Sons of Mexico
by Mojave Dragonfly

Agent Sands had played high and had lost, even with a rigged game.

He knew he was dying. The warmth of the fading sun, the smells of dust and gunpowder, the distant din of fighting—these were the last things he would ever know. Those, and pain.

God, the pain.

He shifted his body against the warm wall, seeking a position less agonizing, but the movement only shot burning arrows through the three blasphemous holes in his body. He gasped. The hell of it was, he knew damn well none of his injuries had to be mortal. With anything resembling decent medical care—an urgent ambulance, paramedics, a race through city streets to a bustling ER where they would give him drugs—drugs for the pain...

Fuck. If only he were dying somewhere civilized, not in this shit-hole.

For once in his life, Sheldon Jeffrey Sands couldn't sustain his fury at the world. It sank into a pool of mourning. Who would have thought you could mourn your own death?

Then the pain demanded all his attention. The holes in his legs and arm still howled their outrage at him, even as blood-loss numbed his hands and feet. Distantly, he wondered why his eyes didn't hurt.

What eyes, Fuckmook? You'll never see again. Somehow it didn't seem to matter, much, as his life pooled beneath his butt, warm and sticky.

He panted like a dog in the hot sun, even as his body turned cold. No! He would not accept this! Somehow, there must be something...

The pain eclipsed any coherent thought.

Footsteps approached. Two men, wearing expensive cowboy boots. Walking fast—men with a mission. As they neared Sands's position, clicks and thunks announced guns being cocked.

Sands still had one good arm. He blew them both away, aiming with his hearing only.

No coherent thought necessary.

One man toppled near him, almost in reach. Sands listened, hearing the gurgle of the man's last breath.

He should have felt pleased, but nothing pierced the blazing pain.

Drugs, for the pain. Drugs...

Inch by agonizing inch, Sands dragged his screaming body to the dead man's side. The first pocket—nothing. The second—Sands's elbow slipped where it propped him up, and he collapsed. What should have been a howl of righteous pain and fury came out as a moan. He lay where he had fallen, face down. He could only manage the one further pocket.

Paydirt. At least he would die, as he had seldom been in life, happy.

---

The guitar town looked like many other dusty Mexican villages, but two things set it apart from its fellows. One thing was the rows of hand-made guitars hanging like grapes from the vine, lining the main plaza. Another was the cars. Everyone in the town owned a car, wore fine clothes, and drank good beer. The smallest child could name the town's benefactor.

The limousine, nonetheless, attracted attention as it turned onto the plaza, tiny Mexican flags fluttering from its hood. The intruder slowed and stopped by a guitar stall where two old men sat in the afternoon heat sanding newly-made guitars. From the passenger side of the car stepped a suit-and-sunglasses-wearing man, who looked arrogantly around, then deigned to speak.

"I'm looking for The Mariachi," he said.

"Which one?" asked one man, shrugging.

"The," said the suit.

Two back doors opened and two more suit-wearing men stepped out, their jackets bulging beneath their left arms.

From every door, window, corner, and crack of the town came a cacophony of weapons clicking into readiness. The late afternoon sun glinted off of dozens of gun barrels aimed at the men by the limousine. From the far side of those barrels peered men of all ages, children, señoritas, and abuelas.

Startled, the suits froze, then slowly lifted their arms above their heads.

Unperturbed, the second old man spoke.

"We don't know who you're talking about." He smiled.

Swallowing hard, the first suit said, "I have a message for him from El Presidente."

The first old man looped a guitar string around a tuning peg and tightened. "What is the message?" he inquired.

First Suit took a deep breath. "Are you still a son of Mexico?" he called into the tense stillness of the town.

After a long moment, a black-clad figure descended from a rooftop and stepped into the square. Long hair flopped over piercing eyes as he bent to set his guitar carefully against a building. He walked steadily toward the limousine, backed by the weapons of the town.

"What do you want?" asked El Mariachi.

"I am honored to meet you," said First Suit.

"What do you want?"

"El Presidente requests your presence."

"Why?"

"Will you come?"

El Mariachi said nothing. He looked at the guitar stall with its unvarnished instruments, the old men who continued their work, the church beyond, and the dusty square. He raised a graceful hand, and the gun barrels vanished into the shadows.

The second old man reached beneath his table and handed El Mariachi a well-used guitar case. "Go with God," he said.

---

The new Presidential Palace might have been a drug lord's modest summer home. High enough in the hills for cool temperatures at night and high enough in the hills to be easily defensible from attack. El Mariachi approved. The property showed little ostentation beyond what the President's rank would require. A prudent sacrifice of ego for practicality.

El still felt out of place. He paced the tiled floor to look out a window at the eucalyptus and bougainvilla beyond. He could not be the man the President needed, and he knew it. To make matters worse, he knew exactly who the right man was.

A man he loathed.

But the best service he could give El Presidente, this man who cared about Mexico, cared about her people, cared for justice and honor, was to give him the name of a man who cared for none of it.

El Presidente, sitting at a small tea table, looked at the scrap of paper in his hand.
"I never heard of him," he said.

"You probably heard of him. You just didn't know it was him they were talking about."

"Why would he help me?" El Presidente took a delicate sip of his tea.

"Money. Or power. Promise him a return favor. But make no mistake, Señor Presidente; you will be dealing with the Devil."

"Where can I find him?"

"No one knows. But if he's still living, he's the man you want."

---

There was no mystery about where Lorenzo lived. He owned an estate in the suburbs of Mexico City, where he spent his days by the pool surrounded by bikini-clad women.

El Mariachi scouted the place, unimpressed. Lorenzo had known not to rely on the city police for security, but the guards he employed were sleepy. Cameras peered around from the top of the wall, but El knew they were not the models that are used where a guard watches many monitors and can respond immediately to an intrusion. Instead, these cameras recorded what they saw on tape, as if Lorenzo believed the tape might be useful in a courtroom as evidence against a thief. El snorted. Burglary was not the threat his friend should be fearing, and evidence in court might be useful on American TV, but in Mexico it was only useful to the rich.

Of course, Lorenzo was rich, now, he reminded himself. Perhaps he could buy justice, but he could not buy back his life after a cartel had taken it. This high-profile playboy lifestyle of Lorenzo's was foolish, and El decided to show that to him.

After carefully noting the locations of all the inattentive guards, he circled the estate again, keeping to what shadows he could find in the bright daylight. He marked a helpful tree, growing from within the estate and slopping its bushy boughs over the top of the wall.

The alley on the side of the estate where the tree grew was almost as busy as a street, and El Mariachi had to wait for the children on bicycles and mothers with strollers to clear momentarily. Then he slapped Velcro straps over the chains on his trousers, and removed the jingly spurs from the backs of his boots. These he twisted, turning them into climbing spikes, and attached them to the toes of his boots. The silver piping on his jacket yielded to his yank, and he snapped the metal into the form of a small grappling hook. Black nylon cord came from behind his belt and attached to the hook.

In seconds he had crossed to the wall, flung the hook over it where the tree grew, and scaled the crumbling stucco to lie flat on top, ignoring the whirring camera, and shielded from view by the tree. The boughs were a problem, for, lying flat on the wall as they did, his arrival shook them and the motion was transferred to the slender trunk of the tree. A very shivery tree. He lay still, despite the sound of laughter coming down the alley.
The teenaged girls passed without seeing him, and no one seemed to have thought the tree's behaviour worth note.

Carefully, he slid over the wall, touching the boughs and the rest of the tree as little as possible. Crouched in the foliage, he restored his tools to their usual places, though he kept the spurs and chains muffled.

Tension filled him, now that he was inside. There might be guards he couldn't spot from the outside. It would be a sad death to be shot by his friend's security as he made his point. He checked his guns and tried to keep the adrenaline rush under control.

He peered through the shrubbery, and smiled. The tree grew at the side of the house. The pool area, from which direction came laughing voices and the sound of splashes, was to his left. Cameras whirred ineffectually from the roof, and a guard sat in a folding chair at the corner of the house, peering around the corner to see the laughing girls.

The guard continued to peek at the poolside show as El Mariachi's silent footfalls approached. El stopped directly before where the guard should have been looking and allowed his shadow to fall across the man.

"Eh?" was all the man had time for before El clubbed him with a pistol butt. He would have toppled off the chair, making further noise, but El caught him by the front of his shirt and placed him firmly on his seat, leaning against the wall.

"Sanchez?" called Lorenzo. To Lorenzo's credit, he had noticed the slight sound from the corner of the building. "Keep your eyes where they belong."

El Mariachi stepped around the side of the building. "Bang, you're dead," he said, no weapons in his hands, but glancing all around the grounds, senses on high alert.

Lorenzo dived off his lounge chair, throwing aside the girl who had been sitting on his lap. He rolled toward the house, toppling aluminum chairs and small tables. As he drew breath to summon the guards, he met El Mariachi's gaze.

Smiling, El showed him open hands, palms up.

Lorenzo froze, his hand inches from a wooden crate against the building. Then he exploded to his feet, crying El's real name. Crying in anger, for he had been made to look very foolish. His fury might have been more intimidating had he not been wearing red swimming trunks, and nothing else.

"What the fuck are you doing here?!"

"Visiting an old friend."

Later, Lorenzo regained his humor, even appearing to listen patiently while El enumerated the dangers of his living arrangements. He insisted on showing El what he called his hacienda, and then the two of them took shelter from the noon heat in the tile and marble lined dining hall. A long, elegant Spanish table with high-backed wooden chairs suitable for a banquet served instead two gunfighting mariachis and a lot of beer bottles. Also a number of beautiful and buxom young women who draped themselves over Lorenzo's shoulders and laid their heads on his lap.

El found the expanse of bare and inviting female flesh disturbingly distracting. It had been long enough since he'd held a woman that he could not keep his head clear while light fingers played with his hair. He had to dismiss the girl with his darkest glare.
Lorenzo laughed and asked all the girls to go, his eyes twinkling merrily at El.

"You are not the life of the party, my friend," Lorenzo said.

"I'm not interested in your party. I need information. The Delgado cartel isn't so thin anymore. They've destroyed or absorbed six or seven other cartels since the Day of the Dead, including the remains of the Barillos. They have almost a monopoly on the South."

Lorenzo nodded. "I know. Everyone knows that."

This startled El Mariachi. He didn't think anyone in his village knew of it. He sighed and swallowed his pride. "What else does everyone know?"

Lorenzo shrugged. "They have been swift and aggressive. Three cartels even banded together to oppose them in Villahermosa, but they have some great new muscle."

"The Colombians?"

Lorenzo shook his head. "That's what's mysterious. No. They say Delgado thinks he can cut the Colombians out entirely."

El frowned. "Cut them out of the cocaine trade? They're the suppliers."

"I don't know. But eventually it will come to war. A hell of a war."

"And many, many people will be hurt." El regarded his beer bottle.

Again Lorenzo shrugged. "People in the south." Then he had the grace to look sheepish. "I like it here," he said.

El understood. Peace was something he had only had snatches of, all his life, and it was to be treasured. But he understood better now why El Presidente needed the Delgados destroyed or at least destabilized. It was one thing to strive for a monopoly on the drug trade in Mexico, but if you defied Colombia in any real way, the resulting conflagration would attract the attention of the greatest threat, Mexico's drug-consuming neighbor to the north. He sighed.

"Lorenzo, I'm looking for a man, a CIA agent named Sands. Have you heard of him?"

"CIA? Fuck, no. What do you want with the CIA?"

"He was in Culiacan on the Day of the Dead. He was behind the attempted coup." El swallowed the last of the bottle of beer. "Not the coup, actually, but the assassination of Marquez."

He watched as the implications sank in. Lorenzo slammed down a bottle. "We were working for the CIA?" He spat.

