King of Swords (Assassin series #1) (33 page)

A baby goat nosed the shoots of a struggling plant at the base of a cactus and was quickly joined by its mother, who scooted it away, back to the others on the far side of the hill.

Cruz lowered the glasses and blinked the sweat from his eyes. The blistering heat wasn’t doing anything for his already-frayed nerves, that was for sure. His only consolation was that at least he hadn’t run in a hobbled trot while brandishing his assault rifle to save the delegation from a baby
chiva
.

The President finished his speech, and the American president took the stage. Cruz spoke passable English from his university years and so understood most of it. A relationship forged through common goals, a new era, commitment to prosperity. About the same as his president’s. He absently wondered what would have happened if they’d switched speeches; whether anyone would have even noticed. For the first time that day, Cruz smiled.

The American’s rendition was blissfully short. He sat to polite applause. Now there would be half an hour of festivities, including the presentation of the key to the city, some dancing by the local high school girls, and a fiesta with some first graders, and the welcoming event would be over, and everyone could move into the air-conditioned comfort of the new hall.

His trepidation increased with each passing minute. The governor of Baja California Sur made a mercifully brief set of comments and then presented the key to the city to the American president. Once everyone had taken their seats again, music blared out of the speakers that had been brought with the stage, and the dancing began, the girls twirling in native garb while the gathered politicians feigned polite attention. Cruz had personally been involved with checking the speaker cabinets and associate audio gear for any booby-traps, so there was no danger there.

Things were going as planned, but he still had a tingling at the nape of his neck, a premonition of something about to go badly wrong. He tried to shake it off, but it lingered like a bad taste.

He wiped more sweat from his face and prayed it would be over soon.

El Rey
watched the presentation with little interest. So far, no surprises, although the security detail did seem to be on a more heightened alert than usual. He’d studied hours of footage of speeches and rallies with both presidents, and knew their procedures cold. They were nervous, that much was clear, likely due to the ruckus the Federal Police captain had raised. No matter. He was within a hundred yards of the targets, and soon they’d be a bloody pulp, and he’d be gone during the confusion.

The girls took the stage, and he watched with a grim smile as they performed their intricate footwork for the leaders of the free world.

Soon to be ex-leaders.

He hummed along with the music, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he held his rifle at the ready, lest anyone try to attack his president.

Inside the tent, the two teachers were having a hell of a time with the kids. Amped on soda and buzzing with anticipation, they were running around their area of the tent like hellions; even the little girls. Normally better behaved, the heat and the large crowd had sent them berserk, and it was all Monica and Letty could do to control them.

Three of the little boys were especially ill-behaved. They kept swatting at the
piñata
with the pole reserved for that purpose, and Letty was afraid they’d break it apart in the tent, which would spoil the whole ceremony. After hearing a particularly alarming thwack from the enormous suspended papier-mâché bull, she turned to see the little bastards smiting it with all their might, not two minutes after she’d punished them for doing so earlier. She was worried they’d knock the sorry creature’s head off and was already mentally calculating where she could get glue to re-affix it if they got away from her again and succeeded in their assault on the candy-stuffed totem.

She grabbed one of the tiny assailants by the hair to get his attention, tweaked another by the ear, and dragged them away amid noisy protests. Once she had them under control, she confiscated the heavy stick so they couldn’t do any more harm to the endangered animal. Monica moved several chairs as an improvised blockade to keep the feisty tikes from doing any more damage. She looked up at the blank bovine stare the artist had created and took a deep breath. It would all be over soon, and then they could return to the classroom and some semblance of order.

The bull was large for a
piñata
, over four feet long by three high, which was part of what made it irresistible as a target for the kids. Colorful ribbons hung from around its neck, and a chrome metal ring dangled from its nose. It weighed a good forty pounds due to all the candy inside, and Monica silently offered thanks to its fabricator for making it sturdy enough to withstand the pummeling from the toddlers’ searching blows. Little Stefan, especially, had already delivered substantial punishment to the effigy’s shoulders and head, and Monica cursed the little prick as she studied the cracks and gouges the pole had inflicted. She fished in her purse and withdrew a black felt pen, and worked furiously to mask the bulk of the abuse. As long as nobody got too close, it would pass muster. Now she just needed to keep little Satan and his friends from completely destroying it in the next ten minutes, and they were home free.

~ ~ ~

El Rey
yawned as the girls finished their performance to a smattering of lackluster applause. He was glad it wasn’t him having to dance like a monkey in the sweltering sun for the amusement of a bunch of suits. An elaborate linen tarp had been suspended over the seating area to fend off the worst of the June blaze, and large fans blew ventilation across the seated dignitaries, but even so, whoever had thought it would be a good idea to do this outside had been misguided to the point of delusion.

He studied the overhead white linen billowing in the breeze and imagined what it would look like soaked in the assembled group’s blood. Now that would be something the media would remember. It was all he could do not to detonate the bull now, just to end the misery.

The
piñata
had cost a fortune to create – a one inch shell of a new explosive three times more powerful than plastique. He’d sourced it from Russia, a half-inch thick coating of carbon fiber etched with grooves so that when the animal blew apart hundreds of razor-sharp shards of half-inch square projectiles were created, effectively shredding everything within the blast range to bloody smithereens. And lest that wasn’t sufficiently destructive, roughly half the candy inside was in reality carbon fiber bearings milled to match the gum balls they’d loaded the creature with, which would also hurtle outward at near the speed of light. They’d even tested a sample of the new explosive with two bomb sniffing dogs from the airport in Manzanillo, and they’d passed by the bull without interest – apparently, they didn’t know what prototypical Russian explosives smelled like.

