Target Deck - 02 (28 page)

“Roger.”

Nikita was a silent sentinel at the top of the tower, gazing down on the entire fortress. In the second courtyard a dozen cartel men played a game of soccer. Stadium lighting allowed them to play all night if they wanted. One by one, Nikita stared at their faces through his sniper scope but came up empty. Jimenez was supposed to be taking his holy communion or some such at this time of night but he wanted to make sure.

When they had briefed Deckard on their mission plan just prior to heading out they had asked about the commander's intent behind the mission. Specifically the mission was to gather intelligence on the cartel but the overall intent of the operation was to destroy the cartel itself. If they had the chance to assassinate the drug lord himself as a target of opportunity, should they take the shot?

If I have to answer that then you don't need to work here
, had been Deckard's reply.

“What in the good name of fuck is all of this,” Aghassi mumbled to himself.

He felt like he had just wandered onto a movie set. There were tables filled with weeping, half burned wax candles everywhere. Out of hundreds, only one or two were actually lit, making the room flicker with shadows. The air was thick with smoke and something unidentified. As Aghassi's eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw that he was in a bedroom.

Two women were passed out on the king sized bed, the sheets pulled astray. At least he hoped they were passed out. Tip toeing forward, he could see the naked back of one of the girls moving up and down as she breathed. The other lay on her back, her large breasts partially sinking into her armpits as her arms were flung over her head. Her massive chest was also moving. Bloody syringes and tie offs had been discarded over the side of the bed alongside the brown splotches of dried blood.

Mounted on the wall were various cured animal skulls, crosses, and other religious paraphernalia. A few books were laying around the bedroom by authors such as Aleister Crowley. On the dresser was a massive Smith and Wesson revolver. It looked like Jimenez was into some kind of Santeria type voodoo or something. He filed it away in the back of his head, even this type of intelligence could prove useful later on but having been raised a Baptist, he wanted to get the hell out of the bedroom as fast as he could.

Easing open the door, he slipped out and into the hall. The corridor was cold and dark, the air conditioning blasting up from the vents in the floor. Standing with the Glock in his hand, he listened for sounds of any enemy presence. Time seemed to stand still. The infiltrator had to fight off the feeling that he was being watched, that someone was right behind him. As he had been told by his sources, the second floor had no security cameras. After a full minute had passed he pressed the transmit button on his radio.

“Shooter-One.”

“I got you Spooky-One.”

“Can you see anyone moving around through the first floor windows?”

“It's dark, I can't see shit.”

The next step was to get into the strong room on the second level, disable the cameras and motion sensors, then locate the server room. One thing at time.

The third door down on the left hand side would lead to the central monitoring room that controlled most of the security systems, at least those connected to it. Once inside, he would not be able to remotely open locked doors, but any alarm systems, cameras, and probably any other passive sensors could be shut down. It was a heavy metal door, set inside a metal frame, with a beveled bottom to prevent someone like him from slipping shims or rods through any cracks. The locking mechanism was controlled by a smart card reader.

Holstering the Glock, Aghassi went back into his bag of tricks. He had his own smart card modified with metal leads attached to the actual smart chip that ran in down the length of the card. To those leads he attached a logic analyzer with alligator clips. The other end of the cables terminated in a USB port. Reaching into the Koala pouch he removed his notebook computer, plugged in the analyzer and booted it up.

Starting up an analytical program, it quickly broke down in what sequence the card reader functioned, figured out what prompts it asked for, and what replies were expected. Once the digital recon work had been done, Aghassi packed up the card and sequence analyzer. He then plugged in a smart card reader to the notebook and stuck a blank smart card into it. Programming the card, he put it in the monitoring station's smart card reader, which picked up the false authentications and allowed him to open the door.

Dumping his kit into the open Koala pouch, he hurriedly stepped inside and shut the door behind him. He had thirty seconds to attack the alarm console inside a hard case on the wall before the alarms went off. The normal security monitor would just type in the pass code but he didn't have the code or the time to finesse that type of bypass.

Turning a key, he opened the alarm box and started pawing around through the guts of the alarm system. Using his screw driver he began disconnecting the leads, all of them just to make sure. No alarms sounded. The key had been provided to him by the kid that he and Nikita had saved from the sicarios that had threatened his family. He had been able to steal it while working on the compound the day prior to the night raid. It was one of the spares and the security monitor had left the key box unsecured for half an hour while making his rounds.

