Chapter 9
Later that evening, after catching a few hours of sleep, El Rey returned to Valiente with the photo of Altamar after the acid facial scrub, having collected his fee before departing the office earlier in the day. The cartel boss was both fascinated and repelled by the ‘after’ image of Altamar – and this was a man who saw death on an almost daily basis.
“Jesus Christ. What did you do to him?” Valiente exclaimed.
El Rey shrugged. “Acid.”
“Damn, kid. You’re one sick bastard, I’ll grant you that. I never want to piss you off,” Valiente admitted.
“I figured you’d want something that would make a statement. You can download the photo or I can e-mail it to you for circulation purposes if anyone ever decides to test your power. I imagine it would deliver a considerable deterrent value,” El Rey said.
“This will stop anyone that doesn’t have a death wish in their tracks.” Valiente slid a folder to him, along with a black garbage bag. “I have three primary rivals I need executed in the next two days. Their details are in the folder. Half the money for the first contract is in the sack. Come back when you’ve done the first one and I’ll pay you the balance and give you a payment for the second and third contracts. But I need this handled quickly, because once they get wise to Altamar being missing for any significant period of time they’ll be coming for me.”
“Then I better get going. I could use some help locating a few things for the jobs, though. I figure you’d know where to find these.” He handed Valiente a small piece of notepaper. “The sooner I can get them, the sooner I can fulfill these contracts.”
Valiente studied the precisely detailed list.
“The M4 is no problem. We’ve got a bunch of those. Don’t know if any have a night scope on them, though. Let me make a call. The Remington we also have, or can get within a few hours. Same for the Beretta with a silencer. Pretty standard issue, that.” Valiente looked up from the list and El Rey nodded approvingly. “Lot of the marines bring those Remington 700s with them – they love their sniper rifles. I see you’re okay with the .308. That will make it easy. Oh, and plastique and grenades? How messy do you plan to make this? I don’t want to be associated with public bloodbaths in crowds. You need to be surgical.”
“I intend to be as discreet as possible, but it’s better to be prepared, than not. For now, I’ll get busy on the first contract while you source that gear. How can I contact you at night? I’ll want to pick up the weapons as soon as you have them.”
Valiente scribbled a cell number on the back of a card.
“Call me in two hours and we’ll arrange a drop-off. Don’t worry about the cost; they’re on me. I’m presuming you’ll want, what, five hundred rounds for the M4 and maybe fifty for the Remington and the Beretta?” Valiente confirmed.
El Rey nodded. “Make it a hundred for the Beretta.”
Valiente grunted. He was already imagining how it would feel to be sitting on Altamar’s throne.
“Okay, then, we’re set. And you, my friend, can call me any time.” He looked at the image on the little camera again. “I’m glad you’re on my side… ‘El Rey’.”
“So am I.”
Both men smiled, any humor never reaching their eyes.
El Rey had checked into a high-end hotel in town and now sat at the small rectangular table in his room going over the details of the three targets. He didn’t see a problem taking them out but it would get progressively harder as word of a purge spread. Ideally, he would do all in the same night but the logistics wouldn’t accommodate that, and he reconciled himself that he’d be lucky to get two, with the third on the schedule for the following day. He jotted the addresses down and decided to go for a drive to reconnoiter the neighborhoods and see what he would be dealing with. Valiente had supplied plentiful information on the targets’ security, so there would hopefully be no surprises there, but he wanted to determine if there was anything Valiente had missed.
He would need a different vehicle than the truck, so he would have to buy something, preferably with an alarm and dependable, considering that he would be driving around with over two million in cash. It was a Thursday evening, so he headed to the part of town where all the new car dealers had lots, before they closed. Some lucky salesman was about to get a dream handed to him.
El Rey drove to the Toyota dealer, and after an hour emerged with the keys to a shiny new black 4 Runner with a factory alarm. That would more than do. He could do the reconnaissance in the plate-less Toyota and then use the big Ford for the actual hits. His days with the Ford were numbered in hours, so it would be best to use it, rather than the Toyota, for operational purposes.
He drove to the first target’s ranch in a neighborhood on the outskirts of town, five acres with a nice colonial-style single-level house, a modest seven bedrooms per the information he’d been given. He knew from the photos and the file what to expect on the layout, and found several obvious holes in the security setup just driving by. The first target, Manuel Remarosa, would be a piece of cake.
