruz waited beside him. When he finally unlocked the door, Cruz stepped into the waiting area, which was cool from the air-conditioning but heavy with the stagnant odor of too many bodies. He looked around the room as he pushed the door closed behind him and whispered as loud as he dared, “Dinah Cruz, I need you to come with me.”

His order was met by snores and snuffles, and then a figure rose in the dark from one of the chairs by the reception desk. “Romero?”

“Dinah Cruz? Not a word. You’re wanted for interrogation,” he said.

Several sleeping forms stirred awake at the sound of his voice. He needed to get her out of there. Cruz crossed the room and took her arm, and then led her back to the door as he whispered to her.

“Stay quiet until we’re in my car.”

Dinah nodded, and he opened the door and they moved through the doorway, still holding her arm as though she was his prisoner. The supervisor and the pimply-faced guard considered them both, and Cruz gave the pair a curt nod. “Lock it back up. Nobody is to leave. Understood?”

The trip downstairs seemed to take forever even though only a few minutes passed, and she remained silent throughout the return trip in the tunnel. Once they reached his vehicle and the CFE technicians had driven away, he held her to his chest as tears streamed down her face.

“I love you, Dinah. I told you I’d come for you.”

He felt her head nod against him. “I love you too. I knew you would.” She lifted her face to his and gave him an exhausted smile. “Papa.”

Chapter 40

The grounds of the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City were quiet at one a.m., the police presence required to maintain order far smaller than at the Federal building or the hospital. Those had turned into circuses, between the army, Federales, city police, and crowds of onlookers and vocal activists who weren’t exactly sure what they were protesting, given the dearth of hard facts the government had provided.

The perimeter of the museum’s verdant grounds was secured by army troops, their Humvees parked across the entry lanes, blocking all possible access and egress points. The handful of protestors who’d appeared mid-day had left once dusk had passed, and the outlying area was still, other than the armed soldiers patrolling the fence line.

Two demolitions experts had snuck into the building under cover of darkness; the risk of Aranas somehow watching twenty-four seven or having an informant in the building to alert him of the newcomers was considered remote enough to take the chance. They’d made their way in through the receiving area, hidden within two food carts the government team believed would fool any watching eyes into thinking that they were merely providing supplies for the people trapped inside – only a few dozen workers, thankfully. The carts were rolled to one of the service entrances, where they were left for the personnel inside the museum to retrieve. A moment after knocking on the door, several men’s arms had appeared through the doorway and pulled the carts inside, technically complying with the demand that nobody be allowed in or out of the buildings.

The museum was equipped with portable X-ray equipment used on artifacts, and the two military demolition specialists had spent hours studying the bomb from every angle, including the guts of the mechanism, using the scanner. They’d concluded it was a minor miracle of engineering that lived up to Aranas’s warning, designed to detonate with any movement, requiring no external power, and consisting of enough C-4 to level much of the building. Attached to the C-4 was a smaller secondary charge to detonate it, hooked up to a complicated bit of wizardry that could trigger it remotely…or if it was tampered with.

After much discussion and radio consulting with the American experts who had arrived that evening, they’d decided that their best bet lay in using a shaped charge to take out the secondary triggering explosive, the theory being that it could be accomplished with sufficient speed and accuracy so the main C-4 payload didn’t detonate. Beyond that risky approach, there was no other way they could see to neutralize the device, and one of the Americans had commented that he was glad they’d never seen anything like it on their soil.

The president had been informed of the risks involved, and Norteño had again protested that an approach with a less than hundred percent chance of success was ill-advised. As expected, he’d been overruled, the president’s political nose leading him to the compromise position his council members advocated in spite of the danger.

The bomb specialists in the museum had gotten the go-ahead a few minutes earlier and were busily making their preparations. They’d been ordered not to alert anyone else in the building, so they worked in silence as the rest of the staff slept.

Leo, the senior of the pair of demolitions experts, finished affixing the shaped charges to the side of the bomb’s steel exterior in locations they’d marked with chalk based on the schematic they had created from the X-rays. He stood and stretched his arms over his head, the patience and detail required to get it right straining his physique as much as his intellect, and glanced over at Juan, the other instructor. Both men were old hands and knew the risks in dealing with a device unlike any they’d seen. They’d discussed in hushed tones the level of sophistication evidenced by the bomb maker after they’d studied the results of the scans, which had been far beyond anything they’d seen. A guard had located the device an hour after the museum had been locked down, and even the placement had been chosen to optimize the damage – there had been no other spot that would have been equivalent, which, along with the workmanship and the design, told them that they were dealing with a sophisticated operation.

“You ready to do this?” Leo asked quietly. His voice sounded relaxed, though he was anything but, having gone in a matter of hours from the safety of a senior instructor’s job at the navy base in Veracruz to an assignment that could end his life.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Juan said. “Let’s move to the max range of the wireless trigger. I have a bad feeling about this. Anyone who could build this baby should have foreseen the possibility of shaped charges being used to interrupt detonation.”

