Return of the Assassin (Assassin Series 3) (7 page)

“Who else have you called?”

“The head of the detail that was transporting him, who committed to notifying all the appropriate agencies.”

Cruz took a calming breath. “Were there any witnesses? What happened?”

“Yes, a couple in a car saw a big truck ram the transport vehicle, and then an SUV pulled up and armed men got out. The man says he thinks it was a Lincoln Navigator or a big Ford SUV. Neither of them are sure, and there were no plates on the truck…”

“Are there helicopters in the air? What’s being done? They couldn’t have gotten very far,” Cruz observed.

“Of course. But there isn’t much to go on just yet. The guards are still groggy. The attackers used some kind of gas.”

“Shit. All right. I’m going to get on the road. Who is the officer in charge?”

“Lieutenant Abrijo. He indicated he’d be in touch within a few minutes.”

“Got a number for him?”

Cruz was already moving back to the conference room as he dialed the number on his cell phone. He burst through the door as it started to ring.

“Listen up, people. Major emergency.
El Rey
’s broken out of prison. Happened just a few minutes ago. Briones? We’ll take your car. I want to get to the scene immediately,” he announced, and then a voice came on the line.

“Lieutenant Abrijo? Captain Cruz, head of the
El Rey
task force. What the hell happened?” he demanded.

“We’re still trying to figure it out. There was a collision, and some sort of an extraction team got him out of the cage in the back of the transport van. From what we can tell, it was sophisticated, coordinated, and perfectly executed. They were in and out in under two minutes, if that. This was a pro group…”

“Fine. But how could they have known he was being transported?” Cruz asked.

“That’s part of the mystery. That, and how they knew which vehicle was being used. There were two decoy vans in addition to the primary, and they only went after the real one,” Abrijo exclaimed in frustration. “This stinks. They must have received detailed inside information.”

“I tend to agree, although it’s too early to speculate. Abrijo, I’m headed over to the prison now. Where exactly are you? Give me a breakdown of what’s being done,” Cruz ordered as he and Briones made for the elevator.

“We’ve got the armored division mobilized, an APB out on the suspect vehicle as well as the truck, and birds in the air. But they have a head start, so unless they’re stupid or careless, you know as well as I do that every minute we don’t find them decreases the odds…”

“Are you at the prison?”

“No, I just arrived at the crash site.”

Abrijo gave him directions.

“Set up roadblocks and checkpoints in a perimeter ten miles from the prison. I don’t want anyone in or out of the area without being searched. There’s no way this prick is going to escape justice. It came at far too high a price,” Cruz reminded him.

When the elevator arrived, Cruz signed off and told Briones where they were headed.

His day had just gone from mundane and unpleasant to catastrophic in the blink of an eye.

~

The Navigator pulled into a veterinary supply warehouse, followed a few minutes later by the truck, and the gunmen divided up after changing into business attire. One man gathered the weapons and other equipment and placed them into two large rucksacks, which he stowed in the rear of a local police cruiser. Next to it, a dark blue van with a red cross on each side sat by the entry, its bank of roof-mounted lights glittering in the artificial luminescence from the overhead lamps.

The leader and his helper moved into the back of the building and emerged a few minutes later wearing federal police uniforms. They each took one of
El Rey
’s arms, and after removing the prison chains and dressing him in clothes brought for that purpose, he was also transformed into a federal policeman.

The unlikely metamorphosis complete, they placed him on a gurney which they wheeled into the back of the police ambulance. The leader jumped in the back with him, and the other man climbed behind the wheel, starting the engine with a rumble before hitting the flashing lights.

They pulled away, leaving the rest of the team to disperse and find their way in the three other vehicles in the warehouse. The Navigator and the truck would be dealt with later. That would be somebody else’s chore, to be taken care of once the heat had died down and the roadblocks had been lifted.

~

El Rey
came to with a start, but couldn’t move his arms or legs. He had the sensation of movement and knew from the vibration he was in a vehicle. He tentatively tried to shift one arm, and then the other, but it was no good – straps held him secure to whatever the padded surface was that he was lying on.

