Return of the Assassin (Assassin Series 3) Read online

  Return of the Assassin

  A THRILLER

  Russell Blake

  © 2012

  Copyright 2012 by Russell Blake. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact [email protected].

  Return of the Assassin is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between the characters and real people, living or dead, is coincidental.

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  Features Index

  Return of the Assassin

  About the author

  The Assassin series

  The Voynich Cypher

  The JET series

  Excerpt from The Voynich Cypher

  Excerpt from JET

  About the author

  Russell Blake lives full time on the Pacific coast of Mexico. He is the acclaimed author of the thrillers: Fatal Exchange, The Geronimo Breach, Zero Sum, The Delphi Chronicle trilogy (The Manuscript, The Tortoise and the Hare, and Phoenix Rising), King of Swords, Night of the Assassin, The Voynich Cypher, Revenge of the Assassin, Return of the Assassin, Silver Justice, JET, JET II – Betrayal, JET III – Vengeance, and JET IV – Reckoning.

  Non-fiction novels include the international bestseller An Angel With Fur (animal biography) and How To Sell A Gazillion eBooks (while drunk, high or incarcerated) – a joyfully vicious parody of all things writing and self-publishing related.

  “Capt.” Russell enjoys writing, fishing, playing with his dogs, collecting and sampling tequila, and waging an ongoing battle against world domination by clowns.

  Visit Russell’s salient website for updates

  Follow Russell on Twitter

  The Assassin series

  Night of the Assassin is the gritty, edge-of-your seat prequel to King of Swords. A no-holds-barred, breakneck-paced thriller, Night of the Assassin charts the early years of El Rey - the King of Swords - a super-assassin responsible for some of the world’s most spectacular and daring executions.

  Purchase Night of the Assassin

  King of Swords is an epic assassination thriller set in modern Mexico against a backdrop of cartel violence. Captain Romero Cruz discovers an assassination plot to kill the Mexican and U.S. presidents at the G-20 conference in Cabo.

  Purchase King of Swords

  Revenge of the Assassin is the breakneck-paced sequel to the bestselling international thriller King of Swords. When El Rey, the super assassin responsible for Latin America’s most spectacular hits, returns to Mexico for one final sanction, the race is on for Captain Romero Cruz of the Federales to stop him before he can fulfill his contract to kill the president.

  Purchase Revenge of the Assassin

  The Voynich Cypher

  When a sacred relic is stolen from its subterranean guarded vault, Dr. Steven Cross, amateur cryptographer, becomes embroiled in a deadly quest to decipher one of history’s most enigmatic documents - a 15th century parchment written entirely in unbreakable code; The Voynich Manuscript. Stalked by secret societies, and aided by the daughter of a murdered colleague, a trail of riddles catapults Cross from England to Italy to the Middle East, where a Byzantine web of ancient secrets leads him to a revelation so profound it will change the world order.

  Purchase The Voynich Cypher

  Go to excerpt from The Voynich Cypher

  The JET series

  Readers are raving about the latest series in Blake’s ever-expanding stable of thrillers. To illustrate why they are reaching for the superlatives in their reviews, included at the end is a special bonus excerpt of JET.

  JET

  Code name: Jet

  Twenty-eight-year-old Jet was once the Mossad's most lethal operative before faking her own death and burying that identity forever. But the past doesn't give up on its secrets easily. When her new life on a tranquil island is shattered by a brutal attack, Jet must return to a clandestine existence of savagery and deception to save herself and those she loves. A gritty, unflinching roller-coaster of high-stakes twists and shocking turns, JET features a new breed of protagonist that breaks the mold.

  Fans of Lisbeth Salander, SALT, and the Bourne trilogy will find themselves carried along at Lamborghini speed to a conclusion as jarring and surprising as the story’s heroine is unconventional.

  Go to JET excerpt

  Visit Russell's website for more details

  Prologue

  5 a.m., Mexico City, Mexico, Yesterday

  A skin of dirty water from a late night shower coated the empty streets in the industrial district near the city center. A small storm had blown past the valley, leaving a partially overcast sky dotted with stars as a sliver of moon grinned crookedly between the clouds. Dawn would arrive in an hour, and the bustle of the city’s inhabitants would begin anew. But for now, the sidewalks were empty, other than an occasional rat scurrying down the gutter, or a skulking cat, brave or desperate enough to challenge one of the hardy rodents.

  The lone dim bulb mounted on the back façade of an exposed brick building struggled to pierce the gloom over a steel-clad service entrance flanked by two overflowing green metal dumpsters, the garbage an ongoing beacon for the night’s scavengers. The door opened with a protesting groan, rusting hinges lamenting the scant maintenance that was a chronic feature of Mexican life. A man emerged carrying a lunch pail and a trash bag, which he tossed onto the pile at the top of the teetering mound.

