King of Swords

place, none of them were feasible. There were no surrounding buildings where a sniper could hide, so the most surefire method was the scorched earth approach. He had no objection to killing many versus only a few. To him, the number was immaterial. He just loathed inefficiency and slop — bombs and poisons, as with radiation, were imprecise. This approach flew in the face of his preferred techniques, but after considering all the possibilities, the mass explosion was the most surefire way of fulfilling the contract.

He would position the custom-made nodes several weeks before the G-20 was to commence along with the detonator caps. All he would need to do was wait for the targets to get within the kill zone, and then push a button. He’d have to be proximate in order to confirm that the targets were actually where they were supposed to be when he detonated, but that was relatively simple to execute. He already had his army uniform, and in all the confusion, one more running soldier would never be missed.

El Rey prided himself on detailed planning, which was one of the reasons he’d had a one-hundred-percent success rate on all his sanctions. It was one of the justifications for his high fee — this time, enough to retire on for good, when combined with his savings.

Under normal circumstances, he got half his fee in advance, no negotiation, and the other half upon successful completion; but this was no ordinary hit, so he’d gotten eighty-percent up front. The nodes would be made for him by a specialist in Honduras — he’d already been in contact, and they would require a ten day turnaround, so next week he’d place the order and then his cartel contacts would take care of smuggling them to Baja. They were to look like lighting fixtures, only with a deadly coating of easily splintered metal that had the explosive power of ten hand grenades per fixture. For the surface area, three would have done the trick, however he’d decided on eight based on worst case assumptions. At fifteen thousand dollars per node, they weren’t cheap, but then again he wasn’t price sensitive.

Once the hit was completed, he’d have to go to ground for a long time, perhaps forever, so he wanted to ensure that he had double the amount he’d need to live comfortably anywhere in the world. Mexico was his first choice but would be far too hot for him, so he’d made arrangements to be transported to Uruguay, where he could live in luxury in a waterfront villa in a suburb of Montevideo until the search went cold. He figured three to five years, minimum.

That was fine. After this final job, his swan song, he’d have nineteen million dollars. With that kind of swag he could stay disappeared for a long, long time. He’d already flown to Montevideo the prior year and spent a week there. It had everything he could wish for — first class restaurants and infrastructure, beautiful women, great wine from Argentina, and a host of more stimulating, esoteric pastimes available for a discriminating young man of secure means.

He wasn’t worried about getting paid his final twenty percent for the job, even though the cartel boss who had hired him was dead. Whoever took over for him was unlikely to test the patience of El Rey or invite his wrath.

That was one perk of being notorious, he mused. Collections issues disappeared when you had the reputation for being able to kill anyone, however well they were protected. His clients were actually eager to pay him.

Perhaps, in time, the furor would die down, but he wasn’t betting on it, which was one of the reasons he still needed to deal with a few loose ends, and cover his tracks. A door closed, a window opened. It was all part of life.

He watched the men working and felt a sense of quiet satisfaction. He was a lucky man. After all, how many people in the world could honestly say that they truly loved their job?

Julio Brava swaggered along the sidewalk in downtown Mexico City, fully immersed in his role as fast-money criminal. He’d spent a lifetime around miscreants so he knew all too well how they behaved. That was one of the hardest parts of his job, in truth — separating the pretend from the real. He had a generous amount of walking- around money to spread around, and would stay underground for months at a time, so it was all too easy to get caught up in the game and lose track of himself.

The job had cost him his marriage early on — it was hard to explain to a wife why you needed to disappear for fourteen weeks. She’d hung in for the first year, but quickly tired of being married to a phantom. There were no hard feelings from his end, although she claimed he’d ruined her life. That perceptual dissonance was probably just one of the many examples of how men and women differed.

He’d been in the game now for over a decade and had been instrumental in busting a lot of bad guys, but there was literally an infinite number of new ones to slot into the place of any he put away. That was the depressing aspect of his job. There were many positives, though, if you could deal with the constant threat of being killed.

Julio was thirty-nine, and had three different girlfriends who didn’t ask questions of the free-wheeling entrepreneur. He drove a lemon-yellow Humvee with every imaginable option, and he kept whatever hours he felt like. Every club in the city recognized him as an A-lister, and he had access to whatever vices he cared for.

Now that he ran his own squad he was autonomous, and nobody complained as long as he delivered results. His operating budget was vast, and the opportunities to make additional money on the streets as a function of the contacts he’d cultivated were substantial. More than once he’d made a loan and seen double the money come back to him within a month. That added up when you were funding your loan shark business with government money; it really was a perfect cover for a cop. It wasn’t his fault if he never seemed to be able to turn a profit, at least when reporting to his supervisors. Fortunately, his superiors didn’t question things too closely. A man had to earn a living, after all, and lending money to those in need was pretty benign compared to most. It was like being a bank of last resort, really — a liquidity mechanism for a booming economy.

He was on his way to meet a man who was rumored to know how to get in touch with El Rey, which didn’t mean much at this stage, as most of the hustlers on the street would claim to know how to get you a meeting with Santa or Jesus for a fee. But this contact was different — he was higher up than most of the contacts on Julio’s roster.

Felipe was loosely affiliated with the Gulf Cartel, and handled some of their distribution logistics, in addition to managing some of their love-for-sale venues, so he probably dragged down thirty grand U.S. a month, no sweat. That kind of money suggested that you were unlikely to be a time-waster or a con artist. If you were in the game at that level and you said you knew a guy who knew a guy, you probably did. Julio’s challenge would be to get to the next stage. That sounded easier than it would likely be.

Julio knew how the street worked — if you were responsible for bringing someone into a circle and they wound up burning someone, you paid the price as the person who vouched for them. It was a brutally effective approach. If Felipe knew anyone affiliated with El Rey, he’d be very reluctant to admit it unless the reward far exceeded any risk.

He’d known Felipe for three years and had partied with him more than once, bringing in the dawn as they’d left one club or another together. It had been a mutually beneficial relationship — Felipe passed on prospects who really needed money in a hurry for investment, generally in product he was selling, but was unwilling to provide them with credit. Everyone benefited; Felipe got his needs met, Julio got his profit, and the borrower got to play with other people’s money. None of his referrals had defaulted, so it was a relationship built on love. The truth was that Julio could lose money on occasion to support his cover and there would be no ramifications, but it offended his sense of business acumen — it was more the principle of the thing.

Felipe greeted Julio with a hug when he walked into his bar. He immediately called over two girls for Julio’s consideration. They were enticing beauties, but Julio waved them off — he was there for business. He did accept a glass of Don Julio 1942, and waited until they were comfortably settled in a corner booth at the back of the club before he began the discussion he’d come for.

“I hear that you can get just about anything a man could want, my friend,” Julio began.

“Very true. Thank goodness that most men’s imaginations are limited to things I can readily provide — for a price, of course,” Felipe observed.

“It’s the way of the world, is it not?” Julio agreed.

“Indeed, my friend, indeed. So…how can I help you today, Raphael? What could I possibly have that you might want? Just mention it, and it’s yours,” Felipe offered magnanimously. He knew Julio as Raphael — his undercover name.

“I have need of a delicate specialist, for a friend. A very wealthy, powerful friend who can afford the absolute best, and demands it.”

“Sounds like my kind of people. And what does he want, exactly?” Felipe asked.