Russell Blake - Revenge of the Assassin

He radioed the tactical team and relayed his orders. Remain in place. Next, he contacted the van operators and instructed them to do the same. They were also likely exhausted by now, but that was the job and it came with the territory. At worst, the two man teams could sleep in short shifts, as he had. It wasn’t his problem, but he still felt sorry for the men.

The morning dragged by, and at noon Cruz made a judgment call. They would go in, but stealthily, only three plainclothes officers using a passkey provided by the soon-to-be-wealthy Gabriela. If El Rey was in there, he’d managed to shield the apartment from their best surveillance efforts, but that didn’t surprise Cruz.

Cruz turned to brief the men he had selected, who had arrived a few minutes earlier.

“Guerrero, you, Simon and Roberto do the entry. Use whatever force is necessary. You have my permission. And make sure you have vests on under your jackets. I don’t want to have to call anyone’s family and tell them daddy’s not coming home.”

Guerrero pounded his chest with his fist, thumping the bulletproof vest for emphasis. They were ready.

The men made their way to the apartment complex, scanning the sidewalk reflexively. They stopped in the well-kept lobby and got the key from Gabriela, then took the elevator to the sixth floor. The building was a medium luxury property, where the rent on a two bedroom apartment would run three month’s salary of any of the officers; when they exited the elevator they stepped onto polished marble tiles.

El Rey ’s apartment was the last on the left. The officers moved soundlessly on rubber soles, pistols ready, safeties off. Guerrero, as usual, was in the lead, and he moved to the far side of the doorway, with his two partners taking the opposite wall. He gingerly slipped the key into the lock and turned it with the delicacy of a neurosurgeon. Their ears strained for any hint of movement inside, but heard nothing. Guerrero nodded at Simon and Roberto, holding each man’s gaze, and then with a deep breath, he turned the knob and eased the door open. Under Guerrero’s holding fire cover, Simon lunged into the foyer, doing a lightning scan of the small entryway with his weapon but detecting no threat.

Roberto and Guerrero followed him, guns sweeping, and they moved as one into the darkened space beyond the entry. As their eyes adjusted to the paucity of light they could make out a kitchen on the right and a larger area straight ahead. Guerrero moved past them into the living room, his Beretta M9A1 now pointing at the master bedroom doorway, and then he stopped, sniffing the air.

What the hell?

He turned to Roberto, who was reaching for the wall switch to give them some light, and screamed, “Nooo…!”

It was too late.

A blast erupted through the apartment door, blowing out all the windows, showering the street below with glass and debris as the fireball shot through the apertures. The crude five gallon gas can had been augmented by leaving the stove propane running with the pilot light off and the automatic shutoff disabled, creating a massive bomb. Rigging a simple electrically-activated detonator had been laughably simple. The three men were instantly incinerated, the air sucked out of their lungs almost as quickly as their skin melted and their bones seared.

Cruz watched the firestorm erupt through the apartment’s facade on the monitors and realized instantly that somehow, the assassin had trumped them.

He threw back his chair and slammed his coffee cup down against the table, shattering it with a crash. Briones pushed back from his vantage point and moved to help and then thought better of it when he saw the look in the captain’s eyes.

Cruz licked away a rivulet of blood from his hand and wrapped a paper towel from the coffee tray around it, seemingly oblivious to the pain. He collected himself with a shudder and then took another glance at the screens, watching black smoke belch from the front of the complex. He didn’t need to wait for the report from the team that was rushing towards the building.

That afternoon, he would be making the visits he dreaded to the three spouses.

Cruz exited the conference room where he’d been meeting with the president’s security people, frustrated at their conviction that El Rey couldn’t get to him. He understood that they believed they were good at their jobs, but he knew that the assassin was better — which wasn’t to say that the president’s detail wasn’t dedicated or good, they just weren’t El Rey . He’d already proved he could get past them once. And not only them, but also the American Secret Service, considered the best in the world.

He’d said as much at their get-together, but met with blank stares and polite assurances, except for the president’s chief of staff, who had seemed to get it. Then again, his career was predicated on his boss continuing to breathe, so he was probably more motivated than the rest. He’d taken Cruz aside on the way out and slipped him his card, and asked him to call whenever he had more information or any breakthrough ideas on how to handle the mess. That had given Cruz hope, even if it was a slim reed upon which to rest optimism.

He walked to his car, waiting in the secure lot, and thought to himself that they were in serious trouble. If it had been him, he would simply cancel any appearance that could create an opportunity to execute the president. He really didn’t understand how these men’s minds worked. They’d blithely told him that they had every confidence in his abilities, had listened politely as he’d detailed the story of the threat, as well as the latest series of miraculous escapes, and then thanked him for his time. It was like everyone was in denial — like El Rey ’s existence, if they acknowledged it, challenged their competence, and so it was better to ignore him.

And there was the question of how the assassin had escaped, which still lingered in Cruz’s mind — as well as how the Sinaloans had known that the arms dealer had been the leak.

Cruz mentally went down the list of everyone who had been privy to the task force’s moves and dismissed them one at a time as potential traitors. Briones had proved his loyalty with blood, as had many of his group chiefs. They put their lives on the line every day to combat the cartels and had all lost more than their fair share of men to the bastards. There was no way they would sell him out for money. Even if some of them were corruptible, and he didn’t deceive himself that they were altar boys, passing information to El Rey went beyond anything they would risk. It was high treason, especially if it resulted in the death of the president. Even the most larcenous and greedy man drew the line somewhere, and that was not a line — it was a twenty-meter-high wall.

His driver opened his door for him, and he gratefully sank into the seat, feeling exhausted by the presentation as well as the course of the last few days. He’d attended a memorial service for the men he’d lost at the apartment — there was literally nothing left of them after the explosion, so it was the best they could do — and had tried to comfort the wives and children of men he’d known only in a professional sense, and even then, not particularly well. His words had sounded hollow to him even as he’d uttered all the usual cliches. It was disheartening — the assassin was winning every round. Which meant that the trend wasn’t Cruz’s friend.

As much as it pained him, he would need to begin a quiet investigation into his group leaders, to see if anyone had recently come into some inexplicable money or had bought a car or home outside of their pay range. He couldn’t just discount the possibility someone had rolled, as improbable as it was to him. Harsh experience had long ago taught him to expect the worst, and then be happy if the outcome turned out anything less than horrible. While he was now happy with his new life with Dinah, there were still nights where he awoke in a cold sweat, dreaming of his family’s final moments, or reliving the day he’d opened the special delivery box to find the heads of his wife and young daughter in it, with a scorpion in each of their mouths. He hoped that eventually he could keep the horror at bay, but during times of stress their ghosts came back to haunt him.