King of Swords

Chapter 6

Sinaloa, Mexico — 1986

The midnight horizon glowed with leaping licks of fire as the meager improvised tarpaper shacks around the hidden field blazed. Dense, acrid smoke belched into the night sky, carrying with it all the earthly possessions of the simple farming family huddled together, their wrists bound with plastic ties, the children sobbing as they watched their home vaporize. A pair of armed men stood next to a lifted four-wheel drive pickup truck, watching the blaze as they shared a bottle of mescal while admiring their destructive handiwork.

The mother tried in vain to comfort her panicked children — two little girls and a small boy — as the father mumbled a prayer to the Virgin of Guadalupe, who had been conspicuously absent in assisting him this year. He’d planted a cash crop instead of tomatoes — marijuana bringing with it a substantial premium over the edible harvest he’d always grown in the past. He’d needed the money for his youngest girl’s operation, to repair a congenital deformity; Michelle had been born with a cleft palate that would limit her chances in life due to the effect on her appearance. He had realized that cultivating cannabis carried a risk, because the other drug growers and their distribution network didn’t want competition, but he hoped to be able to get away with it this one year, and then go back to tomato farming.

The farmer’s luck had been bad ever since the arrival of his newborn two years ago. First there was her birth defect, then a bad harvest, and just a few months ago, news that another baby was on the way. More mouths to feed diminished the miracle of birth somewhat. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his children, but the financial pressure was immense, and the last thing he needed was another one. And in the back of his mind lurked a darkness — what if this one also had some problem; an even more expensive one to care for? He’d tried to banish the thoughts, but they had recurred and grown to dominate his days.

Two of the men approached — rough looking, wearing cowboy hats and carrying pistols. These were the foot soldiers of the local distribution network; in 1986, there was only one cartel, operated by Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, also known as The Godfather, who lived in nearby Culiacan and controlled all drug traffic of any note in Mexico. Everyone answered to him, including these men. In a few years, Gallardo would divide up the country and create a more fragmented cartel scheme, dolling out territories like a multi-level marketing magnate, but at this point, he alone was the ultimate authority, with close friends and family members handling the local day-to-day operations.

The mother pleaded frantically with the two men to forgive them, to at least release the children — they were helpless babies, the boy the oldest at five years old. One of the men backhanded her, splitting her cheek open. The father begged for them to show mercy in a keening burst of rapid Spanish, his tense formal and respectful of their obvious dominance. He acknowledged that he knew it was wrong to grow marijuana without their consent, but there was the baby’s operation to consider, and to please, in the name of all that was holy, not punish the innocent for his bad judgment.

The men were unsympathetic, and drunk, flushed with the power of life and death over their miserable captives. The distraught children were dressed in rags, and the parents weren’t much better — their poverty and desperation was palpable.

The heavier of the two men moved towards the kneeling prisoners and kicked the two year old in the head with his heavy cowboy boots. The snap of her neck was audible; the additional blows with his heel unnecessary. The mother shrieked in blind rage, screaming her baby’s name into the deafness of the night. The two men laughed drunkenly, and the kicker wiped the blood from his boot onto her tattered peasant dress before moving to the father and silencing his hoarse yells with a brutal pistol blow to the head. Dazed, he fell over, blood flowing freely from a gash in his scalp.

Grabbing the mother by the hair, they forced her to her feet, and the kicker tore at her dress. She struggled in protest, hysterical with grief and fear, and was rewarded for her efforts with a savage punch to the throat. The men hauled the now silenced woman off to a flat patch of dirt near the flaming main dwelling, and took turns raping her while the father and children watched helplessly.

Eventually tiring of the sport, they dragged her back to her now mute family and discarded her beside her toddler’s mutilated corpse. The woman had gone into shock, barely registering the abuse or the mangled body of her baby, her awareness shut down as a self-preservation mechanism for what remained of her psyche. She raised her head from the dirt, and in her delirium saw Satan dancing in the house’s flames; the dark one had come to claim them for his own.