"You were paid well. What do you have to complain about? And I got my revenge."

Lorenzo scowled, but said nothing.

"The Yanquis won't want this either. This Sands could help. But I need to think of a way to find him. Or to have him find me."

While El was thinking, in the middle of the day, in not quite the middle of Mexico City, the Delgado cartel attacked Lorenzo's hacienda.

Like El Mariachi, the attackers considered Lorenzo's "hacienda" easy pickings. Unfortunately for them, on this day Lorenzo had more competent help than usual.

The first shots were silenced, but the open architecture and marble construction of Lorenzo's halls carried the "poofing" sound as Lorenzo's guards died. El saw Lorenzo's expression of dismay as he realized his peace was ending. It had happened often enough to El that he actually had time for a pang of sympathy for his friend.

"Guns?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Under the furniture," Lorenzo said as he scrambled beneath his own chair and came up with a semi-automatic.

El's own guns were a familiar weight inside his suit, but it always paid to know where a cache could be found for when you ran out of ammo.

Gun ready, Lorenzo headed for a corridor that El guessed led eventually to the side of the building where El had first entered the estate.

El, his own guns in his hands, moved back to the pool area. Staying just within the doorway, he called, "Señoritas! Get out of here, now!"

The girls looked in his direction with various expressions of amusement or bemusement.

El looked beyond them to the walls, searching for places he might have chosen to enter, when he was infiltrating the place. Lorenzo's guns boomed in the distance, just as El spotted the conspicuous movement of the foliage. He fired, a man cried out, and the women began screaming.

Taking better cover behind the ledge below a cut-out arch beside the door, he picked off everyone he could mark in the shrubbery beyond the pool. At first a hail of bullets pockmarked the front of his ledge, but the storm abated as more of his foes fell. Once he was certain they were dead and not simply reloading, he looked for a better vantage. Altitude.

Lorenzo's estate was three stories high in some places, and had many balconies, both inside and out. The high parts of the building were farthest from the outside walls, so El thought it unlikely that anyone had entered from above.

Gunshots continued to sound from the side of the house where Lorenzo had gone, so El decided the other side could use some cleaning up. The inside stairwells were not a good idea—El was leery of long narrow places with no cover—so, appropriating three more weapons from beneath the banquet table and chairs, he looked for a way to scale the walls inside the vaulted interior.

Aided by a hanging tapestry, his grappling hook, and brittle mortar in the walls, he climbed to the nearest balcony. Before he was over the rail, he heard booted feet running into the dining area, coming from the side of the house he'd intended to cover. With one hand, he laid down a field of automatic fire, killing three men, and wounding a fourth. He tossed aside the empty weapon, and vaulted over the railing, followed by shots from the fourth man. He ran along the balcony, then slid silently back on the railing to where he had been. Sure enough, the other man came into view, thinking he had fled. El dropped him with a single shot.

He'd cleared the back, Lorenzo was at the one side, and those four men had come from the other side. The front of the house was too visible to the rest of the city; El doubted anyone was coming from there. He decided to see if Lorenzo needed help.

Locating a connection to the outside balconies, he inched into range of the side of the house. He saw three bodies, one of which was the guard he hand clubbed not a few hours earlier. Poor bastard. He ran toward the back, hugging the wall. At the corner he was frustrated to find that his view down on the pool and courtyard area was obstructed from that corner by low trees and a canopy that shaded Lorenzo's outdoor beer tap. He lay flat on his belly and slid forward, watching below. The sound of an exchange of single shots made him smile. The action was in the back again.

He reached a point just before the concrete of the pool, and now he could see Lorenzo, crouched where El had been before, just inside a doorway, but also with shooting access through an arch.

"Romero! I have the girl!" called one of the attackers. El couldn't see him, because of the canopy.

El peered at Lorenzo, and saw his friend's face go white. What girl? There were dozens of girls; they had all scattered. Half of them were probably on the streets by now, raising the alarm. It would be interesting to see if any police responded.

To El's consternation, Lorenzo threw his guns out into the courtyard. "What do you want?" he asked.

Mierde! If Lorenzo wanted to throw his life away for one of his bunnies, he was a bigger fool than El had thought. The girls' lives were all at risk the first day they had agreed to join Lorenzo's coterie in return for whatever Lorenzo gave them. Lorenzo was responsible for the danger to all of them, in El's opinion. But for any one more than the others?

The coast should be fairly clear of other gunmen. The attackers had not sent in enough men to take on the two mariachis. The sensible thing to do was to leave now, and El intended to do it, with or without Lorenzo. He moved back along the balcony. As his field of view cleared the canopy, El saw the man with the girl and he froze.

This girl was no bunny. Too short, too flat-chested, and certainly too plain, El knew her. Maria, Lorenzo's sister. His blood ran cold. Of course Lorenzo would use his new wealth to help support his family. Those of his family who would accept his help.

"Come out with your hands up!" the man ordered, his gun pressed to Maria's temple.

"Order your men to stop."

What men? The few sleepy guards would never wake, now. But this guy couldn't be sure there were no other men. Good. He didn't know El was there. He probably thought El was a small army of security.

Lorenzo moved out into the daylight, his hands held high. "Stop! Don't shoot!" he yelled.

Damn. El couldn't shoot the man from where he was—not, and be sure Maria would live. He could still get away—this was Lorenzo's problem, he told himself.

Apparently himself wasn't listening. He didn't move.

A second man, rumpled and panting, limped into view, his semi-automatic trained on Lorenzo.

"Mariachi!" called the first man. "Come out! Hands up, or your friend dies!"

He should have listened to himself.

The ride was long and bumpy. Blindfolded and bound, El couldn't tell where they were headed, but he was sure they had left Mexico City. They traveled in a panel truck with no windows in the back and two armed guards. Lorenzo and Maria were with him, but none of them were permitted to speak.

With nothing to do but try to learn about their captors, El considered. The three of them had been taken alive, which surprised him. Clearly their identities were known: these men had even known who Maria was. If there was a cartel in Mexico that didn't want El dead, he didn't know of it. El didn't think he was of any use as a hostage. There was no one who would ransom him. El Presidente? There was a thought. Perhaps someone believed El Mariachi had information about El Presidente's plans.

Finally he exhausted his speculations, and still they drove. He had long ago grown used to the idea that he might not live beyond the next day. He had known when he left his village that he was returning to the world of death and pain, but he also had always known he couldn't hide from it indefinitely. He only hoped to involve as few innocents in his fate as possible. He would not have stayed in the guitar town had he not been able to arm the entire village.

He wondered how El Presidente had found him.

He relaxed, harboring his strength, and rested his thoughts in memories of Carolina. He had never sought death, but at least he had the comfort that she would be waiting there for him, with their little daughter.

Lorenzo and Maria did not deserve this, though. He sighed. Always there was something to make him care.

They arrived somewhere late at night. The air was cool and scented with the aromas of many flowers. El was stiff with inaction as he was pushed, his hands still bound behind him, along an uneven stone-lined walkway, and now that he had to walk blindfolded, he was extremely nervous. His captor did not lead him, so he had no way of knowing if he was running into anything. Where was cover, where were the vantage points? He had never realized before how automatically he evaluated his surroundings, and his inability to calculate shooting tactics made him feel worse than blind. Three times he tripped as the walkway turned beneath his feet. Each time someone hit him in the back of the head with what was probably a gun butt.

Maria and Lorenzo stumbled behind him.

Ahead of him, growing nearer, he heard voices.

"Puta madre!" someone yelled. "Antonio and Juan. Nine men!"

A cynical laugh from another man, who spoke in English. "I told you to send more men," he said. "And smarter ones."

El nearly stumbled again, in surprise. He knew that voice! If only they would take off his blindfold!

"Shut up," said the first man, also in English. Rough hands checked El, probably right in front of the speaker. El didn't think they had entered a door. He guessed they might be in a courtyard.

"So this," the man spoke grandly, stepping close to El, "is the great Mariachi."

It was not a statement that called for a response, but CIA Agent Sands had one anyway.

"Don't ask me. How would I know? Is he dressed in black with a tormented look?"

Cold hatred welled up in El.

Then the first man was yelling at El, inches from him. "You are El Mariachi! You killed two of my best men!"

This did seem to call for a response. "Get used to it," El said, and braced for what he knew was coming. He wished again, futilely, that he could see.

Sands, a few meters away, laughed.

The hand that hit him had large sharp rings on it. He tasted blood.

The man grabbed the front of El's shirt, and hauled him to inches from his face. El could smell cigarettes and garlic on the man's breath.

"Some men I tame with pleasure, some with pain. Which should it be for El Mariachi?"

"Pain," said Sands.

"You surprise me. Surely he's familiar with pain. Perhaps you are just selfish."

There were chuckles around the area, though El didn't think Sands's was among them.

"You wanted my advice," said Sands in a bored tone. "Men like him are the way they are because they can't take real pain."

"Pain it is, then. It's cheaper, and more entertaining."

The man threw El to a cold floor, where he landed hard on his shoulder. He had only a moment to worry about what they would do to Lorenzo and Maria before someone dragged him out by his bound wrists, face down, along the walkway.

At least they took the blindfold off. El could see the reinforced concrete room they put him in, with its one bare low-wattage bulb, and table of torture implements. One little man with a craggy face hovered hungrily over the tools, while the other two men softened El up with a beating. Bruised and bleeding, with one possible broken rib and his cheekbone blazing with pain where one thug had clubbed him with the stock of a rifle, he kept thinking, "at least they took the blindfold off." He hoped his relief had not been too obvious.

El had been beaten before. He endured this beating in silence, using the pain to block his apprehension about what was to come. Sands was dead wrong. Pain and El were old acquaintances. He'd endured being shot nearly to death in the chest at the same moment he lost Carolina and his daughter. No pain, physical or spiritual, had ever matched that.

Eventually the two thugs backed off, leering, as the craggy-faced man approached with what looked no more elaborate than a pair of pliers.

"I'm a traditionalist," the man said pleasantly, in good Castilian. "We'll start with fingernails."

El lost all sense of time, living every moment as an eternity.

Finally, at some point, he was taken away through outside corridors lined with lush foliage, and shoved into a lightless, guarded room, where he fell to his knees and then collapsed forward on a cold floor. It was night. The same night or another, he didn't know.

More time passed, and the door opened and light footsteps entered. For a moment light from the corridor illumined the room, and El saw that it had a bed, some kind of small table and a sink. Then the door closed and someone knelt beside him in the dark. A hand touched him gingerly and a small voice called him by name.

"Maria?" he asked, incredulous.

"Yes, it's me," she said.

"What are you doing here?"

"They said I could come and help you. I'm studying to be a nurse, you know."

He didn't know. "Why did they let you?" It didn't make sense.

"I don't know," she admitted. She stood and took some uncertain steps around the room. "They even gave me some bandages. Isn't there a light? I can't see you."

El thought he understood. A common tactic, to keep a prisoner off-balance by alternating cruelty and kindness.

A weak light flickered into being and Maria stood silhouetted beside the small table. "The bulb was loose," she said. She returned and scrutinized him. "Let's get you on the bed."

El couldn't really use her help. She was too slight and weak to either lift him or support his weight. He half-crawled to the cot-sized bed, finding that some of his injuries hurt less now and others hurt even more. Once on the bed, he lay still as she exclaimed in horror over him. Her cautious ministrations hurt him more than once, but being touched to help instead of to hurt gave such healing to his psyche that he made no complaint, even when she wrapped his torso tightly. She had a bag of ice for his face.

Gingerly, she took his hand and studied his fingers. Every fingernail had been pulled out and his hands were a bloody mess. He couldn't help but flinch when she tried to bandage the ends of his fingers. "No, no," he said, pulling back his hand. He couldn't bear to have anything touch them.

