Russell Blake - Night of the Assassin

“Make sure it’s low fat. Remember I’m on a diet,” he chided, rubbing his ample belly with a grin.

“Always, Don Remarosa,” Maria assured him.

Manuel was a brutal killer who had executed twenty competitors over his two decades of ascending the cartel ladder in Sinaloa, but he loved his mother, his four children, his dog, his wife and his two mistresses. And Maria’s cooking.

It never occurred to him to question his lifestyle – he’d come up from the streets, where he’d started out as a collector for one of Don Aranas’ cells, and had worked his way up to his current position as one of Altamar’s trusted lieutenants, and was now making ten million dollars every year. This, for a boy from the slums who had terminated his education at the age of twelve to live by his wits on the streets of Culiacan. The cartel game had made him a rich man, and he wanted for nothing. If he had to get his hands dirty, so be it. He’d murdered his first man when he was thirteen, using his bare hands and a bread knife, and had never looked back.

His life had been relatively tranquil under the reign of his boss, and he had hardly had to kill anyone so far this year – an anomaly for the business. It was a time of peace, and he was happy to be reaping the rewards of Altamar’s rule. He still remembered the bad time a few years back when Don Miguel had been executed, the streets running red with blood. He’d had to pack his family and send them off to Lake Chapala during the worst of it. For months, he’d lived like a terrorist commander, hiding for his life in different anonymous locations as he waged a guerilla war against his competitors each day. It was like anything else, he supposed. There were good times and the not so good times. It wasn’t perfect, but then again, nobody got rich in Mexico without getting blood on their hands. He’d made his choices – and had prevailed. He couldn’t complain.

Manuel lumbered to the entry door with Sadie springing alongside him and stepped outside to the crisp air of a bright new morning. He loved this time of year. It was cool enough so you weren’t sweating through your clothes all day, but the rainy season hadn’t started yet. Spring was a perfect time to live in Sinaloa. His morning shift of bodyguards was dutifully waiting outside for him, two of them on All Terrain Vehicles, with their weapons cradled in their laps, ready for the jog at whatever time it would begin.

“ Hola, chicos. You ready for another good one?” Manuel greeted his men.

No reply answered him. None was expected. These weren’t his friends, no matter how warm and fuzzy the Don acted, and they understood their role was to protect him, not chat with him.

Sadie whined and nudged his hand with her nose, anxious to get underway. Manuel began stretching, using the columns of his porch for support, smiling at his beloved dog – barely more than a puppy.

Searing lances of white hot pain shot through his upper-body as his chest exploded. Blood splattered Sadie and his men as the four round burst of gunfire from the brush shredded his torso. The men froze momentarily before taking cover wherever they could, shooting haphazardly at the area where the gunfire had come from. The two on ATVs gunned their motors and went tearing off in the direction of the sniper, until first one and then the other’s heads exploded, the vehicles slowing and turning aimlessly now that their operators were dead. The two guards by the porch had taken refuge behind the heavy stone columns. They fired without conviction into the dense foliage at the property's perimeter.

Manuel stared up at the complex herringbone pattern of the brickwork in the dome built into the roof over his porch, the cupula, his breath gurgling from the holes in his chest as his life ran out onto the rustic stone floor. Sadie approached and nosed his face with her own, licking the spattered blood from his chin in an effort to comfort him, her warm tongue the last thing he would ever register. His eyes met hers for a brief instant and then grew wide as he noisily exhaled a long groaning rattle before shuddering into stillness.

Sadie lay beside her master, then stood and circled him. She nudged him again with her nose, and then, as dogs had done since the time they’d joined humans as companions in caves, she sat and pointed her head to the heavens and let forth a baleful howl, filled with all the sadness and pain of the world.

Her beloved master was gone. She was now alone, as only the surviving can be.

“What do you mean Altamar is missing. What the fuck does that mean? Missing?” Jorge Encarlo screamed into his cell phone. “Does that mean he decided to disappear and bang a fifteen year old for a few days, or does that mean he’s mulch in a tomato field?”

“ Jefe, I’m telling you everything I know. I heard from a friend of a friend that he went missing yesterday and his organization is scrambling to find him. Doesn’t sound like young love to me…” the voice on the phone advised.

Encarlo was a bulldog of a man, heavily muscled with a buzz cut and a closely cropped four day shadow. “Is there anything else? God damn it, get some more information. I don’t care what you have to do. This could be really big if someone’s taken the cocksucker out,” Encarlo snarled.

“I know. I’m on it. But you know how this goes. Nobody’s going to talk if they think they could wind up beheaded for doing so.”

“Right. I get it. But the problem is that if Altamar’s been taken out, we need to move rapidly – or we’ll all be as good as dead,” Encarlo warned.

“I’m doing everything I can. Really. Give me some more time and I’ll find out more. This just came in, and it’s not easy getting anyone on his crew to talk. They’re not chatty types, if you remember.”

Encarlo silently counted to three. “Look. I’m not paying you to tell me how hard it is to do your job. I’m paying for you to do it. So do your fucking job and get me some intelligence, or I’ll find someone who can.” Encarlo was fuming and had nobody to take his anger out on. He stared at his little Motorola flip phone, the latest model, and snapped it closed in frustration.

What the hell was going on with Altamar? If he was really missing in a way that suggested he would never be reappearing except as pieces floating in the river, then Encarlo needed to get positioned to take action against the other lieutenants. That was how it worked. If the king was dead, long live whoever was left alive once the smoke cleared and they hosed the blood off the sidewalks. He didn’t make the rules, but he was a survivor, nonetheless. At thirty-one, he was already reputed to be a mover and, even by cartel standards, was utterly ruthless. He’d learned early that shock and awe went a long way towards moving you up the food chain, and so he was prone to violent outbursts of slaughter at the slightest provocation. That was his modus operandi and it had served him in good stead.

Encarlo owned a recycling plant that shipped its product to the United States once it was processed, which had provided excellent cover for shipping other items north as well. His operation was one of many responsible for the growing methamphetamine traffic that was slowly displacing crack cocaine in many areas of the U.S.. It was a booming market with a rock bottom production cost, so the profits from trafficking in it were swelling his accounts. It made the cocaine trade seem like small potatoes, if the growth curve kept up.

He picked unconsciously at a scabbed area above his left ear. It was a nervous tick, one of many he’d developed from the constant pressure to stay one step ahead of the rest of the wolf pack. Encarlo used his own products and consumed a fair amount of both meth and cocaine in a cocktail of stimulants that enabled him to sleep only four hours at a stint. He firmly believed that much of his success was thanks to the long hours he worked, in addition to an innate cunning borne of the streets. Those traits, combined with a relentless sadistic bent and a sociopathic streak that would have been the envy of any serial killer, made him the perfect mid-level cartel functionary. His men and his competitors were terrified of him, for good reason – the chemical supplementation often resulted in erratic mood swings; he could be set off on a bloody tirade by virtually anything.