Next, he turned his attention to the monitor bank. With the alarms switched off, Aghassi simply disconnected the power cable running to the console. The motion detectors would now be shut down and the cameras would not be recording anything that could be found later on after he left. There would simply be a blank area on the tapes if someone went looking.

He took a deep breath and let it out.

He was making progress.

Back out in the hall he headed for the stairs. It was so dark that he had to go into his kit and pull on a set of PVS-15 night vision goggles. There wasn't even any ambient light for the goggles to intensify so he had to use the infra-red illuminator to create some non-visible light. With his depth perception altered by the night vision goggles, he proceeded slowly and carefully.

The IR illuminator acted like a flashlight that was invisible to the naked eye but would at least allow you to see with night vision goggles when there was no ambient light.

Once at the bottom of the stairs, he panned back and forth, examining his new surroundings. There were dozens of guns hanging on the walls. Most of them looked like show pieces as near as he could tell through the green tinted night vision. The room was arranged as an entertainment area with overstuffed leather couches and chairs arranged around multiple flat screen televisions. The tables and bar area looked like they had been recently cleaned, the help having tidied up before going home for the night.

Aghassi began to think it though, trying to get inside Jimenez' head. His sources had told him that when the cartel's tech guru showed up every week or so, that Jimenez would clear the bottom floor of his villa. The technician would disappear inside for a few hours and then be escorted back off the compound. It was suspected that he was a professional flown in to maintain whatever system it was that the cartel was running for information management.

It was clear to Aghassi that the server room for the cartel's network was hidden behind a false wall or inside a concealed sub-basement somewhere. But where was the entrance? Where would someone like Jimenez hide it? The drug lord was known for his ruthlessness and brutal tactics. With what he had just seen in the bedroom, the Samruk mercenary could now add superstitious to the cartel leader's personality traits.

“Shooter-One?”

“I'm here,” Nikita answered.

“How are we doing?”

“The roving patrol moved over to the second courtyard to watch his friends playing soccer. You are clear for now.”

The former ISA operator began looking for seams in the carpet, maybe a trap door. Under night vision, his task was made about ten times more difficult. He bent over several times to run his hand along suspect areas. Unfortunately, it wasn't like the Scooby Doo cartoons where you just turn a candle holder sideways and a door pops open.

Or was it?

Looking over Jimenez's firearms collection, he came to a display case. The sign above the case read:
Goat's Horn
in bloody red letters. It was the nick name that cartels gave to the AK-47 rifle, referencing the distinct curved shaped magazine known by terrorists and soldiers alike the world over. Inside the case itself were gold plated Kalashnikov rifles, some embedded with jewels and other decorations. Aghassi could see large printed words behind the glass but could not read them with his night vision goggles so he flipped them up.

Activating a small red colored LED flashlight, he read the words written at the center of the displayed rifles.

The Beast.

What the hell is the beast?

At this point he had more than a hunch. Pushing on the display case he found that it didn't budge it, but when pulled, it smoothly eased open on ball bearing rollers.

Gotcha.

Jimenez hunched over the pool of holy water and began scrubbing the blood off his hands and arms.

The church had been built over a hundred years ago and nature was slowly reclaiming it as her own. Everything, even the silent stone erected by the ancestors would eventually die, perish, and crumble back into what was before.

Strong pillars at each side of the church were encased in a tangle of twisting vines and overgrowth that reached up to the vaulted ceiling. There the creeping vegetation slowly gave way to the faded images of angels that stared at those below. The golden Catholic alter had long since been picked apart by looters, now there was just stone and shattered glass. Holes in the roof allowed a steady drip of water to create a pattering that echoed through the open space.

In place of the altar was an effigy of Santa Muerta. She was what this was all for.

The black robed skeleton wore a crown upon her head, the empty eye sockets hanging down at the sacrifice laid out before her. Jimenez looked away and back at his hands, the holy water now turning pink as he scrubbed away at the coagulated blood staining his skin. Wherever he went, she was close by. Her images were tattooed across his back, the hooded skeleton figure keeping watch. Drying his hands, the drug lord slipped back into his shirt.

Santa Muerta had not been pleased with him as of late. His blood offerings had not been sufficient. The rival drug cartel members he had decapitated, the police officers he had hung off of overpasses, the countless assassinations that kept blood flowing in the streets day and night. They were not good enough and she had blighted him for it. When would it be enough, did he have to bleed all of Mexico dry before she took pity on him?