As the pair chatted lazily on the rear stone patio of the darkened house, El Rey gently squeezed the trigger. The standing man crumpled next to the seated guard, his chest exploding outward and onto his stunned partner; the fragmented slug having torn through his back, the shards exiting his front along with chunks of his pulmonary system and heart. El Rey caressed the trigger again, gently, as a lover might the receptive lips of his mate, and the seated man’s throat blew onto the heavy stucco house’s rear facade. That left the man in front, who would be getting a little apprehensive within a few minutes.
El Rey waited patiently for the inevitable, and was rewarded after seven minutes by the sight of the third sentry rounding the corner of the house. Another well placed shot took him down before he could draw his weapon. The threat from the security force was neutralized. He watched the grisly tableau for a few moments to ensure nobody was moving, then placed the rifle in the bottom of the boat before shrugging into a scuba harness. He double-checked the waterproof bag for the cell phone and two pistols before propelling himself backwards with a dull splash into the cold water of the bay.
It took him a few minutes to swim the distance, and when he pulled himself onto the shallow beach in front of the house, he paused to unclasp the tank and remove the scuba rig, dropping it where he stood on the sand, along with his flippers. They, like the boat, would be recovered later that night by Victor’s clean-up men, so he wasn’t worried about leaving any traces.
He padded in his neoprene dive booties to the grass that separated the patio from the beach and extracted a silenced Beretta 92FS pistol from the bag. Quickly gliding to where the corpses lay, he put a muffled slug into each man’s head, purely out of professional diligence. There was nothing more disruptive to a well-planned sanction than a wounded man with a gun exhibiting second-wind heroics. The niggling housekeeping chores concluded, El Rey studied the locking mechanism of the rear pocket doors before fishing out a foot-long stainless steel strip that looked much like a ruler, which is what in fact it was, albeit modified with a jagged hook ground out of one end. He slid it carefully through the center section, and with an abrupt pull, opened the lock. Back into the bag it went, and he fished out the second pistol – an odd-looking gas-powered gun that fired a horse-tranquilizer dart.
The house blueprints Victor had sourced from the building department were still fresh in his mind as he stealthily ascended the stairs to where he knew the master bedroom was located. The neoprene made his steps silent – a fortunate by-product of his unfashionable outfit. As he drew nearer to the partially-opened master bedroom door, his ears pricked up, listening for any tell-tale warning signs. Satisfied that the house was still, he pushed the door open, only to be rewarded with a creak from the hinges, corroded by the salt air.
The figure on the bed stirred at the sound and then lunged for the dresser. El Rey fired the dart gun left handed at him – the dart missed by a scant few inches and embedded itself into the pillow. The target swung around at him with a silenced pistol and began firing even as El Rey made a split second judgment call and charged him rather than shooting him. He ignored the white hot stab of pain that lanced through his upper leg as he hurled himself through the air at the prone, firing El Chilango, and within seconds had dislodged the gun and was grappling with his left hand for the dart as he slammed his Beretta butt into the man’s head with his right. The struggle was over in a matter of seconds, and the former cartel captain slumped into the mattress as the dart’s soporific venom, stabbed into the side of his neck, found its way into his bloodstream.
El Rey lay still on top of the target for a few seconds, assessing the throbbing pain from his thigh. He felt blood seeping from the wound – but it wasn’t spurting, which meant the projectile hadn’t hit an artery. Still, it was bad, and the pain was significant. After looking around the room, he rose and limped to the master closet and flicked on the light. His eyes scanned the rows of neatly hanging clothes until they alighted on a bathrobe with a sash for cinching the waist. He pulled the fabric strip loose, then pulled drawers open until he found some white cotton undershirts, all folded in neat little parcels. He grabbed one and tied it in place using the sash, studying the makeshift bandage with acerbic satisfaction. It would do until he could get medical attention.
He returned to the dark bedroom and reached into the waterproof bag dangling from his dive belt to retrieve the cell phone. Peering at the target’s inert form on the bed, he pressed a speed dial number. Victor’s voice answered.