The kicker moved to the little boy — the only one of the family who wasn’t crying. The child radiated a piercing look of pure hatred at the man, but there were no tears. Already, he’d been hardened by the demanding life on a rural farm, where he worked besides his father from dawn until dusk.

“Hey, look here, we have a tough guy, Hmm? What a tough character, this little cabron is, huh? He looks like he wants to kill me,” the man taunted, slurring as he waved the pistol in the boy’s face.

“I think he would, if he had a chance, Paco,” his companion confirmed.

“All right, little man, you want to kill me? You want to kill someone? Let’s see you do it, you goat prick.” The kicker flipped open a long wooden-handled folding knife, freeing the little boy’s hands with a single slice of the razor-honed blade.

The little boy rose to his bare feet, glaring defiantly. The kicker spat dismissively and cuffed the boy, knocking him back a few paces; but the little boy remained on his feet, although obviously dazed by the blow.

The man strode to him and flipped off his pistol’s safety, jamming it into the little boy’s tiny fingers while maintaining an iron grip on it. He forced the child’s hand towards the back of his father’s head, holding the knife at the boy’s throat. He reeked of onions, alcohol and sweat, and the little boy gagged at the powerful stench of his bear-like captor.

“Go ahead, cabron. Be a man. Blow his fucking head off. Either that, or I’ll cut your throat and fuck him in the ass for good measure. After I’m through fucking you, too,” the kicker hissed in his ear.

The roar of an engine arriving in the field startled the group, and the kicker reflexively squeezed the boy’s hand, depressing the hair trigger of the automatic. A spray of blood spackled the little boy as the father fell forward, his struggle on the planet finally at an end.

A stately older man approached the scene from his Ford Bronco, taking in the carnage with a practiced glare. Like the others, he wore a cowboy hat, but his bearing was one of authority that immediately commanded the men’s full attention.

“What the fuck are you doing? What’s going on here?” he demanded, as the kicker scrambled to his feet, fear spreading over his face, as well as his partner’s.

“Uh, nothing. Just cleaning up the job, Jefe. Having a little fun,” the kicker mumbled sheepishly.

The man slapped him, his look radiating contempt as he shook his head. He regarded the boy, who watched the scene impassively, his face smeared with his father’s blood, a fleck of brain stuck to his cheek near where two rivulets of tears had trickled a channel in the gore.

“Your fun is over. Finish this.” The leader studied the child carefully for a few more seconds. “The boy will come with me. Hurry up with this mess. I haven’t got all night.” He kneeled in front of the small face, and flicked the errant cerebral speck off his stern countenance. “This is a lesson for you. Your father took a chance and didn’t think through the consequences, so now everyone has to pay. I don’t want to hurt them anymore than they want to hurt me, but the law of the land is that if you cross me, you die. So we all pay the price. I’ve spared you because you’re brave, and I can use brave men around me. So remember tonight, and remember that I saved you from this,” he beckoned at the burning hovel and the bodies.

The boy glared at the man, unable to process much after the horror of the execution. The roof of the main house collapsed in a shower of amber sparks; both man and boy turned to look at it. A crow took flight from the field, its startled, raucous cry piercing the silence as it beat its wings over the slaughter. The man grabbed the boy’s chin and returned the child’s focus to his mustached face.

“I will be your new father, and the only god you will worship. I am the law, and I am the judge and the jury. Don’t forget it. Remember that I saved you, and could have killed you with a snap of my fingers.” The man stood, nodding at the kicker, who was obviously relieved to have gotten off with nothing more than a little humiliation and a slap. He took the boy’s trembling hand and turned, the child padding by his side as they walked to his vehicle.

Neither turned when two gunshots fractured the night.