He opened his eyes and found himself staring at a federal police officer, who was filling a syringe from a small glass bottle with a clear fluid in it. The man regarded
El Rey
impassively and then leaned towards the front of the vehicle.

“He’s awake. Let me know when you can pull to a stop.”

El Rey
raised his head and registered a tube trailing from his left arm up to a bag of fluids on an IV pole mounted to the gurney upon which he was strapped.

“Okay. We’re at a light. You got thirty seconds,” the driver called over his shoulder.

“Who are you?”
El Rey
’s voice sounded foreign, ethereal, the coarse whispered rasp something alien.

The policeman ignored the question, instead reaching up with the syringe and emptying it into the IV line before reconnecting the bag.

“Your savior and guardian angel. Nighty night,” he said as he patted the assassin’s chest.

Almost instantly, the interior blurred, and then everything darkened and faded.

~

The scene of the assault and subsequent breakout was chaotic by the time Cruz and Briones got there. Helicopters hovered near the army and police roadblocks in the distance. Everyone was agitated and jumpy.

Cruz opened the passenger door and strode over to where the ranking federal police officer was dispensing instructions to his men.

“Lieutenant Abrijo?” Cruz guessed, seeing his insignia, and extended his hand.

Abrijo shook it. “You must be the famous Captain Cruz. Glad you could make it.”

“What have we got? Anything new?” Cruz probed.

“The officers in the van remember being hit by a truck, then some men approaching them in a professional formation, but beyond that, nothing. The emergency medical tech says that the amnesia is probably due to the gas. We retrieved the canister and sent it to the forensics lab for analysis, but whatever it was, it isn’t helping us find the perps right now,” Abrijo explained.

“Any theories on how they knew that
El Rey
was in this van?”

“Negative. Even if someone had been watching when he was loaded, which is impossible given that it took place behind the prison gates, there would be no way of knowing for sure which of the three vans had him once they all hit the road. None of them have plates for that exact reason.”

“Hmm. And yet they obviously not only knew which van, but also the route. Am I correct that’s impossible?” Cruz asked.

“Yes. It’s never happened before. This is a first. Then again, prisoners awaiting sentencing aren’t usually incarcerated in the prison. Usually they’re held downtown in jail. Nobody has ever broken out of this facility. It’s considered impenetrable. But one of the reasons is because they don’t transport prisoners beyond the walls…”

Cruz peered at the prison van’s crumpled front end. “Anything you can glean from the evidence?”

“The problem is, what evidence? We have a few shell casings from where the attackers fired a warning burst into the top of the van, and the gas canister, and some paint from where the truck pinned them. Beyond that, nothing,” Abrijo lamented.

“Tire tracks? Footprints? Fingerprints? What about the witnesses?”

“Tires were BF Goodrich All Terrains judging from the impressions in the dirt by the shoulder. That narrows it down to half the SUVs in Mexico. We’ve taken impressions of the footprints, but unless we have a suspect, that’s unlikely to lead to anything. They’re dusting the van for prints, but if they were as pro as the breakout suggests, I’d bet they were wearing gloves.” Abrijo shook his head. “The witnesses are over there.” He gestured to a gold Nissan Sentra where a couple was nodding and speaking with two officers. “But they don’t have much more to offer than what I told you on the phone. Black SUV, men in masks, no plates, in and out in two minutes or less.”

“Where were they when it happened?” Cruz asked.

Abrijo pointed at the street that connected to the main artery.

“Pulling down that road, getting ready to swing into the turn lane to get on the freeway. They stopped when they saw the truck slam into the van, and the husband backed away up the hill when he saw the armed men. Smart, actually. I wouldn’t have stuck around with a kidnapping in process.”

“Could they describe the guns?”

“No need. The casings are 7.62 mm. That says AK47 to me.”

“Any prints from the casings?” Cruz asked.

“As you’d expect in an operation like this, the shells are clean. They were wiped, then loaded using gloves, no doubt.”

“Someone went to a lot of trouble to plan this out. When did the route and the schedule get formalized, and who knew about it?” Cruz inquired.

