Revenge of the Assassin

cordon off the northwest block, now,” he screamed.

His earpiece crackled.

“Can you make it across?” Cruz’s voice sounded tinny in his ear.

“Negative. I don’t know how he did it. He must be able to fly,” Briones said in frustration, straining futilely for a better shot at his quarry.

But El Rey was nowhere to be seen.

Chapter 21

El Rey locked the door behind him and turned on the air-conditioning before placing the backpack on the coffee table. He’d worked the question of how the police had known about his meeting over and over as he’d made his way back to his apartment, and come to the conclusion that there weren’t many possibilities. Either someone in Aranas’ camp had talked, or the man he’d killed at the warehouse had sold him out. In the end, it didn’t matter. He was safe. But he was also furious. That had been far too close. And it reaffirmed every belief he had about what a bad idea dealing with unknown quantities was.

He paced the length of the living room, calculating how to proceed. The raid had been a big operation, and he’d only escaped by a miracle. But he got the sense that the miracle bank was running low, and he wouldn’t be so lucky the next time.

Fucking Cruz. The man was an annoyance and was fast becoming a real impediment. And the woman hadn’t told him anything — which had lulled him into complacency. That couldn’t stand.

He went into the kitchen and opened a drawer, retrieving a phone from its depths.

Dinah’s voice sounded guarded when she answered.

“Hello?”

“Listen very carefully. Don’t talk. Your boyfriend just launched an operation to capture me. It failed, of course, but now I’m upset. I feel like you haven’t been keeping to your side of the bargain — you didn’t warn me. That makes me want to hang him upside down and peel his skin off.”

“I…I didn’t know anything about it! You have to believe me…”

Dinah sounded like she was telling the truth. No matter.

“Shut up. I said don’t talk. Here is what you are going to do if you want him to be breathing this time tomorrow. Get me information. Figure out where the leak came from that alerted them about the meeting. Failure on your part won’t be tolerated. Get me something, or our deal is off, and I’ll make sure the last thing you ever see is his rotting corpse skewered like a pig.”

“But how am I supposed to find that out?”

“I don’t know, nor do I care. Just do it. Tear his office apart, or wherever he keeps his papers at home. Tell him you desperately want to know everything about today’s operation or he’ll never have sex again. Whatever you do, it better be good, because I’m out of patience. You have twenty-four hours.”

He hung up and tossed the phone back into the drawer. That might shake something loose. Maybe she was telling the truth, or maybe she had been feeding him inconsequential minutiae. Whatever. She needed to perform, or he’d see to it that the pair of them regretted every moment of their last breaths.

Now he had to make the call he’d been considering since he’d leapt across the buildings like a demented free-runner. He went into the bedroom, emerged with another phone, and pressed a speed dial button. Don Aranas answered.

El Rey took him through the morning’s events, omitting that he’d killed Aranas’ man at the rendezvous. That would be attributed to having happened during the police raid, and he didn’t see any reason to rock the boat. Aranas sounded worried — mostly about the viability of the plan moving forward.

“I have no concerns over our arrangement. I’m planning to close the contract in the agreed-upon time,” El Rey assured him. “I think it’s worth probing to see if you can find the source of the leak, though. I don’t have to tell you that it’s not in your best interests for your confidential information to find its way into the hands of the Federales. Even after this is concluded, you still have a problem.”

“I’ll take steps.”

“I’m also working on some avenues. I’ll keep you apprised of any progress I make,” El Rey finished, having delivered the message he wanted to send.

Aranas had to deal with his issue, or he’d be in constant jeopardy. He didn’t have a reputation for tolerating disloyalty, and El Rey had no doubt that he’d do whatever was necessary to find the traitor and silence him permanently.

“The man is really superhuman,” Briones declared in frustration towards the end of the staff meeting. “I still have no idea how he made it across that alley. I mean, it’s obviously possible to do, but I can’t imagine throwing myself into the air in the hopes I made it. Two stories is a long way down…”

“No, he’s not. He’s flesh and blood, just like you and I — like everyone in this room. He simply reacts differently than we do. And that has to stop. I made a critical error by not having more men on the roof. I underestimated El Rey. A mistake I will never make again,” Cruz spat.

“It was a one in a million chance that he’d discover the assault in time to escape. The odds of alerting him with a dozen officers tromping around on the roof was far greater. It was the correct call,” Briones reasoned.

“That is neither here nor there. At this point our only hope of capturing him has gone down the drain. That puts us back on square one. Worse, he’s now alerted that we’re hunting him. I think it’s fair to say that we lost this round. We can’t afford to lose any more,” Cruz said emphatically. “I want twice as many men on the streets. We know he’s in the city, and we have the footage of him we got when he approached the shop. It’s unlikely he’ll be able to stay incognito if his photo is plastered everywhere. I want the film and the construction photo leaked to the press so his face is on every news station and newspaper in the country. There’s no reason to play it quiet any longer.”

The meeting broke up a few minutes later, and Cruz motioned to Briones for him to accompany him to his office. Once behind closed doors, he slumped into his chair and stared off into space before focusing his attention on the younger lieutenant.

“The spooks at CISEN are going to lose their minds when I tell them what happened,” Cruz complained.

“Probably. They won’t be happy, just like we aren’t happy. It’s a generally unhappy time for everyone right now. They’ll get over it,” Briones assured him.

“That’s not what worries me. No, it’s more that they might not share any more information with us after this, or they might pass it to someone else, like the president’s staff. If we get too many players on this field, it will only make finding the assassin even harder.”

Briones nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t try to jump across the alley, sir,” he said in a quiet voice.

Cruz waved it away with a curt gesture. “Don’t be ridiculous. The job is dangerous enough without demanding that you try something that would get you killed. I wouldn’t have done it, either. That’s the difference between being the cornered rat, and being the cat,” Cruz said.

They continued the discussion, moving to the practical logistics of getting maximum coverage of the images they had of El Rey, but the atmosphere remained uneasy as the afternoon wore on. Neither said anything more about Briones’ chance at getting El Rey.

Neither had to.

Both knew Cruz would have jumped.

When Cruz made it home that evening, Dinah was making pasta for dinner — chicken piccata with linguine. He went to the bedroom, changed out of his uniform, and returned a few minutes later wearing sweat pants and a white linen short-sleeved shirt. He obligingly took plates out of the cupboard and set the table, then uncorked a bottle of white wine — after Dinah forbade him a draught of the wine she’d bought to cook with.