"Wait," she said. She fumbled with something on the floor and came up with a tube, like a tube of toothpaste. "This is a topical anesthetic. Let me put it on. Then you can take the bandages."

They had given her an entire first-aid kit! El mentally shook his head in bemusement, but he allowed her to treat him.

She had finished one hand when she said his name again. "What do they want with us?" she asked, tremulously.

"I don't know," he said. "If they need the money, they can sell me, and probably Lorenzo, to another cartel." It was the only thing he'd been able to come up with, but it was very thin. And, in most cases, their corpses would be sufficient to garner the reward. "Where did they take you?"

"Lorenzo and I are together in another room. Unless I am to be here, now." She looked around.

"Did they hurt either of you?"

"No," she gulped. "Not yet."

He lifted the bandaged hand to her frightened face. "Has anyone touched you?" he asked, gently.

She blinked. "Not yet."

"I am sorry, Maria."

The door opened, and in came the last man El wanted to see this night, or any night. Agent Sands paused just inside the doorway, and someone outside closed the door behind him. El heard the click of the lock. For a long moment no one said anything. Sands wore dark glasses, making his expression difficult to read.

"What the fuck is this?" Sands finally asked.

"What do you mean?" asked Maria, still crouched beside El on the bed.

"What are you doing in my room?" Sands turned and pounded on the door. "Hey pig-dick! Who's in my room?" he yelled.

"Easier to guard one room than two," came the muffled response. "Have a party, if you like."

"Ah, shit," said Sands as he kicked at the door. He turned to face them. "El?" he asked, an uneasy note in his voice.

What was the matter with the man? El couldn't quite put together Sands's actions and his words. Not that it mattered. What mattered was that they were together in a locked room, and as far as El could see, Sands had no weapon on him. He gathered his strength and launched himself off the bed at him.

He got in one solid punch with his bandaged hand. Maria gave a little shriek, and then Sands retaliated with more strength and fury than El expected, given the man's slight build. El went down without much further fight as he exhausted what strength he had recovered. He had instinctively caught himself with his unbandaged hand and the agony from that member brought tears to his eyes.

"No, no, stop!" cried Maria, hanging on Sands as he pressed his counter-attack.

Sands stepped back, shrugging her off, and Maria shrieked again. El blinked and struggled up. What had Sands done to her? Sands turned his head toward El and El saw what she had seen. The sunglasses had fallen off in the fight, and where the man's eyes should have been...

"Dios!"

Sands looked like a living skull. El almost crossed himself. He stared, his fury as exhausted as his strength. Beyond Sands, Maria did cross herself, her eyes huge in her pale face.

Sands straightened, paused, then took a deep breath. "Are we done with this shit?" he asked. He moved, with uncanny accuracy, to where his glasses had fallen, and put them back on.

El still could find no words. Hearing the gringo's twangy voice come out of the death mask had only made the situation more creepy. He wondered for a moment if he were having a nightmare, but the pain from his hands and ribs dispelled that possibility.

"Get off my bed," Sands ordered.

Maria stood forth with admirable courage, El thought. "He's injured. He gets the bed," she said.

"It's my goddamn bed," Sands roared, and, gripping the rail at the foot of the bed, he lifted the end of it, with El on it, and, twisting, dumped El on the floor.

Even as a spear of pain went through his ribs, El marveled at the man's strength. Only great anger or fear should inspire this, and Sands had no cause for either, that El could see. Something was wrong about the whole situation.

Ignoring Maria, who joined him on the floor, her arms around him, El studied Sands. He could bear to look at the man now that the glasses were back on. Sands looked unnaturally pale, he thought, and sweat glistened on his face.

Sands threw the bed back into place, and then returned to the door. He knocked and called, in a less angry tone, "Gomez! Where's my nightcap?"

Laughter from beyond the door, and then it opened a crack, admitting the barrel of a gun. "Have you been a good boy?" the guard asked. "How's the party going?"

"Cut the crap," said Sands, and, just to add to El's confusion, he sounded, not insulting, but almost solicitous. "Have you got it?"

"Here. Nice doggy."

A sandwich bag with a tiny amount of white substance in it flew in the door as the gun retreated. The door closed and locked. CIA Agent Sands slid down the wall beside the door, scooped up the bag, and proceeded to put the white stuff up his nose, as El and Maria watched.

El pulled himself to a more comfortable position on the floor, watching Sands lean his head back against the wall. He wondered how long Sands would be coherent. "What did they do to you?" El asked quietly.

"Who?" Sands replied. He got to his feet and walked to the bed, moving confidently, as if he had his sight. He lay down on his back, with his arms behind his head.

"What happened to your eyes?"

"That was Barillo." Sands sounded distant.

El was ashamed of the wave of relief that swept through him. Delgado had not done this, so El did not have to assume it was in store for him. He wondered if Sands knew El had killed Barillo. Clearly that day had not gone the way Sands had planned. El had some satisfaction in his own part of that. He had refused to be used. "I guess you fucked up," he said.

"Fuck you."

Quietly, Maria took El's unbandaged hand and began her ministrations.

"What are you doing here?" El asked.

"I," Sands paused, "am," he paused again, "helping Julio Delgado get rich."

"You? You are his new muscle? You're blind."

"Brilliant observation, El. I am not the muscle; I am the brains. You will be the muscle."

"I will never work for a cartel."

"You will work for a cartel, doing whatever dirty work they have for you, or they will slowly dismember the Romeros." Sands almost sang the words. "They are not the nicest of guys."

Maria made a small sound.

"But you are helping them."

"Also," Sands continued, "they will condition you with torture, until they know exactly what kind of pain to threaten you with." He reached up and drew small circles on the wall with a forefinger. "They already know you don't like electricity."

El winced. His every nerve twinged at the mere reminder. Had his torturers actually wanted something from him, he would have given them anything to make the shocks stop. He felt sick.

"Electricity..." Sands's voice trailed off. "Zzzp. Zzzp." He continued to draw circles on the wall.

Maria, finished with El's other hand, stood and approached the bed. El tensed.

"What?" asked Sands. The man must have quite good hearing.

"May I see your eyes?" Maria asked.

"What? No. Fuck off."

"Why not?"

El braced for violence. If Sands hurt her...

"Oh, all right. If that's what gets you off." Since he continued to draw on the wall, Maria reached down, herself, and removed the glasses. She stared, barely breathing.

"If I were you, El..." Sands paused as if he had lost his train of thought.

"Yes?" El prompted.

"I would let them think you really hate the beatings." The man's chest rose and fell rapidly. He was almost panting. El wondered what he was feeling.

"You told them to use pain on me," El said.

Sands stopped tracing circles. "How do they look?" he asked.

Maria looked at El for help. Either she didn't know what to say or her English wasn't extensive enough for the description.

El answered. "You look like death. Your eye sockets belong on a skull, but the holes are not black, they are red."

"Do they hurt?" Maria asked.

"Not at the moment," Sands answered. "As for the pain, El," he paused for a long time, "you wouldn't have stood a chance with the pleasure."

Maria put Sands's glasses on his chest and returned to El.

"They hooked you," El said.

Sands folded the sunglasses and set them on the floor. "I was an easy catch." Beneath the bored tone and the slightly slurring words, El heard a trace of self-loathing.

El shifted again, cursing the man for taking the bed. He needed support for his torso. Maria rose, snatched Sands's pillow from beneath his head, and gave it to El. Sands's head fell back, but he had no reaction.

"Why isn't Lorenzo with us?" Maria asked El, in Spanish.

"We are hostages for each other," El told her. "They won't ever put the three of us together."

"Got it in one," sang Sands from the bed.

El made a mental note that the man's understanding of Spanish was pretty good. "Maria, if you see Lorenzo, tell him... tell him I will get us out of this. He must stay alert and ready."

The girl nodded.

"El," called Sands. "El Mariachi," he sang.

El had an odd feeling that what the man was about to say was important. "What do you want?"

"Whatever you do, escape plans, crazy, stupid plots, whatever..."

"Yes?"

The man said nothing for a long time. El would have tried to read his expression if he could have borne to look at the agent's ruined face. When he spoke, Sands's voice was almost a whisper. "Don't tell me. Don't trust me. Make no mistake, Delgado owns me, body and soul."

"Soul and body," he sang. "Soul and body."

It was a long night.

El dozed fitfully, waking himself with pain every time he moved. Maria gave him her lap for a pillow, so he could use the pillow under his ribs. A distant part of his mind was acutely aware that he was cradled on firm young female thighs, but the rest of him was in no condition to be any more than grateful. The mix of genes that had resulted in Lorenzo had given the world an unfortunately plain woman for his sister. The lap was nice, though.

He woke once again as someone stumbled against his outstretched leg.

"Dammit," Sands muttered, recovering his footing and continuing to the door. Was it morning? The room was windowless, and there was no clock. El had been dreaming about being blind and helpless. He tested his swollen limbs and decided that his ribs were not broken. They didn't hurt enough for that.

Sands knocked on the door. "Martinez? You out there?"

"It's not time, yet," answered a different voice than the one earlier.

"I could use my coffee now," Sands said.

"You can always use your coffee. Later."

Sands leaned his forehead against the door. "How much later?" he asked plaintively. "Shall I start singing?" He waited for a moment, listening. Then he tipped his head back, took a deep breath, and belted out, "Oooooklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain, where the waving wheat,"

"Stop!" El cried, struggling up from Maria's lap. "For Christ's sake, stop!" El despised American musicals, and Sands wasn't even singing on key.

". . . can sure smell sweet, where the wind comes right behind the rain!"

Someone pounded on the door from the outside. "All right," the man called. "All right!"

Sands stopped.

A muffled oath in Spanish, and the sound of chair legs scraping against stone. "You have half an hour. The Señora is here. Try to be presentable."

Maria stood and clicked on the light. Sands's head jerked. He turned around, the ghastly holes staring into the room. "What is that?" he asked. "The light?"

"Sí," said Maria, gulping at the sight of his face again.

Sands leaned back against the door, and gave a mirthless chuckle. "So, do I look presentable?" Neither El nor Maria replied, and Sands pushed off from the door, stepping deftly over El's outstretched leg, this time, and reaching the sink. A plastic safety razor and comb were on the basin, and Sands availed himself of both.

"How long have you been here?" Maria asked as she watched him try to pull the comb through his stringy hair.

"That bad, huh?" said Sands. He turned away from the sink and El flinched away from looking at his face. Maria handed the man his sunglasses, touching his hand with them. Sands pulled his hand back, startled, but then accepted them and put them on. "Better, Sugarlips?" he asked.

"Sí," said Maria in a small voice.

"Who is the Señora?" El asked, his voice raspy.

Sands bounced cheerfully across the room to the door, and waited there, like a dog expecting a treat. "Delgado's mommy," he said.

Maria smoothed her skirt and tucked her blouse in. El pulled himself to the sink, careful of his hands, ran cold water over his palm, and rubbed his face.

The door unlocked and a hand tossed in another plastic bag. Sands caught it as if he could see, and promptly snorted the contents. The door closed again. "Mmm, I just love the smell of coffee in the morning," Sands said.

El's stomach rumbled. He hoped there was some real breakfast to come.

Twenty minutes passed, during which time Sands grew increasingly talkative. El used the time to try to get his swollen joints mobile enough to at least walk. He listened to the agent ramble and wondered if the CIA had made any attempt to recover the man. Surely a talkative, cocaine-addicted agent was a serious liability to the agency. It occurred to him that Sands had probably made no attempt to attract rescue. The CIA quite possibly had no idea what had become of him.

"The coca plant can't grow in regions where the temperature drops below freezing," the man was saying. "Everyone knows that. Everyone has always known that. But the times they are a-changin'. Modern technology can do wonderful things."

