Blood of the Assassin

CHAPTER 45





The lights of Cuernavaca sparkled in the distance as Rauschenbach drove the stolen Mitsubishi Gallant south from Mexico City, his nerves dead calm in spite of the fact that tomorrow morning he would be executing the Chinese ultimate leader. He peered over at the guitar case next to him and then took a peek at the pack lying on the rear seat. Pedro had come through with flying colors, so he was as ready as he would ever be for his night’s work.

It was late, nearing one-thirty a.m., when he pulled through the airport gate into the private plane area and approached the main hangar, a long building with a row of roll-up doors where the smaller prop planes were stored, he knew from his research the prior day. When the facility had been open, he’d approached the two maintenance men and asked about the cost of a hangar and a service program, and after twenty minutes of talk, walked away with everything he needed to know.

He stopped near the door at the far end from the entry drive and got out, stretching as he scanned the area for any hint of the security guard who would walk by every two hours to make sure nothing alarming had happened. After verifying that the man was nowhere to be seen, he walked over to the stall he wanted and stooped down, calmly sliding a pick and a strip of metal he’d created from a soda can inside the lock and feeling for the tumblers. He had it open in thirty seconds, and found himself face to face with a Cessna 150L prop plane from the mid-seventies he’d spied – a relatively primitive beast he could fly with his eyes closed. A quick inspection of the interior told him that the plane was perfect for his purposes, if a little cramped.

By his estimate he had thirty minutes before the guard would make it back, at the worst – more like forty-five, but he didn’t feel like cutting it too close. He hurriedly unpacked his items from the car and carried them to the plane, and then retrieved a toolkit he had bought that afternoon and set about his final preparatory task – removing one of the plane’s doors. He had the hinges unbolted in ten minutes, and once the door was stowed in the hangar’s depths, he had nothing left to do but start the engine, warm it up, and take off.

The noise of the motor revving sounded like a hurricane in his ears, the roar amplified by the hangar and the lack of the door. He eyed the gauges, confirming that he had sufficient fuel for what he intended, and then he inched the plane forward, increasing the RPMs as he pulled out onto the runway and strapped himself in.

It was a perfect night – not too cold, partially cloudy, perhaps a fifteen-knot wind from the west. He increased the revs and the little plane began a lazy roll forward. Then he pushed the throttle to the firewall, adjusted the flaps, and soon he was climbing into the night sky at a rate of roughly six hundred feet per minute.

The engine settled into a comfortable drone as he ascended through the eight-thousand and then the ten-thousand-foot level, and he hoped his luck would hold and he could get the plane to its maximum operating ceiling of fourteen thousand feet. The wind from the door opening buffeted him and tore at his heavy jacket with the violence of a hurricane, and as the temperature dropped he was glad he’d had the foresight to wear gloves.

The radio crackled as he scanned the frequencies, and then he picked up the expected warnings directed at him as he approached Mexico City. He would be well clear of the commercial airlines on approach or takeoff on the course he had plotted, which was essential to his plan – it wouldn’t do to be clipped by a 737 as he edged past the perimeter of the city.

The plane would be reported as stolen almost immediately by Cuernavaca ground security, and the assumption would be that it was a drug smuggler trying to secure transportation for a small shipment at no cost. By the time anyone had figured out that there might be another explanation, it would all be over but the shouting, and he would be long gone. He eyed the altimeter and made a few adjustments – the plane was straining at a little over thirteen thousand feet, and didn’t seem like it wanted to go much higher. When he hit thirteen thousand three hundred, he engaged the Stec 50 autopilot with altitude hold and slowed the speed to seventy miles per hour – twenty or so above the plane’s stall speed, and well short of its cruise speed.

After another few minutes, the lights of the international airport were plainly visible off to the left, and he made his final preparations. He entered a course on the autopilot that would take it on a northeasterly direction, and then estimated the fuel – an eighth of a tank, so it would probably run out over the mountains northeast of Pachuca and crash somewhere in that uninhabited area.

He reached beside him and hoisted the parachute he had gotten from the Los Zetas contact – a medium-performance Ram-air parachute that would slow his drop to just over twenty feet per second and had good glide characteristics. He donned the seven-point strap harness, cinching it to ensure it was secure, and then strapped the rifle across his chest with a nylon quick release clip he’d created specifically for it. He’d wrapped the weapon in neoprene so it wouldn’t be picked up on the tower radar, which he knew would be adjusted to tune out smaller objects like birds – and a bird was what he would look like to the radar as he dropped from the plane.

When he could see the airport a few miles to the southwest, he lowered himself onto the wheel strut, the wind tearing at him with incredible force, and then hurled himself into space, releasing the chute only four seconds after beginning his drop so as to have maximum maneuverability room.

The parachute slammed the harness into his torso as it deployed, and then he was in control, directing his glide to put him north of the airport and well out of the path of its traffic, which was a hazard at any time of night or day.

Ten minutes later he was on the roof of Terminal One, which as expected was empty at that late hour. There would undoubtedly be snipers moving into position in the early morning, but by then he would be hidden, in position inside one of the ventilation ducts he could just make out in the dark. He had dropped north of the airport, gliding in from over the city, so the likelihood of being detected was minimal at three a.m. – nobody would be watching for a nocturnal parachute ingression.

Rauschenbach quickly rolled the chute up, stuffed it back into the pack, and toted it to the duct. He extracted a small portable toolkit and set about removing the outer grid. Six minutes later he was done, and he moved to the next duct and removed those bolts as well, and then the next three in the line. His chore completed, he dropped the pack into the shaft and then eased himself in, and soon was lying face down on the cold steel surface. He pulled the grid closed so that if there was a cursory inspection, the missing bolts would appear to be the result of typically shoddy maintenance, same as the rest of the shafts in the area.

He fished a small camping headlamp from his shirt pocket, pulled it onto his head, and flicked it on. The pitch black shaft, approximately five feet wide by four high, brightened. He carefully set the rifle down, the camera tripod next to it, and maneuvered so that he was facing away from the opening. Rauschenbach knew from studying the blueprint he’d found online where the shaft ultimately led, but he wanted to prepare for a quick exit after the assassination – now a little under six hours away.

Forty-five minutes later he was back. He first retrieved the parachute and pushed it down the chute, and then returned for the rifle. If anyone bothered opening the grid in the morning they would see an air duct; and even if they bothered with an exploration, they wouldn’t be coming as far as he would be lying in wait, biding his time. The only wrinkle would be if they stationed a sniper right by his position, but that was luck of the draw. If they did, he would deal with it once it was light out. Now that he was in position, he had options, and could shoot from any number of locations.

The hard part was over. He turned off the lamp and returned it to the breast pocket of his dark blue shirt, and then slipped the baseball cap he’d pilfered over his head and settled in for the long wait till dawn.