Night of the Assassin (Assassin Series 4_prequel) (6 page)

“How many pounds of trigger pressure on the Ruger?” the boy asked.

“I wonder, if you’re in a situation where you have to use someone else’s weapon, whether they’ll be able to answer that for you? My guess is, not.” Emilio replied.

The boy shrugged. Never hurt to ask.

He calculated the distance and then began firing, alternating weapons, rapidly, but not in an uncontrolled manner. The cans, which they’d filled with water, both sprouted leaks. After emptying both weapons in their direction they walked over to inspect the results.

Of six possible hits from the revolver, five had found their mark. All nine that Emilio had loaded the Ruger with found theirs.

“
Heh
. Not bad. I would have guessed you wouldn’t have hit any with the revolver. The only problem is that the one you didn’t hit it with might have been the one you needed to save your life. We’ll need to practice this more, switch things up on you. And I want to start practicing shooting while running or riding in a vehicle soon. Once you master being able to hit anything using whatever you’re handed from a still position, we’ll kick it up a notch and have you simulate real combat situations where you’re not stationary.” This was high praise from Emilio, who was grudging with his accolades.

The boy smiled. He understood his performance was extraordinary. Nobody he knew could have done it. But Emilio was right. There was no room for error, and no satisfaction from being almost great.

Emilio’s only concern as the boy matured was the inevitable interest that he showed toward his daughter, Jasmine. She was a year younger than the boy but already a beauty, thankfully reflecting her mother’s genes rather than Emilio’s. Also highly intelligent, she was every bit the boy’s match when it came to anything intellectual, and there had been a simmering kind of sibling rivalry between them since they’d first met.

Jasmine’s mother had died when she was five, leaving Emilio to shoulder the burden of raising her, assisted by his sister and mother. One of the benefits of being a breadwinner of secure means with a generous employer like
Don
Miguel was that you could help with family members, and Emilio did his fair share. In return for which, the ladies, as he called them, raised Jasmine while he was working. It wasn’t a perfect situation but it had done well enough by her and she’d blossomed into a gorgeous, charming example of classical Mexican beauty, all gleaming black hair, white teeth and coffee-kissed skin.

The only quirk she’d shown was a deep interest in the occult, driven no doubt by a frustrated desire to somehow relate to her departed mother. She was Catholic, of course, as was everyone in Sinaloa they knew, but she’d grown restive with the faith and had taken to reading tomes of dubious virtue, on divining, and psychic powers, levitation and transmutation, and all manner of arcane, esoteric disciplines. Jasmine had of late taken to sneaking out and spending time with an old woman who claimed to read fortunes in one’s palm, as well as through studying tea leaves – all for a price, of course. Emilio had been worried, but the ladies had assured him that it was just a phase; a way to appear more mysterious as she came of age. He’d never understood women, having found them all equally inscrutable and impossible to read, so in the end he’d decided to take the advice of his mother and sister and let the fascination run its course.

Emilio’s days consisted of working with the boy and the horses. Once both children were home from school, his attention focused almost exclusively on the boy, leaving Jasmine to be trained by the ladies – in the feminine ways of the world. This wasn’t because of any lack of love on Emilio’s part. On the contrary, he lived for Jasmine. It was just that as she’d grown from a child into an adolescent he’d felt out of his depth, and now that she was thirteen, and moody, her body sprouting the curves that would attract members of the opposite sex like bees to honey, he had no idea how to deal with her. He rationalized that this was natural, and would hopefully also pass. She just needed to be around other women, to learn whatever it was they learned while he taught the boy how to do masculine things.

One Friday before Easter, the boy had come home from school with a bloody nose and some abrasions on his face, which after some hard questioning turned out had come about from a fight with an older boy who had been bothering Jasmine during recess; he had grown increasingly abusive and insulting as the day had worn on. The boy had rushed to defend Jasmine’s honor, only to be pummeled by the larger student, whose two years of seniority was enhanced by growing up in a household with three brothers who had taught him to fight. The boy’s education hadn’t yet moved to manual self-defense, but, looking at his bruised face, Emilio decided it was time to teach him how to use his fists.

