Blood of the Assassin

CHAPTER 3





Present Day, Zacatelco, Mexico

A battered Chevrolet pickup puttered down the dirt road on the outskirts of town, springs creaking from the washboard surface’s pummeling of its suspension, a red plastic bag taped over its one operating brake light as a safety concession. Raw exhaust belched from a rusting tailpipe, the muffler having rotted out long ago, catalytic converters a silly luxury for the idle rich. Its headlights glowed a dull amber, barely penetrating the two a.m. gloom, the driver squinting as he peered through the smeared bug splatters on the grimy windshield.

Dust swirled in the wind as it roared by the oversized bulk of the stationary black command-center van, Policía Federal painted across the side in two-foot-high white letters. From the outside, the vehicle displayed no signs of life, but inside was a hum of activity.

“How much longer until the army gets here?” Lieutenant Briones asked, his voice strained, sitting in front of a flat screen monitor in the rear of the van.

“They said they’ll be in position in five more minutes,” the man next to him murmured, as though raising his voice might alert their target.

“Five minutes! What the hell have they been doing? They were supposed to be here by now,” Briones griped.

“You know how it is. Mas o menos.” More or less.

Briones sat back, considering a response, and then decided to let it go. He did indeed know how it was.

“What about our men?”

“In position and awaiting the signal to breach the compound.”

Briones nodded and then lifted a two-way to his mouth. “Army’s late again. But they say they’ll be here shortly,” he reported.

“Damn. What else can go wrong today? Did they think that showing up was optional? Who’s the commanding officer?” the disgusted voice of Captain Romero Cruz, the head of the Mexico City anti-cartel task force, growled from the speaker.

“Your favorite. General Albacer.”

“That explains a lot. I’m surprised he’s still awake. Do you want me to scream at him?” Cruz asked.

“Can’t see that it will do any good. The compound is dark. Five minutes shouldn’t make any difference if everybody’s asleep,” Briones said.

“Are you ready to go in?”

“Yes, sir. The assault force is standing by.”

“Well, thank heaven for small favors. Let’s see if we can take these scum alive, shall we? I want a shot at interrogating them.”

“I understand, sir. We’ll do everything we can to get at least a few survivors.”

“Does everyone know what El Gato looks like? You circulated the photos?” Cruz asked.

“Of course. If he’s still got the fuzz, he’ll be hard to miss.” El Gato, one of the top captains of the Sinaloa cartel, affected a distinctive beard. He was also known for his shaved head – for which, the rumor was, the facial hair was compensation. He was widely believed to control much of the cartel’s marijuana, meth, and heroin trade in Mexico City. The Federales had received a tip from an informant looking at years of hard time for his role in a drunken bar stabbing a few days earlier, who had alerted them to the location of one of his safe houses. Surveillance had been ongoing since then, and a man who looked suspiciously like El Gato had been seen going into the house from a black Ford Excursion early that evening. That had triggered the late night strike on the house – Cruz had been tracking El Gato for years, but had always been one step behind him.

Not this time.

Their prey was still inside the house, and the lights had gone off at midnight.

The original plan had been to grab him when he was leaving, but then the opportunity to seize not only the drug lord but also the inevitable stash of weapons, drugs, and cash had been too attractive for Cruz, and he’d given the go-ahead to launch a raid.

There were six people inside that they knew of – five men and one woman, who appeared to be El Gato’s seventeen-year-old sometimes-girlfriend. If they could be captured without shooting, it would be another coup in a year of them for Cruz – between capturing El Rey and several other high-profile operations, he appeared to have the Midas touch, even if nothing much changed in the criminal underworld besides the names.

Briones sat back, his leg bouncing impatiently, anxious to get the operation underway. Every minute that passed increased the odds of something going wrong and alerting the target – an all-too-common occurrence when the army was involved. Even though all the soldiers on these offensives were vetted and trusted, the truth was that in a world where their pay was three hundred dollars a month, it was all too easy to buy information. He would know soon enough, he supposed. Once the soldiers had sealed off the perimeter he would send his officers in, and then it would be over quickly.

His other radio issued a burst of static, and then a deep male voice cut through the hush in the van.

“Lieutenant Briones. This is Major Gutierrez. We are in position. Are there any changes or additions to our orders?”

Briones shook his head. “Negative. Just seal off the roads and make sure nobody gets in or out. We’re going in. Hold your positions unless I expressly tell you not to. Understood?”

“Roger that. We will hunker down. Consider the perimeter sealed. Out.”

Briones stood and donned his helmet and Kevlar vest, and over it pulled a dark blue windbreaker with Federales emblazoned across the back. He reached down and grabbed an M16 assault rifle and chambered a round, then looked at the remaining three men in the van.

