losing Beltran. That must never be.
He straightened up, said, 'Wait here. I've got to go kill a man and then I'll be right back.'
He went around the front of the Explorer, padding light-footed along the aisle at the head of the row of parked cars. He hauled a pistol, a flat, big-caliber semi-automatic, out of his right hip pocket.
He caught fresh sight of Beltran, from up close, feeling the old familiar sensation of bloodlust rising in him. A good feeling.
Monatero had steered him right, he told himself. The Supremo cell commander hadn't known who Beltran was, who he really and truly was, not until Paz had told him. But he'd known the operational details of the kidnap exchange.
Beltran had ordered Rubio, Torres, and Moreno to maintain comm silence and not contact the Supremo home base. He hadn't said anything about home base contacting them, though.
His doubts mounting as the day wore on, Monatero had finally given in to his fears and phoned Rubio's cell late in the day to find out what was happening. Rubio had briefed him on developments, including where and how the ransom swap was set to go down.
Monatero had learned that the Kwik-Up mini-mall off the highway was the staging area for the Garros exchange at Sad Hill. He'd told Paz, and the tip was a good one.
Paz walked soft, but at the last instant, eagerness for the kill had caused him to speed up as he closed in on Beltran.
The sound of his footfalls might have betrayed his approach, or perhaps Beltran had sensed something at the last: impending doom casting its shadow before it.
Paz said, 'Hello, amigo.'
Beltran turned, face to face with Paz. Beltran, Havana's ace spymaster, the deep cover legend whom Monatero had known only as Tio Rico.
Uncle Rico, aged, amiable, ineffectual vendor of snack treats from a beat-up old food truck.
Paz loomed, standing up close to Beltran, separated from him only by the length of the gun barrel whose muzzle he held jammed into the other's middle. With his free hand, Paz relieved the oldster of the burden of the knapsack, gripping it by the shoulder strap and taking it away from him.
It was heavy, bulging at the seams. A million dollars! Not bad for a day's work.
The rest went quickly, in a businesslike manner. Beltran wasted not a breath on appeals, pleas, or last words.
Paz made no final speeches, no taunts, no exit lines. Having said hello to Beltran, all that remained for Paz to do was to say goodbye to him.
'Adios, amigo,' he said, pulling the trigger. He fired several times, blowing out most of Beltran's middle, muzzle flashes underlighting his face to showcase its gleeful, masklike cast.
Having the gun wedged up tight against Beltran's flesh served as a kind of silencer, muffling to some extent the sound of the blasts. Beltran stood there in place, thrashing and thumping against the truck door as Paz unloaded into him.
A round ripped through him and the door into the cab, setting off the computerized musical ditty that the food vendor had played through the roof-mounted loudspeaker to announce his approach and peddle his wares.
The tune was the same one that had played earlier today, when he'd showed up at snack time at the Supremo Hat Company:
'La Cucaracha.'
It was on a short loop and now kept replaying itself, again and again, its piping notes shrilling through the parking lot.
Paz stepped back from Beltran, who slid down the side of the door, sitting down on the pavement and slumping forward, head bowed, as if bowing down to his slayer. A distinctive touch; Paz liked it.
He started to move, intending to circle around the front of the food truck and return to the Explorer the way he came.
People in the lot had heard the shots, but the amplified strain of 'La Cucaracha,' repeated again and again, defused the threat and made it seem like nothing more than a food vendor's ill-timed advertisement for himself.
Stepping off, Paz felt something slipping out from under his bulletproof vest, falling to the pavement at his feet. Light glinted off the object: his Saint Barbara medallion.
It hadn't escaped him after all! It had been stuck somewhere under the vest and finally worked itself loose during the shooting.
Total satisfaction spread through Paz, suffusing him from head to toe with its warmth. The talisman's loss had worried him more than he dared admit; finding it again filled him with a surge of good feeling, almost equal to what he'd felt pumping slugs into Beltran's belly.
He leaned forward from the waist to pick it up, setting down the knapsack on the pavement and releasing for an instant his grip on the knapsack to retrieve the medallion.
A shout came, loud enough to be heard over the refrain of 'La Cucaracha,' which continued its idiotic, monotone blaring over the loudspeaker.
Jack Bauer stood behind Paz, no more than six feet away, gun in hand. Paz half-rose, whirling, swinging the gun around.
Jack shot him twice in the head. Ordinarily he wasn't a headhunter, going for the body shot, the safest and most reliable course in a gunfight. Odds were that Paz was wearing a bulletproof vest, though. This was one time that a head shot trumped a body shot.
One-two, the double tap, surest way to inflict instant death. Kill the brain and the reflexes crash, including those of a trigger finger.
In the Explorer, Vasco and Fierro suddenly found themselves confronted by CTU agents who popped up on both sides of the vehicle, sticking riot shotguns through the open windows into their faces.
Fierro moved.
A shotgun blast filled the cab interior. As did much of Fierro's head, blown off at point-blank range.
Vasco froze and stayed that way. Not moving even after a CTU man had frisk-patted him down, relieving him of his handgun and ordering him to get out of the cab.
He had to shout to be heard over 'La Cucaracha.'
Vasco remained in place, clutching the steering wheel. Until his fingers were pried open and he was hauled out of his seat and thrown facedown to the pavement and handcuffed.
Jack stood with his arm hanging down at his side, smoking gun barrel pointed at the pavement.
Pete Malo reached across the food truck's rooftop, grabbing a handful of wires leading into the loudspeaker and yanking them out. Cutting off 'La Cucaracha' in mid-note.
Blessed silence.
Pete moved up beside Jack, said, 'You took a chance there, calling him out.'
Jack's ears were still ringing, not so much from the gunfire as from the music. He said, 'I wanted him to turn around so I could shoot him from the front instead of from behind. Looks better that way for the record. Less like an execution.'
Pete said, 'No working that diplomatic status to get off scot-free and board the next plane for Venezuela, not for him. There's no diplomatic immunity from a couple of bullets in the head.'
He gave Jack a quick side glance. 'I guess you had it figured that way.'
Jack shrugged, his silence committing him to nothing.
Pete indicated the white-haired oldster. 'So that's the legendary Beltran. Too bad we couldn't take him alive.'
Jack said, 'Paz had other plans.'
Reflected light from an overhead lamppost glinted off a metallic object on the pavement a few inches away from Paz's open, grasping hand.
