Page 11 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest
The worst gang, informally known as MS-13, was one of the largest international criminal syndicates in the world, and undoubtedly the most violent. They had dominated El Salvador for decades in a campaign of blood and terror that cowed civilians and government officials alike. It was natural for these last-remaining gangsters to assume President Olmedo’s recent efforts would soon fade away, and when they did, the bloody retributions would follow.
Olmedo ordered his commanders to stand down. No new police actions had taken place in the past month. The gangster bosses were wary, but confident. Time was on their side.
Or so they thought, Rivas reminded himself. He and his men would prove the butchers wrong tonight.
He checked his watch. It was 02:44. Across El Salvador, another coordinated wave of mass arrests would begin in just one minute. At this time of the night, most people were in the deepest stages of their sleep cycles. If woken, their cognitive skills and response times were highly degraded. The attacks needed to happen simultaneously so gangsters couldn’t warn their compatriots across the country.
Unfortunately, the armed figures on top of the wall were not only fully awake but moving toward the front gate. Rivas’s orders had been clear. “Prisoners, not corpses,” his commander insisted. President Olmedo couldn’t wage a campaign of mass assassinations if he truly wanted to bring law and order to his small nation. Olmedo wasn’t a gangster and he wouldn’t act like one.
Rivas checked his watch again. The digital readout flipped to 02:45 exactly.
It was go time.
Rivas gave the order. His sniper team took out the two guards patrolling the wall just as plastic explosives tore open the front gates. A sergeant next to Rivas secured the grappling hook on the high wall facing the sea, but Rivas was first on the rope and over the top. If therewere any deadly surprises on the other side of the wall, he wanted to be the one that faced them. If he was killed, so be it.
His men knew what to do.
?
Rivas marched down the villa’s hallways noting the dozens of gangsters lying on the cold Saltillo tiles, their hands zip-tied behind their backs and clothes stripped down to their underwear. Most had succumbed to the flurry of nonlethal flash-bang grenades his men had deployed, as their bloody ears and pained, migrained faces testified. His men had to shout their orders at thesicarios, who were temporarily deafened by the blasts.
Nearly all of them bore the garish tattoos denoting their rank and record of crimes. Several wore the facial tattoos that forever separated them from normal members of any civilized society.
One of his medics was bandaging the leg wound of one of the killers and a second was inserting an IV into the arm of another. His team leaders reported seven gangsters shot, three fatally, including the two guards on the wall. Most of the criminals had escaped serious injury. Rivas wondered if that was a good thing. He’d lost an uncle and two cousins to MS-13. But his opinion didn’t matter. Tonight his job was to carry out his orders, and his orders were clear:
Prisoners, not corpses.
His soldiers began yanking the unwounded men to their bare feet and herding them down the corridors to the landing zone outside.
Rivas turned into the doorway of a large bedroom. A huge picture window overlooked the starlit ocean and white-crested waves that crashed against the shoreline. The first of the big transport helicopters approached the island, its huge carbon fiber blades thrumming in the warm night air.
He shuddered at the sight of the life-size Santa Muerte standing in a corner. Skeletal “Saint Death” was the patron saint of killers and cutthroats throughout Latin America. Her gruesome niche was backedby a wall of hammered silver and fronted by a turquoise altar of smoldering incense and dead, guttered candles.
The Saint Death skeleton was undoubtedly human, its smoke-stained bones draped in a blood-red robe. A solid gold crown rested on her skull and a silver pentagram was etched into her forehead. The bones of her left hand clutched a Grim Reaper’s scythe edged in dried, black blood. Her other hand held the iron scales of justice balancing what appeared to be a desiccated human heart in one tray and a photo of President Olmedo in the other. Rings bearing expensive stones crowded every finger and thumb. A giant venomous yellow beard snake coiled its taxidermied body around her shoeless feet.
As gruesome as Saint Death was, Oscar Tamacas—tonight’s primary target—appeared even more terrifying despite his advancing years. The old man stood between two soldiers with his arms zip-tied behind his back, but his eyes blazed with murderous rage as he glowered at Rivas.
Though in his seventies, Tamacas still had thick, shoulder-length hair and a long mustache streaked with gray. His long face was puckered with acne scars. Stripped to his skivvies like all the others, Rivas could see the slackened bands of muscle now run to fat in Tamacas’s thighs and gut. The once fearsome ink on his stretch-marked and crepey skin was faded and indistinct like a child’s scrawl.
Physically, Tamacas was a frail shadow of his former self. But the old gangster still radiated pure energy—and evil.
Two of Rivas’s soldiers stood by with their M4 carbines at high ready, their hands nervously fingering their weapons, their narrowed eyes fixed on Tamacas.
Rivas approached the fearsome former crime boss.
“Señor Tamacas, by order of the president, you are under arrest.”
Tamacas spat on the floor.
“Release me now,pendejo. Or I will roast your wife over an open flame as I feed your children to my pigs.”
The gravelly voice shot through Rivas like a bolt of frozen lightning.
How did he know about my wife and children?
The young lieutenant fought the urge to cross himself. He wasn’tsure if Tamacas was just a man or a snarling devil. He tried to stare the old man down, but the reptilian black eyes gripped his soul like a vulture’s claw. Rivas looked away.
Tamacas grinned.