“Time to roll. I’m headed to the first squad. Be there within two minutes. Come on, Santiro. Let’s hit it.” He gestured to the other man in assault garb, who nodded and slipped his vest on and then gathered his weapons.

They exited the van and trotted down the dirt road to where Briones had twenty crack officers waiting in the dark. He had been through countless similar assaults with these men, and everyone knew the drill. Hand signals only, fire only if fired upon; the objective to take as many of the cartel members alive as possible.

When the two men reached the others, Briones frowned at the squad leader, a hard-faced sergeant with a decade of assault experience, and gestured to the iron gate in the perimeter wall that sealed the three buildings of the compound from the street. The sergeant nodded and the men moved out, their rubber-soled boots thumping on the dirt as they jogged to the gate. Earlier that day an undercover officer had made multiple slow runs by it and confirmed there were no cameras mounted outside – a positive for the assault force. The sergeant motioned to one of the men, who moved forward with a set of picks and quickly opened the lock. Another man sprayed lubricant on the hinges. Two of the officers pushed it open, and the rest moved into the large area in front of the main house, weapons at the ready.

Briones stood by the perimeter wall, anxiety nagging at him. This was all too easy. Something wasn’t right. He debated calling the men back, but then choked down the unease. Sometimes things went well. It wasn’t necessary to expect mayhem on every operation. The buildings were quiet, no signs of life, nothing stirring. Perhaps gratitude was more appropriate than agitation.

The group was halfway to the house when a window slid open, and then the night exploded with gunfire, automatic weapons chattering from two of the three buildings. A round caught the officer next to Briones in the chest. His vest absorbed the blow, but the force knocked him off his feet. In the courtyard, a handful of the Federales were cut down in as many seconds – a disaster that left the rest without any shelter, sitting ducks for the cartel gunmen.

“Fall back. Now,” Briones hissed into his com line, all the officers’ helmets containing similar communications gear as well as night vision goggles.

The Federales returned fire, trying to buy themselves breathing room, but when they regrouped outside the walls, only fourteen men were left of the original twenty.

“Lieutenant. Do you want to get the soldiers here?” the sergeant barked, panting, watching as his men fired measured bursts at the house.

“I’d rather not. Get the second team here on the double.” Briones had ten more men waiting on the far side of the compound as backup. The sergeant murmured into his radio, and forty-five seconds later the additional fighters were crouched with the original team, awaiting instructions.

“They must have motion detectors somewhere inside the yard. Any benefit of surprise is over. Now we need to do this the hard way,” Briones said, and the men exchanged grim looks. “I want two teams. I’ll get the army here with armored personnel vehicles, and when they roll into the yard, we’ll use those as cover. Sergeant, you take the main house. I’ll lead the second team to take out the guest house. There’s no fire coming from the third building, so I think we can assume it’s empty.”

“Yes, sir.”

Briones keyed his radio and relayed his instructions to Major Gutierrez, and then they waited as the sound of heavy trucks rolled down the dirt road from the larger artery around the bend. Three armored trucks approached and stopped a few yards from where Briones and his men were huddled. The lead vehicle passenger door opened, and a captain stepped out onto the dirt. Gunfire chattered from the house, but had diminished in intensity once the men were out of the line of fire.

“We’ll go in together. Let my men open up with the heavy artillery, and then your men can follow up,” the captain said. Briones was torn, but then thought about the six men lying dead inside the compound, and gave his assent.

“Fine. Let’s do this.”

Soldiers poured from out of the backs of the trucks until there were thirty heavily armed men, faces drawn with determination, prepared for the worst. The captain made a hand gesture and the three trucks eased forward through the gates, the soldiers using the first two for cover and the Federales shadowing the last one as the gunfire from the house increased to a barrage. Answering volleys from the soldiers tore through the building’s windows, and bullets ricocheted off the vehicle armor and the driveway pavers as the gunmen in the house intensified their efforts.

Briones motioned to his men and they joined the fray, pummeling the cartel shooters with a deluge of fire. One of the men near Briones grunted and dropped his weapon, and then fell towards him, half his face blown off by a Kalashnikov round. Briones’ jaw quivered and he took the man’s place, letting loose with burst after burst from his M16, enraged at the number of casualties they’d suffered from a supposedly low-intensity home invasion.

One of the soldiers tossed a grenade at the windows and got lucky. The detonation was deafening, and then the shooting from the house stopped. A few more scattered shots emanated from the guest house, and the roar of a big .50-caliber army machine gun silenced them with a three-second sustained volley.