Sands reached out a hand toward the bed and encountered Maria who was sitting on it. "There you are, Darlin'," he said. He caressed the side of her face, and played for a moment with her hair. "You're a beauty, aren't you Sweetheart?"

El watched warily. Maria, the silly girl, blushed. "Señor," she said, uncertainly.

Sands turned his hand over in an oddly elegant gesture, and slid the back of it down her neck, over a breast, and to her waist. Maria stiffened, but did not move. She could have easily moved away from him.

"Sands," El warned. He held out his hand, demanding that Maria come to him.

Sands cupped his hand beneath her chin, gently, then cupped one small breast in the same manner. "I am so with stupid," he said, thoughtfully. To El's annoyance, Maria only stared at the man's glasses. She did not move away. El could not make sense of the man's words, but his intentions were clear enough. The agent pressed closer to the seated girl, sliding his hand over her shoulders so he could move her in close.

The jangling sound of the lock startled El before he could take any action, and then the door was opened. Three armed men, also wearing sunglasses, stood in the sunlit doorway.

"Time to go," said one of them.

El squinted against the bright daylight as the three of them moved into the outside corridor. As his eyes adjusted, he was able to get a much better idea of the estate. Lorenzo's share of twenty million pesos had allowed him to buy what was really just a very large house in a good district. This compound was truly an estate. Arch-lined outdoor corridors rimmed multiple interior courtyards, all with beautiful topiary, fountains, and gardens of all sizes and on many levels. Above the corridors, the courtyard walls bore beautiful murals—not good, patriotic, Rivera-influenced murals, but religious iconography in a distinctly Spanish style. Loving Madonnas cradled their babes, mournful pietas grieved, and Christ's bloody agony saved undeserving sinners, all with their eyes cast heavenward.

El found that his painful efforts to get himself mobile had had mixed results. Yes, he could walk, which was an improvement over last night, but he couldn't walk at a normal pace. One of the thugs shoved him forward, and the series of steps he had to take to keep from falling face down in the forsythia lanced agony through him. He gasped.

"I thought you could go faster," laughed the man.

Maria was at his side, then, beneath one arm, and supporting him more sturdily than he had thought she could.

"Don't be afraid," he murmured.

"Aren't you?" she asked.

"No."

A guard cuffed the back of El's head with a fist. "No talking."

Sands, that hopped-up bastard, strode ahead of them, navigating the brick and tile walkways with amazing confidence. Remembering his own blindfolded, almost panicky fumblings, El couldn't help but be impressed. The guards trailed El and Maria, apparently not concerned that they keep Sands under close watch, nor concerned that it was Sands who was leading their party into the interior of the main house. Sands seemed to know where they were going, and was content to go there. El could hear him humming to himself.

After what seemed to El a very long walk, Sands slowed as he approached a large pair of glass French doors. It was the first hint El had noticed on their walk, that Sands couldn't see. Sands knew the doors were coming up, but didn't know exactly where they were. He extended his right hand a little, at waist height, and slowed cautiously a few feet before the glass.

The doors were set in a larger expanse of glass walls enclosing what otherwise would have been a large open ballroom area. Sunlight, which would have made such a greenhouse unbearable, came gently filtered through the courtyard canopy of dwarf palm and eucalyptus trees. Inside, El could see rows of ceiling fans slowly turning, an expanse of exquisitely tiled floor, carved dark wood columns, at least one chandelier, and, at the far end of the room, the figures of people, in shadow.

The dappled sunlight fell upon Sands's face as he turned toward the approaching group, and El saw again a sheen of perspiration, though the morning was still temperate.

"Hey Martinez!" said Sands, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. "What brings the Señora here today? Has the first shipment arrived?"

"Ask the boss," grunted Martinez.

"Has it? Huh? Has it? You can tell me. Oh, come on."

One guard positioned his gun at the small of El's back, and a second moved forward to open the door.

"Oh, I hope it has. I hope, I hope, I hope," sang Sands, sounding like a child waiting to open a present.

"Oh, shut up," ordered Martinez, sounding like the weary parent of the child. El noticed that Sands didn't get his ears boxed, though.

The guard who opened the door led them inside.

"Shutting up," said Sands cheerfully. "Shutting up now."

They entered the glassed-in area, and El felt at once the reason for the enclosure. A cool man-made breeze drifted across him, making his clothes clammy. Central air-conditioning.

El took his arm from around Maria's shoulders and straightened. He would not approach his captors like a cripple. Somehow he managed to take strides large and quick enough to keep up as they walked, boots echoing, down the long hall. They passed wooden tables with velvet upholstered chairs, antique loveseats, divans, and brocaded ottomans. It felt like walking through a throne room.

That impression grew stronger as they neared the end of the room. Seated on an impressive high-backed chair was a white-haired matron decked in a rich green gown with a filmy overlay sporting peacock feather patterns. In the "eyes" of the peacock feathers, jewels winked in the dappled sunlight. Around her neck she wore a beautiful gold crucifix, also inlaid with jewels. She gripped in her right hand, a sturdy wooden cane, its golden handle in the shape of a peacock head. She lacked only a crown to be a dowager queen.

Beside the "throne" stood the man El presumed to be the drug-lord himself. His hair slate-gray where his mother's was white, Delgado was tall, looked strong, and was dressed in a loose green silk suit. His every finger bore a ring. His eyes were deep-set and cold.

Two other men were clearly of higher rank than the business-suit wearing muscle. Both were younger than Delgado, expensively dressed, and shared a resemblance to him. One of them, the older of the two, leaned over a table sumptuously laden with breakfast foods, picking his selection. Like a buffet, the table had no chairs and a modest stack of small china plates at one end.

This man watched the group warily as they approached, particularly sizing up El. The others, including a handful of armed thugs, looked less interested. The old woman was impossible to read.

The youngest man with a family resemblance already held a plate with food upon it, and he moved closer to the approaching entourage, as if to intercept them, but then stepped aside so they all had to pass very close to him. The smell of cooked ham reached El's senses, reminding him how very hungry he was.

As Sands passed this youngest man, the man put out his foot, tripping Sands and sending him sprawling forward. The leading guard dodged so Sands hit the floor instead of falling into him. The American's sunglasses slid along the stone floor, stopping at Delgado's feet. Everyone but Delgado and the Señora laughed. Maria gasped, and gripped El's arm.

Sands, still on the ground, rolled over and gave the man his eerie eyeless stare. "Hello, Pablo," he said.

Delgado, with an economical movement, kicked the plastic sunglasses back to Sands, who caught them and put them on. Sands got to his feet and faced the throne with everyone else.

El regarded the agent with mixed feelings. While Sands might be a willing worker, rewarded with cocaine, he was still a slave, manipulated by the very people whom he had played like chess pieces. It had a romantic irony to it, but El felt a little sorry for him.

"Good morning!" said Sands brightly, startling El a bit. Generally, he felt, prisoners were wisest to stay as quiet as possible and learn all they could about their situation. This wisdom did not seem to have occurred to Sands. "Here's El Mariachi," Sands continued, as if he'd brought him as a gift.

"Thank you for the introduction," said Delgado, his dry voice confirming for El that he was the man El had first been brought before.

The man at the food table stepped closer to El and narrowed his eyes. "He doesn't look like so much," he said.

"Actually," Sands said, "there's a bonus I hadn't thought of when we went after him."

When we went after him!? El made a quick review of the English words and concluded that yes, it meant what he thought it did. Any sympathy El had had for Sands evaporated.

"He really can play, you know," Sands said. "You guys could use a little entertainment around here besides Pablo's porn films." Pablo turned a ruddy color, and, with a strangled sound, reached for Sands. This time, however, Sands anticipated him and evaded him neatly.

"Pablo!" Delgado said, stopping the young man. Pablo turned and stalked to a chair, not looking at the old woman.

Delgado raised one eyebrow. "I have heard of the things he does with his guitar."

Sands snorted. "Well, obviously, you don't give him that guitar. You must have one around somewhere that's not, you know, loaded." Sands laughed, enjoying his own joke.

Delgado only smiled tightly. "We have a problem, Agente Sands, more serious than lack of entertainment."

The old woman spoke. Her voice was strong, and all the men paid instant, respectful attention. In Spanish, she commanded, "Let them eat."

"Sí, Mama," said Delgado. Giving El a mocking look, he gestured toward the food, in invitation.

For a moment El did not move, not believing, but Maria's tug on his arm brought him cautiously to the table. The two of them began filling plates. There was coffee.

Sands did not move. "What's the problem? Has the shipment come? I'm ready to be your guinea pig."

"The shipment, Agente Sands," said Delgado with a glance at his mother, "was ambushed outside of San Miguel, and stolen."

"Well, fuck. I thought we cleared that corridor. That was sloppy of your brother." The man who had scrutinized El so closely slammed his plate down on a table.

"Oh, David!" said Sands. "Is that you? I'm so sorry; I didn't realize you were here." David's response made clear what he thought of that claim.

"Enough!" Delgado said sharply. "You will all show respect for Mother. And for the lady," he added with an ironic nod toward Maria.

"Do you at least know who perpetrated the dastardly crime?" asked Sands.

"The Orozcos," replied David, through clenched teeth.

"Oh! Well, no problem, then," said Sands, with an elaborate shrug. "They'll take it to their basement cache outside of Villahermosa. I can give you the address. Just go raid it."

Even the angry David looked astonished. He, Pablo, and Delgado exchanged guarded looks. "How do you know this?" demanded Delgado.

Sands threw wide his arms. "Hello! CIA? We know everything." Sands turned and swaggered to the food table, but rather than take any food, he moved around the table until he stood very close to Maria. "They'll guard it like a motherfucker during transport, but they'll be complacent once it's safely there. They don't think anyone knows about their hidey-hole."

Maria, with a glance at the others, turned and put her plate of food between herself and Sands, stepping back. "Why, thank you, Darlin," said Sands, helping himself to a pastry from her plate.

Pablo jumped to his feet. "I could go ahead and be waiting for them there."

"They'll expect an immediate reprisal from us because they think we don't know where they're going," said David. "They'll be cautious and heavily guarded. Which means slow. Plenty of time for us to get to Villahermosa."

Both men consulted Delgado. Delgado tipped his head and looked at Sands with narrowed eyes. "What do you suggest, Agente Sands?" he asked, his voice silky. "You know the consequences if you mislead me."

"When have I ever done that?" Sands replied innocently. He took Maria's plate from her, and groped with it to find a clear spot to set it on the table. "I just supply the information. You guys do what you do best. But if it were me..." Sands slid his arm around Maria's waist.

No one said anything. El planned how best to deck the asshole if he felt Maria up any further.

After a moment, in which, El reminded himself, Sands couldn't see how everyone was staring at him, Sands shrugged. "I'd have you guys go somewhere else, high-profile, as a decoy, so they don't suspect you know where they are. Send the men to do the job. Juan, maybe."

"Juan is dead," Delgado said, with a venomous look at El. "As is Antonio."

"Oh, yeah, I forgot. Well, Pablo might be up to the job. It shouldn't be very hard." Sands's hand roved upward from Maria's waist as he slid his body against hers. Was El imagining it or did the American stroke his hips against her? The girl's eyes grew wide.

Pablo growled low in his throat, whether at the insult to himself or to Maria, El wasn't sure.

The Señora interrupted, in Spanish. "The girl. She was with the American?" The conversation ceased, respectfully, but Delgado looked puzzled. "Last night," Señora insisted. "Why was the girl not with her brother?" Delgado glanced at Maria and El thought he might be going to object. "It is not to happen again. At night, she is to sleep with her brother. This is not proper."

