With bible in hand, and fingering his rosary, he exited the house of worship and crossed the street; a pious man on a mission to save the world.
Twenty minutes later, the bodyguards and soldiers crept up the stairs to the tower top, guns at the ready as they strained their ears for any hint of threat. The huge bells had fallen silent, and the only sound besides the scream of the sirens from the square across the street was the cooing of amorous doves taking refuge in the tower rafters.
The leader of the team held up a hand in warning when he spotted the rifle, still on the tripod, a single spent shell casing lying by its side. He softly moved towards it; the blood drained from his face as he saw the item held in place by the votive candle.
The stern countenance of the highly-stylized rendering of the royal presence seemed to sneer at the intruders, the brandished sword proclaiming to one and all the regal superiority of the seated man.
He approached the card as if in a trance, then reached down and retrieved the tattered rectangle, holding it up for his men to see.
The King of Swords had struck again.
Chapter 1
April 18, 2012 — 6:15 a.m.
The concrete walls of the industrial building on the outskirts of Mexico City were painted a garish orange, the roll-up steel doors clashing navy blue with a coat of high-gloss enamel. The large parking area was empty except for three Cadillac Escalades — an unusual sight in the neighborhood, which ran more to dirt roads and twenty year old dodge trucks. The surrounding buildings were the dingy gray of unpainted cinder block, with rusting rebar sticking out of the roofs where the builders hadn’t bothered cutting off the steel from the support beams. Graffiti covered almost every area; the raw odor of garbage and filth pervaded the run-down outpost.
The skyline of Mexico City could be seen in the distance; tall buildings thrust angrily to the heavens, into the perennial layer of brown pollution that hung over the valley. A rooster crowed its welcome to the first rays of dawn. Two scavenging dogs trotted from building to building, their emaciated forms a testament to the pickings to be had. In the near distance, a shanty town of rough tarpaper walls with tarps or corrugated steel roofs emitted a sour stench, while here and there the sorry structures belched smoke into the air from early morning wood fires stoked up to cook the day’s sustenance.
A small mirror on the end of a rod eased out from around the corner of one of the neighboring buildings, enabling the Federal Police officer manipulating it to watch the orange structure without having to duck his head into view. Seeing nothing, he made a series of short hand movements to the group of thirty heavily-armed commandos behind him. This was the armed conflict team that consisted of the most battle-hardened members of the Federal Police force, who specialized in urban assaults, usually with backup from the army or the navy. All the officers had been marines, and all had been in numerous armed engagements with the narcotraficante armies that were the new scourge of mainland Mexico.
The men ran towards their orange objective, crouched low so as to present less of a target. The commander’s radio crackled with confirmation that another group of similarly-equipped police commandos had the rear of the building covered, as well as the flanks. He checked his watch, then pushed the button that would start the stopwatch function before making another series of hand signals to indicate they were going in.
Three of the officers carried a heavy steel battering ram with handles on it to knock down the front door in seconds; each of the windows had two officers framing the glass, ready to fire through it or take out anyone who tried shooting from inside. The commander made a fist, and the iron projectile drove the steel door into the building, knocking it off its hinges. Eight of the men entered, with more ready to follow. The distinctive popping-chatter of Kalashnikov assault rifles began echoing around the large warehouse, quickly answered by the more sonorous burst-firing of the M-16 assault rifles the police favored.
Even though the Federales had the overwhelming majority odds due to sheer numbers, their adversaries inside the building continued the firefight until they’d exhausted their ammunition. As the sulfurous stink of cordite wafted through the air in the enclosure, the surviving drug dealer tossed his pistol away and raised his arms over his head, having already jettisoned his empty assault rifle.
The final tally was four civilians killed and five police, with three more seriously wounded — in spite of their body armor and precautions. The leader of the team moved to the surrendering shooter and slammed him across the face with his rifle butt, then, reaching around his equipment belt, retrieved a set of blackened steel handcuffs. He ordered the man to lie on his stomach and slapped them around his wrists. Two other officers dragged him to his feet, past the fallen bodies of his entourage, out to the waiting police van.
A tall, athletically-proportioned man in his early forties, wearing the distinctive blue uniform of the Mexican Federal Police, ran a hand through his thick, slightly-graying hair and let forth an exasperated sigh. Captain Romero Cruz circled the object of his current attention, a seated man shackled to a metal chair bolted to the floor in the center of the room. A solitary hundred watt incandescent bulb hung from the ceiling, providing meager but adequate illumination for the interrogation cell. The captive was a high-ranking member of the Knights Templar cartel — close allies with the Sinaloa cartel. This man, Jorge Rodriguez Santiago, was rumored to be a confidante of the Sinaloans, which made him doubly valuable to Captain Cruz. Santiago had been the sole survivor of that morning’s bloody firefight; a surprise capture who normally would have been holed up in Michoacan, where his brutal gang ruled with an iron fist.
Santiago glared at Captain Cruz, blinking away the sweat and blood that trickled from his hairline into his eyes. The look conveyed an almost demonic hatred, and an arrogance borne from the knowledge that no prison in Mexico would be able to hold him for long. Cartel chieftains tended to escape with astounding frequency, no doubt due to the abundance of money at their disposal to lubricate the system.
This was not the first time Santiago had been arrested under serious circumstances, so for him, it was merely an annoying interruption to his lucrative criminal career. The last time the case hadn’t even gone to trial; the judge miraculously ruling that the prosecution had failed to make an adequate case. That had been a blow for the Federales, and was among the judge’s last decisions before he retired to a hilltop compound in Costa Rica, to live out his days with a nineteen year old soul-mate who had a nose for stimulants, as well as an apparent affinity with vastly older men.
Santiago began spewing vitriol about what would happen to every member of the force who had participated in his arrest. Cruz stepped forward with surprising speed and backhanded him — a dismissive slap — more an insult than a rebuke.
“You’re going to regret this, you bitch-” Santiago spat.
Since the slap hadn’t gotten the message across, Cruz punched him in the jaw — it was he who would do the talking, and Santiago would answer the questions put to him, only speaking when told to.
Cruz blew on his reddened knuckles, the skin abraded by the prisoner’s coarse stubble. He motioned to the other man in the room, his lieutenant, Fernando Briones, to bring him the nightstick that lay on a table in a corner of the room. Briones, a compact pit bull with skin the color of brandy, obliged.
Santiago spat a bloody lump onto the floor, then grinned at the captain, displaying a mouthful of gold capped teeth, with an incisor now conspicuously missing.