Rage Of The Assassin (11 page)

“Don’t struggle or it’ll be worse for you. And if you scream, I’ll cut your balls off. Do you understand?” a voice asked from behind him.

Godoy managed a grunt in the affirmative and wondered why Leticia wasn’t yelling. His confusion deepened when he heard a different voice addressing her. “Did you really think you’d be able to get away with this? Stupid bitch. Now he’ll pay for your treachery.”

“Please…” Godoy pleaded through the cloth. Some part of him hoped to convince his attackers to release him, although another understood that it wasn’t going to happen. Kidnappings were a regular occurrence in Mexico City. Godoy had believed himself to be immune from the crime, given his station within the police department, but his throbbing skull convinced him otherwise.

“Shut up,” his assailant growled. Another blow struck the side of Godoy’s head and he gasped as he fell to the floor. He was spared the agony from a kick that landed on his ribs a moment later, his consciousness replaced by the comforting numbness of oblivion.

The kidnappers worked quickly and efficiently, two of them hoisting Godoy between them as the third placed a call on a cell phone. They manhandled him down the stairs, and after checking to ensure the sidewalk was still empty, waited till a dark brown van drew to a stop at the curb in front of the entrance.

Two minutes later the van was on one of the capital city’s wide boulevards, Godoy stashed in the cargo area with a pair of captors for company. The third kidnapper sat in the passenger seat and lit a cigarette. The snatch had gone off without a hitch, and the prospect of a healthy payday was now a virtual certainty.

One of the men in the back tossed Godoy’s wallet forward and the passenger caught it with ease. He rifled through the thick sheaf of cash and pocketed it, and then stopped when he came to Godoy’s official credentials. His boss hadn’t told them anything about whom they were grabbing – it was immaterial, given the sin he was guilty of – and the passenger’s eyes widened at the photo ID with the Federal Police crest emblazoned across the top. He leaned toward the driver as he took a drag on his smoke.

“Looks like we’ve got a VIP aboard. A cop, no less.”

“A cop? He’s not armed, right?”

“No. We searched him. He’s clean.”

“What kind of cop doesn’t carry a gun these days, even off duty?”

The passenger studied the identification, sounding out the words. His reading skills were rudimentary, limited to whatever he’d mastered when he’d quit school in fifth grade.

“Says he’s some kind of associate commissioner. So a higher-up.”

The driver turned onto another street and shrugged. “Well, he picked the wrong bimbo to bang – which he’ll figure out the hard way. Hey, got another smoke?”

The passenger shook a cigarette free and handed it to the driver. “I guess it doesn’t matter, does it?”

The driver grinned as he reached for the lighter. “Not to me. He could be the pope, for all I care. I just need to know that the boss wants him.”

“Stupid bastard should have known better than to cross him.”

The driver nodded grimly. “You got that right.”

Chapter 19

El Maquino stood over his boxes like a mother hen as he checked and rechecked the wall clock. He’d forced himself to stop switching his lights on and off, but his teeth were tingling from the constant brushing. He trembled with nervous energy at the thought of strangers soon to arrive in his abode, even though he knew it was necessary for them to be there. He couldn’t carry the boxes downstairs by himself, or he would have. He’d tried but given up when his back had transmitted the reality of their weight now that they were fully assembled.

They weren’t much to look at, he knew, but like many treasures, their inner beauty was what gave them their value. He’d been working on them for a month, first designing them, then machining all the parts required, and finally fitting them together with the precision of a Swiss watch. Now all his work was done, and the only thing that remained was to hand them off like a proud parent.

“Big surprise. Going to be a big surprise, all right,” he said softly, reaching out to touch one of the smooth surfaces and then jerking his hand back like he’d touched a stove burner. “Oh. Got to clean it. Don’t want any fingerprints. That would be bad. Very bad.”

He moved to the workbench, spotless now that he was finished with his current project, and slid open a drawer. Inside was a package of bright yellow hand towels. He withdrew one and took a bottle of cleaner from the top shelf, and set to wiping the exterior of the box for the tenth time that day.