  The distinctive sound of glass bottles clashing sounded through the alley as the bag came to rest, perched precariously on one side of the refuse pile. Satisfied that it wasn’t going to come sliding back down at him, he returned his attention to the door, taking care to lock both deadbolts. The owners would never forgive him if someone broke in on his watch due to carelessness, and he needed the job.

  Normally, Pedro would have been finishing his shift at eight a.m., but this was a Wednesday, so the evening had wound down early. By three, the manager had sounded last call, and the handful of lingering die-hards had reluctantly swallowed the remainders of their over-priced, watered-down drinks and had shuffled on in search of other spots to pursue their mid-week fiesta. Once empty, Pedro’s three employees had moved through the space with practiced precision, preparing for the day crew that would be arriving at noon to ready it for the next night.

  Pedro sighed, his back hurting, and ran gnarled fingers through his thick salt-and-pepper hair, trimmed close to his skull for ease of maintenance. At fifty-two years old, he felt like he was ninety, particularly when it rained. The damp crept into his bones and made them ache, especially the base of his spine and his right tibia, both of which had endured a car accident decades earlier that had left him immobilized for months. A junker Nissan had run a red light, striking him a glancing blow that forever changed his life, leaving him sprawled on the pavement bleeding as horrified pedestrians rushed to help. Traffic accidents were a common hazard in DF – Distrito Federal, as Mexico City was called by its inhabitants – and that had been Pedro’s unlucky day. The driver had never been caught – the car had no plates – so he’d been left to the ministrations of the Social Security hospital that provided free care to workers who were paid current, which thankfully Pedro had been.

  He fumbled in his shirt pocket and retrieved a three quarters empty pack of cigarettes, pausing by the door to tap one out. A bus engine roared in the distance as he lit up his reward, then flicked the wooden match at one of the
pools of putrid water that had formed in the center of the alley’s worn surface. He waited a few seconds for his eyes to readjust to the darkness, taking an appreciative pull on the smoke before setting off.

  Damned things would kill him eventually.

  Then again, so would life, he reasoned. Might as well enjoy the little pleasures while he could. He blew a cloud of cancer at the sullen sky, turned, and began the long walk to catch the bus that would deliver him to his dingy one room apartment over a butcher shop in one of the poorer barrios on the outskirts of the city.

  A spike of pain shot through his head from the blow he never saw coming, and he barely registered the vague silhouette of his assailant, who had been hiding behind one of the dumpsters. His knees buckled and he fell forward as he lost consciousness, his cigarette fizzling out on the moist pavement next to his head, the lunch box clattering by his side. He never had a chance to struggle as his attacker slid a nylon cord around his neck and tightened it with a sharp pull, gloved hands gripping the rope with vice-like tenacity.

  The killer watched with detached interest as Pedro’s face first turned red, then slowly blue, his appendages jerking reflexively as his body fought to get the air it needed to survive. He held the noose tight, his boot on Pedro’s chest so the knot couldn’t work loose, and maintained the tension until Pedro’s ordeal had ended and his body lay still, pants stained from where his bladder had let go.

  The man hastily scanned the area to ensure nobody had seen the assault, then withdrew a cell phone from his pocket and made a call. One minute later a Dodge van covered in black primer rounded the corner and pulled to a stop next to the dumpsters. The side door opened and two men got out to pick up Pedro’s remains. They pitched the body onto a black plastic tarp in the van bed, the head striking the hard metal floor with a clunk.

  “Hey, careful there. I don’t want a mess in this thing, okay?” the driver growled at the loaders, eyes darting to the back of the van with a glare.

  The door slid shut, the pair crouching on the floor next to the corpse as the strangler climbed into the van’s passenger seat and dropped the lunch pail and the two foot section of steel pipe he’d used to crush Pedro’s skull onto the mat under his feet.

  The van’s exhaust burbled softly as it crept to the far end of the alley. Steam drifted lazily from manhole covers as the vehicle rolled up to the deserted intersection. The driver glanced in his rearview mirror, confirming the area near the attack was still empty.

  A garbage truck trundled past them on the desolate main street, lights flickering as it continued on its way; the driver waited until it was a hundred yards beyond them before making a cautious right turn and heading towards the freeway.

  Chapter 1

  A weasel-faced man with a curtain of oily black hair hanging over his eyes pushed a ragged mop along the concrete floor of the squalid corridor. Grim and Spartan, the ten by twelve cells housed the solitary confinement prisoners, their creature comforts limited to a single bed attached to the wall, a toilet with no seat and a sink.

  Nine men were currently interned in the section’s sixteen slots, which were reserved for the most dangerous and violent miscreants in the Mexican penal system. A guard sat at the far end of the hall, watching the prisoner clean the floor, ensuring that there was no contact between janitor and the other inmates.

  The area stank of bleach, urine and body odor – a perennial stench familiar to most prisons. The guard’s small radio was tuned to a Banda station that featured creaking accordions and slightly off-pitch tenors lamenting love’s harsh truths, accompanied by the occasional cough of an inmate or toilet flushing. Conversations were forbidden in the wing, although at night it was impossible to prevent whispers from drifting through the block.

