Night of the Assassin

  Chapter 7

  The cantina lights twinkled in the softness of the spring night air; the bouncing beat of lively Banda music floated out from inside, along with raucous laughter and peals of glee from inebriated women. It was Saturday night and the party was in full swing on the outskirts of Culiacan, a rough and rural area populated by hard men with dead eyes and females who were looking for a fast luxury ride to nowhere. This was cartel country and the bar was a cartel bar, so if you hadn’t grown up in the area and didn’t know the owners, you didn’t go inside unless you had a death wish.

  It was one of the few places in Mexico where Armand Altamar could let his hair down and relax. He wasn’t at war with anyone for the time being so he had little to fear. Things were prospering under his iron rule and everyone was making a ton of money since he’d taken over most of Don Miguel’s duties. He’d had to give up some of the meth and heroin traffic to Diego up north, and had to cut in Aranas, the head of the Sinaloa cartel, for a fifteen-percent-larger slice of his cocaine traffic; but even so, business had grown to the point where he didn’t even feel the dilution – he was pocketing fifty million dollars a month, on a bad one.

  Not so bad for a forty-year-old ex-enforcer who had come up from the streets, fighting tooth and nail for anything he ever got. He’d been born in one of Culiacan’s worst barrios, a desperate den of poverty and filth that few walked away from. Now he was running things after someone had taken out the Don. It was like a dream come true and he was making the most of it. Every weekend, he would hire one of the most popular Banda groups in Sinaloa to play for his de facto private party at his bar. Every friend he had would attend, as well as some of the most beautiful examples of Mexican femininity in the country – all to pay homage to him and celebrate his success.

  Not that winning the spoils had been easy, by any means. For a few months after the Don had passed on to his just reward, Culiacan had been a death zone. Five or six different factions fought it out for his turf, and the streets had literally run red with their blood. The only way Altamar had emerged victorious was through a combination of epic brutality, stealth, deceit and, surprisingly, a willingness to compromise with his rivals. After several of his competitors had been found beheaded, along with their entire families – including newborn babies, aged relatives and even household pets – the notion of doing a deal to end the madness had been appealing to even the most battle-hardened contenders. And so a cautious truce had gone into effect. The killing stopped, prosperity returned and everyone went back to doing what they were supposed to do: making money – a lot of money. Maybe not as much as if one man ran it all, as Don Miguel had, but, then again, more than anyone could spend in a hundred lifetimes, just the same.

  Altamar had introduced the idea that you had to be alive to spend it, and had been utterly ruthless in driving home the point that, unless you cooperated and stepped out of the way, your life wasn’t worth anything. Over four hundred and seventy people had lost their lives in the two months following the Don’s passing, at least according to the official count. The actual number was more like double that, many left rotting in hidden fields for the carrion birds to pick apart, or buried in shallow graves. One particularly brutal week, the rivers had been chocked with bodies floating down from the marijuana fields. It finally got to the point where even those accustomed to incredible violence and brutality had been through enough, and so they worked out a truce.

  He’d proved his point. If you crossed him, you, your family, your servants and their families would all be slaughtered without a second’s hesitation. It had been a stunningly effective campaign. By its short but bloody end, he was in charge of a coalition of former rivals – who were all still alive to spend their money. True, he’d made lifelong enemies due to his tactics, but he wasn’t worried. Nobody dared move against him. The price of even the slightest thing going wrong was the extermination of everyone you knew, of everything you held precious. The stakes were just too high, so he settled into his position of power with confidence, while always sleeping with one eye open.

  His entourage were the most dangerous and violent killers in the region; he made a huge point of advertising that fact. They were men who drank baby blood for breakfast and killed priests over coffee. By cultivating the reputation as the devil walking the earth, he’d climbed to the pinnacle of his world; the view from up top was better than he’d ever expected. He had his pick of the most gorgeous young women, he was literally awash with cash and every comfort and toy he desired. He was feared and revered for his ruthlessness and his absolute power. It was as close as you could get to being a demigod.

  And it was good.

