Revenge of the Assassin

Chapter 28

The morning of the Easter mass at Catedral Metropolitana de la Asuncion de Maria, the streets were a nightmare. The cathedral — the largest on the continent — was located in the heart of Mexico City and was ringed on three sides by huge boulevards, which were closed off to traffic for the hour duration of the mass. The presidential helicopter would arrive on the south side of the cathedral, where there was eighty feet of open space for it to touch down. The decision had been made to close the streets for fifteen minutes prior to its landing until after it took off, in the interests of avoiding the complications that thousands of vehicles could introduce into the security scenario — a valid precaution, but one that played hell with downtown traffic.

Likewise, spectators were limited to the huge square across the street, where the citizenry would be confined to an area that was barricaded off at the far edge of the six lane street that fronted the main entrance on the south side. Already, a crowd of almost twenty thousand had gathered, waiting for the spectacle to begin. Soldiers formed a perimeter around the church grounds, and the president’s security forces were deployed along the sidewalks of the buildings adjacent to and facing it. Snipers were nestled in the cathedral’s towering bell towers, scanning the rooftops of the numerous buildings surrounding the church for threats.

Cruz watched the proceedings from his vantage point near the front entrance of the cathedral, Briones in tow. The president was due in ten minutes, and as usual Cruz was anxious. El Rey had vanished, having apparently given up once his bomb had been discovered at the congress, but Cruz didn’t buy it. The man wasn’t the type to just quit. For all his reprehensible qualities, he had a hell of a work ethic Cruz understood in a very odd and dysfunctional way. El Rey was committed and singularly focused. Qualities he knew only too well. For all his distaste of the killer’s occupation, he had to concede that he’d never seen anything like his ability to pull off the impossible.

Vendors meandered through the crowd of onlookers hawking churros and cotton candy, and a fair number of both uniformed and plainclothes police were interspersed in the throng to watch for pickpockets or possible assailants. A security gateway had been erected at the far end of the square by the ice rink, where Chilangos, as the residents of Mexico City were known, normally passed the time on skates, improbable as that might seem to visitors from other countries. The popular view of Mexico was cactus and peasants wearing serapes and sombreros, walking their burros through dust and scrub with a mission bell tolling in the background, not cosmopolitan middle class business people and their children skating around like they were in New York’s Central Park.

Given the crowd, it was impossible to have the area completely buttoned down. Multi-story buildings everywhere, tens of thousands of people gathered, countless pedestrians moving through the far edges going about their business. It was every security planner’s worst nightmare. Thankfully, the president would only be exposed for a short while, as he made his way from the presidential helicopter to the massive front doors of the cathedral. Then it became a different matter.

Cruz had accompanied the president’s security head as the team had set up the security checkpoint metal detector inside the church, and chained all entries but the main one and the one leading to the vestry. Armed guards monitored the clergy entrance, subjecting the priests and altar boys to the same pat down and search as the general public. In addition to the president, virtually every dignitary in Mexico City was going to be in attendance, so if a terrorist wanted to eliminate the government in a single stroke, a well-timed attack during the service would achieve this with ease.

A team of explosive specialists had gone over the interior of the church all morning with bomb-sniffing dogs, inspecting every nook and cranny for suspicious items. After five hours of intensive searching, they’d turned up nothing. Cruz would almost have felt better if they’d located a device. The anxiety in the pit of his stomach had been building, although he had to admit that there was no evidence of an assassination attempt in play. Now the church was packed, with a hum of murmuring reverential voices vying with the organ music. There was little they could do inside at this point — the mass was imminent.

Briones and he stepped back through security and into the sun, shielding their eyes while surveying the crowd across the empty boulevard. One of the security detail approached them and tapped his watch. They would need to move to the perimeter. The president was due to land in three minutes.

Cruz and Briones walked across the cobblestones to the far edge and waited, Cruz studying the four and five story buildings at the sides of the massive square distrustfully. As he waited for the great man’s arrival, he looked up at the church’s ornate front facade, grimy from exhaust and soot, but still impressive. Built on the site of the main temple of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan in the mid-1500s, it had been enlarged over the years and was now easily one of the most impressive sights in the city, as well as being a reminder of the Spanish role in the history of the country.

As Cruz resumed scanning the surroundings, his eye caught a glint in a distant window on the top floor of the Gran Hotel de Mexico, across the street from the most distant corner of the square. Simultaneously, the distinctive sound of a large helicopter battering the air above them intruded into the expanse, echoing off the church and momentarily drowning out the din of the crowd. He squinted and tried to make out what he’d seen at the hotel, but it was no good. Then the downdraft from the chopper caused a dust cloud to blow off the landing area, causing him to cough and close his eyes to fend off the grit. The aircraft touched down and the rotation of the long blades gradually slowed, enabling Cruz to resume his surveillance. He eyed the hotel’s windows and then spotted it again.

There.

Cruz elbowed Briones and leaned in to him.

“Binoculars. Now.”

Briones hesitated for a moment, then lifted the leather strap that held the glasses over his neck and handed them to Cruz. He raised the lenses to his eyes and studied the window that had caught his interest and then handed them to Briones before racing to where the head of security was standing, in preparation for the president’s exit from the aircraft. He cupped his hand over the man’s ear and yelled something, and then the security chief moved his handheld radio to his lips and issued a terse order. The helicopter remained in place, but the doors didn’t open.

Cruz sprinted across the empty boulevard to the sidewalk in front of the hotel, Briones panting in his wake as he struggled to keep up. Three serious-looking men with earbuds and suits carefully tailored to hide their shoulder holsters dovetailed from their positions near the barricades to meet them, and within a minute they were in the lobby of the hotel.