  A plume of cigarette smoke emanated from a cell halfway down the row, where a particularly brutal inmate was spending thirty days for attacking another prisoner, nearly killing his victim with a sharpened bedspring he’d stabbed through his kidneys a dozen times. This Juárez cartel enforcer was already serving a life sentence, the maximum possible in Mexico, so being thrown into solitary was the only recourse the guards had beyond a thorough beating – not an advisable tactic to take with cartel soldiers, who were adept at bribing the whole criminal population, and who tended to hold a grudge.

  The man with the mop peered slyly into the cell at the end of the row as he went about his chore, catching the eye of the man considered to be the most dangerous in Mexico. El Rey was sitting on his bed, reading a week-old newspaper, apparently untroubled by his incarceration, tranquility radiating from his face. He raised a single eyebrow in silent inquiry as he observed the mopping man’s movements. The janitor glanced over his shoulder and, seeing the guard immersed in cleaning his nails, inched closer to the bars separating him from the assassin.

  A particularly raucous musical passage began on the radio as the man fixed El Rey with a cold glare.

  “You’re dead man walking, cockroach. You don’t screw Don Aranas over and live, puta,” he murmured in a stage whisper only audible for a few feet.

  El Rey said nothing. The situation really didn’t call for a response.

  “I’m going to cut your heart out and drink your blood. You don’t look like such hot shit now, do you? El Rey. What a joke,” the janitor taunted.

  El Rey listened for any indication that the guard had heard, and satisfied that he was otherwise occupied, flipped a page of the paper and sighed. “Keep talking, shit-bird. The talk may help you work up the courage to come for me, eh? It won’t save you, though. I’ll peel your skin off and use it for toilet paper. You’re just a bitch. I’ve killed tougher than you while I was napping,” he whispered back. “But hurry. It’s boring around here and I could use some fun. Maybe I’ll make an ashtray out of your skull before I send it to your bastard children with your balls stuffed in your mouth…”

  The mopper sneered. “Tough talk. I’ll remember that when I’m carving you.”

  “Sure thing, big man. Any time.”

  El Rey was used to the threats from the impotent Sinaloa cartel members who were itching for a chance to earn the million dollars that Don Aranas, the head of the organization, had offered to whoever killed him. They meant nothing and provided modest amusement value for the assassin in an otherwise tedious existence.

  Still, an attack was a concern, even in solitary. It wasn’t impossible that a guard could be bought off, although in this facility it was unlikely. Altiplano was the flagship of the Mexican system, and the personnel were the most honest. Even so, stories abounded of inmates being killed while their captors were off using the bathroom – a fact of life behind bars.

  The mopping man frowned at El Rey’s response and made an insulting gesture with his hand before moving grudgingly back down the hall. He’d killed dozens of men with his bare hands, so terminating the assassin didn’t pose a huge challenge. The million was practically already his – he just needed to figure out which guard he’d have to split the bounty with.

  El Rey resumed reading his paper. It had been three and a half months since his capture, and his bones had knitted and the scars had healed, although he still pretended to have motor skill problems with his right side following the brain surgery he’d had after being arrested – there was no point in alerting his jailers that he was fully mended. He needed every edge he could get, and information was power.

  His plastic surgery-enhanced nose had been ruined by the collision with the police cruiser windshield that had brought his freedom to an end, but other than that and a few hairline scars from the accident on his right cheek, he was in good shape. Every morning he forced himself to perform his clandestine ritual of isometrics followed by three hundred pushups and sit-ups, and it had gradually gotten easier over the last month.

  The trial wouldn’t take place for at least another half a year, but he was being treated as though he was already convicted, which under Napoleonic law, in all but formal sentencing, he had been. Unlike the U.S
., in Mexico the accused was considered guilty until proven innocent – an impossibility in his case. There would be no jury, just three judges who would be anxious to curry favor with the president.

  His life sentence was a foregone conclusion.

  He’d put out feelers through the prison network to probe arranging a breakout, but so far nothing looked encouraging. This facility was famous for being escape-proof, so his chances weren’t great. But he had a lot of money offshore, and anything was possible if one was motivated – at least, that’s the perspective he’d adopted, although a part of him understood that it was a long shot.

  Experience had taught him the value of patience, and he had resigned himself to a long stretch of what he viewed as self-improvement time. He had wounds to heal, and had to build his strength back, which he was now close to achieving. Soon it would be time to turn up the heat and execute a plan to get free. He already had some ideas. But he would require more information before he could settle on the most promising ones.

  It didn’t help that the most powerful drug lord on earth wanted his head on a platter. That was the understood price of his failure to fulfill the sanction he’d been contracted to perform, but it was a complication that increased the pressure to escape. Even though he’d executed the hit against the president flawlessly, the end result was that, for whatever reason, the man was still alive, and Aranas was out the ten million dollars he’d paid as a deposit to have him assassinated.