Leo nodded. “Maybe that’s why they ordered that nobody was to enter or leave the building.”

“Let’s hope so,” Juan said doubtfully.

“You see any way it could be rigged to safeguard against it?”

Juan shook his head. “No. Or I wouldn’t still be here.”

“Then let’s do this and go home to mama.”

They moved to the next vault, one of fifteen storage areas used for artifacts that weren’t on display, and took cover behind a heavy wooden crate. They knew that the attempt wouldn’t mean much if their shaped charge failed – their only consolation was that the force of any blast would vaporize them instantly.

Leo ducked down as he retrieved a small radio transmitter from his pocket and armed the device. The handheld trigger was one he’d designed himself, which used encryption and transmitted on a military frequency so there was zero possibility of an accidental detonation signal from another source.

“Nice knowing you, buddy,” he said, a grim bit of gallows humor that was an old joke between the seasoned veterans, and depressed the button.

Chapter 41

The mood in the president’s suite was somber as the Security Council watched the replay of the museum footage taken by a military helicopter five hours earlier. The dark outline of the building flashed orange and a massive fireball roared skyward, carrying with it debris that damaged structures as far as a quarter mile away.

“Enough,” the president said as the glow from the explosion faded on the screen.

Norteño stopped the replay and waited in silence, opting not to belabor the obvious: that the result he’d predicted had come to pass.

The president rose and faced the gathering. “Gentlemen, we’re out of options. If we’re lucky, Aranas’s greed will overcome his anger at our trying to disarm the bomb and he won’t detonate the others. But I don’t think I need to tell anyone in this room how disappointed I am in this performance. We’ve lost twenty-seven lives, as well as countless irreplaceable treasures.”

The head of the council scowled. “While regrettable, it was the correct course.”

“No, it wasn’t, or we wouldn’t be sitting here at Aranas’s mercy,” the president snapped.

The rest of the council members chimed in while Norteño sat back with an impassive expression on his face. After several minutes of bickering, the president turned to him. “Well, you were right all along. Any breakthrough ideas?”

Norteño nodded and the room fell silent. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “How would Aranas know we tried to disarm the bomb?”

The head of the council laughed humorlessly. “I’d say the smoking crater where the museum stood might be a giveaway.”

Norteño offered a sad smile and fought to keep the condescending tone to a minimum. “You might say that, but I wouldn’t.”

“What are you getting at?” the president demanded.

Norteño scanned the table. “Look. All we know is that the bomb exploded. Nobody can be sure why. Not you, not Aranas – nobody. For all he knows, his bomb maker crossed the wrong wire. Or a small tremor set it off. We have two options here – we can either admit that we deliberately disobeyed his instructions, or we can go on the offensive, with our starting position being the assumption that he detonated it.”

The men looked at each other, stunned by Norteño’s suggestion. It had clearly never occurred to any of them to simply deny any wrongdoing and demand an explanation for why Aranas had acted in bad faith. Norteño’s voice strengthened as he continued. “I’ve taken the liberty of pulling seismic data from last night. There was actually a small amount of activity about an hour before the bomb blew. Not big – a 3.8 shake – but that can serve as plausible deniability. Our story, after we pretend puzzlement at Aranas’s accusations of tampering, will be that the tremor must have dislodged something, causing it to blow. We’re just fortunate the other bombs didn’t suffer from the same defect.” Norteño paused, allowing his duplicitous suggestion to sink in. “We blame his bomb maker. That’s where the fault lies.”

The president shook his head. “You really think he’ll buy that?”

“It’s non-disprovable. He can’t prove the tremor didn’t dislodge something, and nobody’s infallible, no matter how good – as we just learned by our top experts’ failed attempt. I think it’s a better gambit than admitting guilt. If I’m right and the money’s most important to him, he’ll want to go along with it.” Norteño spoke directly to the president. “The art will be in the presentation. We should open with an accusation, which will put him on the defensive from the start. He’ll fire back at us, and then you can advance the idea that a seismic event triggered it – that your experts warned you earlier that it was a risk given what we knew about the bombs, and that, sure enough, there was a tremor, and the rest is the bomb maker’s shoddy workmanship. I think you can sell it,” Norteño finished, and sat back.

The head of the council, seeing an out that would allow him to preserve his career, heartily endorsed Norteño’s plan, and by the time the meeting ended, Norteño’s gambit was the group’s official recommendation. The men were polishing a statement for the press, alluding to terrorist animals taking innocent life, when one of the president’s aides stuck his head through the door.

“Mr. President, excuse me, but you have a call.”

The president glared at the young man, annoyed. “I told you I wasn’t to be interrupted.”

“Yes, sir. But the caller said you were expecting the call, and that if I didn’t put him through, there would be hell to pay.”

The president nodded and motioned to his advisors. “Everybody out.”

Once the office emptied, the president sat behind his desk and stabbed the blinking line to life.