Return of the Assassin (Assassin Series 3) (21 page)

He pointed his wheels at the dirt road that headed towards the tree line and gave the ATV more gas. This would be the easy part. Once he was in the hills on the Guatemalan side, it would get more problematic. He encountered nobody on his trek across the no man’s land that ran along the frontier, and the entrance to the first trail in the thickening brush was within thirty yards of where he’d expected it. His plan was to head up the valley a few miles into Guatemala and then turn north until he hit the main highway where it crossed the river. He’d dart over the bridge then get onto trails again, skirting the little villages along the way – Cuatro Caminos, Yuxen, El Tabacal, Buxub. Everyone was likely to be asleep, but he couldn’t risk alerting anyone who could sound an alarm.

As he came around a bend, he had to veer around a horse munching on the thick vegetation. The dumb beast didn’t even budge and merely gawped at him before returning to its meal. A collision with a large quadruped was the sort of unplanned event that could ruin even the best laid plan, so he slowed further as conditions dictated, preferring to move along at a crawl than to collide with a ton of muscle on the hoof.

~

El Rey
arrived at the main road – Highway 1 – and paused when he pulled near its edge, still out of sight. This was one of the problem points on his journey. The bridge would be easily crossed, but exposed him to scrutiny while he was in the open. It was a risk, but a manageable one that would speed him to the target.

After a few moments studying the foggy strip of pavement, he was steeling himself to race across when he heard a faint sound of metal on the far side. He stiffened as his ears strained to catch it again. A scrape of steel on asphalt.

He backed the ATV into a tangle of vegetation and pulled a pair of small binoculars from the case on the back. He couldn’t use night vision goggles at the same time, and it was too dark to make anything out as he peered through the glasses, so it was no good. He couldn’t see anything.

But there was the sound he’d heard. And that could only mean one thing.

He reached back into the case and unpacked the sniper rifle’s night vision scope, withdrawing it carefully from its foam-lined housing. He hated to use up battery time, but there was no choice.

He flicked the scope on and zoomed-in on the far side of the bridge. A Guatemalan army truck sat by the road shoulder, and four soldiers manned a darkened checkpoint. While rare, a spontaneous military roadblock was one of the variables he had no control over – but it would cause a delay because now he would need to find another way across the river, which was too deep to cross on the ATV. He replaced the scope in the case and reconciled himself to doing it the hard way.

He glided back into the brush until he was a hundred yards off the road, then stopped again, this time to fish out a small tablet computer with the satellite footage of the region uploaded on it. He brought up the area surrounding the bridge and saw that if he could get across a smaller tributary, there was a dam or small farming crossing about a mile and a half south. That was going the wrong direction, but north of the bridge the river got wider, so getting across there was out of the question.

It would be a rough trek because his current trail turned away from the river a half mile south of his position, meaning he’d have to do almost a mile through dense jungle, trying to find game trails to follow. Even in daylight that would have been difficult, but at night, even with the goggles it was a most challenging task. But there was no point bemoaning it – there was no other way.

When he arrived at the bend in the trail where he would have to forge a new path, he saw a small break in the thick underbrush – perhaps cows or burros forged their way through there, or perhaps the local peasants had cut a route along the river. He inched into the breach and tried to ignore the branches and leaves scraping his face and head.

Fifty minutes later, he arrived at the smaller stream and found an area where the water was only a few feet deep, just above what sounded like rapids. He walked gingerly through the current, testing with a branch, and once he was satisfied that he wouldn’t bog down in the mud, he gunned the ATV across, brown water spraying in arcs on both sides. He shook off the splatter and looked for another trail, but there was nothing obvious, so he inched along, ducking to avoid the worst of the undergrowth and trying to follow the less dense openings.

