Night of the Assassin (Assassin Series 4_prequel) (10 page)

He swiveled his attention to the hull, where he could just make out heads popping up here and there, like on a fairground shooting stall. A man leaned over and fired his weapon at the vehicles below. Raul caressed the trigger again and watched as the man’s head vaporized. Moving down the line, he took out another. He was now four down with three shells, which he felt was a fair contribution to the ensuing train wreck of an operation. Raul peered through the scope, trying to find any other obvious targets, but the men along the side of the ship had figured out there was a sniper at work, and had retreated into the ship, barring the watertight ship’s deck entry door in the process.

The gun turrets on the BTR-70s opened up with their armor piercing rounds, but quickly discovered that their shells, which could easily penetrate up to a one and a half inch steel plate, were just denting the heavy hull, which had been fashioned from considerably thicker material. That left the commandos and the traffickers in a classic Mexican standoff. Shooting from the ship had stopped other than from a lone gunman who hadn’t made it inside in time, but was behind the bulk of the bridge’s tower and so out of Raul’s line of sight. Firing from the two BTR-70s had also stopped, though the entire waterfront area still resonated with receding echoes of gunfire.

The commander barked orders into the radio and the men emptied from the personnel carriers and took up position to mount an assault on the ship. The men below flung three grappling hooks affixed to black nylon rope over the hull’s edge. The four-pronged hooks all found a purchase. The problem was that any men on the ropes who got caught in the fire from the remaining gunman were dead meat, so nobody wanted to be the first to climb four stories up onto the deck. Raul decided to shift his position and moved down the row of windows on the warehouse until he was more symmetrically placed and could see down the entire length of the ship.

He set his rifle tripod down, and resumed peering through the scope. There, at the farthest end of the ship, right near the stern, was the gunman, taking cover below the three foot high steel lip of the boat’s deck edge. Raul calculated the distance and an additional forty yards and adjusted accordingly, then waited for the man’s head to pop back up. It was just a matter of time, he figured – correctly, as it turned out – his vigilance was rewarded by the man’s arms and head coming into view as he prepared to empty his weapon at the commandos below. Raul took his shot, and the man’s head disappeared in a bloody puff of fragments.

The deck was now empty, although it would still be ugly fighting through the ship. Not his problem.

The commander gave the squad the all-clear signal, and within seconds men were moving swiftly up the ropes to the ship above. Raul had shifted his attention to the bridge windows again, figuring it would just be a matter of time until some bright lad figured out that he could shoot from the portholes that stretched another four stories above the ship’s deck, picking off soldiers as they climbed over the rail. Sure enough, one of the glass hatches on the side opened, and a gun barrel poked out. He waited patiently because the angle of the shooter’s barrel wouldn’t allow him to hit the deck, and sure enough, more of the weapon slowly emerged from the window until Raul also saw the arm that was holding it. The first commandos were only a few feet from the edge so he only had a second before they’d be exposed to the gunman. Raul fired, and the gun went sailing harmlessly to the deck below, taking three quarters of the man’s still attached arm with it.

That would give the rest inside something to think about.

From there on out it was a textbook incursion. They had to use explosives to blow the doors open, and for fifteen minutes, bursts of gunfire echoed throughout the boat’s hull. Eventually the commander got an all clear call from the men inside, and a status report. They’d taken out six hostiles, no survivors, and lost nine men in the process. Raul listened to the recitation impassively, his face betraying nothing. The commander glanced at him as he heard the casualty assessment, but Raul was busy packing up his gear, his work for the night finished. The commander approached him and stopped a few feet from him.

“Great shooting. You saved a lot of lives tonight,” the commander said.

Raul bit his tongue, didn’t blurt out his natural reaction, which was that if he’d been allowed to lead an amphibian team they would have likely lost only a few men, if any, thanks to the element of surprise, and that the commander had killed those commandos with his lack of flair and imagination just as surely as if he’d pulled the trigger himself. Instead, he nodded and stood, weapon in tow.

