Rage Of The Assassin (2 page)

“Why?”

When Martin looked up and met his uncle’s eyes, the little boy’s contained all the misery of the human condition in them. “They hate me,” he said with the simplicity of youth. “Because…you know. I’m different.”

“Did you fight them? How many were there?” Aranas demanded, his tone hardening.

“Seven. Eight. I don’t know. Too many.” Martin winced as his free hand probed his ear and came away smeared with red.

“Did you hurt any of them?”

Martin’s eyes returned to his scraped shoes and the torn knees of his uniform pants. “N-no.”

Aranas stepped back and cleared his throat. “You must not let them pick on you. I can intervene, but that won’t help. This is your battle, and you have to show them that they can’t do this and get away with it.”

Martin licked away a fleck of blood from his upper lip and remained silent. Aranas’s eyes narrowed as he considered his nephew – who was indeed different and needed to learn life’s harsh lessons early if he was to survive. The first of which was that he wasn’t a victim – he was a threat to anyone who would harm him.

“There are two kinds of people, Martin: predators and prey. These boys are aggressive because they are in a group, so they feel powerful. They see you as weak. So you need to find a way to prove to them that you’re stronger, and that to hurt you brings consequences that makes it too costly for them to consider. It is the only way.”

Martin looked up at his uncle, who seemed a hundred feet tall from where he stood. The older man’s face was impassive, unsympathetic, with a hint of anger flashing in the depths of his chocolate eyes. The message conveyed was clear – Martin had disappointed him, and in his uncle’s hierarchical world he’d brought shame to the family by allowing himself to be beaten like a dog. Martin had heard the stories about the
Don
, about his merciless rise to power and his reputation as a killer. How could he not, even if they were only whispered snatches that quickly died when the speakers saw Martin lurking within earshot?

“I…I don’t want to go back.”

Aranas nodded. “Of course you don’t. But you have to. Take a few days to heal, and then you will return with your head held high, and you’ll show these boys what you’re made of. Do you understand?” Aranas’s tone left nothing to be discussed.

Martin nodded. Aranas turned to the empty doorway and called out, “Ynez! Get this warrior cleaned up. He looks hungry. Call the doctor and have him look him over, stitch him up, whatever he needs.”

Ynez scuttled back in, wringing her hands, worry written across her normally placid face. “Yes,
Don
Aranas. Of course.”

Aranas gave Martin another hard stare and turned on his heel. His stride covered the Saltillo tile floor in three long steps and then he disappeared through the doorway, other business to attend to. Ynez moved to a rack for a fresh towel and waved Martin over. He shuffled toward her, his mind churning at his uncle’s words, a core of fury searing in his stomach like a hot ember.

He would find a way to show them all.

He had no choice.

~ ~ ~

Don
Aranas glanced up from his newspaper when Ynez approached. He set it down in his lap and eyed her, his coveted moment of evening relaxation disrupted.

“What did the doctor say?” he asked.

“Dr. Alioto put two stitches in one of the cuts and swabbed the rest with antiseptic. And he gave me some ointment. He said that the bruising should go down in forty-eight hours. Nothing’s broken, thank heaven.”

“How’s Martin holding up?”

“He’s quiet. Doesn’t want to talk.”

Aranas nodded. “Then not much different than usual.”

Martin was an odd boy, Aranas knew. He’d wound up living with Aranas after his father had been gunned down in a bitter territorial dispute in Tijuana. A loyal associate of Aranas, he’d been murdered within shouting distance of the border crossing by a split-off faction of the Sinaloa Cartel headed by a group of brothers as vicious as pit vipers. Martin had been calling Aranas ‘uncle’ since arriving three years earlier, and by now it was fact, regardless of what a blood test might say. Aranas had grown fond of the quirky child, who was easily startled by noises and avoided human interaction as much as possible – one of the reasons Aranas insisted that he go to a public school, so he could become better socialized.