Present Day, Los Cabos, Mexico

At six-thirty a.m., the old school bus creaked to a halt at the side of the dirt road in the barrio, just off the street that led to the small municipal airport. Its front door opened to the waiting group of workers, who shuffled groggily towards their ride. They were dressed in ragged jeans and T-shirts, and most of the men wore hooded sweatshirts in spite of the daily ninety-degree heat. There wasn’t much talking as they climbed aboard, and most conversations died once the small portable radio at the front of the bus was turned on, blaring ranchero music from its tinny speaker.

Thirty minutes later, the bus arrived at its destination, a gargantuan construction project on the slope of a hill just off the main highway, near a toll road leading to the international airport. A golf course stretched off into the distance; the perimeter of which was dotted with homes. A school sat below the project, dwarfed by its scope. Across the highway, a shopping plaza loomed over the surrounding buildings, housing a grocery store and a host of shops, with aboveground as well as underground parking areas.

When the bus pulled up the service road to the drop-off point, the site was already a swarm of activity, with workers milling about everywhere. Twenty other buses similar to the new arrival waited in line to exit, having discharged their loads of workers. Still more were queued to gain entry. A long line of personnel transport wound its way from the construction zone to a dirt field a quarter mile away that had been set up as a longer-term parking facility for the rickety conveyances.

The supervisors appeared at seven-fifteen and passed out hard hats — an unusual requirement for workers in Baja, but mandatory on this particular project. The different trades grouped together according to specialty — to the right were the masons, to the left the carpenters, in the middle the painters, in the back the electricians. A sense of controlled pandemonium pervaded the air and the pressure to perform was high. They were a little over four weeks out from show time, and scrambling to catch up to the schedule. Crews were being run round-the-clock, the prior eighteen hour days of nine hour shifts having proved insufficient to meet deadlines. A host of new arrivals waited on the perimeter for their assignments, bewildered somewhat at the underlying chaos that rumbled in the heavy atmosphere.

The project had been plagued with labor problems, and disputes were now being settled with summary firings of the sub-contractors. The company chartered with making the project happen was in a state of raw panic; there was no higher a profile build in all of Mexico. Many companies had underbid to get the work and had failed at every turn to perform. The lack of certainty in the employees created an unhappy labor pool. This in turn resulted in yet more mistakes or overruns, resulting in more firings, which generated a negative chain reaction.

The work orders were handed out to the peritos, the supervisors for a particular trade or section of the project, who in turn issued a list of the day’s concepts to their workers. At the end of the day, the peritos checked the work and verified that the tasks had been completed, then reported the status of their jobs to the main supervisor, who had a team of engineers working to stage the various projects to be completed on the following day.

Turnover had been high in the skilled trades, especially the plumbers and the engineers, who were essential to the project’s completion. Most of the companies that had begun the project were no longer there, their attempts to wrangle more money out of the project once they’d won the bid having failed.

The new electrical supervisor for zone seven nodded as the harried engineer in charge of the myriad electrical details for the project curtly handed him his day’s assignments along with a rolled up plan for his area, before moving to the next man in line. There were thirteen electric sub-contractors who acted as supervisors to the actual electricians; six of them had only been hired within the last three weeks.

The zone seven supervisor signaled his men, and together they moved up the concrete ramp to the upper tier of the main entry, where they would be working on the lighting conduit for the massive reception area, which would double as the stage for any opening festivities. The men moved to their assigned work spots, and the supervisor called two of his more senior workers and handed them a set of detailed drawings with minor modifications on it. Specifically, eight of the conduit runs were going to be rewired to accommodate a central switching system for the new runs the detail plans now showed. The men nodded to one another — this would be easy to install at this stage, and wouldn’t be much more work, so it would be possible to complete it within the timeframe allocated by the schedule.

El Rey slapped two of the electricians on the back, and they moved to begin the modifications. He watched as they added the desired wiring and strung the modified sections with the existing ones. Ensuring that none of the engineers were around, he studied the new plan he’d had drawn by his consultant in La Paz. It would enable him to mount a set of high explosive nodes to simultaneously detonate with a single flip of a switch, blanketing the reception area in a lethal shower of shrapnel that would slaughter everyone in the vicinity. It would be a killing field when they went off — no one would be able to survive it.

