Russell Blake - Night of the Assassin

Altamar slammed his fist down on the scarred table-top of his favorite booth, having just finished telling another tale of one of his conquests, and threw back his head and laughed with delight. The girls on either side of him were all smiles. Another round of tequila and beer hastily arrived, Altamar having waved down a waitress moments earlier. The service staff didn’t need to ask what kind – it was always the same. Negro Modelo and Cazadores. Altamar liked the familiar, and he was like a drinking machine every Friday and Saturday night. His cousins invariably struggled to keep up with him as the hour got late, which deterred him not one iota. He’d be having a private party later with the pair of youthful minxes he was sitting with. His two cousins eyed him with envious admiration even as their vision began to blur. They had their own girls, but not much was going to be happening by the end of the night, when they’d fall dazed into bed with the room spinning while their companions did their best to entertain them. Altamar, on the other hand, had a reputation as insatiable, more than likely helped by the plentiful chemical supplementation he lavished upon himself. He looked around after delivering the hysterically funny punch-line to his latest story, and delivered it again, louder, for emphasis. No doubt it would be even funnier the second time.

“So I tell the fucker, ‘What, you think you’re superman? All right, asshole, so you’ll have no problem flying.’ And then I threw him off the roof of the high rise. You know, in the end, he didn’t fly so good!” He pounded the table again, killing himself with his wit.

His entourage tittered drunkenly. He quickly lost interest in the girls as nature called. Altamar stood up drunkenly and, after steadying himself with the table, woozily moved to the rear of the club, where he had an office with a private restroom. He grappled with his keys and unlocked the door before entering and turning the deadbolt, ensuring he wouldn’t be interrupted while conducting his important business. Before hitting the john he stumbled over to his desk, opened the center drawer and extracted a small vial. He fiddled with the top, and after opening it tapped out two fat lines of cocaine on the glass desktop. He rolled up a hundred dollar bill and snorted them with gusto, wincing at the delicious burn as the drug hit his septum. Augmentation complete, he moved to the bathroom and opened the door. He failed to notice the shadow in the dark room before excruciating pain lanced through his head and everything went dark.

Fifteen minutes later, his cousins realized that he’d been gone a long time and went back to the office to check on him. The door was locked. The men pounded on it, calling to him. After getting no response to multiple efforts, they went and found two of Altamar’s security detail, who swiftly broke the door down, guns drawn. The office was pitch black. When they turned on the lights, they were confronted with an empty room. The most sober of the cousins went to the window and pulled the blinds up. He yelled at the two guards, pointing at the opening.

Three of the iron bars over the window had been cut, either with a welding torch or some sort of acid, and were bent out at a right angle, creating a space just large enough for a body to fit through.

The music stopped two minutes later. The fiesta was abruptly terminated. Armed men milled about, uncertain as to what to do until the cousin who had discovered the window issued instructions and they raced for their vehicles.

Altamar faded in and out of consciousness, unsure what was happening to him. He was bouncing against a hard surface, felt cool air blowing over him and a sense of motion. He struggled to move but his wrists and ankles were bound and he had tape over his mouth. He opened his eyes wider but couldn’t make anything out; something was blocking his vision. His arm hurt in the upper bicep like he’d been shot, and the last thought he had as he faded again was that someone had injected him with something to knock him out.

Eventually, Altamar regained consciousness and this time he could see, albeit without much clarity. He blinked his eyes, trying to clear his head, which was splitting from the blow. He tried to reach up to touch the tender spot and discovered that he could only move his arm a few inches from where it was extended slightly above shoulder level. He tried the other arm, also extended, and met with the same resistance. Now fully alert, his respiration increased and he was flooded with a sense of panic. When he tried to move his legs, he encountered the same problem – he was immobilized, spread-eagled, his arms and legs stretched wide. His nose registered the musty odor of long-abandoned horse stalls, and when his vision returned to near normal, he could see that he was indeed in an old barn, chained to the floor. He continued to struggle for a few minutes until blood began tricking from his wrists where he’d torn most of the skin off from pulling against the chains.

The dim light came from a pair of headlights outside the closed barn door, where slim illumination crept through from around the sides and the base. Altamar screamed, more a hoarse croak than anything, largely due to the effects on his vocal cords of whatever he’d been dosed with. He paused after several seconds and heard a sound from the far end of the space. He was able to move his head and crane his neck and he saw a young man dressed entirely in black turn to face him from the area by the stalls. The young man sauntered over unhurriedly and smiled at Altamar, causing his breath to catch in his throat and his blood to run cold. He knew that look, and knew what it meant. He needed to take the initiative or this could get far worse.

“You fucking cocksucker. I’ll cut your balls off and force you to eat them in front of me. Do you have any idea who I am?” Altamar rasped at him. A good defense was often a strong offense.

The young man smiled again, almost blithely, and without responding, opened the barn door and went out to the truck that was parked outside, returning after a few minutes with a lit lantern. He placed it carefully on a stall ledge so it brightened the area where Altamar was chained and went back to the truck, extinguishing its headlights and shutting off the motor. Altamar heard the man’s footsteps grow louder and then he was blinded by a blue-white flash. His vision gradually returned, and he was blinded by another.

The young man was taking photographs of him.

A spike of fear ran through Altamar. He decided to try a different approach.

“I’m very, very rich. I can get you whatever you want, eh? Anything. How much money do you want? What’s it going to take?” Altamar sensed that threats weren’t going to have any effect, so he’d appeal to greed, which was a constant in all humans. It wasn’t a question of if, it was a matter of how much.

The man just smiled again, shaking his head as if dealing with a child.

“Did you hear me? I can get you anything. Millions of dollars. In cash. What’s your number? What do you want? A million? Two million? Fine. I can get you two million dollars with a phone call.”

The young man considered the idea, and then nodded.

“I think I’d like to be a millionaire. That sounds like it would be fun. So you get me two million dollars, and then once I have the money and I’m safe, I’ll release you. I’ll unlock your chains, and you’ll be free to go. You don’t know me, so I’m not worried about being found by your thugs. How do we do this?” the young man asked.

“Now you’re thinking. In my pocket. I have a phone. Get it for me, and I’ll give you a number to call. Let me talk, and we’ll set up getting you your money.”

“But how? How will I get the money and know I’m safe, and that your men aren’t watching me or following me?” he asked.