King of Swords

rolled.

Battle-frazzled soldiers leaned against the wall and lounged on the red vinyl booth benches, their guns pointed at the floor or resting on the tables. Combat was an odd thing, the general mused. Time compressed and minutes seemed to take an hour to pass. Once the adrenaline rush of being under fire diminished, your body felt like it had run a marathon. He knew the feeling, although it had been over a decade since he’d been in a firefight. A ranking general was far too high-profile and strategically important to take risks of that sort.

Two soldiers stood at attention on either side of the battered office doorway, the walls around which were pocked with bullet holes. He entered the room and the unforgettable smell of blood struck him, along with that of voided bowels. They didn’t feature that in the movies or on TV, but often when a target was gut shot, the bullets tore through the intestines, leaking bowel fluid everywhere. And equally often, a by-product of dying was a complete loss of neuromuscular control, including bowels and bladder. The business of death was a filthy one, he knew.

It was, after all, his chosen career.

Ortega moved to where the major was standing over a little bull of a man, collapsed behind the metal desk, at least six bullet wounds visible. The room was a disaster, the grenade having hurled shrapnel throughout it; the man behind the desk must have taken cover there to escape the explosion. Judging by most of the other bodies in the room, they hadn’t had that foresight.

“It’s the target. Batista,” the major observed. “He was holed up in here with five others, and a group of enforcers. They put up a fight, I’ll give them that, but you saw how long it took to take them down. Stupid fuckers should have surrendered instead of trying to shoot it out with an army unit…”

“When was the last time one of these shit-rats wised up and put a gun down, instead of shooting at us?” General Ortega mused.

“Good point. We’d all be out of jobs if human nature changed that much, eh?” the major countered.

“Not likely. Well done, Major. Carry on,” Ortega said, before taking a photo of the dead Batista with his telephone.

The general inspected the other bodies with scant interest and then motioned to his two armed attendants to move out. He had no intentions of sticking around any longer than he had to. The operation was concluded, the target neutralized, the mission accomplished. The rest was just mop up.

They returned to the command vehicle and the driver started the engine of the military edition Humvee H1 — a throaty diesel that would run the vehicle through raging rivers or up the sides of mountains. Ortega donned his reading glasses and fiddled with the buttons on his phone, struggling to make out the menu options. After a few false starts, he located the e-mail function and pushed send, watching in satisfaction as the photograph of the dead Batista winged its way to his rival, El Chavo, the lieutenant favored by his sponsor in the Sinaloa cartel to run the Knights Templar operation now that Santiago had gone to his reward.

Tomorrow, if Poncho Gallermo was still alive, Ortega would be spearheading a drive to eradicate that parasite from the planet as well.

One had to choose one’s battles carefully. It didn’t pay to buck the system. The world was an imperfect place, and if two dangerous homicidal psychopaths could be taken out with a minimum of fuss, that was good for everyone. Of course they’d just be replaced by other predators, but that was the way of the world. He couldn’t stop it, so might as well make a little retirement money while doing his part to keep the world safe.

The Humvee moved ponderously down the road to the checkpoint, where the sentries waved it through and saluted their commander, a legend in the ongoing battle for the safety of the Mexican people.

Julio’s phone rang at ten-thirty p.m.. He answered it, and was greeted by the blaring sound of house music and Felipe’s voice.

“Raphael! Hey, man, glad I caught you.”

“Felipe. How are you? What are you up to?” Julio asked, his heart rate increasing twenty beats per minute and booming in his ears.

“You got a pen? Write this down. The guy we were talking about? He agreed to see you. His name’s Jaime Tortora. He’s got a pawn shop near the main cathedral downtown.” Felipe gave him the address. “He says he’ll see you at ten tomorrow morning, at his place.”

“Felipe. That’s great. I can’t thank you enough. I won’t forget this.”

“Be careful what you wish for, my friend. Like I said, from this point there’s no going back. You’re on your own,” Felipe reminded him.

“I know. No worry, be happy, right?” Julio said, alluding to a reggae song they had gotten drunk to on their first meeting years ago.

“Isn’t that right! Hey, you want to come down to the club and have a drink? May be the last time I see you…” Felipe teased.

“I don’t know. The last time I had a drink with you, your bartender almost sucked the life out of me,” Julio said.

“She’s here tonight. She’s been asking about you. Apparently, once you taste the God of Love, you’re ruined for all other men. You’re an animal, my friend. I’ve never seen her like this,” Felipe reported.

“Yeah. I’ll just bet. No, I think I’ll stay in tonight. I’m still trying to recover from our last little soiree.” Julio’s mind wandered to their spirited tryst. “Tell her I’ll call her.”

“I will. But will you really? If you don’t, you better not come around here until she quits, because she’ll be looking to even the score,” Felipe advised.

“I swear on a stack of bibles as tall as you are, I’ll call. But I can’t do it tonight. I’m beat,” Julio said, omitting that he would be on the phone with Cruz in a few minutes and likely have to meet him early in the morning to finalize a plan of attack and scope out Tortora’s shop.

“Sure, sure. Hey, I’m not sleeping with you no matter how sweet you talk, so save your breath for Monique,” Felipe concluded. Monique was the bartender’s name. As if Julio could ever forget.

The conversation degraded from there into jousting over each others’ claimed prowess, and before long Julio signed off, impatient to share the good news with Cruz.

The next morning at eight-thirty, Briones, Julio and Cruz were at the same Starbucks as the prior meeting, Briones with a laptop in tow. They ordered coffee while Briones got online, taking a few minutes to log onto the server at headquarters. They had run a full profile on Tortora, and he came back squeaky clean. No prior arrests, no suspicious bank filings, a model citizen with a modest but sustainable pawn shop, all licenses current, no violations or problems ever reported. Tortora hadn’t even had a parking ticket in the last five years, which was as far back as the system went. The man seemed the least likely agent for a contract killer imaginable, much less for El Rey. Julio had a momentary fear that maybe this was Felipe’s twisted kind of a joke, then dismissed it. He hadn’t seemed like he was making a funny when he’d agreed that he could put Julio in touch with the most infamous hit man in the world.

Briones tapped out a series of keystrokes and then brought up a window with satellite coverage of downtown Mexico City.

“All right. The red X is the shop. You can see there’s an alley running alongside of it, and it backs onto another building, so there’s only the back emergency entrance on the alley and the front doors to worry about. At street level are single story shops, with apartments above, but they’re accessed from a separate lobby next door to the shop. According to what information we could get, Tortora leases a one bedroom apartment there, and also owns a home in one of the suburbs. Drives a VW Golf, three years old, paid for,” Briones recited, pointing at the screen for emphasis.

“What else do we know about this guy?” Julio asked.

“He’s fifty-eight, been in the same location for twenty years,” Briones said.

“Where is he originally from? Here?” Cruz asked, his skin subtly darker from discreetly applied base, and his hair slicked straight back under a sheen of pomade. The transformation was subtle, but made him unrecognizable — a tribute to the skill of the theatrical makeup woman they’d hired to alter his appearance. A pair of round stainless steel spectacles completed the disguise, and Cruz had been truly surprised when he’d inspected his made-over profile in the mirror.

“Hmm, no. Sinaloa. Culiacan,” Briones said, switching screens to access the information.

“Drug capital of Mexico. Coincidence?” Julio wondered.