  Tonight, he’d been drinking tequila with his cousins, who were never far away from his side. He surrounded himself with family and made sure they also wanted for nothing. Blood was their bond, he’d repeat over and over when drunk. Altamar made sure that they understood he was a hundred percent loyal to his family, and he expected nothing less in return but the same. The threat was as clear as the reward. Stick with Altamar, and you would live a happy and prosperous life. Get it into your head to betray him and he’d erase you from the earth.

  The combination of carrot and stick was highly effective.

  Inside the club, the air was thick with a haze of cigarette and marijuana smoke. The police avoided the building like it was radioactive, so there were no rules when within its four walls, the interior of which were covered with cowboy regalia. Lassos, bridles, photos of prize bulls and horses, horseshoes. Myriad related paraphernalia adorned every inch of the place, giving it an air of a themed junk shop. Booths ringed both of the longer sides of the room, which featured an elaborate stage on one end and a long wooden bar on the opposite. Girls in cowboy hats and microscopic jean shorts or miniskirts and cowboy boots weaved their way between the small circular tables that cluttered half the floor – the remainder of which was left to the many dancers. The fifteen-piece band barely fitted on the stage but neither the musicians nor the celebrants seemed to mind as the caterwauling of the dissonant horn section battled with the strident tenor of the singer, who was belting out a song begging apology for a series of indiscretions with other women; because this time, he’d be faithful due to having changed. Straw was scattered about the floor in an effort to create a more authentically rustic experience. The overall tone of the establishment was a rowdy rural roadhouse, albeit fifteen minutes from the edge of a cosmopolitan city of over a million in population.

  Most of the men wore jeans or slacks with cowboy boots and hats; their female companions wore little but smiles, their modesty cloaked by strategically-donned tops that struggled to contain their charms, with shorts or pants that looked like they’d been sprayed on. Many of the girls were in their late teens to early twenties – with a fair mix of professionals and those looking to find a generous narcotraficante sugar daddy. It was a playground for men who lived at breakneck speed, for whom the light of tomorrow was not guaranteed, and who denied themselves nothing.

  Outside the building, four discreetly armed men loitered a few feet from the entrance, providing the obligatory muscle should anyone be so foolhardy as to interrupt the fiesta with unpleasantness. They were in their mid-twenties, with a palpable air of menace and dispositions that indicated their willingness to kill you just as readily as bum a smoke. Two were ex-marines, the other two survivors of a lifetime on the street – the four of them had tallied between themselves at least ten times their number in killings.

  The area around the club was dense brush that had been cleared to create the mammoth dirt parking lot. A custom-built neon sign atop a metal column blinked the image of a highly-stylized devil wearing a cowboy hat and leering suggestively at new arrivals, its oscillating illumination lending a carnival air to the tightly parked cars. Occasionally, another vehicle would pull off the main road and brave the hundred yards to the club, headlights briefly shining on the front of the establishment before finding a spot among the rest of the patrons.
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  Inside, Altamar slammed his fist down on the scarred table-top of his favorite booth, having just finished telling another tale of one of his conquests, and threw back his head and laughed with delight. The girls on either side of him were all smiles. Another round of tequila and beer hastily arrived, Altamar having waved down a waitress moments earlier. The service staff didn’t need to ask what kind – it was always the same. Negra Modelo and Cazadores. Altamar liked the familiar, and he was a veritable drinking machine every Friday and Saturday night. His cousins invariably struggled to keep up with him as the hour got late, which deterred him not one iota. He’d be having a private party later with the pair of youthful minxes accompanying him. His two cousins eyed him with envious admiration even as their vision began to blur. They had their own girls, but not much was going to be happening by the end of the night, when they’d fall dazed into bed with the room spinning while their companions did their best to entertain them. Altamar, on the other hand, had a reputation for being insatiable, more than likely helped by the plentiful chemical supplementation he lavished upon himself. He looked around after delivering the hysterically funny punch-line to his latest story, and delivered it again, louder, for emphasis. No doubt it would be even funnier the second time.

  “So I tell the fucker, ‘What, you think you’re superman? All right, asshole, so you’ll have no problem flying.’ And then I threw him off the roof of the building. You know, in the end, he didn’t fly so good!” He pounded the table again, killing himself with his wit.

