Russell Blake - King of Swords

“Men. Quick. Over there. That man — the Federal Policeman. He’s down. Help him. I’ll get the truck. We need to get him to a hospital.” El Rey saw the confusion in their eyes. “Now!” he bawled at them. “That’s an order. He’s been hit. Get a move on!” They sprang into action, and jogged over to where Briones lay.

El Rey climbed into the driver’s seat and cranked the engine, jamming it into gear and tearing straight to the hills. He only needed a half minute head start, and he’d be golden. It would be just like if he’d been successful, only with more pursuit. The wind dried the sweat on his face as he bounced along, the massive four wheel vehicle’s heavily knobbed tires gripping the steep slope as it climbed towards the peak above.

The soldiers made it to Briones, who was bleeding heavily from his shoulder. His vest had stopped the shot to the chest, and though there would be a painful bruise, it wasn’t a deal breaker — but the arm was: the bullet had nicked an artery, and blood spurted freely from the wound. He tried to speak, but found himself disoriented and momentarily unable to do so. Cruz, having noticed the downed man, came running with a lopsided gait. He leaned over him, putting his head close to his ear.

Briones struggled to talk.

“ El Rey . There…”

He used the remains of his energy to point in the direction of the Humvee, now three quarters up the hill and throwing out a cloud of dust. Cruz looked back down at him, and Briones’ eyes rolled back into his head as it fell limp against the pavement.

“Get an ambulance. Run. Hurry. Where’s your commanding officer?” Cruz demanded.

“Over there.” the soldier pointed to the group of soldiers in front of them, thirty yards away.

Cruz debated for a split second, and then abandoned his initial instinct, which was to commandeer one of the other Humvees and give chase. He moved to the officers, and quickly explained what had happened.

“He’s out of range, and I don’t think we want to shoot up the hills and cause an international incident. Get the helicopters loaded with some crack shots, and take off. I’ll go after him with some men in one of the trucks,” Cruz directed.

The officers were taken aback for a few seconds, gawping at the blood surrounding the fallen policeman before snapping into action. The general trotted over to a man holding the rank of major, and gave him direction. The major quickly held his radio to his mouth and barked a sequence of orders.

They were losing time. It would take several more minutes to get the choppers into the air, best case. That was too long.

Cruz limped over to the nearest Humvee and slung his rifle next to him, calling to the three soldiers who had approached him.

“Get in. Now.”

They exchanged furtive glances, then hopped aboard. Cruz roared pell-mell up the hill in full-on pursuit.

Back at the stage, the kids were still whacking at the pinata with all their might, the drama taking place on the perimeter off to the rear side of the building invisible to the attendees. The roar of the diesel motors was muffled by the linen shade element and the blaring fiesta horns blaring from the speakers.

When the two large military helicopters lifted off, the pinata festivities had grown tiresome, and the dignitaries were restless and hot. When the infernal creature hadn’t fallen apart after ten minutes of determined swatting, that part of the summit entertainment was concluded by the Mayor, and the assembled attendees moved gratefully into the building interior, where refreshments and arctic air-conditioning waited to greet them.

El Rey ’s Humvee slid to a stop by an old shed two hills away from the conference center. He studied the dust cloud from a pursuit vehicle, and calculated that it had to be several minutes off. He tossed his helmet into the truck and shrugged out of the uniform, beneath which he wore black cargo shorts and a T-shirt.

He hurried to the shed and disappeared inside the abandoned structure. Emerging a few seconds later, he pushed a heavy-duty off road motorcycle to the side of the Humvee and jumped on the kick start. The motor roared to life. He kicked the gear selector and tore down the slope into an even more remote area of uninhabited brush.

Cruz came over the hill and saw the motorcycle leap into the air, landing with a puff of dirt as it raced into the wilds.

“Shit. We’ll never get him in this,” Cruz lamented. “How does this radio work? We need to let the helicopters know what direction he’s headed, and that he’s on a bike.”

One of the soldiers jabbed at a button and turned a dial — within moments a voice crackled over the air. Cruz grabbed the microphone from him and barked directions to the pursuers before stomping on the gas and rocking down the hill, past the shed, to the arroyo down which the assassin had disappeared.

El Rey was enjoying the pursuit. The men in the Humvee had to be hating life right now, as they fought a losing battle to keep up with the nimble motorcycle. They didn’t stand a chance.

He sped along the dry wash for several minutes and then swung up a tributary gulch that led to the uninhabited mountains that bisected the peninsula. Part of him wondered what had gone wrong with the bull. Everything had been so perfectly planned, and then it didn’t explode. What the fuck . It was his first failure ever, which annoyed him more than being pursued by half the Mexican army.

Spotting the cactus with the streak of yellow paint on it, he made another right turn, and thirty yards farther, pulled to a stop. All the planning was worth it, he reasoned with satisfaction. They’d never catch him, and even though he hadn’t succeeded in his attempt to kill the two presidents, this escape would be spoken of in hushed awe by police for generations.

He killed the motorcycle engine, dropped his mount and walked into a small cave that had been eroded by centuries of flash floods from the mountains. He couldn’t help but grin at the thought of his pursuers’ plight.

Cruz saw the motorcycle tire tracks careen off to the left, and he spun the wheel, nearly flipping the burly vehicle. As they tore up the arroyo, they heard a sound from above. Cruz slowed, and the men searched the sky for the source of the clamor.

An ultra-light flew off into the distance, a single man at the controls. It was already five hundred yards away, so out of rifle range, leaving Cruz and the soldiers to gape at it in disbelief.

It banked over San Jose, and made for the coast and the sparsely inhabited East Cape area.

Cruz watched it disappearing from view as he radioed to the pursuing choppers. A few minutes later they chucked by overhead, a pair of gunships after little more than a kite with a lawnmower-sized engine propelling it.

A large part of him wanted to celebrate at the prospect of nailing the son of a bitch, but a tiny voice inside him countered that they wouldn’t. El Rey may be a homicidal psychopath, but stupid or careless he obviously wasn’t. Cruz watched the helicopters disappear in pursuit, and then, finding himself suddenly purposeless, turned the wheel and headed back to the convention center, his part in the chase over.

El Rey soared over the highway and then banked again, heading in the direction of the coast. He was looking for a very specific area and knew he was on borrowed time. The search team would now be looking for an ultra-light, so he’d need to ditch soon. Fortunately, everything was still going according to plan. He fished a cell phone from the knit bag suspended from the chassis and pushed redial even as he rapidly trimmed altitude.

“I’ll be arriving in two minutes. Have everyone suited up and ready to go,” he instructed into the phone, which he then dropped; watching as it fell two hundred feet to the ground. He was deliberately flying as low as possible, so as to avoid possible radar hits, but there was always a chance, so he’d taken an extra precaution.