“Thank you, sir. I had some lucky shots tonight. We were all fortunate.”

There being nothing more to say, he saluted before descending the stairs to join the remainder of his team. It would be a long stretch of duty as the bodies were recovered and the drugs inventoried and he wanted to get out of the commander’s sight before his contempt for the man leaked through his veneer. It wasn’t worth it. Most of the world was composed of idiots – the commander was simply making up the numbers.

It was that night, on his first live operation, that he realized he had probably already learned everything he was going to from the military. The time had already come, after little over a year in the service, to reconsider his options.

Ten Years Ago

A year and a half after joining the marines, Raul disappeared without a trace, leaving nothing behind to be remembered by except his assumed name, which he’d quickly grown to despise. He’d participated in seven more operations after his first one, and yet with each mission he became more convinced that his talents were being wasted and he wasn’t progressing any further. To make matters worse, he witnessed countless acts of bumbling bureaucracy by the ranking officers, costing the men under their command casualties for no good reason. If anything had ever convinced him that he wouldn’t do well working for someone else, his half year of active duty after completing his boot camp and all the specialized training had done the trick. When he walked off the base for the last time, ostensibly on two day’s leave to go visit his fictional family in Chiapas, it was with an audible sigh of relief.

Raul had saved almost all of his meager pay and still had a few thousand dollars from the money he’d left home with, after selling his weapons to convert his assets into cash. His identity papers had cost him six hundred dollars in Mexico City, and he’d done some odd jobs before joining the navy, but he would need to put the next part of his grand plan into operation fairly soon if he was going to avoid having to work as a day laborer. Fortunately, the cartels he’d been battling were generous employers, able to pay far more than the navy, so he could pretty much choose which cartel he wanted to approach; as an ex-marine they’d be eager to have him as part of their enforcement team. Although he had different ideas about how he could be of service to them.

He was now three months shy of his nineteenth birthday and free to do as he pleased. Yet there was some unfinished business he needed to attend to back in Sinaloa before he moved on to the next phase of his life. His departure had stuck in his craw, and he felt a pull to return. He’d learned to trust his judgment on these things, so he hopped on a bus and began the long trip from Veracruz to Culiacan. Wearing the uniform of a special forces commando, he was afforded privilege by the bus company so thankfully it cost him almost nothing to cross the nation. Two days after he’d left his naval career behind, he descended the stairs in Culiacan, blinking into the bright sunlight of an early spring day.

After forty-two hours cramped on buses, eating whatever junk he could get at the irregular stops, his first order of business was to have a decent meal. He set off in search of a restaurant that had been his favorite, back in the day. Outside the terminal, he hailed a cab, providing the driver the address as he slid into the back seat. The young man had changed since he’d last been in town, as had the city itself, growing by leaps and bounds. His carefully-trimmed goatee and closely-cropped military haircut ensured nobody would recognize him, which wasn’t much of an issue considering his long absence. He’d developed into a hardened combat veteran since leaving as a teen boy and his bearing and additional muscle weight filled out his uniform, lending him a formidable presence. The boy had left and had returned a man.

The taxi arrived at the restaurant,
La Chuparrosa Enamorada
, nestled on the banks of the
Canal Rosales
, and the young man paid the driver and hoisted his duffle. It was a Tuesday, so the breakfast business was thin, which wouldn’t have been the case had it been the weekend. The place typically had a standing room crowd on Saturdays and Sundays, due to the generous portions of mouthwatering food. He had been there a few times with Emilio on special occasions and it was one of the things that had been on his mind since boarding the bus in Veracruz. The waitress invited him to an outdoor table overlooking the water. He ordered a glass of orange juice and a plate of chicken
chilaquiles
in red sauce – a local favorite and one of the restaurant’s signature dishes.

