King of Swords (Assassin series #1) (24 page)

It wasn’t a comprehensive strategy, but it was a good start, and as the sun began to dip behind the Sierra La Laguna mountains the undercover team prepared to begin the first of many long nights in southern Baja’s dens of iniquity, searching for an illusive man with no name other than that of a tarot card.

Chapter 14

Cruz felt like he’d been through the wringer after the last two days’ back-to-back meetings. Ten hour shifts were customary for him, but with all the work piling up while he met with his team leaders, he was clocking twelve to thirteen, and it still was not enough. He hated this part of the job; but the administration aspect was an essential part of Mexican management, and whether he liked it or not, he was in Mexico…managing.

Now that the teams had departed for Los Cabos, he felt like they were beginning to become pro-active. But it was an emotional roller coaster. He had the sense of time racing by as the summit drew nearer, yet they were really no closer to getting hard proof than they had been a week before. He’d taken the sketch of
El Rey
to CISEN and described the interview he’d had with the robber from Culiacan, but they’d seemed unimpressed. That didn’t surprise him given their first meeting. He knew from experience that, when bureaucrats fought turf wars instead of doing their jobs, there was no way of forcing them back on track. He’d tried shaming them, but they hadn’t budged – preferring to spin out lame assurances that all necessary steps to ensure the President’s safety had been taken. They’d told him not to worry – they were on the case.

Cruz had left a copy of the sketch with them and hoped they’d wake up, but he wasn’t optimistic. For whatever reason, they hadn’t been interested in anything he had to say, so that looked like a dead-end.

His meeting with the DEA hadn’t gotten any traction either. Bill had been noncommittal about the Secret Service’s reaction, which Cruz took to mean that he’d fared no better than he had with CISEN. It was possible that the Americans were taking the danger more seriously than Mexico was, but he thought it unlikely, given that nobody had touched base with him or asked for any additional information.

It was a classic catch-22 situation. He couldn’t prove that the pawn shop owner had been killed by
El Rey
, and had nothing new to report on that slaying, which meant that his sketch could have been of anybody – there was nothing to confirm it was the infamous killer, any more than the other sketches, besides the testimony of a jailhouse snitch, which was notoriously unreliable anywhere in the world. And Santiago’s statements had carried no weight – a cartel boss who’d died of brain damage after threatening to kill the two presidents; it was hardly pristine testimony. Cruz understood that. He’d been quick to distrust Santiago’s threats as well, until he’d had time to process his reactions and consider the man’s tone and demeanor. None of which was proof of anything, even if it was convincing.

Cruz’s stomach growled. He glanced at the clock on his wall, surprised that it was already eight o’clock at night. The day had flown past yet again. Staring at the never-shrinking pile of paperwork in front of him, he felt demoralized. He wanted to be in the field, chasing down leads, questioning people, not acting like a goddamned CPA.

He took a swallow of the now cold coffee from his oversized cup and, grimacing at the bitter brew, decided to call it quits for the night. The slush pile of documents would still be there tomorrow, awaiting his perusal and signature. Of that he was sure. He rose, stretched his arms and rotated his head to get the kinks out, and then experienced a stab of guilt. It was unlikely he’d have a house full of hookers and booze tonight, so he reasoned that he might as well take the work home and plow through it as he ate, rather than watching TV. At least he’d have less unpleasantness waiting for him the next morning, and it would certainly put him to sleep.

Toting his newly-stuffed briefcase through security to his car, he decided to put in for a secretary. He’d always dismissed the idea, believing it sent the wrong message to his team, but he couldn’t go on like this. Cruz needed to be active operationally, especially now there were less than four weeks till the summit. Finding one wouldn’t be a problem, as all the other captains had administrative assistants, so he didn’t have any worries in that regard. He made a mental note to have Briones send out an inter-departmental memo notifying the staff, so if there were any candidates internally they’d get first shot. He’d prefer someone familiar with the labyrinthine processes imbedded in the Federal Police system; otherwise he was just further adding to his task load trying to bring someone up to speed.