Normally, he favored more surgical methods for fulfilling a contract, but with all the security that would be in place, none of them were feasible. There were no surrounding buildings where a sniper could hide, so the most surefire method was the scorched earth approach. He had no objection to killing many versus only a few. To him, the number was immaterial. He just loathed inefficiency and slop — bombs and poisons, as with radiation, were imprecise. This approach flew in the face of his preferred techniques, but after considering all the possibilities, the mass explosion was the most surefire way of fulfilling the contract.

He would position the custom-made nodes several weeks before the G-20 was to commence along with the detonator caps. All he would need to do was wait for the targets to get within the kill zone, and then push a button. He’d have to be proximate in order to confirm that the targets were actually where they were supposed to be when he detonated, but that was relatively simple to execute. He already had his army uniform, and in all the confusion, one more running soldier would never be missed.

El Rey prided himself on detailed planning, which was one of the reasons he’d had a one-hundred-percent success rate on all his sanctions. It was one of the justifications for his high fee — this time, enough to retire on for good, when combined with his savings.

Under normal circumstances, he got half his fee in advance, no negotiation, and the other half upon successful completion; but this was no ordinary hit, so he’d gotten eighty-percent up front. The nodes would be made for him by a specialist in Honduras — he’d already been in contact, and they would require a ten day turnaround, so next week he’d place the order and then his cartel contacts would take care of smuggling them to Baja. They were to look like lighting fixtures, only with a deadly coating of easily splintered metal that had the explosive power of ten hand grenades per fixture. For the surface area, three would have done the trick, however he’d decided on eight based on worst case assumptions. At fifteen thousand dollars per node, they weren’t cheap, but then again he wasn’t price sensitive.

Once the hit was completed, he’d have to go to ground for a long time, perhaps forever, so he wanted to ensure that he had double the amount he’d need to live comfortably anywhere in the world. Mexico was his first choice but would be far too hot for him, so he’d made arrangements to be transported to Uruguay, where he could live in luxury in a waterfront villa in a suburb of Montevideo until the search went cold. He figured three to five years, minimum.

That was fine. After this final job, his swan song, he’d have nineteen million dollars. With that kind of swag he could stay disappeared for a long, long time. He’d already flown to Montevideo the prior year and spent a week there. It had everything he could wish for — first class restaurants and infrastructure, beautiful women, great wine from Argentina, and a host of more stimulating, esoteric pastimes available for a discriminating young man of secure means.

He wasn’t worried about getting paid his final twenty percent for the job, even though the cartel boss who had hired him was dead. Whoever took over for him was unlikely to test the patience of El Rey or invite his wrath.

That was one perk of being notorious, he mused. Collections issues disappeared when you had the reputation for being able to kill anyone, however well they were protected. His clients were actually eager to pay him.

Perhaps, in time, the furor would die down, but he wasn’t betting on it, which was one of the reasons he still needed to deal with a few loose ends, and cover his tracks. A door closed, a window opened. It was all part of life.

He watched the men working and felt a sense of quiet satisfaction. He was a lucky man. After all, how many people in the world could honestly say that they truly loved their job?

Julio Brava swaggered along the sidewalk in downtown Mexico City, fully immersed in his role as fast-money criminal. He’d spent a lifetime around miscreants so he knew all too well how they behaved. That was one of the hardest parts of his job, in truth — separating the pretend from the real. He had a generous amount of walking-around money to spread around, and would stay underground for months at a time, so it was all too easy to get caught up in the game and lose track of himself.

The job had cost him his marriage early on — it was hard to explain to a wife why you needed to disappear for fourteen weeks. She’d hung in for the first year, but quickly tired of being married to a phantom. There were no hard feelings from his end, although she claimed he’d ruined her life. That perceptual dissonance was probably just one of the many examples of how men and women differed.