Ignoring the surprised stares from the guests in the sumptuous, centuries-old lobby, Cruz hurriedly approached the reception desk and gave a command to the young uniformed woman. She looked unsure of herself for a moment and then nodded and picked up the phone. After a few hasty sentences, she hung up and regarded him.

“Miguel, the head of maintenance, will meet you on the top floor in two minutes with a passkey. Do you know which room you want?” she asked.

“It’s the fourth from the corner, facing the cathedral,” Cruz answered.

She tapped on her keyboard and pulled up the information.

“Registered to Senor Ricardo Gomez, from San Luis Potosi. Checked in two days ago,” she told him.

Cruz had already motioned to the men and strode to the large, ornate wrought iron elevator that was the showpiece of the spectacular ground floor, its green and gold trim glancing off the sunlight that poured in through the intricate stained-glass roof over the lobby. The hotel was a rough rectangle built around the lobby, with the walkways and room doors facing the atrium.

The elevator creaked to a stop and they got on, with one of the men soundlessly taking the stairs in case their quarry got wind of their arrival and tried to make a stealthy escape.

When they reached the top floor, the maintenance man arrived, having followed the security man up the stairs. They counted the doors, and when they arrived at the suspect one, the group drew their guns. Cruz heard a collective gasp from the crowd in the lobby beneath them, which was now following the unfolding drama with interest. He took three steps over to the railing, holding a finger to his lips, his pistol clutched in his other hand. The people below scattered at the sight of the weapon and made for the exits, which was just as well, he reasoned. If there was going to be a gun battle, it would be best if civilians weren’t in the line of fire.

He returned to his position by the side of the door and indicated for the maintenance man to open it using his universal card key. The man slid the coded rectangle into the card reader, and the light on the lock flicked to green. Cruz motioned for him to move aside, which he didn’t need much encouragement to do, and then quietly gripped the lever and turned it. Once in the open position, he abruptly swung it wide and rolled into the room, gun searching for a target. The rest of the men followed him in, with Briones taking up the rear.

A telescope sat on a tripod, aimed at the cathedral. Next to it, on a chair, lay a laser range finder and an M110 SASS rifle with a custom high-powered scope. An empty golf bag sat in one corner of the room. Cruz gestured to the men to check the bathroom and held his breath while the lead man darted in, pistol first, and then emerged a few seconds later, shaking his head. Briones swung the door of the eight-foot-tall armoire open, but it was empty except for an overnight bag and a shirt. The assassin had fled.

Cruz unclipped the radio from his belt and gave a quick summary to the security chief, and watched through the telescope as the president and his bodyguards exited the helicopter and made their way into the church.

“Don’t touch anything. I want a forensics team in here as soon as possible. It looks like we interrupted El Rey and made him scramble, which means that there’s a chance we’ll pick up some valuable evidence,” he ordered. Briones fished his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and made a hushed call.

He hung up after a short discussion. “Twenty minutes, and they’ll be here.”

“Guard the room. I don’t want anyone in here until they arrive. Is that clear?” Cruz demanded.

Everyone nodded, and he stalked out. They had prevented a shooting, but missed their quarry yet again.

The elevator ride down was mercifully brief, and when he got to the ground floor he advised the front desk girl that the room was a crime scene and then interrogated her on when she had last seen the elusive Senor Gomez, as well as probing for a description. She didn’t have a lot of detail she could offer, and she hadn’t seen Gomez since yesterday afternoon. Which did them no good at all.

Cruz left Briones to finish the questions and exited the hotel, making a beeline back to where the helicopter sat.

El Rey watched the flurry of activity at the main entrance of the hotel, as the crowd of guests emptied out through the exits with looks of fear on their faces. It would just be a matter of minutes until the police discovered the weapon, and then the fun would start. He had planned a nice diversion to keep everyone occupied, and they had fallen for the bait. Now they would be less vigilant for the remainder of the mass, concentrating on their shocking new find instead. Word of the assassination attempt would spread through the gathered security, and they would ratchet their guard down, just a little. Of course, as he knew, that was when it was most dangerous — the moment everyone decided it wasn’t.

A small boy bumped his leg, jostling the long blue robe, and he looked down at him and smiled. The little tike smiled back uncertainly, and then grabbed his father’s hand. The pair continued their trip down the sidewalk, away from the church, a hundred and fifty yards across the square.

El Rey moved to his pre-planned point at a sidewalk coffee shop and took a seat, placing the briefcase he was carrying on the table. When the waitress approached him, he asked for something out of the sun, so she moved one of the tables to a position right by the building. He thanked her and ordered a sparkling water as he pulled his chair against the concrete so his back was to the wall, and he was facing the packed square.

She returned with his bottle of water and a glass, and he cheerfully paid her, telling her to keep the change. Happy with his generosity, she departed and went back inside the shop, leaving him to his thoughts.

He watched the crowd across the street in the square, already losing interest given there was nothing to see now that the president had gone inside the church, and easily picked out the plainclothes security men. It was always childishly simple to do so.

Seeing no immediate threat and satisfied that they had their hands full with the mob of humanity, he opened the briefcase and connected the cable inside to a jack on the case lid, which he’d run wire through, making the entire top an antenna. Glancing at his watch, he calculated he had another twenty minutes before the mass would be over. He softly closed the briefcase, leaving it unlatched and connected, and reconciled himself to waiting.

Reaching through a slit in the side of the heavy robe, he rummaged in the pocket of his shorts for a small smart phone, extracted it and placed it on the table. He looked around and, detecting no interested observers, pressed a series of keys.

The screen illuminated, and he was suddenly watching the ceremony taking place inside the church — an aerial view. He reached into another pocket and pulled out a cord with an earplug and plugged it into the audio jack so he could enjoy the show.