"Sí, Mama," said Delgado.

"Maria!" cried Sands. "They're going to separate us!" He grabbed the girl around the waist and swung her, somehow missing the food table and a nearby chair. "Ma-ri-a!" he sang. "I've just met a girl named Maria!"

"Señor," breathed the girl, almost smiling. Around them the others looked on in different states of disapproval and alertness.

"And suddenly the name, will never be the same, to me!" Sands dipped the girl and kissed her deeply, stroking her side and breast.

Maria made a small sound, but did not struggle. The kiss continued, even El strangely transfixed by its intensity and inappropriateness to the situation, as Sands tasted her hungrily.

El collected himself and started forward, but was startled by a loud knocking sound. The Señora had stamped her cane on the tile floor, and the sound echoed around them. Still in her chair, she looked furious. She gestured to Delgado, who leaned over near her to hear what she had to say.

Delgado straightened. "Enough!" he yelled, gesturing at the armed guards. "Stop him!" Two of them pounced on the couple and dragged Sands off the breathless Maria. She was permitted to scamper to El's side, her cheeks flushed. "The girl," Delgado announced, "will stay with her brother. Agente Sands, you have displeased the Señora." Something about the way he said it made it sound like a judge pronouncing sentence.

With a guard holding each of Sands's upper arms, the man looked sullen, like the accused hearing his fate.

"And Mariachi, you will raid the Orozcos in Villahermosa."

Suddenly El was part of the conversation. "No," he said.

"Yes," said Delgado pleasantly. "It is the perfect job for our new muscle. Or you will spend the day with my cousin, again."

El's mouth went dry. "No," he said.

Delgado sighed dramatically. "Very well. We have time. I'll ask you again later."

El went cold. The threat beneath all the morning's pleasantries had become real. The guards came and took him back to the concrete room.

In some ways this session was worse, but in others it was not. El's already bruised and swollen body was much more sensitive to the beatings, but this time he knew what they wanted, and he knew they couldn't afford to harm him in any lasting way. He even thought they avoided adding injury to his maimed hands. They left Maria's bandages on.

He had no difficulty groaning pitifully and, to the extent that he could stomach it, cowering from their blows in order to avoid the application of the electrodes. Unfortunately, the Castilian-accented man liked using the juice. Somehow El choked down the promise of compliance that he wanted so badly to give in order to make it stop. Mercifully, his acting must have convinced them, for they didn't spend much time shocking him.

When it was finally over, they had to drag him out. He thought he could walk, but decided not to let his captors know that.

They dragged him over the cobblestones to a different location. Delgado received him while sitting in an armchair in a sumptuous library. El was dropped onto the carpet. He lay there unmoving, savoring every moment of being left alone.

Delgado said nothing at first, and El gradually became aware that someone besides the ubiquitous armed guards was also in the room. He heard sounds of movement and of furniture sliding and banging.

Curious, he opened his eyes.

Fuck, did it have to be Sands?

The agent prowled the room, feeling over every shelf, desk, table, or bookcase. When he came to a cabinet or drawer, he opened it and thoroughly explored the interior before moving on. The guards watched him with amusement.

Delgado watched El. "What is your name?" he asked.

El said nothing.

"What is his name?" Delgado asked Sands.

"Why the fuck would I know?" Sands replied. He continued his exploration, slamming things closed irritably.

"I thought the CIA knew everything."

"His name didn't matter."

"I'm not calling him El, as if he were a king."

"Call him horse's ass, then." Sands, still wearing sunglasses, turned his back to a bookcase and faced Delgado. "Come on, Julio," he wheedled, a note of desperation in his tone. "I won't do it again."

"You displeased the Señora," said Delgado in a bored voice. "You might as well sit back down. There's no perico in here."

"I heard you the first time," Sands replied, and returned to his searching.

Against the background of books and paintings, El saw for the first time how very thin the American was. He was reminded of a wild animal not adapting well to captivity, compulsively pacing its cage.

"So, 'El'" said Delgado, "are you ready to help me?"

"No," said El.

"Why not?" he asked. "You seem to have something against us dishonest businessmen. This is an opportunity to really hurt the Orozcos."

El said nothing. In truth, his resolution to not be used by a cartel was weakening. Days and weeks of torture could very well be ahead of him, all for what? In order to not attack and injure another cartel?

It was a matter of pride. These bastards wouldn't make him work for them.

His gaze moved to CIA Agent Sands. But then there was the matter of the deception. Sands had recommended the torture, but El believed him that he had done it because he knew El could deal with that better than with addiction. The American had claimed that Delgado owned him, but from the start Sands had given El a chance. Perhaps El would be foolish to throw that away over pride. He needed Delgado to believe he feared the beatings.

Or perhaps he was giving himself excuses. His foggy mind was weary of dealing with the pain from his abused body.

Sands himself remained an enigma. El had only to see his pale and pinched face as his craving led him to paw at every nook and cranny of his cage, to know there was no way Sands was faking his total dependence on the Delgados. But a man like Sands—he had to hate it, somewhere deep down. Hate it a lot.

"You know," Delgado continued, "the job will get done anyway."

Also true, El had to admit. Why was he refusing, again? He wasn't sure why Delgado had not threatened Maria or Lorenzo if El did not cooperate, but he was sure to do it soon, and then El would give in. Better if they thought they'd broken him with the torture.

Sands, in his searching, encountered one of the machine gun-toting guards. He treated the man's person as if he were a desk or a cabinet, going through his pockets. The man growled an insult and clubbed the agent beneath the chin with the stock of his weapon. Sands fell back beside a bookcase, blood flowing from his lip. He lay there, unmoving, looking exhausted.

"Agente Sands, go back to your place. There is no cocaína for you. We have already canceled our arrangements with Colombia, so until this new shipment of yours is recovered, we have only inventory on hand. And that, my friend, goes to paying customers, unless you are very, very good."

El currently considered himself something of an expert on pain, and he saw now that Sands was not only exhausted, he was in some pain that didn't come from the blow to his jaw.

The man slowly got to all fours, then stood. He made his way, fumbling with his hands ahead of him, to a chair, and collapsed into it. Gone was the confident navigating he had done along the estate's pathways. He held his head in his hands.

"The next shipments are being prepared, and will be ready by next week," said Delgado. Until then, if we do not recover what the Orozcos have taken, we can't meet our own business obligations. I'm sure you realize the seriousness of the situation."

"Call the Colombians back," muttered Sands, rubbing his forehead.

"You expect me to grovel to them!?" Delgado got to his feet and walked toward El. "Never! We will crush the Orozcos and take any other inventory they have, as well. Fuck Colombia!"

"You need a backup plan." Even in a haggard voice, Sands managed to sound like he was speaking to a small child. "Your customers can't go a week without their shit. They'll defect to more reliable sources." Then he added, in an ironic tone, and El heard the pain in it, "Trust me, I know."

"No! Your advice, my friend, is poor. Your judgment is bad. I told Marco I didn't need him anymore. I will not ask him for help, now."

"It's not help; it's business," said Sands, still resting his head in his hands. "You can pay."

"Pay! Marco will charge me everything I have if he knows our danger. He will overcharge me just out of spite! You are losing your usefulness as an advisor. No aperitif today."

This brought Sands to his feet, his fists balled. "Christ, no!" he wailed. "Julio, think for a second! It's only a backup! You won't have to pay him if you get the first shipment back! You can't... you can't. I'll be no good to you before long."

"You are already no good to me. And no nightcap. We can't afford it."

Sands sank to the carpeted floor with a sound like a sob. "Please..."

"You! Mariachi! Are you ready to cooperate or do I send you back to my cousin?"

"Don't," El said, trying not to overplay his part. "Don't send me back."

"Hah!" crowed Delgado, "This is the kind of help I can use! You will assault this cache and return my property!"

"Yes," said El, looking at Sands.

El's treatment changed almost immediately. Two men in white jackets, not conspicuously armed, came to the library and helped him to his feet. They walked him slowly to a dining area, where Asian servants, also not armed, were clearing away the remains of a meal. Solicitous without being overly friendly, the servants brought him a sumptuous dinner, much of which he didn't have the appetite to eat.

Now that he was not bracing mentally for blows, he was able to look around more and start to build a map of the estate in his mind. Though the servants and his escorts did not appear to be armed, guards were posted, sometimes obtrusively, sometimes not, at every door and in every room he was in. Delgado must be employing a small army, and they were not the fat, sleepy security for hire that Lorenzo had found. These men were trained and loyal, and very numerous. No wonder Delgado was concerned about his cash flow. Besides the damage to his business from losing customers, you can't risk not paying your army. They'll turn on you. El thought about that as he tried to eat.

When he was finished, the white-jackets led him to yet another room, a small infirmary. For a moment El flinched mentally at the reminder of some of the implements the Castilian-accented man had used on him, but this man gently removed his garments, bathed and treated his injuries, and helped him back into his clothes.

"Why do you work for Delgado?" El asked.

The man smiled tightly. "I am not to talk to you about such things. Let me see your hands."

The man rebandaged El's fingers, this time placing small caps of some material over his exposed flesh where his fingernails had been. Another anesthetic, this one with some kind of glue, held them in place. "You should be able to shoot by tomorrow," the man said with satisfaction.

"Is that when I am to go to Villahermosa?" El asked.

"I am not to speak to you about such things," the man said again. El shrugged, and obeyed the man's instructions until they were finished.

He was then led, not dragged, to his, or Sands's, room. On the way, he noted that the room was one of a half-dozen doors in a row, facing one of the inner courtyards. He wondered if Maria and Lorenzo were in another. Inside the small room, he found that a second bed had been squeezed in, opposite the first.

"Rest," his escort told him, as an armed guard took his place outside the door. "You leave tomorrow at dawn."

So El rested. Food, drink and civil treatment had revived him considerably, but he was concerned that he wouldn't be in good enough shape for whatever the morning would bring him. His worst physical problem, now, he found, was swelling. He couldn't expect to assault so much as a church service if he couldn't move a little better.

The door opened, and Maria entered, accompanied by two wary guards, and two other men carrying Styrofoam ice chests. These they set down, and everyone but Maria retreated.

El sat up, and Maria came to him, crying his name. "Is it true you are going to work for them?" she asked.

El felt his face grow hot. He thought his decision had been a good one, but it still shamed him. "I have no choice," he said, and changed the subject. "What are you doing here? I thought..."

"I am not to stay the night," she said in a rush. "But they want you in good shape. These chests have ice packs." She opened one and produced plastic cuffs with ice in them. Pleased, El took them from her and put them on, himself.

"Lorenzo has a plan," she said in a low tone.

El put a finger to her mouth. "Search the room, first," he said.

He helped her examine the bare room for anything that could be a listening device. The room held only the beds, the tiny basin table with the lamp, and the sink, so it was not difficult to be thorough. Finally satisfied, El allowed himself to sit back down on the bed and readjust the ice packs. "What is his plan?" he asked.

"Our room has molding up near the ceiling, and the room is small, like this one. Lorenzo can hold himself up there, braced against the walls. He tried it today."

El nodded, seeing the potential. "What about you?"

"I am to hide under a bed. They will see me anyway, and that is why they will enter the room. Then Lorenzo will drop on them, and get their guns." The girl's eyes were wide and frightened-looking, but excited.

"Maria, tell Lorenzo to do this tomorrow, while I am away. Then I will know that you are no longer hostages."

"What will you do?"

"If I am to be killing people tomorrow, there will be guns. I will find a small one and hide it on me. Don't worry about me. You and Lorenzo must get away."

Before Maria could answer, there were sounds at the door. The door opened, and someone shoved Sands into the room. The agent stumbled into the foot of El's bed, as the door slammed behind him.

"Shit!" he cried. "What the fuck is this?"