  His company tittered drunkenly, the girls beaming toothy smiles, but he quickly lost interest in the ladies as nature called. Altamar stood up unsteadily and, after stabilizing himself with the table, woozily moved to the rear of the club, where he had an office with a private restroom. He grappled with his keys and unlocked the door before entering and turning the deadbolt, ensuring he wouldn’t be interrupted while conducting his important business. Altamar flicked on the overhead light and leaned against the wall for a second, as though the act of walking forty yards had sapped his energy. Maybe he’d had too much tequila too fast, he thought, and then he stumbled over to his desk, slid the center drawer open and extracted a small vial. He fiddled with the top, and after tearing it free tapped out two fat lines of cocaine on the glass desktop. He rolled up a hundred dollar bill and snorted them with gusto, wincing at the delicious burn as the drug hit his septum. Augmentation complete, he moved to the bathroom and opened the door. He failed to notice the shadow in the dark room or the quiet rustle before excruciating pain lanced through his head and everything went dark.

  Fifteen minutes later, his cousins realized that Altamar had been gone a long time and staggered back to the office to check on him. The door was locked, which wasn’t unexpected. The men pounded on it, calling to him. After getting no response to multiple efforts, they went and found two of Altamar’s security detail, who swiftly broke the door down, guns drawn. The office was pitch black. When they turned on the lights, they were confronted with an empty room. The most sober of the cousins went to the window and pulled the blinds up, then yelled at the two guards, pointing at the opening.

  Three of the iron bars over the window had been cut, either with a welding torch or some sort of acid, and were bent out at right angles, creating a space just large enough for a body to fit through.

  The music stopped two minutes later. The fiesta was abruptly terminated. Armed men milled about, uncertain as to what to do until the cousin who had discovered the window issued instructions and they raced for their vehicles.

  Altamar faded in and out of consciousness, unsure what was happening to him. He was bouncing against a hard surface, felt cool air blowing over him and a sense of motion. He struggled to move but his wrists and ankles were bound and he had tape over his mouth. He opened his eyes wider but couldn’t make anything out; something was blocking his vision. His arm hurt in the upper bicep like he’d been shot, and the last thought he had as he faded again was that someone had injected him with something to knock him out.

  Eventually, Altamar returned to full awareness and this time he could see, albeit without much clarity. He blinked his eyes in a futile effort to clear his head, which was splitting from the blow. He tried to reach up to touch the tender spot and discovered that he could only move his arm a few inches from where it was extended slightly above shoulder level. He tried the other arm, also extended, and met with the same resistance. Now fully alert, his respiration increased and he was flooded with a sense of panic. When he tried to move his legs, he encountered the same problem – he was immobilized, spread-eagled, his arms and legs stretched wide. His nose registered the musty odor of long-abandoned horse stalls, and when his vision returned to near normal, he could see that he was indeed in an old barn, chained to the floor. He continued to struggle for a few minutes until blood began tricking from his wrists where he’d torn most of the skin off from pulling against the chains.

  Dim light came from a pair of headlights outside the closed barn door, where slim illumination crept through from around the sides and the base. Altamar screamed, more a hoarse croak than anything, largely due to the effects on his vocal cords of whatever he’d been dosed with. He paused after several seconds and heard a sound from the far end of the space. He was able to move his head and crane his neck and he saw a young man dressed entirely in black turn to face him from the area by the stalls. The young man sauntered over unhurriedly and smiled humorlessly at Altamar, causing his breath to catch in his throat and his blood to run cold. He knew that look, and knew what it meant. He needed to take the initiative or this could get far worse.

  “You fucking cocksucker. I’ll cut your balls off and force you to eat them in front of me. Do you have any idea who I am?” Altamar rasped at him. A good defense was often a strong offense.

  The young man smiled again, almost blithely, and without responding, opened the barn door and sauntered out to the truck that was parked outside, returning after a few minutes with a lit kerosene lantern. He placed it carefully on a stall ledge so it brightened the area where Altamar was chained and went back to the truck, extinguishing its headlights and shutting off the motor. Altamar heard the man’s footsteps grow louder and then he was blinded by a blue-white flash. His vision gradually returned, and he was blinded by another.

