Blood of the Assassin (Assassin Series 5) (3 page)

Rauschenbach darted across the road just as another police car veered onto it, and he swerved to miss the vehicle as he made for the labyrinthine streets only a few hundred yards away. The motor howled as he twisted the throttle, and he disappeared around another ancient building just as one of the officers opened fire at him. Chunks of stone flew off the centuries-old façade, and then he was gone, the sound of his revving engine the only trace of his passage.

Four minutes later he got off the motorcycle in an empty church parking lot and walked to a parked light blue Renault coupe. He stripped off the worker’s coveralls he was wearing, balled them up, and threw them into the nearby bushes. His blue pinstripe suit and conservatively striped tie were slightly rumpled but serviceable, and as he eased behind the wheel of the little car he caught a glimpse of his gray eyes in the mirror, the small scar above the right eyebrow an almost imperceptible reminder of a past close call from his days in the military. His salt-and-pepper hair framed a ruggedly handsome face, square jaw, high cheekbones, a slight tan – the picture of a respectable businessman.

He turned the key and put the car into gear, exhaling with relief. The job was done, and he would be in Dresden within an hour and a half, even allowing for some holdup at the border. He was carrying one of his many identities, this time a Dutch passport, and had a rock-solid alibi for his time in the Czech Republic if anyone questioned him. A seller of pharmaceuticals, he’d filled his trunk with samples and literature, and even the most aggressive border agent would come up dry after a few minutes of searching.

He hadn’t stayed free, a frustrating rumor for the authorities, by accident. Nobody had any current photos of him, and any old ones would have done no good – extensive plastic surgery had altered his features to the point where his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him. He was a cypher, a ghost, who slipped across borders with ease, and carried out the most difficult contracts without drama or complications. He smiled to himself at his professional nickname:
Der Eisenadler
. The Iron Eagle. Indestructible, the ruler of the sky. And now with over fifty hits to his credit over an illustrious career.

Not bad for a simple boy from the Berlin slums and a disgraced ex-cop. A millionaire. Homes in Spain, Germany, and Italy. And a book of business from satisfied customers that ensured he had as much work as he wanted. His neighbors knew him as an import/export executive, always traveling, obviously well-to-do, who kept to himself and never made trouble. Which was close enough to the truth, he supposed. He imported cash into his bank account, and exported death.

A commodity that was in constant demand.

Present Day, Zacatelco, Mexico

A battered Chevrolet pickup puttered down the dirt road on the outskirts of town, springs creaking from the washboard surface’s pummeling of its suspension, a red plastic bag taped over its one operating brake light as a safety concession. Raw exhaust belched from a rusting tailpipe, the muffler having rotted out long ago, catalytic converters a silly luxury for the idle rich. Its headlights glowed a dull amber, barely penetrating the two a.m. gloom, the driver squinting as he peered through the smeared bug splatters on the grimy windshield.

Dust swirled in the wind as it roared by the oversized bulk of the stationary black command-center van,
Policía Federal
painted across the side in two-foot-high white letters. From the outside, the vehicle displayed no signs of life, but inside was a hum of activity.

“How much longer until the army gets here?” Lieutenant Briones asked, his voice strained, sitting in front of a flat screen monitor in the rear of the van.

“They said they’ll be in position in five more minutes,” the man next to him murmured, as though raising his voice might alert their target.

“Five minutes! What the hell have they been doing? They were supposed to be here by now,” Briones griped.

“You know how it is.
Mas o menos
.” More or less.

Briones sat back, considering a response, and then decided to let it go. He did indeed know how it was.

“What about our men?”

“In position and awaiting the signal to breach the compound.”

Briones nodded and then lifted a two-way to his mouth. “Army’s late again. But they say they’ll be here shortly,” he reported.

“Damn. What else can go wrong today? Did they think that showing up was optional? Who’s the commanding officer?” the disgusted voice of Captain Romero Cruz, the head of the Mexico City anti-cartel task force, growled from the speaker.

“Your favorite. General Albacer.”