"It's my bed," said El. "Yours is where it usually is."

Sands took the few steps to his bed, stumbling over an ice cooler on the way. He didn't ask what it was, or explore it at all. He had a purple bruise on one cheek. Maria sat on El's bed in order to get out of his way.

"So Florence Nightingale is here again," Sands said bitterly as he lay down on his bed.

"Stay away from him, Maria; he's sick," said El. Maria nodded.

Sands tossed himself onto his side, facing them. "So, El, you decided to work for the big bad drug cartel after all."

"What did you mean," El asked, "when you said you came after me?"

Sands rolled to his feet and went to the sink. He ran the water and splashed it over his face. Then he did it again. And again.

"What did you mean by that?" El asked again.

"Just leave me alone," said Sands, gripping either side of the washbasin and rocking himself back and forth.

"No," said El. "You're going to answer my questions. We're going to be spending some time together in this room, and I don't give a fuck what you feel like; you're going to give me some information." El got to his feet, feeling much stronger.

Sands shrank away from him and fell back onto his bed. He raised a hand to his temple, wincing.

"What did you mean by that?" El demanded.

"They were watching Romero's place, that's all. Waiting for you. What the hell else do you want to know?" Sands pulled his legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.

El considered. He did have other questions. "Why do they call this 'your shipment'?"

Sands tipped his head back and banged it rhythmically against the wall. "It's genetic engineering. I gave them the recipe for a coca plant that can survive freezing temperatures. They've been growing crops in the mountains where no one will look for them. Now go away and lick your wounds and leave me alone."

His final words were probably intended to be nasty, but El heard mostly desperation in them. He sat back down to consider what he had learned. Sands, he concluded, had not told him all of it. Did the Delgado cartel really want El so badly that they had posted a watch on Lorenzo's place for months? Unlikely. Somehow they had known when El was there.

As for genetic engineering—El reserved judgment. It sounded impossible, to him, but science, particularly U.S. technology, had surprised him before.

"I forgot," Maria said softly. She took a plastic cup to the sink and filled it. Then she poured two large pills out of a pill bottle and held them out to El. "Take these. They're for swelling."

"No, no," said El. "I'm not taking anything from them."

Sands unfolded to his feet. "I will! Give them to me." He grabbed the pills from Maria's hand before she could react. He swallowed them without water in an eager gulp, then sat on the edge of his bed. Maria and El watched him, El holding his breath. After a long moment, Sands made a sound that was half laugh and half sob. "Go ahead and take them," he said. "It's not cocaine." Sands spoke with a level of grief in his voice El had usually heard reserved for the death of loved ones. Sands pulled back into a ball and began rocking on his bed. "Goddamn it!"

Maria came carefully to Sands, holding the plastic cup of water. "Señor, have some water," she said cautiously.

Sands knocked the cup from her hand, again as if he could see. "Water is not what I need," he snarled at her. Maria recoiled back to El.

"You don't need cocaine," El told him. "You only think you do."

"Like you know fuck all about it!" Sands roared. He launched himself off his bed, straight for El. El threw up his arm to block the attack, and Sands landed on both El and Maria in a tangle of punches and kicks. Maria shrieked and scrambled to the corner by the door. Sands managed, despite El's defense, to grab El by the hair and pound his head against the wall. El twisted and punched, but Sands wasn't where he had been. They rolled and flailed, and fell off the bed. Suddenly Sands was every thug who'd beaten El in the last few days. Fury filled him with the exhilaration he usually only felt in a gunfight, and he deftly trapped Sands in a headlock and punched him viciously in the kidneys. He felt Sands sag in his arms, and it was all he could do to keep from pounding the man senseless. Panting, he threw the agent to the wall opposite the door.

"Delgado," El said. "You should be angry at him, not at me."

Sands held his stomach and gasped. His sunglasses were gone again, but El was learning to look at the man despite his ghastly face. His bare agony went beyond any damage El had done him. He gasped and moaned as if unseen demons tormented him. El strode to loom over him. "Don't you want to see him dead? Why are you helping him?"

"Dead?" cried Sands, sounding on the edge of hysteria. "Dead doesn't touch it. I want to see him blind and helpless and desperate and choking on rat poison." Still gasping with pain, the agent struggled to his feet. "I want to see him stripped naked, flayed alive and rolling in his own piss." Sands's back was to the wall and his death mask of a face was half a meter from El's own. He reached out shaking hands and grabbed the front of El's shirt. "I want to see him lose everything he loves—his power, his money, his fucking family."

El raised his own hands and grasped the man's arms. "Then help me fight him. Tell me everything you know about the security here. Tell me quickly." Somehow El sensed that Sands had only a fleeting moment of clarity to work with.

"No," Sands cried.

El shook him. "Yes. How big is the estate? You can tell me this."

El thought at first that he wouldn't answer. Sands tipped his head back against the wall and rolled it back and forth. Then, "About five acres," he said.

"Security systems?" Sands was shaking in El's grasp, but he didn't try to get away.

"Trip wires on the grounds. Everywhere beyond the walkways except for the inside courtyards. There's an outer wall—ten feet high with razor wire. Motion detectors on the outside, and guards walk the perimeter. Also, there are dogs."

"Tell me their weaknesses."

Sands squirmed and panted, as if he were fighting something internally.

"I know you've learned them," El urged. "What are they?"

"The midnight to dawn shift—they like to drink and play cards on the east side," Sands spoke in a rush. "The motion detectors are infrared, dust should show the beams, and the dogs lose their sense of smell if they snuff cocaine."

Suddenly, Sands collapsed. "God!" he yelled. "I need a fix. You've gotta get me something, please!"

El let go of him, triumphant. "I knew you had thought of escape," he said.

"No! No! No escape for me. No." Sitting on the floor, Sands held out a hand. "Maria! You can bring me something. I know you can get it. Give them anything. Fuck anyone you have to. Please!"

El moved away, to take Maria's hand. The girl looked revolted. "You should leave," El told her gently.

In fact, El had an idea, since he was feeling so much better. "Where is your and Lorenzo's room?" he asked.

"I can't...no nightcap," Sands moaned. "I can't make it to coffee. I can't."

"In the same place as this one, on the other side of the courtyard," she said, glancing from El to Sands.

"Coffee," Sands breathed, like a prayer. "He said I could have coffee. Coffee, coffee, coffee."

El looked down at her shoes—ankle strap sandals. "Can you run?" Maria nodded. "Get ready, then."

El glanced once around the room, now seeing it as part of his stage of combat. He knocked on the door. "Hola! Gomez! Or Martinez, whoever's out there! It's time for the girl to go."

There was no reply.

He tried again. "The Señora didn't want her to stay the night. Or to stay with Sands. I don't want her with Sands, either."

"All right," said a voice. "Stand back from the door."

El moved to right behind the door, holding Maria behind him with one arm. As he had done before, the man entered the room gun hand first.

El slammed the door against the arm as hard as he could. The man cried out and dropped the gun, which El caught neatly. Before the man could make another sound, El threw open the door, hauled him inside by his arm, closed the door, shoved the gun against the man's chest for what silencing he could get, and shot him in the heart.

El's blood sang to him. This was the kind of planning he was made for—this was the dark talent he had discovered all those years ago in Ciudad Acuña, when he began his journey from innocent musician to legendary gunfighter. This, he could do. You shoot men and you take their guns. Simple.

Without any effort on his part, his mind gave him details. If Lorenzo's room was across the courtyard, any guard there could have seen what had just happened. He would have to die next, and quickly. Then El would free Lorenzo. Lorenzo, who could shoot a man over his shoulder without looking.

It was wonderful how adrenaline eased his hurts.

Crouched so as to be below where a shooter would expect him, he opened the door a crack, searching.

The sound Maria made would have warned him, had he been expecting attack from that direction. As it was, he thought she was reacting to the bloody death of their room guard, so he was unprepared when Sands tackled him from behind, yelling for help.

El fought the man in earnest this time—all of their lives were at stake—but Sands fought with desperate intelligence. As El tried to bring the gun to bear on the agent, Sands went for his other hand, and slammed El's fingers against the floor. Blinding pain went through El. He pulled the trigger, certain that Maria was not in range, and hoping that Sands was.

Hope died as Sands wrenched his gun hand against the wall, and took the gun from him. El lunged anyway. The man was blind; El should have a chance, even in close range.

Sands fired, point-blank, with absolute deadly intent. The only reason El lived was because a cooler had overturned and spilled ice on the floor.

El slipped and went down.

Then the room and corridor filled with armed and shouting men.

The chaos cleared, and El found himself in the outside corridor on his knees, his arms bent painfully behind him, in front of Julio Delgado. El put all his hate into the look he gave Delgado.

"I'm glad to see you are feeling better," Delgado said, no geniality in his tone, whatsoever.

"Vete a la mierda," said El.

Sands, divested of the gun, and sunglasses back in place, stood nearby, sheer need emanating from him. "Julio," he said.

"There will be punishment for this, Mariachi," Delgado said. "I promise you."

"And reward?" piped in Sands. He tried to approach Delgado, but El now saw he was being held, too. "Julio, now, please?"

"You will call me Señor Delgado!" Delgado snapped.

"Right, right. Sorry," said Sands. He shifted his weight from foot to foot like a child who badly needed to go to the bathroom.

Delgado turned back to El, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "This was to be expected, I suppose, once you were stronger. You do recover fast. You may live up to your legend yet."

"Señor Delgado," Sands begged, "I stopped him for you. I warned you. You've gotta fix me up."

"You think you are entitled to something? Gomez is dead."

"I told him about the estate security. He knows about the motion detectors, the dogs, everything. I told him how the night shift plays cards instead of walking their beat. Listen, the whole punishment/reward thing? It really requires consistent application when the desired behavior is exhibited. Please..."

"I thought I would like it when you begged, you pale-faced sack of shit. Now I only find it irritating."

Sands sagged, to where the men holding his arms found themselves holding him up. "I am what you made me," he gasped, sweat dripping from his chin.

"I made you? I remind you, you son of a whore, you helped yourself to Barillo's merchandise without invitation. Certainly without payment."

With an incoherent howl, Sands lunged at Delgado, actually breaking free of one of his captors before the group of them tackled him to the ground, not far from El. Delgado's lip curled in disgust. "Get him a bag," he instructed a man, in Spanish. "Not too much!"

Sands's response was muffled by his face being pressed to the ground with a rifle butt. "Thank you, thank you, oh God, thank you."

"And tonight," Delgado called after his departing henchman, "check on the night shift."

Delgado turned to El. "Lock him back up," he said with a glare.

In short order, El found himself alone. It felt odd, after what had just happened. Delgado had promised punishment, but had not delivered. Yet.

The room had very little space for angry pacing, so El kicked Sands's bed viciously. He went through every curse he could think of to lay on the man's head, and, because he could, he yelled them all out loud.

When the door opened again, three guards had their automatics leveled at the door. They stood well apart from each other, covering the entrance from every direction. The man opening the door shoved Sands in and stood back swiftly.

"You put him in here, and I'll kill him!" El yelled.

"Not a good idea, Pendejo," someone responded. "You killed Gomez. You make any more trouble, just remember, we're not on your side. He's worth more to us than you are. So far." They slammed and locked the door.

Sands stood just inside the door, holding a paper bag. "They're a little hard on your self-esteem around here, aren't they?" he said.

Very deliberately, El took the bag from him and threw it aside. He then grabbed Sands by the throat and upper arm and hauled him around to where he could press him up against the wall. Sands did not resist. He seemed to weigh very little.

El squeezed very hard. "Tell me why I shouldn't kill you," he snarled, and pulled Sands's head forward so he could bang it back again.

"Well," Sands coughed, and El released his grasp just enough to hear what the hijo de puta had to say.