He tossed his briefcase onto the seat, returned to his office and grabbed a cardboard file box crammed full of the week’s worth of papers he’d been meaning to attend to, but never seemed to have the time for. The container weighed a good forty pounds. Had he really allowed things to back up that much?

Cruz heaved the container to the car and slid it onto the passenger seat, wedging his briefcase next to it so it wouldn’t go flying if he had to stop suddenly. Satisfied, he fired up the big V8, giving it thirty seconds to warm up before pulling out of the lot. He waved goodnight to the guard and swung into the night-time traffic of Mexico City, his vision blurred from fatigue and eye strain.

The trip to Toluca was clearer than usual, probably due to the later hour, and he made it to his off ramp in under forty minutes – a kind of minor miracle. Spying one of the ubiquitous OXXO convenience store signs, he calculated the state of his refrigerator and decided to get beer and bread for his dinner; the current loaf had started to turn an alarming shade of green around the edges, and he didn’t want to tempt fate any more than he already had. Cruz was on his cell phone with Briones getting the evening download on day two of the operation in Baja, so he barely registered the truck that pulled into the space on his passenger side as he eased next to an ancient Impala that he knew belonged to the manager.

“All right,” he told the lieutenant over the phone, “I want to fly to Los Cabos next week and spend a couple of days looking over the site before things get too hectic. We’re running out of –”

His passenger-side window exploded in a hail of bullets as a burst of machine-gun fire tore into the side of the car. Cruz dropped the phone, momentarily stunned, and felt white-hot lances of pain from his chest and his right leg. Operating on instinct, he slammed the car into reverse and grabbed at his pistol, freeing it as he stomped on the gas. The Charger roared backwards. He spun the wheel to the right, blocking the truck in with his car as he jammed down on the brake. More gunfire glanced off the engine block as the shooter leaned out the truck window in an attempt to adjust his aim. Cruz emptied nine rounds through the vehicle’s windshield, noting with satisfaction that the shooter had dropped his weapon on the ground as some of the slugs found home.

A silence returned to the parking lot. Cruz trained his gun on the truck as he swung his driver’s door open and stepped unsteadily onto the pavement. His leg hardly supported his weight, and his chest felt like he’d been pummeled with a branding iron as he limped through the cordite haze to the vehicle, noting that the weapon the shooter had been using bore the unmistakable shape of an Uzi. The dead gunman hung halfway out the window, his blood streaming down the side of the truck onto the shell casings littering the asphalt, so Cruz was confident that the danger from that side of the vehicle was over. He moved to the driver’s door and cautiously opened it, pistol pointed into the cab at point blank range. The overhead light flickered to life, and he was greeted by the sight of the driver, his head cocked at an angle, fighting to breathe, his chest seeping blood from a wound over his left pectoral, and his scalp hanging from his skull where a round must have ricocheted, tearing into his head. He didn’t register Cruz or the gun, and judging by the pink foam gurgling from his nose and mouth, he wasn’t going to make it. Cruz watched as the man, disoriented and unarmed, struggled to keep his hand up, holding his scalp in place, and then with the distinctive moan of the dying, he exhaled his last rattling breath.

Lowering his weapon, he turned and studied the side of his car. It was riddled with bullet holes, the windows blown out; judging from the damage it was a miracle he was still alive – which was his final conscious thought before he slumped against the truck and everything faded.

~ ~ ~

Light burst into his eyes, momentarily blinding him, and he registered distorted faces staring down at him, as though from a great distance, like he was at the bottom of a well.
That’s odd
, he thought as he felt a sensation of floating, before slipping back into the quiet place where nobody could hurt him.

A jolt brought him back to awareness. His eyes flittered open. He watched as long fluorescent lights flew by overhead, which he knew to be impossible but found interesting nonetheless. His body conveyed that he was moving from the sense of momentum and the vibration, and hands worked at his shirt and his pants as he struggled to tell whoever this was that he was a cop; but he couldn’t find a way to form the words – they seemed foreign, just out of reach. He tried to move his head but he couldn’t. His last impression before he lost consciousness again was that the air smelled funny.

