unless you do exactly as I say.”
He froze, and then felt a hand pull his service revolver from his belt. “Are you insane? Robbing a federal policeman? Do you really want this on you?” Porfirio asked incredulously. “Do you know what this is going to do?”
“Let’s go to your apartment. Don’t talk anymore. Now. Move.”
“I don’t have anything of value–”
The assailant swatted the back of Porfirio’s head with his service piece, just hard enough to get his attention. “I said shut up. That’s your only warning.”
They trudged down the gloomy hall until they came to the second to last door, and then Porfirio stopped.
“I need to reach into my pocket for the key,” he explained, growing angrier by the second at the balls of the thief. Robbing a federal police officer was suicide – the neighborhood would be crawling with cops who wouldn’t rest until the perp was found. Of course, part of his annoyance was at the grief he would take from his peers at having been blindsided, and there was the money...he had a quarter of all his savings in the little room, in cash, stashed in the freezer, where he accumulated the bribes he was lucky enough to get, preferring his apartment hiding place to having to explain in any sort of departmental investigation where the money he’d deposited in the bank had come from.
“Slowly.” The voice sounded odd – something about the accent, although it was barely detectable. Porfirio did a double take, and then retrieved his key ring from his pocket and opened the door, thinking he must have been mistaken – why would a common thug have the refined accent of a Castilian native from Spain?
His assailant pushed him into the room and closed the door softly behind him.
“I told you, I don’t have anything of value,” Porfirio started, hoping that would dissuade the robber, and then he was cut off by another smack on the back of his head, this time harder.
“I’m not interested in your money,” the man said, and then Porfirio heard a rustle just before a lance of white hot pain stabbed through his back and his heart stopped pumping.
Rauschenbach stepped aside as the dying officer fell face forward, the handle of the twelve-inch flathead screwdriver he’d sharpened to a stiletto point sticking from between his shoulders, and eyed the twitching body with cold indifference as all the young man’s hopes and dreams died with him. Once Porfirio’s corpse was still, the German’s eyes roved over the room, stopping at the closet.
It took him ten minutes to ransack the room and find the money. He methodically destroyed the place before he removed the dead man’s watch and wallet along with the few other obvious valuables, and then packed them into the empty nylon carry-all he’d brought, folded under his jacket on the long bus ride.
With any luck the cop wouldn’t be missed for a couple of days; and then, when found, the murder would look like a robbery gone wrong. At best they’d find the prints of the hardware store clerk who had rung up the screwdriver purchase smudged on the yellow plastic handle, and that would send any investigation into a tailspin, buying him time. By the point that anyone realized that the robbery had been about something more than a few thousand dollars’ worth of pesos stored in a frozen coffee can, he’d be winging his way out of the country.
Rauschenbach took a final look at the dead man and hoisted the bag over his shoulder with a gloved hand. He moved to the door, listening intently for half a minute, and then eased it open and slid out into the empty hall, a phantom, the single low-wattage incandescent bulb that dangled precariously from the ceiling providing the scantest of illumination as he made his way down the dismal corridor to the front exit.
Chapter 44
A distorted voice blared flight information over the loudspeaker as a small crowd waited patiently for loved ones to exit the terminal. Inside, arriving passengers moved from the gates against the flow of departing travelers, who thronged the seating area while waiting to board.
El Rey, Cruz, and Briones were in Terminal Two of the Benito Juarez International Airport, walking the hall, eyes poring over the security precautions with approval – a routine part of air travel safety and stricter than at almost any other installation in Mexico. Everyone had to go through metal detectors, with no exceptions, and even the trio, two in uniform,