The door buzzer chimed. He shuddered and swung around, jarred from the comforting routine of the task. He looked at the clock approvingly.

“Right on time. That’s good. Very good. Prompt. Time’s valuable,” he said, repeating a saying he’d heard his entire life.

He resisted the desire to switch the lights on and off again and instead made for the door, leaving the room illuminated as though banishing the night with technology. “It’s a big day. A very big day indeed. Right on time. Yes, sir. Good.”

He unlocked the deadbolts and relocked them once in the hall, then rushed to the stairs, his anxiety building with each step. Strangers in his place. Unthinkable. But there was no other way. It was necessary, and they’d be gone soon enough.

At the front door, he eyed the four heavyset men in the dim light of the security screen before calling through the metal plate, “Yes?”

“We’re here for a pickup. The
Don
sent us.”

The
Don
. He’d almost forgotten that was how his benefactor’s men always referred to him, so long had it been since he’d interacted with any of them.

“You have something for me?”

The man nearest the camera fished a photograph from his breast pocket and held it up so El Maquino could see it onscreen. It was a picture of a boy at eleven years old, his limbs gangly as he’d begun to grow, awkward as a colt even in the still. It was El Maquino as a child, after he’d been forced to leave Sinaloa to be raised by distant relatives of the
Don
in Mexico City.

“Okay. Just a minute.”

He unlocked the door and pulled it open, the heavy steel barrier perfectly balanced on hinges that rarely got any use, a tribute to El Maquino’s engineering talents. The men stepped through, two of them pushing heavy-duty hand trucks designed for moving refrigerators, and he closed it behind them and relocked all the deadbolts before nodding to them. “This way.”

Once inside his loft, he approached the boxes and gave a long set of instructions on how to move them without damaging the contents. The men paid close attention, even as he repeated himself again, like a tape loop. On the third go-round, the leader of the group held up a hand to stop him from going through the entire process yet again.

“We understand. But we’re on a schedule, so we need to get moving. Thank you for all your help. We’ll take good care of them, don’t worry.”

“Right. But remember they’re delicate. Won’t do to drop them or jostle them. Won’t do at all. You need to be careful. Very careful. Otherwise it could all go wrong, and that would be bad. Very bad.”

The leader nodded. “Of course. We’ll be careful.” He paused. “Too bad the elevator’s out of commission.”

“I don’t like elevators. Better to get exercise. Stairs are good for you. Very good.”

“Well, we have our work cut out for us. How much did you say they weigh?”

“Exactly one hundred sixty-two kilos apiece. No doubt about it. One sixty-two. I verified it.”

“And it’s okay to incline them some? We’ll have to.”

“Just don’t drop them. Tilting them is fine until they’re activated. Once they are, though…”

“I remember. The slightest movement. Got it.” He turned to his men. “Let’s get busy. Slide this first one onto the hand truck and we’ll work it down the stairs.” He gave El Maquino a look. “Gently, of course.”

Half an hour later the boxes were gone, along with their transporters, and El Maquino was left in peace. His heavy boots clumped on the hardwood floor as he traced and retraced his steps as though trying to psychically expunge the damage the intruders had done to his home’s aura. He wished he had more food, but wouldn’t touch the breakfast portion of his delivery that was waiting in the nearly empty refrigerator. Instead he contented himself with chugging two liters of water to kill the hunger pangs.

“Everything will be okay. It will all be fine. They’re gone now. All locked up,” he muttered. “All locked up. Gone.”

The project had engaged him more than most, and he would miss the technical challenge it had presented. But he still had his hobby, at which he was an expert: drones. The concept of remote-controlled flight had fired his imagination from an early age, and he’d used most of his spare financial resources buying components and designing and building ever more elaborate examples. His one frustration was battery life, and he’d been toying with innovations that, if successful, could revolutionize the remote flight industry.

