Night of the Assassin: Assassin Series Prequel, Russell Blake [good story books to read txt] 📗

shells with a special blend of a more powerful charge to compensate for the velocity difference the silencer caused, which had proved worthwhile when he was sighting it in. The higher-velocity payload attenuated much of the distortion introduced by the device. He’d flatted the tips of each slug a little and carved an X into the top before filling the indentations with solder and filing them so there would be no danger of a jam. Nothing could ruin a well-planned assault like a faultily-loading weapon, and so he’d spent hours on the task before taking the gun out and putting it through its paces.

He watched as the floating sentry approached the seated guard, presumably to ask for a cigarette because the seated man offered him one from his pack. El Rey watched the two men through the scope, taking care to close his eyes while the seated man lit the other’s smoke. It wouldn’t do to ruin his night vision with the match’s flare.

As the pair chatted lazily on the rear stone patio of the darkened house, El Rey gently squeezed the trigger. The standing man crumpled next to the seated guard, his chest exploding outward and onto his stunned partner; the fragmented slug having torn through his back, the shards exiting his front along with chunks of his pulmonary system and heart. El Rey caressed the trigger again, gently, as a lover might the receptive lips of his mate, and the seated man’s throat blew onto the heavy stucco house’s rear facade. That left the man in front, who would be getting a little apprehensive within a few minutes.

El Rey waited patiently for the inevitable, and was rewarded after seven minutes by the sight of the third sentry rounding the corner of the house. Another well placed shot took him down before he could draw his weapon. The threat from the security force was neutralized. He watched the grisly tableau for a few moments to ensure nobody was moving, then placed the rifle in the bottom of the boat before shrugging into a scuba harness. He double-checked the waterproof bag for the cell phone and two pistols before propelling himself backwards with a dull splash into the cold water of the bay.

It took him a few minutes to swim the distance, and when he pulled himself onto the shallow beach in front of the house, he paused to unclasp the tank and remove the scuba rig, dropping it where he stood on the sand, along with his flippers. They, like the boat, would be recovered later that night by Victor’s clean-up men, so he wasn’t worried about leaving any traces.

He padded in his neoprene dive booties to the grass that separated the patio from the beach and extracted a silenced Beretta 92FS pistol from the bag. Quickly gliding to where the corpses lay, he put a muffled slug into each man’s head, purely out of professional diligence. There was nothing more disruptive to a well-planned sanction than a wounded man with a gun exhibiting second-wind heroics. The niggling housekeeping chores concluded, El Rey studied the locking mechanism of the rear pocket doors before fishing out a foot-long stainless steel strip that looked much like a ruler, which is what in fact it was, albeit modified with a jagged hook ground out of one end. He slid it carefully through the center section, and with an abrupt pull, opened the lock. Back into the bag it went, and he fished out the second pistol – an odd-looking gas-powered gun that fired a horse-tranquilizer dart.

The house blueprints Victor had sourced from the building department were still fresh in his mind as he stealthily ascended the stairs to where he knew the master bedroom was located. The neoprene made his steps silent – a fortunate by-product of his unfashionable outfit. As he drew nearer to the partially-opened master bedroom door, his ears pricked up, listening for any tell-tale warning signs. Satisfied that the house was still, he pushed the door open, only to be rewarded with a creak from the hinges, corroded by the salt air.

The figure on the bed stirred at the sound and then lunged for the dresser. El Rey fired the dart gun left handed at him – the dart missed by a scant few inches and embedded itself into the pillow. The target swung around at him with a silenced pistol and began firing even as El Rey made a split second judgment call and charged him rather than shooting him. He ignored the white hot stab of pain that lanced through his upper leg as he hurled himself through the air at the prone, firing El Chilango, and within seconds had dislodged the gun and was grappling with his left hand for the dart as he slammed his Beretta butt into the man’s head with his right. The struggle was over in a matter of seconds, and the former cartel captain slumped into the mattress as the dart’s soporific venom, stabbed into the side of his neck, found its way into his bloodstream.

El Rey lay still on top of the target for a few seconds, assessing the throbbing pain from his thigh. He felt blood seeping from the wound – but it wasn’t spurting, which meant the projectile hadn’t hit an artery. Still, it was bad, and the pain was significant. After looking around the room, he rose and limped to the master closet and flicked on the light. His eyes scanned the rows of neatly hanging clothes until they alighted on a bathrobe with a sash for cinching the waist. He pulled the fabric strip loose, then pulled drawers open until he found some white cotton undershirts, all folded in neat little parcels. He grabbed one and tied it in place using the sash, studying the makeshift bandage with acerbic satisfaction. It would do until he could get medical attention.

He returned to the dark bedroom and reached into the waterproof bag dangling from his dive belt