Saving Mr. Player

1. La DuQuesita

The grey colored monochromatic street of Ramba De Catalunya, Barcelona remained calm, dimly lit by the street lamps placed at four feet distance from each other, as much as hustled it was during the day rushed with pedestrians, it was just as opposingly calm and empty during the night. 

Two tall men, wearing puffer jackets, tattooed till wrists and neck and bulging biceps stood at one corner of the street, smoking puffs of filled cigarettes. Through the same corner, A tall man in a black overall coat, took a turn into the street. His face was barely visible due to the black ivy cap he adorned. Holding a black leather satchel in his hand, he took long strides and walked up till the opposite end of the street, where yellow lights shined out of the grey framed glass doors of a small café.

Named, ‘La DuQuesita’, the man, entered inside the small single shop café. The two men who previously stood near the corner, noticed his attire and straightened up their positions, holding their fingers close to their mouth and ear and slightly whispered, “The target is inside.”

The old owner of the shop, who was still working, stood behind the counter bar, cleaning it. The mysterious man spared a glance at the empty shop and found a petite young girl, carrying bangs for hair, her face hidden behind the French book she read, while she sat facing towards the door at the corner most square booth of the café. Ignoring the girl, the man sat down in the middle of the café at one of the round tables for two facing both sides of the square cafe, placing his satchel in his lap. He extended his arm up calling at the old worker.

“There is nothing at this hour except for beer and orange juice.” The owner stood his place and concluded, clearly not in the mood to serve anyone.

“A beer would suffice!” the man stated in a manly and gentle tone, grabbing the girl’s attention.

She removed the book just to look at the man, who also at the same time looked up at the girl. She had a pretty and round face, with a sharp jawline, encircling her cheeky bones perfectly. Her eyes were a perfect shade of hazel, that were covered with squared glasses, while brown fringes rested over her head, flowing back in to long straight hair.

The man caught a sight of her beautiful face and passed her a smile while she smiled back at him. He took off his cap, revealing a skinnier face, with a slight stubble grown around his sharp cheeks and uneven eyes and the large dark mole underneath his right eye. The sight of his that the girl was watching, was being captured through her glasses and wired directly to a large van standing at few feet away from the café, which was a police mobile van, filled with network systems and computers, channeling all street cameras and even the surveillance inside the café.  

Two medium heightened men, sat inside the man working on each and every monitor in front of them, controlling a panel of buttons and keyboards. On them, who had a dark mustache around his squared face, leaned into the mic in front of him, moving his cursor on to the screen, capturing the image and face of the man inside the café. Pressing the button on the mic, he spoke up.

“Okay we have his face.” Benjamin stated.

While the other man, named Frank who sat opposite to him, facing the monitors on the other side looked atone of the street cams and spoke up, “The Buyers are here!”

They both shared a look and nodded their head, “We will inform the squad as well. Be ready Amy!”

Saying that he let go off the mic and signaled the other van, which was designed as a mobile pet van. The man sitting on the steering wheel, received the radio order, while he turned around, pulling down the separator, revealing the backside which was filled with SWAT team members, wearing overall protection gears, holding machine guns in their hand. Their commander nodded his head and turned to face his team of eight.

The café owner, served the beer mug to the man and walked towards the direction of the TV in the corner above Amy’s booth.

Amy, looked ahead of her at the door, where three men entered inside the shop. The one in the middle was an old man, with white hair, while the other two were large men centered him, seemingly looking like his bodyguard. Amy captured their images with her techno glasses that were transferred to Benjamin. He confirmed the data to Amy and spoke into the mic.

“That is Mario…”

Amy straightened up a bit, knowing her target was here.

The café owner stood facing the TV screen, airing live the final match of The Champions Cup, where The Royal Madrid and Milan Rangers were competing and being a Spanish, he was obliged to support TRM. He turned around to see the trio entering inside his café and turned back, focusing his attention entirely on the screen.

The man sat down in front of the previous guy, as if they had previously planned on this meeting.

“Good evening!” the man nodded at the older one, eyeing at the guards, who stood looking extremely suspicious.