He’d been in the game now for over a decade and had been instrumental in busting a lot of bad guys, but there was literally an infinite number of new ones to slot into the place of any he put away. That was the depressing aspect of his job. There were many positives, though, if you could deal with the constant threat of being killed.

Julio was thirty-nine, and had three different girlfriends who didn’t ask questions of the free-wheeling entrepreneur. He drove a lemon-yellow Humvee with every imaginable option, and he kept whatever hours he felt like. Every club in the city recognized him as an A-lister, and he had access to whatever vices he cared for.

Now that he ran his own squad he was autonomous, and nobody complained as long as he delivered results. His operating budget was vast, and the opportunities to make additional money on the streets as a function of the contacts he’d cultivated were substantial. More than once he’d made a loan and seen double the money come back to him within a month. That added up when you were funding your loan shark business with government money; it really was a perfect cover for a cop. It wasn’t his fault if he never seemed to be able to turn a profit, at least when reporting to his supervisors. Fortunately, his superiors didn’t question things too closely. A man had to earn a living, after all, and lending money to those in need was pretty benign compared to most. It was like being a bank of last resort, really — a liquidity mechanism for a booming economy.

He was on his way to meet a man who was rumored to know how to get in touch with El Rey, which didn’t mean much at this stage, as most of the hustlers on the street would claim to know how to get you a meeting with Santa or Jesus for a fee. But this contact was different — he was higher up than most of the contacts on Julio’s roster.

Felipe was loosely affiliated with the Gulf Cartel, and handled some of their distribution logistics, in addition to managing some of their love-for-sale venues, so he probably dragged down thirty grand U.S. a month, no sweat. That kind of money suggested that you were unlikely to be a time-waster or a con artist. If you were in the game at that level and you said you knew a guy who knew a guy, you probably did. Julio’s challenge would be to get to the next stage. That sounded easier than it would likely be.

Julio knew how the street worked — if you were responsible for bringing someone into a circle and they wound up burning someone, you paid the price as the person who vouched for them. It was a brutally effective approach. If Felipe knew anyone affiliated with El Rey, he’d be very reluctant to admit it unless the reward far exceeded any risk.

He’d known Felipe for three years and had partied with him more than once, bringing in the dawn as they’d left one club or another together. It had been a mutually beneficial relationship — Felipe passed on prospects who really needed money in a hurry for investment, generally in product he was selling, but was unwilling to provide them with credit. Everyone benefited; Felipe got his needs met, Julio got his profit, and the borrower got to play with other people’s money. None of his referrals had defaulted, so it was a relationship built on love. The truth was that Julio could lose money on occasion to support his cover and there would be no ramifications, but it offended his sense of business acumen — it was more the principle of the thing.

Felipe greeted Julio with a hug when he walked into his bar. He immediately called over two girls for Julio’s consideration. They were enticing beauties, but Julio waved them off — he was there for business. He did accept a glass of Don Julio 1942, and waited until they were comfortably settled in a corner booth at the back of the club before he began the discussion he’d come for.

“I hear that you can get just about anything a man could want, my friend,” Julio began.

“Very true. Thank goodness that most men’s imaginations are limited to things I can readily provide — for a price, of course,” Felipe observed.

“It’s the way of the world, is it not?” Julio agreed.

“Indeed, my friend, indeed. So…how can I help you today, Raphael? What could I possibly have that you might want? Just mention it, and it’s yours,” Felipe offered magnanimously. He knew Julio as Raphael — his undercover name.

“I have need of a delicate specialist, for a friend. A very wealthy, powerful friend who can afford the absolute best, and demands it.”

“Sounds like my kind of people. And what does he want, exactly?” Felipe asked.

“He has a business partner who has been less than candid with him about the profits of one of their businesses, and he’s grown tired of having to wake up every morning, distrustful and angry. So he wants to retire his partner…with prejudice,” Julio explained.

“Ah. I see. Well, there are many discreet professionals who can accommodate that sort of request,” Felipe observed.