“That explains a lot. I’m surprised he’s still awake. Do you want me to scream at him?” Cruz asked.

“Can’t see that it will do any good. The compound is dark. Five minutes shouldn’t make any difference if everybody’s asleep,” Briones said.

“Are you ready to go in?”

“Yes, sir. The assault force is standing by.”

“Well, thank heaven for small favors. Let’s see if we can take these scum alive, shall we? I want a shot at interrogating them.”

“I understand, sir. We’ll do everything we can to get at least a few survivors.”

“Does everyone know what
El Gato
looks like? You circulated the photos?” Cruz asked.

“Of course. If he’s still got the fuzz, he’ll be hard to miss.”
El Gato
, one of the top captains of the Sinaloa cartel, affected a distinctive beard. He was also known for his shaved head – for which, the rumor was, the facial hair was compensation. He was widely believed to control much of the cartel’s marijuana, meth, and heroin trade in Mexico City. The
Federales
had received a tip from an informant looking at years of hard time for his role in a drunken bar stabbing a few days earlier, who had alerted them to the location of one of his safe houses. Surveillance had been ongoing since then, and a man who looked suspiciously like
El Gato
had been seen going into the house from a black Ford Excursion early that evening. That had triggered the late night strike on the house – Cruz had been tracking
El Gato
for years, but had always been one step behind him.

Not this time.

Their prey was still inside the house, and the lights had gone off at midnight.

The original plan had been to grab him when he was leaving, but then the opportunity to seize not only the drug lord but also the inevitable stash of weapons, drugs, and cash had been too attractive for Cruz, and he’d given the go-ahead to launch a raid.

There were six people inside that they knew of – five men and one woman, who appeared to be
El Gato
’s seventeen-year-old sometimes-girlfriend. If they could be captured without shooting, it would be another coup in a year of them for Cruz – between capturing
El Rey
and several other high-profile operations, he appeared to have the Midas touch, even if nothing much changed in the criminal underworld besides the names.

Briones sat back, his leg bouncing impatiently, anxious to get the operation underway. Every minute that passed increased the odds of something going wrong and alerting the target – an all-too-common occurrence when the army was involved. Even though all the soldiers on these offensives were vetted and trusted, the truth was that in a world where their pay was three hundred dollars a month, it was all too easy to buy information. He would know soon enough, he supposed. Once the soldiers had sealed off the perimeter he would send his officers in, and then it would be over quickly.

His other radio issued a burst of static, and then a deep male voice cut through the hush in the van.

“Lieutenant Briones. This is Major Gutierrez. We are in position. Are there any changes or additions to our orders?”

Briones shook his head. “Negative. Just seal off the roads and make sure nobody gets in or out. We’re going in. Hold your positions unless I expressly tell you not to. Understood?”

“Roger that. We will hunker down. Consider the perimeter sealed. Out.”

Briones stood and donned his helmet and Kevlar vest, and over it pulled a dark blue windbreaker with
Federales
emblazoned across the back. He reached down and grabbed an M16 assault rifle and chambered a round, then looked at the remaining three men in the van.

“Time to roll. I’m headed to the first squad. Be there within two minutes. Come on, Santiro. Let’s hit it.” He gestured to the other man in assault garb, who nodded and slipped his vest on and then gathered his weapons.

They exited the van and trotted down the dirt road to where Briones had twenty crack officers waiting in the dark. He had been through countless similar assaults with these men, and everyone knew the drill. Hand signals only, fire only if fired upon; the objective to take as many of the cartel members alive as possible.

When the two men reached the others, Briones frowned at the squad leader, a hard-faced sergeant with a decade of assault experience, and gestured to the iron gate in the perimeter wall that sealed the three buildings of the compound from the street. The sergeant nodded and the men moved out, their rubber-soled boots thumping on the dirt as they jogged to the gate. Earlier that day an undercover officer had made multiple slow runs by it and confirmed there were no cameras mounted outside – a positive for the assault force. The sergeant motioned to one of the men, who moved forward with a set of picks and quickly opened the lock. Another man sprayed lubricant on the hinges. Two of the officers pushed it open, and the rest moved into the large area in front of the main house, weapons at the ready.

