Agent 21 (15 page)

Zak nodded.

‘It is my biggest fear, that my father should die,’ said Cruz. And then he looked embarrassed by what he’d said.

‘Your English is very good.’ Zak paid him a compliment to keep the conversation going.

‘And so is your Spanish,’ said Cruz – in Spanish. ‘How come?’

Zak shrugged. ‘I learned it at school.’

‘Why have you come to Mexico City?’

‘To stay with family.’ The lies rolled easily off Zak’s tongue, and Cruz showed no sign of disbelieving him. ‘And to see Mexico.’

‘Some parts of Mexico aren’t worth seeing,’ said Cruz.

‘I guess I’d better stick to the parts that are, then.’

‘I could show you around,’ Cruz offered. As he
spoke, he avoided Zak’s eye, as if he wasn’t comfortable with making friends like this.

Zak chose his words carefully. He didn’t want to sound too keen, or say anything that would arouse suspicion. ‘Yeah,’ he replied with a little shrug. ‘Maybe.’

All of a sudden the teacher was there, standing over Zak’s shoulder. ‘Cruz, Harry, how are you getting along?’ she asked.

The two boys looked at each other. ‘Fine,’ Cruz said, almost smiling. ‘We’re getting along fine.’

Frank was waiting for Zak outside the gates at half past four. Cruz’s armed guard was still there, standing motionless in the intense heat. As Zak approached Frank, he heard a voice from behind. ‘See you tomorrow, Harry,’ Cruz called in Spanish. Zak looked round to see his new friend emerging from the school gates. He smiled at Cruz, but instantly his bodyguard closed in on him and hustled him towards the waiting Mercedes.

Neither Zak nor Frank spoke until they were in the car. ‘Looks like you made contact,’ Frank said over the babbling radio as he pulled away.

‘The bodyguard doesn’t seem too pleased about it,’ Zak noticed.

‘Guess the stooge drew the short straw,’ Frank said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I don’t suppose standing outside the school all day waiting for someone to take a shot at Cruz Martinez is exactly what he signed up for.’

Zak glanced in the side mirror and caught a glimpse of the bodyguard escorting Cruz away from the entrance. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘things will liven up for him on Thursday, right?’

Frank glanced at him and raised one eyebrow. ‘Right,’ he said.

For the next two days, Zak kept his distance from Cruz. He was friendly enough when they encountered each other, but not so friendly that anyone might suspect he was trying to get too close. ‘Like fishing,’ Frank said as they drove to school on the second day. ‘Let the fish see the bait, not the hook. Otherwise you spook the little fella. Cruz has got to come to you – not the other way round.’

Their journey to school served a double purpose: to get Zak to lessons on time, and to become familiar with Cruz Martinez’s routine. Zak remembered Michael’s words:
The secret to a successful operation is not to leave anything to chance
. . .

On Tuesday morning, Cruz arrived at school at 07.55 hrs precisely. Zak and Frank were there to clock it.

On Wednesday morning, the same time. His minders had a timetable, and they stuck to it.

On Thursday morning, though, the routine was going to change.

Zak woke from a restless night’s sleep before the sun was even up and he could hear Frank moving around the house already. They’d both been on edge the previous night and had gone to bed early. Zak got dressed: jeans, a black T-shirt and sturdy but comfortable, ankle-high Converse trainers. From his drawer he took the belt Gabs had given him and strapped it round his waist, and he slipped his phone into his pocket. For some reason it made him feel a bit better.

He went into the kitchen where Frank was drinking coffee. ‘Harry, old boy. Have yourself some breakfast. Going to be a long day. Eggs OK?
Huevos?
’

There were two different Franks, Zak had decided. The affable one who appeared whenever there was even a remote possibility of someone listening in; and the abrupt one who appeared when they were talking in private. Zak thought of them as Fun Frank and Fierce Frank. The man speaking now was Fun Frank; but he had Fierce Frank’s eyes and Zak understood why. To say that today would be a long day was the understatement of the year.

