Blood of the Assassin - By Russell Blake Page 0,16

But there’s still GPS. It allowed us to locate your position.”

“What’s the rush?” El Rey asked, studying his calloused fingers, still dusty from the climb.

“You’ll be briefed on that when we get to headquarters.”

“Headquarters,” El Rey repeated.

“We have a jet waiting on the ground in Chihuahua to take you to Mexico City. Come on. Let’s get out of here,” the man said, and El Rey nodded again. There was no point in protesting the interruption of his outing. He’d made his deal – reluctantly, it was true – but made it all the same, and now he was at CISEN’s beck and call.

And his master wanted to see him.

He got to his feet and followed the man to the vehicle, and within seconds of the door slamming shut behind him they were pulling back onto the dirt track. El Rey watched as the Sierra Madre mountain range passed on either side of him, as rugged and untamed a landscape as any on earth, and settled back into the seat, resigned to being shunted halfway across the country on no notice, no say in the matter, a knight on a chessboard of someone else’s devising.

Once they arrived at the little mountain town of Urique, the driver stopped at the edge of the dwellings. In five minutes the rhythmic beating of powerful rotors tore at the sky, the thumping of the gray helicopter a violent intrusion in the otherwise tranquil setting. It landed in a clearing just off the main road, and El Rey and his escort ran to it, ducking instinctively as the door slid open and two soldiers beckoned. Within moments they were strapped in and airborne, the entire boarding having taken under thirty seconds.

When they set down in Chihuahua, a Hawker business jet sat near the private aircraft area, stairs down, awaiting El Rey’s arrival. He trotted over to it from the helicopter and a pretty uniformed stewardess beckoned from the fuselage door. Once he had boarded and strapped into the seat, the exit closed and the sleek plane’s engines wound up in preparation for takeoff. After a brief taxi they were hurtling down the runway and up into the clear sky, the dusty brown of the high desert quickly fading beneath the wings as they climbed and banked south for the hour and a half flight to the capital of Mexico.

As they hit cruising altitude the young woman handed El Rey a package wrapped in pale blue paper and asked what he’d like to drink. He opted for water and orange juice, and as she poured him a crystal tumbler he un-taped the parcel. Inside were a pair of khaki slacks and a black long-sleeved button-up shirt – both his size, he noted. The stewardess returned with his drinks and then excused herself and slipped up to the front of the plane, where she pulled a sliding door closed, offering him privacy.

He shrugged out of his tank top and shorts and donned his new clothes, then settled back into the seat, his rock climbing garments stowed in the backpack along with the rest of his gear, wondering what was so urgent that the government had pulled out all the stops to get him to Mexico City as quickly as possible. He took a sip of his juice and then drained the water bottle as the plane hummed along at thirty-eight thousand feet, and then leaned back in the caramel leather reclining lounger and closed his eyes.

It had been almost four months since he had rescued the president’s daughter and done his deal with the devil, agreeing to exchange his services for the antidote shots that would sustain him. But this was the first time he had been called. He had spent his newfound freedom in rural locations, choosing to avoid the areas the cartels dominated, in the one-in-a-million chance that he was somehow recognized. Even though he was no longer a wanted man, his sins absolved when he made his arrangement with CISEN, there was still a substantial price on his head. Don Aranas had a long memory, and the multi-million dollar bounty he had offered was a powerful attraction for every hired killer in Mexico.

El Rey wasn’t really worried about it, but it made matters simpler if he stayed off the radar, so he had moved from place to place, uprooting himself every three weeks, his last home a villa in the colonial town of San Miguel de Allende. He had been there for ten days before