When his food came, he thought about his next move, while remarking on how little things had changed in the last twenty months. In this sleepy area, things seemed to always remain the same, even as the city grew at an unprecedented rate. First thing he would need to do is secure reliable transportation. Taxis weren’t going to be an option for what he had in mind, so he’d need to get some sort of conveyance sooner rather than later. With his bankroll being as thin as it was, that meant stealing something, or probably several somethings, depending on how far he decided to travel.

He munched on his food, savoring the rich, spicy sauce, and cleaned his plate as efficiently as a dishwasher would. Stuffed, he paid the bill and strolled out onto the rural road, scanning the surroundings for something he could liberate opportunistically. It took him half an hour to spot a suitable vehicle that was easy enough to break into and hot wire, but he eventually found a thirty year old Chevrolet truck with a broken wind wing. Within seconds, he was in the cab. It took him ten seconds to find the ignition wires and soon he was meandering down the familiar road that led to
Don Miguel
’s estate. The surroundings were still verdant and wild, nature seemingly impatient to encroach on the slim progress man had introduced. When he was a quarter mile from the turnoff to the ranch, he pulled the old truck onto a dirt track that led off into the wilds and parked where it couldn’t be seen from the road. He had no idea what he would find at the hacienda when he made it to the estate, but he’d learned to be cautious about everything and considered it best to err on the side of prudence.

He moved stealthily through the woods until he found one of the myriad game trails that ran through the immense tract of
Don
Miguel’s property, and soon was jogging along as he had in the old days. It was cool in February so he barely broke a sweat and before long, he was in the cluster of trees that ran along the side of the property, near the horse barn where he’d so long ago been set to move hay as the commencement of his training. The main house was deserted, with none of the security men that were everywhere when he’d been living there. No matter; he hadn’t come for anything in the house. He wanted to see his mentor, Emilio, and Jasmine. For all his efforts Jasmine had survived in the place she’d carved out of his psyche, and he wanted to bring closure to a door that bulged, and threatened to burst open in his recurring dreams.

The young man continued along the perimeter and down the track until he reached the caretaker’s house that reposed several hundred yards into the woods. He knew that trail like he’d been on it only yesterday, the loosely-placed flagstone that served as a driveway all too familiar under his feet. Surprisingly, he felt a buzz of anxiety in the pit of his stomach as he neared the front door – an altogether alien sensation for him. There, sitting as it always had, was the modest colonial home, deliberately styled in a rustic, sponge-painted manner to mirror the design sensibility of the larger main house. Pausing on the front porch, he registered that there was something different about the home than the last time he’d been there, almost two years ago. It seemed quiet, as though nobody was living there – much like the main estate had seemed from a distance. Shaking off the sense of foreboding, he knocked on the door, and when he heard nothing from inside, he walked around the side to where Emilio parked his big navy blue Ford Lobo crew-cab truck. There it sat, unchanged, next to the small Chevy econo-box Emilio had bought for Jasmine with his bonuses from
Don
Miguel.

He moved back onto the porch, and knocked again.

“Emilio. Jasmine. Please. Open the door. It’s me…I’m back…” he yelled.

From inside, he heard a faint rustling, and then Jasmine’s distinctive voice.

“Go away. There’s nothing for you here.”

“Jasmine. Please. Open the door. I need to talk to your father. It’s important,” he tried again.

“He’s dead. Everyone’s dead.
Don
Miguel, my father, his sister and his mother. There’s only me left now, and I don’t want to see you. Please. Just leave. Go now, and stay away,” Jasmine warned.

“Dead? How? How is that possible? What’s happened since I left? Tell me, Jasmine. Please. Just open the door. I don’t want to have this conversation through a slab of wood. I just travelled over a thousand miles to see you…please, Jasmine. I’m begging you. I need to see you.”

“No you don’t. You left without a word to anyone, and now death has come to the valley, and it’s only me left alive – and you. Do yourself a favor, and leave now, while you can,” Jasmine implored him.