As with most things, the boy learned quickly, and within a few weeks had mastered the basics of the primitive form of martial arts Emilio knew; really just a combination of rudimentary boxing and street-fighting techniques. But the boy was a sponge, and once he’d exhausted Emilio’s capabilities he lobbied for more advanced training – and given that it was Emilio’s job to provide him with the fullest possible education, they researched alternatives and quickly found a plethora of options. Culiacan was the nearest large city, a half hour drive from the ranch. It had a number of martial arts schools specializing in judo, karate, and kung fu. The boy convinced Emilio that his development warranted three classes a week. He added the stylized moves and holds he learned to his exercise routine, striving to perfect those as he had so many others.

There were no more incidents at school after the next altercation, when the boy knocked the older bully unconscious within a few seconds of the fight starting, the bully abruptly lost his taste for hassling Jasmine or picking on either of them. His classmates treated him with polite and cautious deference from that point on.

He didn’t mix with the rest of his peers and showed no interest in friendships beyond casual greetings-in-passing in the halls. That was more than enough interaction for him; he viewed his fellow students as inferior in every way – not because he was arrogant, but rather because he’d run an equation and found them wanting and immature. They were children, given to excitement or emotional flights, whereas he was almost an adult, always restrained. He was quiet and withdrawn and tended to keep to himself, preferring to limit his mingling to Jasmine during recess. They had grown close by virtue of their shared male authority figure. It was a brother-sister relationship, for the most part, but the ladies had cautioned both Emilio and Jasmine that things would have to change once they both matured.

Once he turned sixteen and she fifteen the inevitable occurred; the two became inseparable in spite of admonitions from the adults. Jasmine was gorgeous by then, and at an age when many Mexican girls in past generations were married and having their first children, so it was foolish high hope on everyone’s part to expect that the two wouldn’t find each other, living out in the country as they did, and in the same compound. The boy had grown from a gangly colt into a self-possessed young man with looks that made females glance at him twice. Jasmine had noticed the transformation over the past year and her interest in him had moved from sisterly to something considerably warmer. Eventually, they discovered their curiosity and admiration was mutual and their passion quickly stoked to a boiling point they both gladly yielded to.

The couple found time to sneak away even while under near-constant watch, as young lovers usually did, confounding the best intentions of their guardians. They’d spend long hours in each other’s arms, in the barn, or hidden away in one of the recesses of the main house. Once they’d fully discovered each other they were like prisoners who’d crossed a long, dry desert and found themselves at an oasis, with no limitations on how much they pleasured each other. Their coupling soon became a daily event and for the first time in his life, the boy found himself enraptured by another human being. His attraction to Jasmine was magnetic and primal, and before long he was hers, body and soul, willing to go to any lengths to be with her or make her happy.

The boy was even willing to entertain Jasmine’s quirky ideas about the nature of reality, and indulged her penchant for spirituality and the paranormal, which at that point had developed into a borderline obsession. Every other utterance was regarding what fate, or the stars, wanted, which the boy attributed to her exotic nature and bored intellect. But she was deadly serious about her belief that there was more to the universe than what could be proved or seen, and so it was that three months after his sixteenth birthday he found himself agreeing to accompany her to the lair of the old woman who claimed to be a medium, so she could read his future.

That morning, they set off down the road on their bicycles, trailed by a pick-up truck carrying three men wearing cowboy hats and toting assault rifles. Even though
Don
Miguel was hardly ever in evidence, he insisted that the boy be protected at all times as though an attack on the ranch was imminent. This was just another way in which he was different than his cartel brethren – he was a meticulous planner and left nothing to chance. That had stood him in good stead throughout his life; he was ever-vigilant to possible threats to his family or entourage.