“An additional wrinkle is that the partner is his wife’s father, so it’s precarious; he can’t afford the chore to be botched. So he’s willing to hire the very best in the business, no matter what the cost,” Julio elaborated.

“Hmm. That could be very, very expensive. How much is at stake here?”

“They’re involved in a variety of large-scale real estate development projects, domestically, and in Dubai. So it’s a great deal of money, my friend, a very great deal. I don’t get the feeling he’s price sensitive,” Julio said.

Felipe considered Julio with interest.

“And why did he come to you?” he asked.

“He knows me as a fixer — someone who can handle problems. He felt that I might be able to better navigate these difficult waters than he could. And he is very generous with his gratitude. I have a feeling the love on this one could be, well, almost embarrassingly large.”

“How serious is he? When you get to a certain level, the client risks angering the contractor if he isn’t prepared to meet the terms and conditions. And when you’re talking about the best, and I mean the very best, you don’t want to trifle with the contractor. It would be bad for one’s health,” Felipe explained.

“I’m fully aware of what’s required, and I’ve gotten sufficient assurances to be comfortable acting as the client’s representative.”

Felipe leaned back, staring at the ceiling as he thought about the proposal. Julio waited patiently, his anxiety now they were at the tipping point masked by years of experience. Appearing to make a decision, Felipe leaned forward, clasping his hands together as if praying.

“I do have a contact who attends to these sorts of matters. Let me make a call and see what his schedule looks like. But Raphael? Once you go down this road there’s no turning back. Even my friendship won’t do much good if something sours on your end once the contract is made. I would think long and hard about this particular contractor. He’s the best — notorious, actually — but he is very particular about the projects he takes, and he is insanely expensive; as in multiple-seven-figure-American insanely expensive. Is that a problem?” Felipe asked.

“It depends upon who the contractor is. There’s no way that kind of money will change hands unless there’s a reason for the fee to be that high. We both know that. So unless this is, say, El Rey we’re talking, I think I can tell you that he won’t want to play. That’s the level of talent he’s used to dealing with — he had the Black Eyed Peas play for his daughter’s wedding, as an example,” Julio shared.

Felipe sat back, impressed.

“That’s exactly the level of talent I’m referring to. There’s really only one number one in any game, isn’t there? When number two won’t do?” Felipe said.

Julio’s pulse quickened. “And you can make an introduction?”

“Not with the contractor himself, obviously. But I think I could make contact with someone who could speak for him,” Felipe said, lighting a Marlboro with his solid gold Dunhill lighter.

Felipe liked his little luxuries, Julio mused. He wore a platinum Lange amp; Sohne watch, Gucci loafers, an Armani blazer. Business must be good. Then again, both of their businesses were relatively recession proof. And what was the point in having real money if you couldn’t treat yourself to the things you loved?

“I’d be in your debt if you could make that call,” Julio stated, locking eyes with Felipe. “And I would be very generous for your trouble.”

“But take my warning seriously, Raphael. I would hate to see you get yourself into something you couldn’t get out of. Once the call is made, you’re on the road. Do you fully understand?”

“I wouldn’t be imposing if this wasn’t extremely serious. I think we both know that there are dozens of also-rans who would jump at the chance to help my client for a fraction of the numbers you’re tossing around. But if you can afford the best, that’s what you want. And there’s a lot at stake here, Felipe. So I know exactly what I’m getting into, and like I said, I’m completely confident, both in the client’s seriousness as well as his gratitude. A gratitude that I will gladly share,” Julio assured him.

“Spreading the wealth is always best, n’est-ce pas?” Felipe quipped.

“I would have it no other way.”

They toasted, and Felipe called the stunning blond female bartender over and requested a refill of their drinks. She smiled at them both, eyes hinting at possibility.

Julio and Felipe exchanged knowing glances.

“Just bring the bottle, Amanda. And pull up a chair. Do you know my good friend Raphael?”