“Too many. The staff at the court, at the prison, and everyone connected with arranging the vans and the guards, including within the
Federales
. Easier to ask at this point who didn’t know about it. As to the schedule, it was inked yesterday.”

“Why was he being taken to court?”

“The lead judge wanted to see him in person before making a final determination on his sentence. It’s his prerogative.”

“Are you kidding me? The man is the most infamous killer in Mexico. What would staring at him do that the record of countless assassinations doesn’t? That makes absolutely no sense,” Cruz fumed.

“Agreed, but you know judges. They’re like demi-gods, living in ivory towers while we worker ants clean up the messes. And what they say, goes.”

Cruz shook his head. The system was crazy. They’d worked for years to put this animal behind bars, only to have him handed an opportunity to escape before he was even formally sentenced.

Sometimes Cruz really hated the whole bureaucracy. He should have just shot the assassin when he’d had the chance. He could still remember the temptation upon seeing his nemesis spread-eagled on the hood of Briones’ police cruiser, his service pistol trembling in his right hand from the adrenaline of the chase as he sighted on the killer’s inert form. He could have done the world a favor then, and nobody would have questioned a later story that
El Rey
had appeared to have been reaching for a weapon.

Sadly, that wasn’t how the game worked. But it was still a compelling daydream.

Now, the super-assassin who had been responsible for multiple attempts on the president’s life, who had killed scores, if not hundreds, with the cold-blooded precision of a slaughterhouse, had beaten them again and was once more out in the world while Cruz and his colleagues scrambled to close the barn door.

To call it disheartening was the understatement of the decade.

Cruz made the mental commitment that if he ever had the assassin in his cross hairs again, he would pull the trigger without hesitation and rid the world once and for all of one of its most lethal predators.

Which was easy enough to commit to when he was free as a bird and probably winging his way at high speed via private jet or helicopter even as Cruz stood entertaining schoolboy flights of fancy.

Cruz watched the interrogation of the Nissan couple from a distance, but didn’t have the heart to get involved. He already knew that would yield no clues.

He and Briones carefully walked the crime scene, the relative solitude disrupted by blaring reports over the radio every few minutes from the roadblocks. Even as they studied every inch of the ground around the van, Cruz sensed that they were wasting their time. He spent a few minutes talking to the three guards, who were now fully conscious, if a little groggy, and peered at the prison chain, neatly cut with bolt cutters – further proof, as if any were needed, that the attackers had been organized and prepared.

Cruz couldn’t see what his presence there was adding to the party, so he wandered a few paces from the gathered
Federales
, trailed by Briones.

“Come on. I want to talk to the warden. We need to start with how the perpetrators knew about the transport in the first place. That’s the weak link. Find the leak, and we’ll be one step closer to finding who broke
El Rey
out.”

The first thing
El Rey
noticed when he opened his eyes was the distinctive medicinal smell of a hospital. The low-pitched steady beeping of his pulse tracing a green graph on a small screen a few feet from his bed reinforced his impression, as did the IV bag now mounted on a bedside metal pole. He tried to move his arms and was surprised that he could. No restraints were in evidence, and his legs were also free.

His mind quickly raced over the implications. Somehow, he had landed in a medical facility, and yet there was no evidence of him being a captive. There were no bars on the window, and he wasn’t cuffed to the bed or in any way restricted. He craned his neck to see whether there were any clothes in the room, but saw nothing, and was rewarded for his effort with a flash of searing pain from the base of his skull.

His eyes caught the distinctive shape of a closed circuit camera mounted over his bed just as footsteps sounded from the hall outside his door. He laid his head back on the pillow as four men entered. Two were dressed in white medical coats, the other two wore suits. One of the doctors approached him and wordlessly checked his vitals before glancing at the other and stepping away from the edge of the bed. He moved to the IV and expertly removed the cannula from
El Rey
’s arm, then rolled up the tubing and pushed the stand into the far corner. Both doctors had a hushed discussion before they walked to the door, leaving him alone with the suits.