“Front door. Two minutes. I’ve been hit, so I’ll need a medic as soon as possible,” El Rey whispered.
“Hit? How bad?”
“I’ll live. He clipped me in the leg. Be there in two minutes, and send the cleanup crew to get the gear and the boat.”
“I’ll have the lads push the bodies into the bay as well, if yah don’t mind,” Victor suggested.
“No worries,” El Rey answered, in the ubiquitous manner he’d heard used countless times by the locals since his arrival.
Gimping over to the bed, he lifted El Chilango by both arms and dragged him roughly into the hall and then down the stairs. The man would be out cold for two hours, he knew, and when he awoke his head would feel like someone had hammered it with a board, which wasn’t far from the truth, given the gashes the pistol had left, the blood already coagulating and crusting where it had streamed down his face.
On the ground floor, he slid the man to the front entrance foyer and watched through the side window for the vehicle. Twenty seconds later, he saw an outline pull up. He swung the door open, to be greeted by the sight of Victor trotting from the black delivery van they’d arranged for the evening’s festivities. He took a hard look at El Rey, standing in the doorway with blood oozing through the T-shirt affixed to his leg, and then wordlessly went to El Chilango and began dragging him to the back of the van. El Rey limped over, helped get the target into the back and climbed in after him.
“Get me a doctor. I think the bullet passed clean through, but I need to get cauterized and stitched up,” he instructed.
“I’ve got a call in. Should hear back any minute. Let’s do that before we hit the warehouse, shall we? I can secure our friend here so if he wakes up in the interim he can’t get up to any mischief,” Victor said.
“Good. Let’s go.”
Victor closed the back doors and ran around to the driver’s seat. Within seconds, they were headed down the carefully-manicured street, bound for the main road. Victor’s cell rang.
“Yeah. I need it now. Ten minutes out, maybe fifteen. Your shop? No worries,” Victor said, and hung up. He leaned towards the rear compartment. “We’ll swing by his office. He’s pretty good for this kinda thing,” Victor assured El Rey.
They drove through Sidney until they reached a rough looking section. Victor pulled to the curb in front of a small storefront featuring photos of yellow Labrador puppies bounding about in a grassy meadow. A short, bald, overweight man stood in the doorway, fumbling for keys to open it. El Rey looked up when Victor swung the rear doors open and gingerly slid himself out and onto the sidewalk, waving off the unspoken offer of assistance. He looked at the little man and then at the shop window, then glared at Victor.
“A veterinarian?” he whispered.
“Bloke’s top shelf. Have you running marathons in no time. Does all my sensitive jobs. No worries, mate. Nigel, come over and let’s get our man here inside,” Victor called out.
“I can make it. Let’s just get this over with.”
He limped to the door, which Nigel finally opened after locating the correct key.
“Name’s Nigel. Doctor Nigel to you,” he said, offering his hand.
“I’m shot in the leg. Let’s clean it and sew it up,” El Rey said, moving inside.
The walked to the back of the shop, where there was a small exam room with a stainless steel table in the center. Nigel flicked on the lights while Victor returned to the van to shackle their captive.
“Best get you up on the table, then. Let’s see what we’ve got here,” Nigel said, donning a disposable surgical apron and mask. He turned to where El Rey now lay and peered at the wound. “I’ll have to cut away your party dress, if you can deal with the loss.”
“Do what you have to do.”
Nigel expertly untied the dressing and snipped away the neoprene, cutting the entire wetsuit leg off just below the groin and pulling it off. Blood seeped slowly from the holes on both sides of El Rey ’s thigh. Nigel moved to the medicine cabinet, filled a syringe with Novocain and injected it carefully on the edges of the wound, finishing by squirting some directly in. The pain receded, replaced by sweet numbness.
Nigel swabbed the bullet hole and then used a pair of forceps to examine it.
“You got lucky. Missed the bone, and nothing major hit other than muscle. It’ll smart for a bit, but I can stitch you up and you’ll be a new man in no time,” he assured El Rey. “The slug passed clean through so I’ll just dump
