Blood of the Assassin

CHAPTER 6





The early morning mist lingered over the canyon north of Urique in Chihuahua, Mexico, the massive excavation of the El Sauzal gold mine a scar on the mountains in the far distance. Dawn had broken an hour earlier, but the morning fog hadn’t yet burned off, and the area was still, the town down by the river in the famous Copper Canyon still slumbering.

A solitary figure stared up at the sheer rock face looming almost a thousand feet overhead, lost in thought, and then moved determinedly towards the daunting monolith and reached towards the sky. Strong hands gripped crevices in the outcropping and used them for holds; powerful legs pushed upwards when crannies presented themselves.

El Rey moved with single-minded concentration, fingers probing for the next niche, completely lost in the moment, the sun warming the glistening skin of his bare shoulders as the muscles bunched under the strain. A dark green bandana tied around his head kept the worst of the sweat out of his eyes, which scoured the unyielding stone, searching for an advantage as he powered up the unscalable cliff, driving himself to the peak now eighty stories above him.

His right foot slipped on a slim ledge and a tumble of small rocks skittered dizzily beneath him, dropping twenty stories before finally coming to rest at the base – a fatal distance. His right hand compensated by taking his full weight as he groped with his left, and for a split second he was hanging in space, holding himself with one arm, the endless repetitions of three hundred chin ups every day since childhood yielding lifesaving dividends, the corded muscles of his bicep rigid as he pulled himself to the relative safety of the next hold.

Foot by foot he continued driving himself upward, the black nylon straps of his backpack biting into his skin as he neared the top. When he finally pulled himself onto the summit his arms were shaking. He flipped over onto his back and stared up at the sky, the beginnings of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Overhead an eagle soared, riding a thermal as it wheeled into the blue, searching for an unlucky snake or chipmunk, the circle of life constant in this remote region of the country. He considered its graceful flight, the perfect symmetry of its purpose in the heavens, and then his ears perked up at an incongruous sound, gradually increasing in volume – a sound that was familiar, but out of place here, in the farthest reaches of the middle of nowhere.

He sat up as the rhythmic clamor grew louder, and watched the ungainly outline of a military Humvee roar up a dirt trail he would have bet was used only by pack mules and an occasional goat. It drew within twenty yards of the assassin, and then the big diesel motor idled, its high-altitude trek over, at least for the present. The passenger door opened and a rangy man in jeans and a black windbreaker leapt out. He did a cursory inspection of the desolate clearing and then jogged to where El Rey sat watching him.

The men’s eyes met as he spoke.

“We need to talk.”

El Rey considered a world of possible responses, then nodded. “How did you find me? Cell phone?”

“Exactly.”

“Ah. But there’s no signal.”

“That’s why we didn’t call you. But there’s still GPS. It allowed us to locate your position.”

“What’s the rush?” El Rey asked, studying his calloused fingers, still dusty from the climb.

“You’ll be briefed on that when we get to headquarters.”

“Headquarters,” El Rey repeated.

“We have a jet waiting on the ground in Chihuahua to take you to Mexico City. Come on. Let’s get out of here,” the man said, and El Rey nodded again. There was no point in protesting the interruption of his outing. He’d made his deal – reluctantly, it was true – but made it all the same, and now he was at CISEN’s beck and call.

And his master wanted to see him.

He got to his feet and followed the man to the vehicle, and within seconds of the door slamming shut behind him they were pulling back onto the dirt track. El Rey watched as the Sierra Madre mountain range passed on either side of him, as rugged and untamed a landscape as any on earth, and settled back into the seat, resigned to being shunted halfway across the country on no notice, no say in the matter, a knight on a chessboard of someone else’s devising.

Once they arrived at the little mountain town of Urique, the driver stopped at the edge of the dwellings. In five minutes the rhythmic beating of powerful rotors tore at the sky, the thumping of the gray helicopter a violent intrusion in the otherwise tranquil setting. It landed in a clearing just off the main road, and El Rey and his escort ran to it, ducking instinctively as the door slid open and two soldiers beckoned. Within moments they were strapped in and airborne, the entire boarding having taken under thirty seconds.

When they set down in Chihuahua, a Hawker business jet sat near the private aircraft area, stairs down, awaiting El Rey’s arrival. He trotted over to it from the helicopter and a pretty uniformed stewardess beckoned from the fuselage door. Once he had boarded and strapped into the seat, the exit closed and the sleek plane’s engines wound up in preparation for takeoff. After a brief taxi they were hurtling down the runway and up into the clear sky, the dusty brown of the high desert quickly fading beneath the wings as they climbed and banked south for the hour and a half flight to the capital of Mexico.

As they hit cruising altitude the young woman handed El Rey a package wrapped in pale blue paper and asked what he’d like to drink. He opted for water and orange juice, and as she poured him a crystal tumbler he un-taped the parcel. Inside were a pair of khaki slacks and a black long-sleeved button-up shirt – both his size, he noted. The stewardess returned with his drinks and then excused herself and slipped up to the front of the plane, where she pulled a sliding door closed, offering him privacy.

He shrugged out of his tank top and shorts and donned his new clothes, then settled back into the seat, his rock climbing garments stowed in the backpack along with the rest of his gear, wondering what was so urgent that the government had pulled out all the stops to get him to Mexico City as quickly as possible. He took a sip of his juice and then drained the water bottle as the plane hummed along at thirty-eight thousand feet, and then leaned back in the caramel leather reclining lounger and closed his eyes.

It had been almost four months since he had rescued the president’s daughter and done his deal with the devil, agreeing to exchange his services for the antidote shots that would sustain him. But this was the first time he had been called. He had spent his newfound freedom in rural locations, choosing to avoid the areas the cartels dominated, in the one-in-a-million chance that he was somehow recognized. Even though he was no longer a wanted man, his sins absolved when he made his arrangement with CISEN, there was still a substantial price on his head. Don Aranas had a long memory, and the multi-million dollar bounty he had offered was a powerful attraction for every hired killer in Mexico.

El Rey wasn’t really worried about it, but it made matters simpler if he stayed off the radar, so he had moved from place to place, uprooting himself every three weeks, his last home a villa in the colonial town of San Miguel de Allende. He had been there for ten days before he grew bored and decided to explore the wilderness of the mountains around Copper Canyon, preferring the company of coyotes and mountain lions to his fellow man as he bided his time, waiting for the call that never came.

Until now.

He wondered who they wanted him to kill.

His eyes flickered open and he looked around the jet’s interior, expensively appointed, all leather and polished wood, lacquered to a high gloss, then reached to his side and found his glass of orange juice. Fresh squeezed, he noted approvingly; then finished it and closed his eyes again.

Whatever the government’s errand, he would know soon enough. Which was just as well. He’d been growing restless from inactivity. Truth be told, he would actually welcome an assignment. Whether he liked it or not, he was conditioned to seek out excitement, and the staid civilian life he’d been leading had been almost as bad as a prison sentence – unable to leave the country, inactive, each day the same as the last.

The plane adjusted its course, a minor deviance, and he shifted, trying to get comfortable.

Within an hour he’d be back on the ground, and soon thereafter at CISEN headquarters, being briefed.

Might as well get a little rest, he reasoned.

Things would get interesting soon enough. They hadn’t pulled him off the side of a mountain to check on his health.

No, they had something they wanted him to do.

And if they were drawing on him, it was sure to be something challenging.

That was the only thing he could be certain of.