"No, I've got nothing." Sands smiled ruefully. "You probably should."

El pulled his whole limp body forward and slammed it back again, for the satisfaction. Then he did it again.

"Except," Sands said between the blows.

"Yes?" Slam.

"You're not a murderer." Slam.

This brought a short bark of almost laughter from El. "Oh no?" he asked, and released him.

Sands caught himself, so he didn't slide to the floor. He lifted a hesitant hand to his throat. "You're one of the white hats." He coughed. "You don't kill men who are no threat to you."

"I kill men for revenge," El snarled into Sands's face.

"Yeah, you have got just a little bit of a point there, I'll grant you." The words were flippant, but his tone sounded tired. "All right." Sands took off his glasses, which made El, to his annoyance, recoil from his face. "Go ahead."

"Go ahead and kill you?" sneered El, but he was covering his discomfort. The ghastly holes in Sands's head made him seem both inhuman, and paradoxically, extremely vulnerable.

"Might as well," Sands said, as if they were discussing what to have for dinner. "It's a shame to waste this high, though. I don't suppose you'd consider waiting until the next time Delgado withholds my junk?"

El was silent for a long moment, regarding Sands. The blind man must have wondered what El was doing, but he showed no sign of anxiety. It was hard to read expression on that ruined face, but El thought he looked resigned.

El's question surprised himself. "Are you high? You don't act it."

A slight tremor went through Sands, but otherwise, nothing changed. "Are you going to kill me or not?"

"I guess not," El said, as they tossed life and death between them like a football. "Are you going to answer my question?"

Sands shrugged and sank onto his bed. He put on his dark glasses. "It could be better. They only gave me enough to keep me from screaming." He started to stretch out on the bed, and encountered the paper bag. He pulled it out from behind him and threw it, again with eerie accuracy, to El. "Here. Food. They want you healthy."

The bag smelled of beef and cooked beans, but El was more concerned about keeping an eye on his roommate than he was interested in food. The two of them had genuinely tried to kill each other not an hour ago. He hated the man with a pure passion. He could be free by now—free without having worked for a cartel. Lorenzo and Maria could be safe—no more blood of friends on his hands.

He watched Sands lie slowly onto the bed, as if he were getting into a hot bath. Once he was lying down, Sands stretched and squirmed, still in slow motion, almost sensuously. Where, before, he had looked like he desperately wanted out of his own skin, now he appeared to be luxuriating in it. He sighed small contented sounds. El knew those sounds. They were the sounds of relief from pain.

El leaned back on his own bed, wearily taking stock. He was still alive, a condition which often surprised him, considering the risks he was willing to take in a fight. Physically he was much better. Maria was all right, and was safely away from Sands. He had diminished Delgado's army by one, and he no longer had to share his cell with a man in agony. This last, he admitted to himself, was an immense relief. No matter how much he hated the man, El had never been good at ignoring another's pain. Causing it, yes: but not at ignoring it.

You're not a murderer. What a thing to say. Of course he was. Just ask his confessor.

Sands hummed a tuneless series of notes. Over and over. El needed to make him stop.

"What is that?" he asked. "What you are singing."

"Marco," said Sands, and returned to humming.

El shook his head. The man was out of it, now.

"Boy, those guys would give their eyeteeth to know where Delgado is getting his stuff," rambled Sands. "What are eyeteeth, anyway? Eyes don't have teeth. Maybe my eyes are off biting someone somewhere. I hope so." He returned to humming the tuneless tune.

"Sands."

"El."

"What will I find tomorrow in Villahermosa?"

"I hope to Christ you find my cocaine shipment. 'Cause if you don't, Delgado will be fucking stingy with his shit." He hummed some more.

Biting back impatience, El asked, "Where is this cache? How is it guarded?"

"Oh yeah, that. I don't really know, you know? It's out in the boondocks, some isolated building. You know, the kind the kids find when they're playing, and they think it would make a cool hideout, but when they get closer they see the wires and some cartel goon waves them off. So everyone local knows what it is, but no one talks about it. Just the kids warning each other to stay the hell away."

"You have seen this?"

"Hah. Very funny." Sands hummed that damned sequence of notes some more.

"Sands." El spoke like he would to recapture a child's attention. "Have you been there?"

"No way. I don't give a fuck about the Orozcos. They're small-time. Delgado's scouting the area by air today. It was all in the briefs. Guess I won't be reading any briefs anymore."

Sands almost sounded rational. El shook his head. Only a psycho like Sands would be more in his right mind when he was hopped up on dope.

And Sands obviously didn't stop thinking. "It wouldn't be hard to figure out where the crops are, once you know to look where it's cold. Just find huge acreages owned by Delgado or his friends high in the mountains somewhere," Sands was saying, in between repeats of a tune of thirteen notes that was really starting to get on El's nerves.

El opened the bag and started eating. "So you are planning the ruin of the Delgado cartel?"

"Shit, no. I plan ways to make myself valuable to them. With my help they've just about got a lock on the South, and that means most of the supply lines to Colombia. Hell, my help has given them the reputation of being real bad-asses—like they have some magic legendary gunfighter."

"That is why you came for me."

Sands didn't reply; he just hummed.

"Wouldn't you rather see them all in flames?"

"In flames, El? How poetic. You are an artist. Listen, don't you pay no mind to the crap I was spewing before. Whatever I may think of Delgado, he's my man. No matter what the fucker does to me."

El had some second thoughts about when Sands was and wasn't in his true right mind. "He's your pusher."

"I should think that's rather obvious, yes."

"You can get cocaine other places." It was a distasteful suggestion to El, but he was curious to feel the American out about his options.

Sands chuckled. "Well, no, not so much anymore, if you see what I mean. That's what a monopoly is." That was ridiculous. It was only a monopoly in the south of Mexico. There were plenty of other cocaine sources. Reading El's mind, Sands said, "I can't go that long."

"What?"

"And then there's the little issue of being blind. I would never make it out of Delgado's territory. Not before I turned into a freaking nutcase."

El thought about that.

Sands hummed.

"What the hell are you singing?" El demanded. There was something familiar about it.

"Nothing," Sands said. He stopped. Which was odd. He certainly didn't stop out of consideration for his roommate.

"Did you take cocaine willingly, like Delgado said?"

Sands snorted and blood appeared on his nose. "That cocksucker. I was dying. Getting hooked was the last of my worries. Then they fucking rescued me and continued the 'treatment.'"

"In Culiacan."

"I'm sure you remember the Day of the Dead, right? It's the last day I ever saw. You weren't a lot of help, Mr. Oh I Think I'll Save the President and be a Hero."

El had no patience for the agent's sarcasm. "Shall I list your end of the deal? You were to provide protection. El Cucuy? He sold me to Barillo. Our deal was off."

Sands made no reply to that. He rubbed his nose gingerly. El had considered saving some of the food for his fellow prisoner, but he remembered how he could be free by now, and finished it all.

The next day began as had the previous, but with a few changes. Sands was allowed his morning 'coffee,' and the two of them were escorted, not to the ballroom, but to the dining hall. Even Sands was kept under close guard, and the escorts were wary.

Sands bounced and hummed, but seemed more subdued than he had been yesterday morning. Yesterday morning seemed a long time ago.

Delgado sat at the head of the dining table. Other men also sat there, burly, competent-looking men, who eyed El suspiciously. The chair to Delgado's left was empty, and Sands strode confidently toward it. El marveled distantly, once again, at how well Sands got around, when he wasn't in withdrawal. El would even suspect that Sands was faking his blindness had he not seen the hideous empty sockets where the man's eyes should be.

El paused, watching Sands sit in the chair by Delgado as if he knew it was for him.

With one of his ironic smiles, Delgado invited El to take the empty chair next to Sands. El sat, and returned the men's stares with a sneer of his own.

"Good morning, Gentlemen," said Delgado.

The wait-staff began serving a veritable banquet of a breakfast.

"I love breakfast," Sands declared with a happy sigh.

Yeah, thought El with disgust, you love the "coffee" that comes with it.

Delgado ignored Sands. "David and Pablo have gone to the coast, pretending to watch the ports for our shipment. They will be noticed. These men," he indicated the others at the table, "will accompany you."

"I work alone," El grumbled.

"Except when you work with Romero and...what's the name of the other man? Oh, yes. Fideo Meza. The drunk."

El said nothing, sickened at the thought of involving yet another friend.

"Don't worry." Delgado smiled. "They're really there to ensure your cooperation. They'll be happy to let you have all the glory. I pray you succeed, my friend. I truly do."

"The Orozcos have had time to get the shipment to their secret location. And we have had time to scout it." Delgado nodded at a guard who stood by the wall. The man reached over and turned out the lights. A projector lit up, showing against another wall a photograph of a concrete building in dense jungle. Delgado detailed what they had been able to learn about the building's surroundings and security. El turned off his conscious mind, concentrating instead on putting away as much food as he could manage. He had long ago learned to let what he thought of, ironically, as his "talent" absorb tactical situations. He wondered about Lorenzo's plan for the day. He hoped nothing about yesterday's aborted escape attempt would change his plan, because El was counting on Lorenzo being free before he returned from Villahermosa. Free or dead, he thought with a sinking feeling. Lorenzo would be alone against an army, and burdened by Maria. Either way, he would no longer be a hostage for El.

Well, they knew from the moment they were defeated in Mexico City that their chances were not good.

El seldom prayed. Like a guilty child, he didn't want to call attention to his faults by making requests, but he thought a selfless prayer for the Romeros' safety shouldn't offend.

He looked at Sands. Despite having had no dinner, Sands ate little of his breakfast. His dark glasses seemed to regard the slide show as if he could see it. The only sign of the drug that El could see was the sheen of perspiration on the man's face and his restless fidgeting. The agent jiggled one leg where it was out of sight of everyone but El, and he tapped the fingertips of one hand in a relentless staccato on the table. El was suddenly reminded of the tuneless tune of thirteen notes and he sighed, realizing that now he wouldn't get it out of his head for who knows how long.

El resisted the urge to add a postscript to his prayer, regarding Sands. His wishes for the agent might not be viewed as in the best spirit of Christian generosity.

Delgado ended the briefing, the lights came on, and servants began clearing away the dishes. "And now," Delgado said, with a grand gesture as he stood, "let us adjourn to the courtyard." Delgado led the way out a door El had not been through. El noticed that as soon as the group of them were on the move, guards moved closer to him, watching.

As usual, no one offered Sands any help, and Sands didn't seem to need it. He did follow the wall with his fingertips, though, until it led him to the door. El guessed the agent had not been this way before.

The map of the estate that was drawing itself in El's head confirmed that there had to be one of the many internal courtyards on this side of the dining hall, but El had not seen any glimpse of it from other directions. He now saw why. Except for the door from the dining hall, and one other door, nothing opened onto this courtyard. Like leftover architectural space, it seemed to be formed by the blank back walls of other sections of the estate. No one could see in here, except through those two doors. Consequently, it was not a lovely courtyard: more like a prison exercise yard.

Its resemblance to a prison was heightened by the first sight El saw as he came through the door. A man was tied to a scaffold by his wrists, his hands above his head, his bare back to El and the others. Beyond him, grinning, stood the craggy-faced Castilian speaking man, holding, of all things, a whip. A surge of panic went through El, and he stifled a sudden urge to bolt.

He could not see the bound man's face, but he didn't need to. The man wore only red swimming trunks. "Lorenzo," El said. It was not an involuntary cry; he knew he was betraying his concern as he said it. He didn't care. He wanted his friend to know he was there, and to know that he cared what happened to him.

Lorenzo twisted in his bonds, trying to see over his shoulder.