When they reached the clapboard hovel where the woman lived, marked with a battered roadside sign proclaiming Madame Sirena to be a medium extraordinaire, the truck pulled to a stop a discreet distance from the dwelling. The couple leaned their bicycles against the front of the house and, hand-in-hand, the pair ascended the three rickety steps. Jasmine knocked on the door, flakes of sun-bleached paint flaked off under her knuckles. After a considerable pause, the door was opened by an ancient gray-haired woman wearing a red gauze gypsy shawl trimmed in small gold coins. She fixed the couple with a one-eyed stare – the vision in her other eye having been lost long ago. The boy was momentarily repelled by the milky-white pupil, but instantly hid his reaction and braved a tentative smile.

“Ah. So this is the young man! Welcome, Jasmine,
mi amor
. Welcome. Look at him. He’s a strapping one, yes? Handsome, you were right about that, and strong as a bull, I’d wager. Come in, come in…” Madame Sirena insisted, gesturing at the dank gloomy interior with her claw-like hand. The boy noted in passing that she smelled like hastily applied cheap rose water, and sweat – a thoroughly objectionable combination that would stay with him as a reminder of unpleasantness for the rest of his life.

“Here. Sit at the table. Let’s see what we have here,
eh
? First I’ll look at your palm, and see what the gods have written for you in terms of love and life…and then I’ll do a reading.” She peered at him in the gloom. “It’s customary to leave a tribute for the spirits’ divine cooperation in producing an accurate reading, young man,” she hissed at him, in what he presumed she imagined to be a sly manner. Jasmine nudged him with her elbow and the boy fumbled in his pocket and fished out a two hundred peso note, placing it in the straw bowl the woman had balanced near the table’s edge. The bowl and the money therein quickly disappeared and the Madame moved around the room, lighting candles and incense. She pushed the button on a portable stereo sitting on a decrepit book shelf; vaguely-Asian music began to drift through the space, low volume, atmospheric dissonance to create a mood, more than anything.

The boy studied the walls and noted with amusement that there were countless photographs of mediums and séances and spooky-looking scenes, interspersed with turn-of-the-century posters depicting supernatural events and expositions. The overall effect was somewhat clumsy, but effective for the local peasantry. What Jasmine found so fascinating about this was beyond him, but if it made her happy, so be it. Seemed a small enough price to pay to find heaven in her embrace.

The crone approached the table and switched on a dusty yellow hanging lamp with an intricate brocade shade that directed most of the light to the center of the table. She gestured at him.

“Give me your hand. The right hand. Palm up. Just relax. This won’t hurt. Much,” she assured him, then cackled. He wondered whether she’d gotten her act out of central casting for a C-level horror film, the kind that were popular at the local cinemas with badly dubbed Spanish or blurry subtitles. Still, he played along, and placed his hand on the table.

The woman took it in hers and made a variety of sounds signaling deep thought.

“Hmmmm. Mmmm…yesssss. Oh. I see your love line is clear. You will only have one real love in your life, and it will be early in your time here. Hmmmm. Your lifeline is different. It’s long, but has many breaks, signaling something unusual. Maybe illness, maybe brushes with death. But it continues, so you will prevail through it all…hmmmm.”

This went on for a while and he pretended polite interest in the ambiguous generalities about his possible future. Of course, with Jasmine sitting there listening, love
would
be early and intense and genuine, which held an element of truth. When he was with Jasmine, he felt like an eagle soaring above the clouds. The intensity of his feelings for her were almost scary. It gave her power over him, which his training advised him to recoil from. Still, hormones were not to be denied, and he was smitten, no doubt.

The palm reading finished, the old woman trundled over to a cabinet and withdrew an ancient deck of cards, placing it on the table after shuffling them for several minutes.

“This is the tarot. It knows all, and tells all. Nobody can hide the truth from the tarot, and its words possess the wisdom of the ages.”