  The young man was taking photographs of him.

  A spike of fear ran through Altamar. He decided to try a different approach.

  “I’m very, very rich. I can get you whatever you want, eh? Anything. How much money do you want? What’s it going to take?” Altamar sensed that threats weren’t going to have any effect, so he’d appeal to greed, which was a constant in all humans. It wasn’t a question of if, it was a matter of how much.

  The man just smiled again, shaking his head as if dealing with a child.

  “Did you hear me? I can get you anything. Millions of dollars. In cash. What’s your number? What do you want? A million? Two million? Fine. I can get you two million dollars with a phone call.”

  The young man considered the idea, and then nodded.

  “I think I’d like to be a millionaire. That sounds like it would be fun. So you get me two million dollars, and then once I have the money and I’m safe, I’ll release you. I’ll unlock your chains, and you’ll be free to go. You don’t know me, so I’m not worried about being found by your thugs. How do we do this?” the young man asked.

  “Now you’re thinking. In my pocket. I have a phone. Get it for me, and I’ll give you a number to call. Let me talk, and we’ll set up getting you your money.”

  “But how? How will I get the money and know I’m safe, and that your men aren’t watching me or following me?” he asked.

  “We can do it like I’ve done some of my deals. We pick a remote location you’re familiar with. At a predetermined time, a man will come and put a bag with the money wherever you like, and then leave. You wait as long as you want, and then retrieve the money. It’s a standard drop. W
e do it all the time,” Altamar explained.

  “Ah. Good thinking. I think I can improve on that. I have an idea that will work.”

  And then he explained what he wanted.

  Altamar’s eyes widened. “Very smart. I’ve never heard of anything like that before. I see what you’re trying to do. It will be impossible to follow you that way. Okay, make the call. We have a deal. You get your money, you unchain me and let me go, right? I’m a man of my word. How will I know you’ll do as you say?”

  “I went to a lot of trouble to get you out alive. If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d have been dead an hour ago. I want something else. So make the call, and let’s get this over with,” the young man replied.

  Altamar’s features clouded – something about the interaction was off. He didn’t know what, but he didn’t believe his captor. “You know what? Fuck you. I think you’re lying, and you’re going to kill me anyway,” he hissed.

  “Fair enough. I guess I’ll kill you now. And you’ll never find out if you were wrong.” The young man shrugged, apparently uninterested in which way the transaction went. From the back of his pants, he pulled a semi-automatic pistol and approached Altamar.

  The drug lord struggled to maintain his composure, but his eyes widened at the sight of the gun. “Wait. Here’s my proposal. You get the two million, but you hand me over in exchange for the money when you get it.”

  The young man smiled again with genuine amusement.

  “I must not be very convincing, or you must be very stupid. This isn’t a negotiation. You either give me two million dollars on my terms, and I release you, or you fuck around and I blow your brains out. Or maybe I gut shoot you and watch you lie in your own shit and blood for a few hours while you beg me to end the agony.” He considered that mental image. “You really think I’m going to let your men pick me off with a sniper rifle the second you’re safe? I’m disappointed. I was sure you were smarter than that. Maybe I’ll blow your kneecaps off, and you’ll be walking around on prosthetic limbs for the rest of your miserable life, just so you know I’m serious. Do you need me to do that? Show you I’m serious?”

  Altamar hesitated, calculating, and then his shoulders slumped.

  “No. I believe you. Fine. We’ll do it your way. Make the call.”

  The young man dialed the number Altamar gave him, and then held the phone up to the ear of the cartel kingpin. When the other end of the line answered, Altamar explained he’d been kidnapped, but that it was okay, and to gather two million in cash and have it ready to go at four a.m. – in two more hours. He then gave instructions on how it was to be delivered. Altamar had many millions in cash stashed in multiple places in town, so getting two million was the least of his problems.

  Altamar listened to the response and then barked angrily into the phone.