A hundred yards further on, he came across what was clearly a footpath and was able to pick up his pace as he made his way to the crossing point. The GPS confirmed he was only a half a mile away, and suddenly the jungle gave way to crop fields, which explained the presence of humans in such a remote location. After the jungle, it felt like he was flying through the rows of plantings, and he reached the dam within minutes. It had been constructed of rocks and stones to divert water into the fields and thankfully had a flat top just wide enough to accommodate the ATV.

Once on the other side he studied the smuggler trail map, searching for the nearest trail. There wasn’t much, so he again powered on the tablet and saw several small roads nearby. Clearly access ways to the fields for the local farmers, which meant that at half past midnight there wouldn’t be anyone on them.

Resuming his trek, within a few more minutes he was on hard-packed dirt and sped north in an effort to make up the hour he’d lost avoiding the military. He only hoped that there wouldn’t be any more surprises – if he was going to make it to the villa with suitable time to do reconnaissance and get the girl out, he needed to be there within two more hours. With ten more miles to go, that would be a challenge.

~

Don
Aranas was sipping an añejo tequila – one of his favorites, Don Julio Real – while running his fingers through the vanilla-scented hair of his young companion seated next to him on the leather sofa. They were watching a movie on the seventy-five-inch flat-screen television in the study of his Honduras villa when one of his men knocked lightly on the door. Aranas looked at his watch. It was almost midnight. He paused the film.

“What?”

The heavy mahogany door opened and his head of security made a subdued entry.

“I’m sorry to bother you,
Jefe
. I know the hour is late, but I felt you would want to know about this as soon as we got the news,” the man apologized.

“Fine. What is so important?”

“We just heard from a source in the
Federales
.
El Rey
has escaped from prison.”

Aranas nudged the girl next to him. “Go find something to do. Use the bathroom, or take a shower or something.”

The girl unfolded her long legs from beneath her and pulled her silk kimono closed, ignoring the security man as she rose. She brushed past him, high heels clicking a staccato beat on the polished Italian Carrera marble tiles all the way to the bedroom, where she shut the door just a little harder than usual.

“Tell me the details. What do we know?”

“There was a breakout at the beginning of the week.”

“A breakout? At Altiplano?”

“Not exactly.”

“Damn it, spit it out.
El Rey
was being held there. I should know. I offered top dollar for his head. What happened?”
Don
Aranas demanded.

“Apparently he was being moved. He must have coordinated an escape. The vehicle he was in was overwhelmed, and he escaped.”

“How can that happen?”

The security man shifted nervously. “Money will buy many things.”

“Yes, but some of the richest cartel bosses in Mexico are in Altiplano, and their money hasn’t gotten them sprung.” Aranas stood up and proceeded to pace in front of the floor to ceiling window, beyond which the lights on the mainland glimmered like dim stars. “Do we know anything more?”

“An investigation was started, but apparently it stopped or was moved to a different department, which has further complicated finding him.”

“Who was running the investigation? Was it an incompetent?”

“I don’t think so. Romero Cruz. The head of the cartel task force.”

“Shit. Why do these names always keep coming up? Maybe I should have killed him when I had the chance,” Aranas fumed. “For all his failings, he’s competent. Why was it stopped, and who took it over?”

“That’s unknown at this time. Our source is trying to get more information, but he hasn’t been able to discover anything more.”

Aranas sighed. “What’s your assessment for security? Do you believe we’re at risk from
El Rey
?”

“No – I mean, if I had just escaped, I’d be a million miles from Mexico by now. Remember last time. He was in Argentina. There aren’t many places farther from Mexico than that. Maybe he’ll turn up in Russia. Or China. But he has no reason to come after you. He’s already got the money from the hit on the president, and he’s a pro, which means he knows that the contract you put out on him was obligatory – there was no way you could allow him to take your money and not deliver. In the end, I think he disappears, never to be heard from again.”

Aranas swirled his tequila in the brandy snifter and took another sip. “You’re probably right. He didn’t strike me as a stupid young man. If he managed to escape from Altiplano, he’s done what nobody has ever been able to do. Another first for
El Rey
. I have to hand it to him. Even if he failed to kill the president, I’ve never seen anything like him.”