The second hit wouldn’t be so easy, he knew. The man lived an hour outside of Culiacan on a large parcel of land with only one entry – a heavily guarded private road. There was no point in driving out there before he picked up the weapons, so he returned to the hotel and called Valiente, who confirmed he had everything. They agreed to meet in half an hour at a restaurant in town and the hand-off went uneventfully. Valiente’s security men kept a watchful eye out for threats as they chatted over a snack, before El Rey transferred the golf-bag with the weapons in it to the Lobo. After heading out to look at the second and third target’s homes, he confirmed his instinct that he could only do two of the three that night, at best, and modified his strategy accordingly.
By the time he made it back to the hotel it was ten at night and he was tired, so after checking the weapons and loading them, he took a two hour cat-nap. The slumber did him a world of good, and by one a.m. he was parked a quarter mile from Manuel Remarosa’s opulent home. He would use the Beretta and the M4 for this exercise, and hoped he’d be able to get in and out without having to fire the assault rifle. The pistol would be relatively silent; but opening up with an automatic rifle would draw considerable undesired attention.
El Rey was dressed from head to toe in dark gray army-surplus camouflage, nearly invisible as he slid silently through the brush on the periphery of the estate. He could make out the silhouettes of the armed guards sitting at their assigned points near the primary entry areas, but even so, he didn’t anticipate any problems getting in and out. The one out on the breakfast patio was out of sight of the rest, so he was the weak link. El Rey’s plan was to neutralize the man and then simply walk into the house, make his way to the target’s bedroom and do the deed. It would be over in no time, before the gunmen had any idea what had happened.
The hurdle was how to cross the expanse of open space between the brush and the house without being detected. He’d need to time it perfectly so as to avoid getting into a firefight. This kind of spur of the moment operation depended entirely on the element of surprise. He preferred to plan his future hits carefully but he’d been handed the means by which to begin his career with a bang, so he’d do what needed to be done on these.
The problem was that, as he watched the house, he couldn’t see any means to reach it without alarming the guard and bringing the full wrath of four armed men down on him. It sucked, but he would need to modify his plan to reflect reality. He’d thought that one of the angles would keep him hidden until he was almost right on the guard, but once he was in the brush he discovered that was illusory.
Calculating his next move, he hunkered down to wait, figuring it would be a long night.
Manuel Remarosa stretched on his four poster bed, and rolled over so that the morning light from the window wouldn’t wake him up anymore than he already was. Sadie, his golden retriever, had other ideas and, hearing her master shift on the bed, decided it was time to
send him a message of undying love in the form of sloppy wet kisses on his face. She jumped up onto the mattress between Manuel and his wife, Gloria, and firmly deposited herself, lavishing her beloved master with affection. Manuel swatted at her halfheartedly before rolling over again towards the window, resigned to his fate. He couldn’t really get too angry with Sadie – she’d been sleeping on the bed with him since a tiny puppy of six weeks, and it was only since she turned one year old a few months ago and was now an adult that she’d been relegated to the terracotta tile of the floor.
“She loves you, amor. And you’re the one who wanted a dog,” Gloria murmured from her position on the bed, her voice thick with sleep.
“I know, I know. Don’t get up. I’ll take her out for a little exercise,” Manuel replied sarcastically.
Gloria ignored the jab, already drifting back to dreamland. Manuel slid his slippers on and trundled across the floor to the bathroom, Sadie locked to his side in anticipation of going for a walk. He stood at the toilet going about his business, Sadie obediently waiting for him on the other side of the threshold to the forbidden area, and yawned loudly, stretching his arms over his head and finishing by rubbing his hand across the coarse stubble on his cheeks. He was fat, he knew, but not dangerously so; maybe forty or fifty pounds. But he could always lose it – that was his daily mantra before going for a half-hearted morning jog, which inevitably terminated with a huge breakfast loaded with cholesterol, carbs and cheese. Manuel scratched his bottom as he considered shaving, then decided he’d forego that chore today.
He entered the huge walk-in closet and donned his workout outfit – a green America soccer tunic and basketball shorts – before turning to Sadie, whose eyes twinkled with anticipation.
“Who wants to go for a walk?” he asked innocently.
Sadie danced back and forth, her tail whipping the air in a frenzy, doing everything in her power to convey to her master that it was she, indeed, that wanted to do so.
“If only I could find someone who wanted to go for a WALK!” Manuel exclaimed, and Sadie began whining as she pranced in the doorway, occasionally leaping into the air and twirling completely around in a canine display of balletic prowess.
