Russell Blake - Revenge of the Assassin

El Rey thought about it. This was a very strange situation, and not at all what he’d envisioned. He’d been expecting almost anything, but not a job offer. He regarded the man, who was clearly extremely tough. This was a man who had faced death many times, you could tell. He was afraid of El Rey killing him, but he was also resigned to it, if that was how the night would end. Better dead than to let down his master. El Rey knew the kind. He gestured with his weapon.

“I’ll consider it. Give me a phone number to call, and when I’m ready, I will get in touch,” El Rey instructed.

“My orders were to have you accompany me. We have a Gulfstream V waiting at the airport that can hit Mexico without refueling. I urge you to reconsider.”

“I don’t care what your orders were. I am retired. If I decide to meet with Don Aranas, it’s out of respect for his position, not because of any orders. Give me a number, and if I decide to, I will call and arrange a meeting within a week. It will be just the two of us. Nobody else. And the price will be very high. Twenty million U.S.. There will be no negotiation. That’s what it will take to bring me out of retirement if I choose to do so. If I decide not to, I won’t call, and you can tell Don Aranas that I have respectfully declined.” El Rey motioned with the gun. “You are still alive for one reason. I want you to take that message back to him. If you’re unwilling to, say so, and I can arrange for you to join your men in the gutter.”

The man nodded and then slowly reached into his jacket pocket for a pen and a scrap of paper — a parking stub. He watched El Rey studying him, and then, after considering it for a few moments, scrawled a number on the back of the ticket. He replaced the pen in his jacket and then held the slip out to El Rey .

“Place it on the ground and then turn around and walk out of here. Keep walking until you get to the main street and then cross into the park. Walk to the far side, and from there, do whatever you want. But be assured of one thing. If I ever see you, or any of your men, again, I will kill you like a dog, without hesitation. Nothing personal. You know how it is,” El Rey said, speaking softly, as was his custom.

The man nodded. “I’ll take him the message.”

He bent down and placed the parking ticket on the ground and then turned as instructed. El Rey slammed him in the base of the neck with the heavy steel pistol, and he tumbled to the ground. Picking up the stub, he calculated that the man would be out for at least fifteen minutes — plenty of time to get to his apartment, grab his gear, and disappear forever.

When the man came to, he was being shaken awake by a uniformed police officer. A blue glow flickered on the street from the roof lights of the squad cars. A harsh glare illuminated the building’s battered facade from the headlights of the four gathered cars. A huddle of cops stood outside by the two corpses, which had been covered with a tarp. El Rey was gone.

He told the police that he’d been assaulted and mugged, and that the last thing he remembered was being told to move into the building. He knew nothing about the two dead men — perhaps they’d happened along and tried to help him. He didn’t know. He’d been unconscious throughout whatever had happened and vaguely remembered a pair of large men, rough-looking, perhaps homeless — he struggled to give as good a description as he could muster, but it was all blurry and had happened so fast.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have his wallet — not surprising, given that he’d just been robbed; but he could get his passport brought to him with a phone call to a colleague at the airport. The officers took him into the precinct and processed his statement, and a doctor checked him perfunctorily. No concussion — just a sore neck and a bad headache. He was allowed to make his call, and within a few minutes the shift chief got a phone call from the head of the Mendoza police force.

Four hours later, the Gulfstream lifted into the night sky and banked north, paralleling the Andes on its way up the coast.

Cruz sat with his advisory team in the conference room, Briones seated by his side, as they strategized on how best to take down the bodega, which they’d been watching for a week. It was obvious to them that the facility was being used as a distribution point for drugs and arms, and the only real questions that remained were ones of timing and logistics.

Briones glanced at his notes. “As suspected, the contraband comes in during the day, apparently from two suppliers, both of which are small construction supply companies that don’t have any other customers. We haven’t been able to get close enough for hundred percent confirmation, but it appears that one of them is dropping off crates of weapons, and the other, drugs. Most likely meth, because the vehicles that are arriving to pick it up at night are well known local meth distributors who specialize in trafficking in the barrios. Could be some marijuana, too, but that’s not a big concern. Guns and meth are,” Briones summarized.

Cruz stood. “We need to coordinate taking down the two vendors as well as the bodega, preferably all at the same time. I’m not nearly as worried about the individual dealers making the pickups. There will be ten more to replace them when we drag them off the street, so the overwhelming priority has to be the supply. Cut off the supply, and most of the problem goes away.” He turned his attention to Briones. “Let’s talk about defenses.”

“It’s relatively low-key. At night, there are only three security men, and we haven’t seen any inside, so neutralize them and it’s a clean sweep. There are usually more men there during the day — workers and legitimate delivery people, so the odds of collateral damage increase with a daytime strike. I’m recommending going in just before dawn, when the night shift will be the most tired, and doing a stealth takeout of the sentries,” Briones concluded.

One of the men at the table shook his head. “It’s not going to sit well with the press if we just gun down the guards with no warning or opportunity to allow them to surrender.”

Cruz nodded. “I’d normally have a problem doing so, but these men are carrying automatic weapons that are illegal in Mexico and are playing host to known cartel street dealers. Our last operations involved considerable police and army casualties, and I’ve about had it with our men being butchered to give these animals a chance to lay down their arms. They almost never do, and all we are doing is giving them warning so they can dig in and kill our forces. I’m done with that. If you’re carrying around an AK-47 and distributing drugs that are killing kids, you don’t need a warning. You need a coffin. That’s going to be our new policy. Zero tolerance.”

The man persisted. “Will the attorney general buy off on that? Doesn’t it violate their rights?”

“On this mission, we will be presenting it as a fait accompli . It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. If you have a problem with that, then you can be the one to go visit the families of the dead officers when these bastards gun them down after they’ve gotten their warning, and explain why the killers deserved a chance. We’ve identified all three as low-level enforcers for the Sinaloa cartel — men who are known killers. These men are butchers. We know it. I’m saying we cut them down before they can do more damage. If you’re uncomfortable with that, I can have you re-assigned to a different group. Make up your mind,” Cruz warned.

The man backed down, shaking his head. “I just don’t want any fallout that could hurt us later.”