Frank cooked a plate of fried eggs while Zak sipped at some orange juice. He didn’t really feel
hungry but he ate anyway. He was going to need it.

They left the house at 07.20 hrs exactly. The journey to school only took twenty minutes, but it was important they built in time for any eventualities. ‘You know what you’re doing?’ Frank asked over the noise of the radio.

Zak nodded.

They turned a corner into Avenida Luis Peron. Frank drove on for about twenty metres, then pulled over. They were fifty metres from the school gates, and the students were already filtering in. ‘Anyone asks us why we’re sitting here, let me do the talking,’ Frank said.

Zak checked his watch. 07.43 hours. Cruz should be arriving in twelve minutes. He wiped his sweating palms on his jeans and kept his gaze firmly in the rear-view mirror while Frank kept the engine turning over.

07.50 hrs.

‘They should be here in five minutes,’ Zak said.

‘Don’t tell me when they
should
be here,’ Fierce Frank replied. ‘Tell me when they
are
here.’

07.52 hrs. Zak ran through their plan in his head for the tenth time that morning. He licked his dry lips as the minutes ticked down.

07.54 hrs. In the rear-view mirror he saw a black Range Rover turn the corner into the street. ‘That’s them,’ he said.

Frank didn’t hesitate. He indicated right and pulled out immediately into the line of traffic, cutting up an open-top BMW who honked his horn at them. Zak kept his eyes on the mirror. He could see the whole of Cruz’s convoy now, plus the five cars that were between Frank’s Ford and the leading Range Rover. They drove for ten seconds, then Frank pulled over again about twenty metres from the school gates.

‘
Go
,’ he said under his breath as the convoy drove past them. Zak opened the door just as Cruz’s Mercedes slipped past the Ford. The moment he slammed it shut, Frank pulled out again and did a U-turn, joining the line of traffic heading in the opposite direction and avoiding the snarl-up the convoy caused as it stopped.

Zak walked slowly towards the gates, carefully taking everything in. There were approximately fifteen students outside the gates, none of whom seemed particularly surprised by the approaching convoy – to them it was totally normal. The Mercedes pulled over, flanked as usual by the Range Rovers. Suddenly a white Transit van appeared. It stopped between Zak and the Mercedes.

The doors of the Mercedes opened and the two bodyguards stepped out. The one on the pavement side opened the rear door and Cruz appeared.

It all happened incredibly quickly.

The bodyguard was escorting Cruz towards the school gates when the back door of the white van swung open and a man exited, just in front of Zak. He was carrying a Colt pistol, matt black, and his head was covered with a balaclava. Nobody outside the school appeared to notice him as he raised the gun and pointed it directly at the second bodyguard who was walking around the back of the Mercedes.

Someone screamed: ‘
Get down!
’ It was one of the students by the gate, a girl. She had seen the gunman, and at the sound of her voice everyone stopped and looked round.

Gunshot. It cracked above the noise of the cars.

The .45 round from the Colt entered the bodyguard’s leg just above the knee, making a brief squelching sound. There was a sudden splash of red and the man collapsed, like a puppet when the strings have been cut. Two seconds later he started to shout in agony. The other bodyguard was five metres from the Mercedes now. He looked around in panic, clearly unsure whether to run back to the safety of the car or do something else.

More screaming from the students around the gate. Three of them rushed into the school grounds; the remainder just stared in horror, unable to move. The shooter aimed his Colt just above them and fired a
round into the concrete wall, which spat dust all over the pavement.

Everyone, including Cruz and his bodyguard, hit the ground. Two of the students cowered with their knees bent; about ten others lay flat on their fronts, covering their heads with their hands. A few of them screamed. The gunman, who was only five metres in front of Zak, aimed at Cruz.

Zak moved quickly. He ran towards the gunman and barged into his back, knocking him to the ground. The man’s gun clattered to the pavement. Zak dived towards the weapon and grabbed it.

