Blood of the Assassin - By Russell Blake Page 0,56

pocket and placed a call.

“Change of plans. Abort on the garage.” The rest of the conversation took place in a hushed whisper, and by the time he disconnected, the beginnings of a grin were creasing his face – an ugly sight even under the best of circumstances.

~ ~ ~

Cruz eyed the text message that had just come in as he rode down to the lobby level on the elevator, and swore under his breath as the building’s reinforced concrete skeleton killed the cell signal, blocking his ability to respond until he was in the lobby. He had sent a request to his assistant at headquarters to run a computer search on hotels for any trace of Dinah, using both her real name as well as her newly adopted, government-issued alias. She was requesting a written confirmation from him, even if just a message, so that she could use it to force the relevant department to comply.

When the elevator reached the ground floor, he gripped his briefcase and dropped the phone back into the breast pocket of his uniform before brushing imaginary dandruff from his left shoulder with his now free hand. Regardless of what was going on in his personal life, he needed to put on a brave front and be professional – there was a lot at stake in this operation, and he couldn’t afford to be scattered, his mind on his domestic worries.

The door slid to the side with a whoosh, and Cruz stepped into the lobby, the day shift of his security team having arrived a few minutes earlier, the smell of their freshly brewed coffee flooding the area as they watched the front entrance and joked with the lobby attendant. Both men’s demeanors instantly changed when they registered Cruz’s presence, and their relaxed postures stiffened as they realized that their boss was there – they normally didn’t see him, his comings and goings limited to the underground parking area.

He looked the men over, their submachine guns hanging from uniformed shoulders, and made a mental note to instruct them to come to work in plainclothes. They were about as subtle as a fireworks display, and even the most oblivious tenants had to be wondering why the Federales were holding an armed vigil in their building.

“As you were, officers,” Cruz said, responding to their worried glances. “I’m being picked up this morning by a colleague. Condo’s empty.”

“Yes, sir,” the older one barked, a twenty-something squat man who resembled nothing so much as a bulldog wearing a badge. His partner looked indecisive, as though wondering whether it was necessary or desirable for him to voice assent as well, and Cruz waved them off with an absent hand as he ran the morning’s tasks through his head. He would spend an hour, maybe two, at most, with Briones at the Congress, and then he had to get back to the office to pore over whatever intelligence had come in overnight. Cruz had total respect for his team and didn’t doubt their thoroughness, but his experience demanded that he study the data himself – nobody would do as comprehensive a job as he would, and he couldn’t afford to discover two days from now that a report had gotten overlooked that would have led them to the German.

The bulldog rushed from the reception console to the front door and made a display of opening it for Cruz, who nodded his thanks, his mind worrying over what he would do if the hotel search resulted in a hit. Dinah had expressly forbidden his bothering her at her work, and he would honor her wishes, but she hadn’t specifically said anything about wherever she was staying.

He stepped through the door onto the sidewalk and was reaching for his cell again when his peripheral vision detected something unusual – movement, hurried, from between two cars twenty yards down the sidewalk, the suddenness unlike the rest of the sparse pedestrian traffic going about its morning business in the largely residential downtown block. His eyes instinctively moved to the commotion, some primitive portion of his brain signaling danger to his body even before his conscious mind had time to process it, and a split second later he was reaching for his pistol and ducking to the side, trying for whatever cover he could find as two menacing-looking men raised the ugly snouts of their compact micro Uzis as they rushed him.

Time compressed and his sensory awareness narrowed as he freed the Glock 21 from his hip