He’d conceived of the design himself after reading about the claymore mines used by the U.S. military, and the devastation they inflicted. The engineer who’d manufactured it had assured him that nothing would survive for a forty yard radius – and the presidents were seated ten yards away, at most. They’d be hamburger once it detonated, and the resulting carnage would be panoramic – a fitting pinnacle on which to end his already infamous career.

El Rey
shifted the M-16 to his left hand as the first grade class, dressed in white peasant pants and shirts, pranced out onto the stage, eyes glued to the
piñata
like it was made out of chocolate. The Mayor and Governor took the stage again, and together hoisted the bull aloft, having secured it to a wire suspended from the stage framing. They would hoist the
piñata
provocatively to extend the fun as the children took turns swatting it, waiting eagerly for the payload of candy to come raining down on them.

Not today, kids.

The miniature high frequency transmitter-triggered detonator in the
piñata
was the only problem he’d encountered. He knew everything coming into the area would be x-rayed, and while the carbon fiber would pass through clean, appearing to be nothing more than part of the plaster used to fabricate the creature, and the bearings would resemble the rest of the gumballs, the detonator had to be made out of metal – wires to conduct the necessary electric pulse, a tiny battery to emit it, and an antenna. The nose ring had been the designer’s suggestion, and it had worked like a charm. The
piñata
was ready for its denouement on stage, and nobody suspected anything.

Overhead, on the trim at the top of the conference center, the sun’s harsh rays gleamed off the black feathers of a silent spectator, its avian eyes coldly appraising the gathered children and the bovine target of their excitement. Nobody noticed the crow in all the pandemonium – it was, after all, only a bird.

A blast of music from the speakers startled it from its position and it took flight, emitting a cry that was lost in the hubbub from the stage below.

El Rey
, to all the world just another of the hundreds of soldiers chartered with keeping the world safe from the cartels, cautiously slid his hand into his camouflage pants pocket, preparing to push the button. He’d had a hacker in the Ukraine list his name two days ago on the security force’s roster and had spent the last two nights in the temporary barracks that had been erected to house the troops on the road to the airport. He was just another faceless, anonymous drudge, his appearance altered with a military buzz cut and cotton padding in his cheeks. He’d long since shaved the goatee off. To any observer he would look like a hapless Mexican serviceman from the hinterlands, albeit a sergeant – he needed a suitable cover for his age, given that most of the enlisted men were eighteen to twenty-two; and he also wanted to ensure he would have sufficient rank to be able to roam, rather than being stationed too far from the stage for the transmitter to reach.

Steeling himself for the blast, he winced almost imperceptibly, and pushed the button, waiting for the blinding flash and then the horrified screaming.

Nothing happened.

Unbelievingly, he pushed it again. Same result.

He quickly estimated the distance between himself and the stage and calculated that he was no more than eighty yards away.

Fuck.

He moved closer to the stage, eyes fixed on the bull, and depressed the button again.

More nothing.

It wasn’t going to work
.

He momentarily contemplated spraying the presidents with lead from his rifle, then dismissed the idea. The goal was not to get killed today. It was to kill. Trying to shoot them would be suicide.

No, he had to abort.

El Rey
pushed the button one last time, and when the stage didn’t vaporize in a blinding flash, he decided to terminate the operation and live to fight another day. All he had to do was wait out the performance.

Except of course, that once the
piñata
came apart and it became obvious that half the candy was in reality custom-crafted projectiles, everyone in the vicinity would be put under a microscope. Even as good as his cover was, it wasn’t designed to withstand that. No, it was time to pack it in and slip away. Or in this case, run away. He’d been assuming that the scene would be one of chaotic pandemonium, not calm, when he made his getaway.

Which posed a problem. But not too much of one.

He was, after all,
El Rey
.

~ ~ ~

Briones listened as the girls finished up their jig and the music terminated. From his position at the rear of the building, he peered into the hills, alert for any threat. His nerves were shot after the incident with the would-be tomato thrower, and he forced himself to take deep breaths to slow the adrenaline rush. He held out his right hand, palm extended down, and considered the tremor, a byproduct of the fight-or-flight reflex he’d triggered when going after the protestor.

Pull yourself together, dammit
.

He was chagrined by the end result of his charge into the crowd. Briones had been a split-second away from blowing the man’s head apart – he’d started squeezing the trigger before he’d registered the tomato. Just the memory of it caused the tremor to worsen. He told himself to calm down and focus on the job at hand.

Maybe they’d gotten it wrong. Maybe the entire
El Rey
thing had been bullshit, just as CISEN had obviously thought. Perhaps the
Capitan
, wracked by grief over his family and blinded by hatred for Santiago, had invented a new crusade to bring meaning to his life. Briones was starting to doubt the entire hypothesis now, just as he was doubting his instincts after nearly killing the hippy.

Briones wound his way around the structure, noting that the soldiers stationed every thirty feet seemed alert and ready. Soon he was standing by the side of the stage, watching the kids trot out to do a cloyingly cute presentation – or perhaps a badly out-of-tune song, before breaking open the
piñata
. He wiped his face with the arm of his long-sleeved shirt, blotting sweat, and cursed his fate. There were bound to be repercussions from the tomato incident. He wasn’t looking forward to discovering what they would be; probably a shift in his career to working traffic in the desert or something similarly awful.

Briones noticed movement on the far side of the stage. A soldier had inched towards the dignitaries, probably to get a better view of the kids, and now was moving away again. Briones’ stomach twisted. He watched the man slowly saunter back to his position, and then continue walking easily in the direction of one of the Humvees sitting at the edge of the lot. Two soldiers rested against it, scanning the hills with boredom now that the presentation was winding down.

There was something wrong. He couldn’t place it, but he knew, just as he’d known there was something off about the vagrant in the alley. What was it that Cruz had told him? Trust that instinct.