Martin had proven brilliant with anything mechanical and, if allowed, would sit for entire days tinkering with some discarded piece of gear, making it serviceable again. Aranas had never seen anything like it, but figured that Providence made up for what it withheld in strange ways. At least the boy would always have a trade, if he didn’t develop normally as he aged, and God knew that in Mexico there would always be broken items requiring a fix. Aranas liked to joke that it was a nation held together with sweat and bailing wire, where jury-rigging was the national pastime.

Not that if Aranas had any say, the boy would ever be relegated to a dirty shop somewhere in the barrio. But the future was uncertain, especially in Aranas’s line of work, and to expect to be alive the following day was a conceit he couldn’t afford.

He sighed and returned to his paper. “Thank you, Ynez. That is all.”

“Of course, sir. Let me know if you need anything else.”

~ ~ ~

The sun was high in the late spring sky, a blazing ball that scorched the town with unrelenting intensity. Three days after the incident in the schoolyard, four boys were splashing raucously in a backyard swimming pool, enjoying the relief from the heat. School would let out in another three weeks and then they’d have two months of slacking before returning to their studies – two months that at their age would seem endless at the start, pregnant with possibility, and yet far too short by the time it was over.

Paolo sprayed a sheet of water at his companions with a swipe of his hand. He laughed harshly when he caught them unawares, and they sputtered as they blinked away the drops and returned the favor. Soon it was an all-out water battle with the bully. Colorful insults were exchanged with the abandon of sailors on leave, the delight at using forbidden curses out of adult earshot heightening the delicious pleasure.

Paolo stopped mid-splash and stared at the doorway to his house, where a diminutive figure approached across the brownish grass. The others turned to follow his gaze, and watched in puzzled silence as Martin walked toward them.

“How did you get in here, retard?” Paolo demanded.

Martin didn’t answer. Paolo looked down at the object in Martin’s hands and back at his face, which was still discolored from the beating he’d received at Paolo’s direction. “I asked you a question, dumbass. What are you doing here? How did you get in? And what are you going to do with that? Make us toast?”

Martin neared the raised cantera edge of the pool, hefted the toaster as if considering its weight, and then tossed it at Paolo with a shrug, the long extension cord that trailed behind it whipping through the grass like an infuriated snake. Martin watched with indifference as Paolo caught the appliance. Current shot through the water, electrocuting the boys in the pool; Martin had taken a few minutes to hardwire the fuse box to bypass the breaker that might have saved their lives. Martin’s only reaction to the horror was to hold his hands over his ears, the dying boys’ shrieking more troubling to him than the expressions of agony as they fried.

~ ~ ~

Ynez came running into the casita, where Aranas was meeting with his lieutenants. A thick cloud of cigar and cigarette smoke hung in the room, the overhead fan barely stirring the pungent pall, and the tabletop was littered with Tecate cans and empty shot glasses. She gasped when she saw whom she was interrupting, but Aranas held back on reprimanding her – he knew it had to be an emergency for her to dare the forbidden impertinence.

“What?” he snapped, the single syllable a whip crack.

“It’s Martin. The…the police are coming for him,” she blurted, one hand near her mouth.

Aranas pushed back from the table and stood. “Coming for him? For what? Where is he?”

“In his room. I asked him, but he won’t talk. You know how he can get. As to why, they say…they say he killed four of his classmates.” She glanced at the assembled cartel honchos and then gave Aranas a brief report on why the police wanted his nephew.

Ynez thought she saw the hint of a smile tug at the corner of Aranas’s stern mouth before he turned to his men. He checked his watch and eyed a thug with a face like a boneless ham. “Jorge, take one of the trucks. I want him in Hermosillo by sundown.”

Jorge nodded and rose. Aranas was already moving to the doorway.

“I need to talk to him,” Aranas said. “Ynez, pack his things. I’ll make a few phone calls so the police aren’t looking too hard.”

Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “They have a witness.”

“He’s a boy. It doesn’t matter. But nobody in my family will ever get locked up if I have anything to say about it.”

Aranas stalked from the casita, Ynez following close behind. His heels echoed like rifle shots in the courtyard as he made his way to the house.

