perfect shooting conditions, a specialized weapon and ammo, consummate skill, and nerves of steel, it wouldn’t work. Few shooters in the world would be able to pull it off – a handful of snipers in Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps two other hit men he’d ever heard of, and a smattering of competitive target shooters. And him.
Which was why he was the right man for the job.
The road eventually turned from dirt to gravel and then to asphalt, and before much longer he was back on the highway weaving his way north through slower traffic, back to Mexico City, another essential element in his preparations concluded.
The hardest part, other than the actual money shot, still lay ahead: figuring out how he could penetrate the location on execution day. Security had already been ratcheted up, which made sense to him now that he knew that his involvement had been leaked. A source at Interpol had sent him an e-mail from a blind account warning him that the Mexicans were on alert.
That was fine.
It changed nothing. He assumed that they had his old photo from his days with the East Berlin police – but he hadn’t resembled his old likeness for years, thanks to a talented plastic surgeon in Budapest who’d later died in a car accident. It was amazing what a slightly different nose, an altered chin, and a little eye work could accomplish – his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him now, even without his disguises. No, he wasn’t worried at all, either about being discovered or the level of difficulty involved in the hit. He routinely performed impossible feats. That was his claim to notoriety. This sanction would be no different. He had absolutely no doubt that he would find a way in, and soon have the Chinese leader’s distinctive profile in the crosshairs. Now it was just a matter of logistics. He knew how he was going to do it, and where.
All that remained was for him to figure out how he would get in and out, and stay alive in the process.
Piece of cake.
Chapter 40
Cruz sat staring at his computer screen, aware of the rapid passage of time. The day of the signing was drawing steadily closer without any progress on his end. Three days had whizzed by since Dinah had been saved, and as he had expected, nobody had linked the charred remains salvaged from the warehouse embers with her abduction. When he had announced two days ago that Dinah had reappeared, safe and sound, the reaction from the group responsible for the investigation into her disappearance had been muted. They always had more work than they could handle, given the constant kidnappings in Mexico City, so an assignment taken off the board would be regarded as a relief rather than a cause for concern.
He printed out the presentation he had been working on and then rose, stopping at the printer to gather the pages before placing them into his briefcase and exiting his office. Briones was on the phone, his voice calm, but he was glowering – an increasingly regular occurrence. The pressure was mounting on everyone involved in pursuing the German, who had so far been undetectable, as predicted by El Rey, who had put in only a few appearances to check on the status and huddle with Cruz about more security safeguards.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this case so far was how easy El Rey had been to work with since their nocturnal foray. He’d been low-key, relaxed, and, while concerned as the signing date had ground inexorably nearer, mostly civil – even with Briones, with whom there had been some sort of unspoken truce. He was still arrogant and abrasive, and displayed as much empathy as a cobra, but he seemed to be making an effort to explain things that to him were self-evident, and had stopped peppering his comments with diatribes about the incompetence of the security force, the Federales, and everyone else.
Cruz gave Briones a curt wave and then took the elevator down to the lower level, where his car was waiting, armed Federales standing guard by both the elevator and the parking garage entry. Since the attempt on Cruz, the security teams had stepped up their game and were on constant high alert – no doubt due in part to the scathing report Cruz had issued about events surrounding his near-miss.
Dinah had taken a leave of absence from school and was spending her days in their new home, recovering.