Briones signaled to his men. They fanned out in a loose formation, approaching the house cautiously, crouched, weapons sweeping the area, wary. When they reached the door, the sergeant turned to Briones, anxious for his approval, a thin bead of sweat trickling down his face, grime smeared on it from throwing himself onto the driveway. Briones nodded, and the sergeant gestured to the two assault team members who were carrying an eight-inch diameter iron pipe filled with cement. They slammed it against the door and the flimsy wooden slab tore off its hinges with a crash, and then the nearest officer rolled into the opening, weapon searching for targets.

The interior of the house was a shambles, the grenade’s shrapnel having shredded everything in the main room. Bodies lay everywhere, bloody stumps a testament to the explosive force unleashed by the blast. Briones crept stealthily to the rear hallway and pointed at three of the officers. They edged by him and moved down the narrow corridor to where three doors stood intact – the main bedrooms.

Two of the men framed the first doorway, pressing themselves against the wall, and then the third knelt and pressed down on the bronze lever, pausing for a moment before swinging it open. He rolled out of the doorway and they waited for shots. When none came, the two on either side swung their guns into the room and did a fast search of the guest bedroom. It was empty.

Four more men inched down the hall and repeated the process at the next door, with the same results. The rooms were deserted.

The final door stood closed at the end of the hall, and the men listened intently for any hint of movement behind it. Briones nodded from his position, and they threw it wide.

“Nooo. Please. Don’t hurt me!” a female voice screamed, terrified and very young. The officers moved through the room and the sergeant motioned to the girl to stand up. She did, shivering from fear, wearing only panties and a T-shirt, and followed their directions to stand against the side wall. It was obvious that she wasn’t carrying any concealed weapons, so she wasn’t a threat.

Her eyes darted to the bed. Briones froze, and then pointed to the king-sized mattress. The sergeant motioned to two of the men, who fixed it with their assault rifles, and then he spoke softly.

“We know you’re under the bed. Slide any weapons out and show yourself, or in three seconds we’ll use it for target practice, and you won’t survive. One...two...”

A Glock 19 slid from under the bed, and then a man’s muffled voice followed. “I’m coming out. Don’t shoot.”

“Crawl out face down. Once you’re out from under the bed, put your hands behind your back and lie on your stomach. Now, or you’re dead.”

A man slid slowly from beneath the bed and did as instructed, lying face down while an officer cuffed him.

“Turn him over,” the sergeant instructed, and when the officer complied, a frigid smile crossed his face.

“Well, well. Look who we have here. If it isn’t our friend El Gato. Hiding under his teenage puta’s bed. Very nice,” he said.

The drug lord glared at him hatefully. “You’re brave men when I have cuffs on and you can hide behind your helmets, eh? I bet you’re praying I don’t learn your names,” he growled.

“Coming from a man who was whimpering under the bed, the irony isn’t lost on me,” the sergeant responded, then gestured to his men to pick El Gato up. “Make sure this shitbird doesn’t hit his head on anything on the way to the lockup van. I want to make sure he’s in perfect health to answer for killing the officers outside. Now get him out of here.”

Two muscular policemen in full assault gear lifted El Gato to his feet and dragged him down the hall. Briones watched them without comment, and then keyed his helmet mike. Cruz’s voice came over the channel.

“We got El Gato. Everyone but his girlfriend is dead.”

“That’s good news. He’s the most important. What about casualties?”

“We’re checking now. It’s hard to tell until all the smoke clears. I’d say we lost eight, maybe nine men, and have at least four more wounded. They’ll probably make it. But this was ugly. I’m...I’m sorry, sir. They had some sort of early warning system that surveillance didn’t spot. Motion detectors is my guess. They cut us down before we could find cover. I should have been more cautious,” Briones spat.

“It’s always easy after an assault to find fault with your actions in the heat of battle. Don’t beat yourself up. You took the objective, captured El Gato, and eradicated a key player in the Sinaloa cartel’s power structure. I’d say that’s a good day’s work,” Cruz said.

“Not for the dead men, it isn’t.”

“Everyone knows the risks going in. Sometimes we take casualties. Sometimes they do. That’s the job,” Cruz reminded him.

“Their wives and children aren’t going to be reassured by that.”

“I know. Get me a list of the names. I’ll make the calls myself.”

Briones nodded silently as the crime scene technicians stepped around the bodies and began photographing the devastation. He had no doubt that the dead cartel gunmen would be replaced by the weekend, if not sooner. And nothing would change except the names and faces. Drugs would still flow like water, and guns and money would work their way into the cartels’ hands, to be used against men like himself, who were trying to make the country safer. A thankless job that seemed pointless on nights like this one.