Chapter 2

Two days ago, Mexico City, Mexico

A line of men shambled along the clammy gray corridor. Their prison garb was muted, the coloring long ago washed out of it, leaving them looking like inhabitants of a monochromatic Neverland. The facility was one of three maximum-security prisons where Mexico’s worst offenders were incarcerated – mass murderers, cartel hit men, and the gang bosses who operated the most powerful transnational drug-trafficking syndicates in the world. It was famous for having never had an escape, until the elusive assassin known as El Rey – the King of Swords – had vanished. The episode had been quickly covered up by the government, and as far as the public was concerned, the edifice was still the ultimate prison.

Don
Aranas sat on his bunk and watched as his fellow inmates made their way past his cell. He always took care to keep the barred door closed and locked lest some overenthusiastic member of a rival cartel make a play for him. There were any number of high prices on his head, but his own influence in the prison was such that he could set his own hours and keep adequate security, so he was never in jeopardy.

He’d been arrested six months earlier in a bafflingly easy raid on an oceanfront hotel in Sinaloa, where he’d been taken without a fight. The papers had dined upon lurid accounts of the capture for months, but after the initial public fascination with the account had faded, other matters had filled their pages, particularly the bloody turf war being waged against the Sinaloa Cartel by a splinter group that had formed after Aranas had been taken into custody, led by his former second-in-command. Bodies were now found throughout the state on a daily basis, usually tortured and mutilated, as those loyal to Aranas battled their former colleagues for a business worth billions. The contagion had spread to Baja California and ultimately throughout the regions where Aranas had built networks, and the death toll continued to mount steadily as the police watched, powerless to slow it.

He rose, and with a glance at his watch, stepped to his sink and washed his face, taking care to smooth his dyed hair into place. His eyes absently swept the cell, which was filled with every comfort – flat-panel television, fully stocked bar, a pharmaceutical cabinet that would have been the envy of any addict, a chest containing weapons, and a microwave for late night snacks. He’d arranged for call girls to visit several times a week. All in all his time in prison would have been a nice life for any but the richest of his countrymen.

Aranas caught his reflection in the mirror and shook his head. Where had the time gone? Who was the aging man staring back at him? It seemed impossible that it was he, yet there was no denying that no matter how wealthy and privileged one was, time had its way with everyone, and the years of stress and abuse hadn’t been kind.

“Better than the alternative, right?” he muttered to himself, and turned to eye the cell door once the corridor was empty. He checked the time again and resisted the urge to pace restlessly. It wouldn’t be long now.

~ ~ ~

Officer Raphael Cifuentes walked along the cell block with ponderous steps. The decade he’d been working as a guard at the maximum-control facility weighed on him; although he was only forty, he felt more like sixty-five. But as he checked each cell and nodded to the prisoners, he reminded himself that he could have had it a lot worse. His cousins all worked in construction and hauled heavy cinderblocks up ladders in the hot sun ten hours a day. That was real work – whereas his job, which was in reality babysitting some of the most privileged criminals in the world, would have seemed like a vacation to them.

He reached one end of the wing and turned the corner, eyeing the convicts with familiarity. Most bore him no grudge. He was just going through the motions for a paycheck, and they understood that it wasn’t his choice to keep them behind bars. Cifuentes was a small cog in this particular machine, and he made his daily rounds as bearable as possible, stopping occasionally to exchange a few words with a convict or to take a request for an illicit substance from an inmate who’d burned through his stash. As in prisons all over the world, if you had money, the time you did wasn’t nearly as hard as that served by a broke lowlife. Money commanded respect, especially in a poor country renowned for its corruption. Everything was for sale, and in prison it was only a matter of price.

That any of these men was behind bars was the miracle, given their clout and the wealth they’d amassed. Most were believed to have gone to prison willingly, fatigued of the constant threat of death in the outside world after years operating as heads of their respective cartels. What families they had were well insulated from the violence that was their stock in trade, but they would never be safe from attack; no matter how elevated their rank, they could be killed at any time, if not by the army, by their rivals or even their own men. The stakes were high, and most had gotten to the top by using the same approach – striking when the right opportunity presented itself, eliminating their rivals or leaders.