Oxygen flowed into his nostrils from two nubs of the connected tube, making his nose itch. He tried to reach for whatever the offending device was, but lacked the strength to move his arm. As he came to full awareness, he heard the telltale beeping of monitoring equipment and realized he was in a hospital.

When he cautiously opened his eyes, there stood Briones, waiting at the side of his bed and appraising him with concern. Cruz’s voice cracked as he tried to speak. He motioned with his eyes at the pitcher of water by his side, near his left hand. A nurse pushed past them and efficiently poured some into a container and then stuck the straw into his mouth. He swallowed feebly, then pulled his head away.

“Why’s everyone so glum? Whose funeral is it, anyway?” Cruz asked in a feeble whisper.

Briones smiled and shook his head. “We thought we’d lost you there.”

“What? From a few scratches? Or the coffee at OXXO?” Cruz asked.

“You took a slug in the chest, and one in the leg. The one in your chest glanced off a rib because of the angle, but you lost a lot of blood. It’s a miracle you weren’t killed. You can thank work for that,” Briones said.

“How so? Seems like the job is what this is all about…” Cruz said.

“The documents you had in your car? They blocked most of the slugs. Otherwise, you’d have been cut in two. There were over a dozen bullets in the box and briefcase, and seven more in the engine area.”

“I guess that’s a decent excuse to not have those reports done on time,” Cruz observed.

“I think it should suffice, sir,” Briones agreed.

“Do we know who they were?” Cruz asked.

“Not yet. We’ve got the prints in the system, but you know how that goes,” Briones stated.

“Well, whoever it was, the party didn’t swing the way they’d hoped,” Cruz mused.

“I’m sure it didn’t.”

The conversation seemed to wear Cruz out, so the group moved to the door.

“We’ve got an armed guard outside, just in case,” Briones informed him.

“Great. Look, Lieutenant. Don’t bullshit me. How long am I going to be here?”

“Doctor says if you recover quickly, maybe three days. The leg will take some time to heal, and the chest wound tore the muscles up pretty well, but nothing that won’t mend. It’s mainly for observation; to give your system time to rest from the blood loss and shock,” Briones told him.

“Yeah. I feel like a tank ran over me. But I’ll live.”

“Yes, you will. I’ll stop in tomorrow to see you, sir. Do you want anything in the meantime?”

“You got your service piece with you? Do me a favor. Leave it with me. I’ll sleep better.”

Briones removed his pistol, checked the safety to ensure it was on, and chambered a round. He slipped it under the sheets, near Cruz’s right hand. “You’ve got one in the hole. But you won’t need it.”

“I hope you’re right. Just call me paranoid at this point.” Cruz coughed. “What time is it, anyway?”

“Six p.m.. They brought you in last night just before ten.”

“Shit. So I’ve been out all day?” Cruz was visibly agitated.

“You didn’t miss anything. Nothing’s happened. The job can wait a few days. Everything’s on automatic right now. It’ll still be there once you’re up and around, sir,” Briones reassured him.

“I guess I don’t have much choice. Hey…thanks for coming by. I’ll see you
mañana
. Oh – did they get my phone?” Cruz asked.

“It’s in the drawer of the bedside table. I turned it off so your battery wouldn’t die.”

“Thanks again, Lieutenant.”

“No problem. See you tomorrow. Try to get some rest.”

“Will do,” Cruz said, settling back and surrendering to his fatigue.

~ ~ ~

Kent fidgeted with his coffee cup as the men across from him bickered over tactics. After fifteen minutes, with a sense of the discussion going nowhere, he held up his right hand, signaling a pause.

“The cop has been neutralized, right? So he’s not going to be a problem anymore. Early reports are that his car had more bullets in it than a gun store. And he’s in critical condition. I’m not sure what all the hand wringing here is about,” he observed.

“The problem is that we now have a plot to take out the Mexican president, as well as our guy, documented, floating around in the system. That shouldn’t ever have happened,” the oldest of the three others commented.

“Agreed. Nobody could have foreseen it. The fucking dope dealer had a big mouth. It happens. The important thing is that nobody’s taking it seriously,” Kent reasoned.

“It’s a concern, though, because it’s always possible that the President will cancel his appearance,” the older man fired back.