Manuel decided to give the dog a break and not torture her any more, although he knew she enjoyed the buildup as much as he enjoyed her reaction. Together, they moved to the bedroom door and made their way down the hall, a wholly unlikely pair. He stopped in the kitchen and greeted Maria, their cook, who was already simmering something heavenly-smelling on the expansive Viking stove top.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Machaca, Don Remarosa,” she replied softly. Maria was sixty, from Los Mochis, north of Culiacan on the Sea of Cortez, and was a remarkably talented cook. She’d been with him for a quarter of his forty years, and he still looked forward to her meals every day.
“Make sure it’s low fat. Remember I’m on a diet,” he chided, rubbing his ample belly with a grin.
“Always, Don Remarosa,” Maria assured him.
Manuel was a brutal killer who had executed twenty competitors over his two decades of ascending the cartel ladder in Sinaloa, but he loved his mother, his four children, his dog, his wife and his two mistresses. And Maria’s cooking.
It never occurred to him to question his lifestyle – he’d come up from the streets, where he’d started out as a collector for one of Don Aranas’ cells, and had worked his way up to his current position as one of Altamar’s trusted lieutenants, and was now making ten million dollars every year. This, for a boy from the slums who had terminated his education at the age of twelve to live by his wits on the streets of Culiacan. The cartel game had made him a rich man, and he wanted for nothing. If he had to get his hands dirty, so be it. He’d murdered his first man when he was thirteen, using a bread knife, and had never looked back.
His life had been relatively tranquil under the reign of his new boss, and he had hardly had to kill anyone so far this year – an anomaly for the business. It was a time of peace, and he was happy to be reaping the rewards of Altamar’s rule. He still remembered the bad time a few years back when Don Miguel had been executed, the streets running red with blood. He’d had to pack his family and send them off to Lake Chapala during the worst of it. For months, he’d lived like a terrorist commander, hiding for his life in different anonymous locations as he waged a guerilla war against his competitors each day. It was like anything else, he supposed. There were good times and the not so good times. It wasn’t perfect, but then again, nobody got rich in Mexico without getting bloody. He’d made his choices – and had prevailed. He couldn’t complain.
Manuel lumbered to the entry door with Sadie springing alongside him and stepped outside to the crisp air of a bright new morning. He loved this time of day. It was cool enough so you weren’t sweating through your clothes, and the rainy season hadn’t started yet. Spring was a perfect time to live in Sinaloa, and he relished the season with the joy of an alcoholic with a full bottle. His morning shift of bodyguards was dutifully waiting outside for him, two of them on All Terrain Vehicles, with their weapons cradled in their laps, ready for the jog at whatever time it would begin.
“Hola, chicos. You up for another good one?” Manuel greeted his men.
No reply answered him. None was expected. These weren’t his friends, no matter how warm and fuzzy the Don acted, and they understood their role was to protect him, not chat with him.
Sadie whined and nudged his hand with her nose, anxious to get underway. Manuel began stretching, using the columns of his porch for support, smiling at his beloved dog – barely more than a puppy.
Searing lances of white hot pain shot through his upper-body as his chest exploded. Blood splattered Sadie and his men as the burst of gunfire from the brush pounded into his torso. The men froze momentarily before taking cover wherever they could, shooting haphazardly at the area where the gunfire had come from. The two on ATVs gunned their motors and went tearing off in the direction of the sniper, until first one and then the other’s head exploded, the vehicles slowing and turning aimlessly now that their operators were dead. The two guards by the porch had taken refuge behind the heavy stone columns, firing without conviction into the dense foliage at the property’s perimeter.
Manuel stared blearily up at the complex herringbone pattern of the brickwork in the dome built into the roof over his porch, the cupula, his breath gurgling from the holes in his chest as his life ran out onto the rustic stone floor. Sadie approached and nosed his face with her own, licking the flecks of blood from his chin in an effort to comfort him, her warm tongue the last thing he would ever register. His eyes met hers for an instant and then grew wide as he noisily exhaled a long groaning rattle before shuddering into stillness.
Sadie lay beside her master, then stood and circled him. She nudged him again with her nose, and then, as dogs had done since the time they’d joined humans as companions in caves, she sat and pointed her head to the heavens and let forth a baleful howl, filled with all the sadness and pain of the world.
Her beloved master was gone. She was now alone, as only the surviving can be.