He only nodded back his head and gave his guards a signal to go ahead and take a seat and they obliged.

Taking it as a signal, Amy began coughing a little too loud, earning everyone attention, while she only innocently bit her tongue,

“Pardon!” she spoke in a sweet French accent.

Ignoring her, everyone focused back on their task, the old café worker squibbing back into the game, while the two men sitting opposite to each other held each other’s gaze sharply.

“Madre Di Puta!” the worker screamed at TV screen just as Ranger’s Milan scored a goal, making it an equal of 2 – 2 for each team, while only four minutes were left to the game. Everyone’s attention turned at the TV, while the girl looked ahead and saw the two men from earlier, who were standing at the corner of the street, stood in front of the café and began graffitiing the doors, again diverting everyone’s attention.

The old man who was already scowled by the game, became furious, cursing in Spanish, picking up his broom stick and running outside the café, while the men as well made a run, hence diverting him to get him out of the café because something was about to go down.

“Did you get the package?” Mario asked first.

“Did you get the money?” the man asked.

“First show me the package.” Mario insisted.

The man, put his hand inside the satchel and just within seconds pulled out a small black pistol and shot Mario point blank to his head, his guards got up but at the same time, Amy jumped over the table, pulling out her gun, cursing for life as things got out of hand within seconds. She shot the guy’s hand, making him lose the pistol. He cursed and looked behind, seeing Amy in a stealth mode, standing over the table.

“Stay right where you are!” she warned him. He cursed waving his bleeding hand in the air. “Spanish Intelligence Forces, SIF, the place is surrounded by authorities, it is better no one makes any move!” she screamed out loud to make herself clear. She moved her gun to point at the large guards.

The two guards stood still, stunned to see their boss lying dead in a pool of his own blood.

The large bald guy, raged with anger and without a split second, jumped right over the man who killed his boss. While he just did his job, being a world class assassin, Mateo, wanted by fifty-eight countries, assigned to kill presidents, ministers and even popes and muftis. The man, he killed, Mario Lopez was the right wing of the Carmen Roman, the Italian Mafia Lord, a cartel Amy had been chasing for the past four years now.

Seeing the brawl in front of her, Amy cursed, “s**t!” she held her pistol to the other guard who stood still and yelled into the mic inside her watch, “I need immediate back up!”

Mateo held onto the large man’s neck, tackling him down, picking up the spoon off the table and bursting right through his eye. The guard yelled in pain but stayed down to the ground. While Amy held her aim at the other guard, she saw the whole scene unfold, which also triggered her target, who launched at the killer.

As the two brawled among each other, Amy had no other option but to shoot as the backup was taking its time to clear the place out. She aimed her gun at Mateo, who somehow shielded himself with the larger man, thinking that he was the primary target. The entire café was surrounded by the swat team within seconds. The owner of the place that was running behind the two agents was now standing bedazzled watching gunned men surrounding his place.

“I will kill him!” the assassin, hissed towards Amy.

She c****d an eyebrow at him, holding her aim behind the large guard, “I don’t care!”

With that she hit the trigger that went and hit the assassin’s shoulder.

He pounced back at the floor and Amy jumped at the guard, pinning him down, while squat team rushed in and arrested the assassin.

Taking the arrested and injured, Amy bent down to see the dead old man, who laid in his own pool of blood.

She got up, cursing words while a team of officers entered inside the place that was being sealed by authorities.

They walked behind Amy and peaked over her shoulder to see him dead.

“At least we got the Mateo…” the tallest of the team member spoke. He was a broad man with a well maneuvered stubble, shaven clearly around his sharp jawline, while his black round eyes, stood out even in the dim lightening of the place. He wore a white button down with his holster running around his body and a badge flashing his name ‘Fred Alonso’.

“You would say that because he was your case. I gave him to you.” Amy turned to speak sharply at him, and walked out of the café, irritated that she missed another opportunity to get close to capturing Carmen.