Briones stood by the perimeter wall, anxiety nagging at him. This was all too easy. Something wasn’t right. He debated calling the men back, but then choked down the unease. Sometimes things went well. It wasn’t necessary to expect mayhem on every operation. The buildings were quiet, no signs of life, nothing stirring. Perhaps gratitude was more appropriate than agitation.

The group was halfway to the house when a window slid open, and then the night exploded with gunfire, automatic weapons chattering from two of the three buildings. A round caught the officer next to Briones in the chest. His vest absorbed the blow, but the force knocked him off his feet. In the courtyard, a handful of the
Federales
were cut down in as many seconds – a disaster that left the rest without any shelter, sitting ducks for the cartel gunmen.

“Fall back. Now,” Briones hissed into his com line, all the officers’ helmets containing similar communications gear as well as night vision goggles.

The
Federales
returned fire, trying to buy themselves breathing room, but when they regrouped outside the walls, only fourteen men were left of the original twenty.

“Lieutenant. Do you want to get the soldiers here?” the sergeant barked, panting, watching as his men fired measured bursts at the house.

“I’d rather not. Get the second team here on the double.” Briones had ten more men waiting on the far side of the compound as backup. The sergeant murmured into his radio, and forty-five seconds later the additional fighters were crouched with the original team, awaiting instructions.

“They must have motion detectors somewhere inside the yard. Any benefit of surprise is over. Now we need to do this the hard way,” Briones said, and the men exchanged grim looks. “I want two teams. I’ll get the army here with armored personnel vehicles, and when they roll into the yard, we’ll use those as cover. Sergeant, you take the main house. I’ll lead the second team to take out the guest house. There’s no fire coming from the third building, so I think we can assume it’s empty.”

“Yes, sir.”

Briones keyed his radio and relayed his instructions to Major Gutierrez, and then they waited as the sound of heavy trucks rolled down the dirt road from the larger artery around the bend. Three armored trucks approached and stopped a few yards from where Briones and his men were huddled. The lead vehicle passenger door opened, and a captain stepped out onto the dirt. Gunfire chattered from the house, but had diminished in intensity once the men were out of the line of fire.

“We’ll go in together. Let my men open up with the heavy artillery, and then your men can follow up,” the captain said. Briones was torn, but then thought about the six men lying dead inside the compound, and gave his assent.

“Fine. Let’s do this.”

Soldiers poured from out of the backs of the trucks until there were thirty heavily armed men, faces drawn with determination, prepared for the worst. The captain made a hand gesture and the three trucks eased forward through the gates, the soldiers using the first two for cover and the
Federales
shadowing the last one as the gunfire from the house increased to a barrage. Answering volleys from the soldiers tore through the building’s windows, and bullets ricocheted off the vehicle armor and the driveway pavers as the gunmen in the house intensified their efforts.

Briones motioned to his men and they joined the fray, pummeling the cartel shooters with a deluge of fire. One of the men near Briones grunted and dropped his weapon, and then fell towards him, half his face blown off by a Kalashnikov round. Briones’ jaw quivered and he took the man’s place, letting loose with burst after burst from his M16, enraged at the number of casualties they’d suffered from a supposedly low-intensity home invasion.

One of the soldiers tossed a grenade at the windows and got lucky. The detonation was deafening, and then the shooting from the house stopped. A few more scattered shots emanated from the guest house, and the roar of a big .50-caliber army machine gun silenced them with a three-second sustained volley.

Briones signaled to his men. They fanned out in a loose formation, approaching the house cautiously, crouched, weapons sweeping the area, wary. When they reached the door, the sergeant turned to Briones, anxious for his approval, a thin bead of sweat trickling down his face, grime smeared on it from throwing himself onto the driveway. Briones nodded, and the sergeant gestured to the two assault team members who were carrying an eight-inch diameter iron pipe filled with cement. They slammed it against the door and the flimsy wooden slab tore off its hinges with a crash, and then the nearest officer rolled into the opening, weapon searching for targets.