  “Don’t argue with me. Just do it. My life is at stake here. Do it precisely as I explained, and don’t fuck around or try anything clever. I don’t want to die because you got smart,” Altamar warned, before the young man terminated the call and pocketed the phone. “All right. I did my part. So now you go get your money, and then you let me go. You better move a long way away from here, because it’s not going to be very healthy for you after this, you know?” Altamar couldn’t resist the threat. He had a good sense for people, and he believed that the young man would release him.

  “I don’t intend to stay very long. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some things to attend to,” the young man apologized, turning to leave.

  Altamar was startled by a sound of scurrying from out of his field of vision, above his head.

  “What the fuck? What’s that?” he hissed.

  “That? Oh, that’s probably the rats, I expect. I remember the place was infested with them last time I was here,” the young man said conversationally.

  “Rats? Then you can’t leave me here on the ground. Get me up,” Altamar demanded.

  The young man appeared to consider it.

  “No, you’ll stay where you are. Besides, you’ll soon have bigger things to think about than a few pesky rats,” he reasoned, and moved to grab the bottle he’d placed on the ground near the door.

  “What’s that?” Altamar asked, his voice catching.

  “You’ll know soon enough. I wanted to leave you something to reflect upon while I’m off picking up my money. You may not remember, but you hurt someone I care deeply about and I’m here to return the favor. That was why I wanted you alive, although once you made the offer of the money, I felt it would be poor manners to turn it down,” the young man explained, carefully unscrewing the top of the glass bottle.

  Altamar stared up at him, horrified, as the young man approached. He renewed his struggle against the chains. “No. You promised you’d let me go,” Altamar protested.

  “I did. And I will. But I never promised you’d want to be let go,” he said, and then poured a small amount of the acid on the cartel boss’ face, careful to avoid splashing any on his own clothes or shoes. Altamar’s skin began to bubble and smoke, and his eyes immediately ulcerated as the fluid seared through the lids. Altamar’s agonized shrieks were bloodcurdling, but had no effect on the young man. They were in the middle of nowhere, the big house abandoned and Jasmine’s home a quarter mile away. There was no one to hear the screams, which gradually died as some acid entered his mouth and cauterized his tongue and throat. The young man resealed the bottle and placed it on the stall next to the lantern, and then turned, unbuckling his pants.

  “I’d rape your sorry ass as well, but I’m afraid I’d catch something. So instead, I’ll leave you to the rats. They’ll come soon enough,” he disclosed as he urinated on Altamar’s face, rinsing off most of the acid so the man would remain alive. He wanted the agony to last as long as possible, and he didn’t want the scumbag to get off lightly by dying after a few minutes of unspeakable pain.

  “I’ll be back after I get the money you so generously offered. I should have held out for five, but since it’s not about the money, two is more than enough – no point in being greedy, and it would be harder to carry. When I get back, if the rats have left anything of you, I’ll release you just as I promised. Without a face, but then again, you’ve done as bad or worse, so you can’t really complain,” he reasoned.

  Altamar gurgled, choking. It was now hard to tell given the condition of what had been his face, but the young man thought he might be choking, the acid having removed his nose along with most of his skin and tendons. He reached into his back pocket and withdrew a pocket knife, which he opened as he approached the drug boss. Kneeling down, he stabbed it into the man’s windpipe just above his clavicle, and then stepped back to study the wound. Blood frothed forth, and he turned and trotted out to the truck, returning a few seconds later with a pen. He used his teeth to pull out the ballpoint mechanism, leaving a slender tube, which he first blew through, and then jabbed through the bloody opening. He listened attentively, and was rewarded with the sound of air moving in and out through the pen, albeit labored breathing – but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  “There. You’ll live. Although you’ll wish you hadn’t. I’ll be taking the lantern. The rats seem to prefer the dark for their work. They seem emboldened by the night. Have a nice rest,” he said, and then grabbed the light and walked out of the barn, taking care to shut the door securely behind him. The big Ford Lobo engine started, and the last thing Altamar registered as the wheels crunched on the gravel outside was the sound of the exhaust disappearing in the distance.

  Then the rats came.