Fred sighed, feeling annoyed by Amy’s attitude and followed her out. She strode furiously, tossing her fake brown big off, waving her long blond hair in the air, removing the glasses and passing it down to one of the tech guys who was in her team and stood near the van. She walked into the van, while the guy followed her.

“It is not that bad!” he argued, “We can find out who paid Mateo to have him killed…”

“Mateo killed him because he was in love with Mario’s daughter, who Mario was hiding just so she wouldn’t marry a killer. Ironic isn’t it?” She crossed her hand across her chest and everyone stood silent, knowing that Amy was in a foul mood, she wasn’t in no good mood to be messed with.

Ignoring everyone, she turned to look at the monitor’s and asked Benjamin, “Did you run his car’s number…”

Her order was cut short to hear Frank, screaming in joy, while holding his mobile phone in his hand. She rolled her eyes looking at him, while Fred also joined him and looked into his phone.

“It is the final match…” Benjamin informed her and she sighed, annoyed with football, she never understood people’s craze with soccer and shaking her head, she extended her arm at Benjamin, “Go ahead and enjoy it!”

Benjamin, jumped out of his seat with joy and went ahead to join his friends.

Amy sat down on the small swivel chair and began running numbers to have anything on Mario, anything that would get her closer to Carmen.

Amy Danvers – Spanish intelligence’s best on-field agent. The twenty-six years old, entered the agency at a very young age, proved herself to be the best by hard training and exhibiting magnificent results. She was best known for her dedication that she always solved any case she picked. Her record was the best, matching with her fellow agents who were in their late thirties and early forties, something that made her even more dangerous in the eyes of all the men on field. It wasn’t easy for her to prove her worth at an early age but she was stubborn and that helped her solve many difficult and puzzled cases. She was not just a brilliant detective at mind but absolute perfection on field with her aiming and fighting skills, she combated many killers and hence, perfected herself as one of the best field agents.

The only tinge of her life was the curious case of Carmen Roman, the Italian mafia kingpin, no one was ever able to catch. He was a faceless vindictive; the stories of his monstrosities were stapled all across the world. No one ever exactly knew how many people had Carmen killed but it is believed that he once burned an entire village of people alive just to have some land cleared, where he could build a hanger for his illegal plan service. No one was able to catch anyone ever near him.

She had been working on that case for the past four years, studying the Italian Mafia and their activities closely. She traveled many parts of the world, just to get to know their network and even made many important arrests and raids. She collected their information, the faces of every guy related to the Cartel but she still had no picture of Carmen. He was a ghost for the past thirty years, ever since he joined the Cartel. There were many faces that she had collected in images. Images that she had connected on the mission map, dotted and joined with threads but she still didn’t know what Carmen actually looked like and the key to him was now lying dead on a café floor.

Sighing exasperatedly, she rested her arms against the panel, exhausted at running behind a ghost, a ghost she was determined to capture in any condition. She had been restless for the past three weeks, focusing entirely on carrying out today’s operation that was ruined within seconds.

Pushing every thought back, she made up her mind to be determined again and ran the number of the car in which Mario came but at the same time, she heard Benjamin yell;

“What the hell!”

She turned and walked up to him and looked into Frank’s mobile screen, where the scenes of the football match in Madrid were being aired live. Davič lying cold on the floor, followed by a large gunshot that caused a havoc in the stadium and people running everywhere. Security getting players inside their dressing rooms, while Alessandro Ricci, fighting security to stay back with his team member. All of this was being aired with grievous silence live, with cameras shifting with hustle all around the place, making it evident that even the coordinators of the live program where unsure as where to direct the camera.

The squad shared a confused look, while cameras zoomed in and out, loosing focus while finally settling on the paramedic sitting right next to Davič, who had a clear gun wound on his head and blood pooled around him.

Fred’s phone began ringing and Amy cursed loudly knowing what was about to come.

“Did you see what happened?” a strong voice spoke on the phone.

Fred nodded his head, “Yes, I just watched it!”

“I want you both in Madrid before midnight!”

Fred cut the call and looked at Amy. Seeing his disappointing expressions, she cursed knowing what was about to come next.

“f**k!”

----------------------------------------------------------