The shooter started shouting, calling to colleagues inside the white van in Spanish. ‘Cruz is on the ground! Repeat, the target is on the ground!
Get him now!
’

Another masked figure jumped out of the Transit, but instead of aiming at Cruz, the second shooter trained his gun on Zak. Zak didn’t hesitate. He fired a single round, which ripped into the shooter’s chest. There was another flash of blood from the area around his heart; the impact flung the man back a metre and he went down.

After that, it was total chaos. Eight armed men jumped from the two Range Rovers flanking the Mercedes. One of them – clearly the boss – shouted instructions as four of the men grabbed the wounded guard and carried him into one of the vehicles. The
other four ran round to where Cruz and his bodyguard were hugging the pavement. They pulled the boy to his feet and, surrounding him completely, hustled him up to the second Range Rover, which instantly pulled into the traffic and screamed away.

Four balaclava’d figures jumped from the back of the white Transit van. Two of them picked up the limp body of the man Zak had shot, while the other two covered them, pointing their weapons towards the school as the first shooter scurried back. When the body was safely inside the van, the others piled in, closed the door and the Transit shot away in the opposite direction to Martinez’s convoy.

Which left Zak.

He was standing on the pavement, a Colt in his right hand and a look of total shock on his face. He turned round. All the students who had been pressed against the pavement were now on their feet; when they saw the gun in his hand, they backed away from him in alarm.

Sirens. They were close. The convoy and the white van had only been gone for thirty seconds when Zak saw two white police cars, one coming from either end of the road. The traffic pulled over to let them pass; seconds later they had screeched to a halt, each one no more than twenty metres from where Zak was standing.

The doors opened. Armed police with helmets and body armour emerged – seven or eight of them, all with their weapons pointed in Zak’s direction. The air became filled with shouts in Spanish: ‘Drop your weapon!
Drop your weapon!
’

Zak didn’t resist. He knew that if he gave them even the slightest reason, these cops would shoot. And so he bent down, laid the Colt on the floor and put his hands up. Seconds later he was lying on his front, his hands Plasticuffed behind his back and his cheek pressed against the tarmac. Three cops pointed assault rifles directly at him.

Frank, of course, was nowhere to be seen.

Zak was on his own.

In the rear of the white Transit van, a figure in a balaclava was stretched out on his back. His front was saturated and sticky with a thick, red liquid. The vehicle’s seats had been ripped out which meant there was enough space for the four people crouched around him. The van swung round a corner and they all swayed slightly.

By the time the van straightened out again, however, the figure on the floor was sitting up.

He removed his balaclava first, to reveal a thick head of blond hair, a square, frowning face and a flat nose. As he pulled off his polo neck, he uncovered a sticky
plastic pouch that had once been filled with the stinking pig’s blood that had now seeped into his clothes. The pouch was strapped over thick body armour, the canvas of which had been ripped away by the impact of the heavy bullet.

One of the figures surrounding him removed her balaclava. It was a woman in her twenties with white-blonde hair and large blue eyes.

‘You OK, Raf?’ she asked.

Raphael winced as he removed the body armour. His chest had already come up in bruises, but the bullet hadn’t pierced his body. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m OK.’ He looked at the woman. ‘He did well, Gabs. All those mornings on the firing range paid off.’

Gabriella smiled. ‘You knew he would,’ she said. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have volunteered to take the bullet.’

Raf inclined his head, then winced again. He was glad Agent 21 was such a good shot, but he knew he’d be sore for a good few days to come . . .

Like everyone, Zak had sometimes wondered what jail might be like. He had never thought it would be as bad as this.

The police had been rough – all shouts and pushes. Once they’d made the Colt safe, they’d bundled him into one of the white police cars and taken him – sirens blazing – to a facility in the north of the city. In order to get there, they travelled along the elevated freeway that stretched through the capital from south to north. Zak was in the back of the car, his wrists still cuffed; apart from the driver there were two other armed cops with him. They neither spoke nor smiled.