“Well, as we’ve discussed, technically he did accomplish the hit.”

“Yes, but it’s not my problem if the president used a double. I didn’t pay for his double to be executed. That didn’t solve anything. No, I paid for results, not best efforts. He failed to deliver, and that’s that,”
Don
Aranas stated menacingly.

“No question,
Jefe
.”

“Very well. Is that it?”

“The footage of Isidro being acid-washed has caused outrage in the media and loud calls for the government to clamp down on cartel violence.”

“Big deal. What else is new? You think they’d be sending me a medal or naming a street in my honor for ridding the world of the filthy shit-stain? I presume nobody is asking the obvious question – how I found him but the whole weight of the government law enforcement machine couldn’t?”

“No,
Don
Aranas.”

Aranas laughed – a dry, humorless sound. “Fine. It’s of no consequence. Send the girl back in. I want to finish the movie.”

The security head nodded and turned, closing the door behind him softly. Aranas drained the remains of his tequila as he considered the news.

El Rey had escaped.

Why didn’t it surprise him?

The ATV purred up the side of the hill, chewing up the muddy terrain as
El Rey
finessed the throttle like a lover. Snowy tendrils of fog crept down the dark slopes, settling in the deeps of the valleys. The sliver of moon beamed a paucity of light, which worked in his favor – the blacked out vehicle was nearly invisible in the gloom, as was he, dressed in camouflage.

The jungle had given way to plots of farmland with crops planted in tidy parcels. That made the going easier, but also posed more risk. As bad as the jungle was, it held the allure of relative safety.
El Rey
felt naked as he tore across the open ground, weaving along the edges of the lots, and had to retrace his path several times to avoid fences that sprang up out of nowhere. But now, as he approached Santa Ana Huista, there was more cover.

He crossed several larger roads, mostly dirt, one the larger paved highway, but after traversing them he quickly got back onto the trails he’d been able to pick up after heading north again. He was making decent time, all things considered, and would be at the village two miles south of the villa within another fifteen minutes. His course would take him just east of Tsibaj, population next to nothing, and then there wasn’t much else until he got to San Andres – the community nestling a stone’s throw from his destination.

Guatemala was desperately poor; the population lived in squalor in the rural outposts at the far edge of the country. These were agricultural hamlets, and everyone was asleep – they’d be up to greet the dawn and perform another backbreaking sixteen hour workday toiling in their fields, so rest was essential. That had also played as he’d hoped – other than the military checkpoint on the main road, he hadn’t seen anyone else on his trip, so he counted himself lucky.

When he finally reached the outskirts of San Andres he checked his watch again, noting that he’d arrived within half an hour of his target time. Given the extraordinary circumstances, that was the same as being on schedule. It was two thirty a.m. and he was close to being in position, which left him ample time to nose around and get a feel for the security surrounding the villa.

Paolo had told him that the guards worked in shifts – they had an arrangement with the local police and military to alert them to anything suspicious, so
El Rey
was expecting four to five bored, sleepy adversaries, with the rest slumbering. His plan was to eliminate the night crew without any drama, and then dispatch the sleeping men before they had a chance to register they were being slaughtered.

El Rey
rolled to a silent halt five hundred yards from the villa’s coordinates and set the brake, leaving the engine running – he didn’t need his escape complicated by a reluctant starter or other mechanical glitch. The fuel gauge still read half full, but he carefully filled the tank from the bladder before unpacking the case on the rear. It wouldn’t do to run out of gas while the motor idled, or to have to do an extended escape run with two people, only to discover that he didn’t have the luxury of time for filling up later.

He could make out a few lights around the outer terraces of the house, but knew he would have to get closer to get a sense of the security contingent’s movements and timing. Slowly, painstakingly, he extracted the weapons and other gear from the ATV’s storage box and reassembled them.