Not that he cared. He just hated limitations, and batteries were inherently limited. He viewed inefficiency as his mortal enemy, offensive to his sensibility. True, he might only bathe once a week when immersed in a project, and cut his own hair with a vacuum attachment that left it looking like he’d fallen against a fan, but El Maquino had a highly refined sense of the elegance of order – which was why, outside his projects, he spent most of his time reading physics textbooks. He loved the concept of discovering the underlying organizational principles of the universe, and theoretical physics allowed his mind to roam free, unfettered by the boundaries of the Newtonian. Had he wished to engage with others, he could have amazed them with his insights, but interacting with humans was difficult for him, so he avoided doing so. He still remembered how he had been treated during his formative years, and he wasn’t about to repeat that as an adult – although the concept of time, like aging, was foreign to him, not because he was oblivious but simply because each day was like the last, with no differentiation other than the end of one project and the beginning of another.

Two hours after beginning his pacing, he finally slowed and moved back to his workbench. He had things to do. His projects weren’t going to build themselves, after all.

“Idle hands. No rest for the wicked. A busy man is a happy man,” he whispered as he reached for a small motor bought for a steal online in need of rebuilding; its rotor shaft was beginning to wobble from worn bearings. “Got things to do. Yes, I do. Things to do,” he repeated, and began to hum as he dismantled the hub with a set of tiny wrenches.

“Tell me that wasn’t frigging weird,” the largest mover said as the SUV they’d loaded the boxes into made its way through town. “He may be a genius or whatever, but that was a ten on the creepy scale.”

The driver nodded. “He’s absolutely out of his mind.”

“Yes, he is.” The large man craned his neck as he looked toward the rear of the big vehicle. “Let’s just hope that he’s as good as they say. Otherwise we’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

Nobody had a glib response for that. They knew the stakes. And they were now all relying on the handiwork of a character who belonged in a padded room.

“A world of hurt,” the man repeated, and returned to watching the lights streak by as they traversed the still-teeming streets, the after-dinner crowd preparing for another long night of celebration in a city that never slept.

Chapter 20

Rodriguez left headquarters late, as was his custom. His duties as the head of the Mexican clandestine agency were never-ending, and he’d had a particularly demanding day, a series of small crises building to a climax with a dinner meeting that went on for hours.

In other words, par for the course.

His predecessor had been a political appointee who’d suffered a massive stroke at home, and the medical examiner had said he’d died within seconds of the clot stopping bloodflow to his brain. The president had considered naming another empty suit as director of the agency – the appointment of allies or political supporters was a tradition in Mexico – but cooler heads had prevailed, and for the first time someone with actual experience had gotten the job. Rodriguez had spent his entire career with CISEN and had de facto run it for the last few years, so he’d been the natural successor.

But after a week like this one, he was having serious second thoughts about his good fortune.

He walked across the parking lot to his car, a nondescript government-issue Ford sedan, and placed his briefcase on the passenger seat as the engine warmed up. He checked the time and shook his head in frustration – his wife would be asleep, and he could expect to be chastised by her in the morning for working late into the night.

He waved to the security guard manning the gate, and the man pressed a button that slid the iron slab open. The lot was ringed with ten-foot-tall walls to prevent snoopers from identifying members of CISEN staff, although Rodriguez had pointed out to his assistant that anyone in one of the surrounding high-rises could easily photograph the lot, should they be so inclined.

The chances of that happening were slim, though. Unlike in Russia or the U.S., the role of the intelligence service was largely defensive; the agency lacked the resources to be much besides an enforcement arm for the president, and deliberately steered clear of the largest threat to the nation’s stability: the cartels. Instead, CISEN ran security when diplomats or heads of state visited, engaged in surveillance on the embassies that dotted the Polanco district, and eavesdropped on the political rivals of the ruling party. Mexico didn’t fight wars of aggression in foreign countries, so it didn’t have any external threats to speak of – there were no angry mullahs calling for its destruction or foreign powers struggling to dominate it. Any that wished to have the nation dance for it simply had to bribe the right parties, which was how it was always done in Latin America.