His heart pounding, El took a place between two of his breakfast companions, gauging the locations of the armed guards and any escape routes. The results were not encouraging. He resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to endure whatever they had planned.

Sands stood not far from Delgado, his head tilted.

"So, Señor Romero," said Delgado, "no longer the wealthy playboy."

"Fuck you," said Lorenzo, and El was glad to hear no fear in his voice.

Delgado smiled. "Mariachi," he said, "your friend will receive a stripe for every time you disobey me or my men. If you betray me, he dies, very unpleasantly." The craggy-faced man with the whip grinned. "Señor Sands? Two stripes, please."

The torturer lost his grin and gave Delgado a disappointed look. He walked to directly behind Lorenzo, and held the whip out toward Sands. "Here," he said to the agent.

Sands approached the man with the whip, slowing as he neared him, and put out his own hand. The man put the whip in the agent's hand and Sands turned unerringly toward Lorenzo, giving the whip a testing flick.

El was appalled. "Wait," he was compelled to say. "I haven't disobeyed you."

Delgado turned an expression on El completely devoid of even his false geniality. In fact, the atmosphere turned so hostile El thought he could feel the chill in the air.

Oh. Yeah.

"Do it," Delgado said.

"Lo siento, Lorrie," El said, resigned.

"Don't worry about me," said Lorenzo.

Sands readied the whip, flicking forward along the ground, experimentally, judging distance. The onlookers, including the Castilian-accented torturer, stepped back, in order to not be in range of the backlash. El stood his ground. If the whip came his way he had some plans for it.

With a leisurely motion, Sands struck. Like a living thing, the whip snaked forward and tore an angry, bleeding brand down Lorenzo's back. Lorenzo yelled with pain and surprise. El was sure his friend had determined to suffer in silence, but he probably had no idea how much the ripping of his skin would hurt. El steeled himself not to flinch.

Sands struck again, the whip cracking, gashing across the first cut to form a gory X on Lorenzo's back. Again, Lorenzo cried out, twisting in his bonds.

El shut his eyes, giving himself a brief respite from reality. He opened them again when he was reminded of being blindfolded. He looked at Sands, forever in darkness. El still found the agent difficult to read, but he saw no sign that Sands enjoyed his task. He did not smile, or hum, or bounce cheerfully in his motions. He reacted like a robot, and showed no emotion. His two stripes administered, he stood still, the whip quiescent beside him.

Delgado regarded El. "I trust, Mariachi, that, like Agente Sands, you understand where your loyalties belong."

El did.

"You've already met my cousin, Tomás. I have given his fun to Sands this morning, but he will administer any further punishment. He will be very grateful if you give him an opportunity to play with his toys." Tomás, the torturer, smiled. "I, however, will not be grateful. I will be very...vengeful."

Delgado seemed to await some response from El. Tight-lipped, El nodded. Any insult from him might earn Lorenzo another lash, but he'd be damned if he'd give Delgado any more of a promise of cooperation than that.

Apparently satisfied, Delgado took out a cell phone and raised it to his ear. He removed the phone, gave it a dark look, and put it away. "Call the hangar," he ordered a nearby man. "Tell them we are ready."

The man returned through the door into the dining room. No one said anything. The only sound was the creaking of Lorenzo's bonds against the wooden scaffold as the younger mariachi squirmed from the pain of his wounds. El wished he dared say something encouraging to his friend.

Into the silence came the distant, slightly musical sound of a desk phone being dialed. Cell phones, El had observed in another lifetime, had eliminated the musical tones you could get from dialing a land-line phone.

Musical tones...

Holy shit.

"They're ready," the man reported, after a brief phone conversation inside.

Delgado had Lorenzo released and returned to his room. El tried to catch his eye as they took him away, but Lorenzo was lost in a haze of pain and only looked up to give a glare of purest hate to Sands.

Sands, of course, was oblivious to the look. He began cracking the whip around him as if he saw attackers invisible to everyone else. He seemed not to hear Tomás and the others shouting at him, as they dodged and tried to get close to him.

Delgado he heard. "Put the whip down, Señor Sands. This is your only warning."

Sands dropped the whip immediately. Again, El felt a tiny bit sorry for him.

El was ushered through a part of the estate he had not seen, along many lovely paths, until they reached a high outer wall, rimming the grounds. El made note of everything, but in a distracted sort of way, his conscious mind working on the problem of the phone number.

Was zero the highest or the lowest note on a push-button phone?

The thugs with him nodded to the two guards at the gate, and, once it was open, the group of them passed through to find two jeeps waiting just beyond. El studied the gate, the guards, and likely places for motion sensors.

Thirteen numbers. That meant it was an international call, and the first numbers would be the code for calling out of the country. That made zero the highest note and one the lowest.

A short jeep ride up the side of a plateau, and they arrived at a helopad. By the time El and six other goons were seated, facing each other in rows inside the military-style helicopter, he had worked out the phone number.

The flight to the area around Villahermosa was not long. El watched the landscape beneath him in order to get a sense of the estate's location.

As planned, the helicopter set down miles from the building, on the far side of a jungle covered ridge between them and the mountainous rise where the concrete building sat. The helicopter approached low, using the ridge as cover. After the seven men got out, the pilot left in the same direction, staying at the treetop level.

"So," El said to the chief goon, a man named Vasquez, "do I get any guns, or do I conquer the Orozcos with my hands?" He held up his bandaged fingers.

Another man produced two familiar gunbelts, and Vasquez drew out a small cell phone, showing it to El. "We have your own guns for you, Mariachi. I will stay behind to report back on your success. If you make a misstep, and your bullets go astray, your friend will suffer for it. If you betray us, or if I do not call by sundown, your friends die. Understand?"

"I understand," El snapped. He reached for his guns and enjoyed the hesitation he saw in the other men before they handed them to him. He checked them thoroughly, then strapped them on, took a machete and a canteen from the other equipment the men had brought, and, without a word, turned in the direction of the building and set off into the jungle.

He moved easily through the terrain, slicing expertly with the machete. He had grown up in a village surrounded by similar dense jungle, and he knew its ways. He wondered how serious the consequences would be of losing the five thugs who tried to follow him, so long as he still got the mission done. He decided not to worry about whether they kept up or not.

It was a long, hot hike. As he crested the ridge, he paused, looking for a window through the foliage to the rise beyond. His practiced eye found the piece of jungle that had been kept clear by man. The Orozcos had beat back the jungle around their cache—too risky to allow that much cover near their door. El shook his head. They had given up the main advantage they had in this terrain—invisibility. Left to its own, this jungle could completely bury a small structure within ten years.

The fatter of his followers came panting at his back. "Wait," the man gasped.

"You keep up," said El, and he started down the ridge. He saw nothing further of the Delgado thugs as he began the climb up the rise.

Halfway to where he estimated the building should be, he encountered a strange find. In a land where vegetation ruled all, the top half of a bare basalt boulder poked up from the jungle floor. The dome of the four-meter wide rock had been carved in patterns too regular to attribute to nature. El even recognized the helmet-shaped pattern and he was startled into stillness, his mission momentarily forgotten.

He was looking at the top of an Olmec head. A few machete swipes at plants at the downhill base of the dome revealed that once this half-buried boulder had borne the carved features of one of those mysterious, enigmatic faces from an ancient time. Something or someone had long ago damaged this one, de-facing the rock into anonymity. Only the shape of the headgear remained, but once this enormous face had looked out over the ravine he had just crossed, watching.

Despite his closeness to his goal, El felt quite confident that he still could not be seen by any guards the Orozcos had. He patted the ancient guardian in greeting, sat on top of it, and took some deep swigs from his canteen, thinking.

He now remembered an intriguing item in the slide show Delgado had shown him. The landmark Sands had given them to find this concrete bunker in the jungle was a nearby pile of ruins, visible from the air. Too remote, small, and dilapidated to be of interest to any but the most pedantic of archaeologists, the rubble of bygone ages had been left unclaimed by modern curiosity-seekers. Why then was it visible? The Orozcos must have been clearing the jungle around it, as well.

Suggestive it might be, but El didn't know of what. Additional guards, perhaps. He wished for a moment that he had the devious kind of mind that could plot and manipulate, and therefore unravel other people's deceptions. A mind like...well, like Sands's.

Oh well. He did well enough once the bullets started flying. He always had.

He finished his water at leisure, waiting for his watchdogs. Eventually they arrived, following his trail of sliced foliage.

"I told you to wait," said one red-faced man.

"I'm waiting," El replied.

"That will cost your friend another stripe," he said.

El said nothing.

The others grouped nervously around the rock, none of them noticing what it was. They drank, swatted mosquitoes, and checked and re-checked their weapons. El enjoyed sitting calmly above them, he and the Olmec head, coolly superior.

"Well, get on with it, great mariachi," the man finally said.

El was ready, the old familiar exhilaration stirring within him. He slid off the domed statue.

"What will you do?" the Fat Man asked.

El shrugged. "Sneak in close and shoot anyone I can see."

"They'll hide inside."

"We'll go in after them. You brought explosives."

"That could destroy the cocaine."

"Then you'll have to be careful, won't you." With that, El turned and left them. This really should be simple.

He crept in the direction of the building, making sure to move the jungle around him as little as possible. Glimpses of grey concrete ahead and above him kept him on track.

His senses hyperalert, he spotted what anyone else would have missed. A trip wire. Cautious, he followed it to where it triggered the detonator on a primitive dynamite pack. El shook his head in amazement. The eternal damp of the jungle made it anyone's guess if the thing would even work. What's more, he wondered how often the wildlife or the wind set it off. He remembered what Sands had said about the kind of place the kids find while playing, and his jaw tightened. The impassable jungle made the location remote, but, in terms of simple distance, the cache was not that far from the city. Obviously these were people who didn't care if they blew an innocent to pieces.

He decided he would allow himself to enjoy killing them.

Too bad he had no way to warn his watchdogs about the trip wires. Shame, really.

Rather than being slowed by his find, El moved more quickly toward the bunker, avoiding putting his feet anywhere he couldn't see completely. He needed to be in position when the first explosion came.

He reached the edge of the cleared area, and saw the building: featureless except for small slits like archers' niches in forts, so the defenders could shoot without exposing themselves. The door was made of heavy steel set in the reinforced concrete walls. It stood partially open. In the cleared area in front of the door, someone had built thick barricades of sandbags for cover. Interesting. Bullets hitting sand made no shrapnel, unlike bullets hitting anything more substantial.

Still, El was not impressed. Heavy enough firepower could shoot through the sandbags, automatic fire or even shotgun blasts could shred the bags, and the barricades were only as high as a man's shoulder. Apparently the Orozcos had never climbed trees when they were children.

El selected his tree and scaled it less agilely than he might have on another day, alert for further traps. Then he waited.

It seemed a long wait, but El was sure that even if his watchdogs didn't get curious enough to come in closer, they'd have to come eventually, to determine if he had cut out on them or not. There was something truly diabolical about waiting calmly for someone to die a gruesome death, and El made a mental note to bring it up to his confessor if he got the chance.

An explosion finally rocked the area, almost directly opposite El's position to one side of the door. A man screamed with agony. Perfect. El had begun to wonder if the dynamite was all too damp.

Two men burst through the door and threw themselves behind the barricades, facing away from El. They carried not only automatics, but larger weapons El couldn't identify. One of them positioned the barrel of this larger gun on top of a barricade.

El shot each of them in the head or chest.

Time to move. There would be more shooters inside. El leaped to the ground, just as a very high caliber rifle shot exploded the tree trunk where he had been. Someone inside was cool-headed and a good shot. Good to know.

He moved swiftly around the perimeter of the building's clearing, away from the explosion, toward the back.

A third man rolled out the door, and positioned himself behind the barricade on El's side of the clearing. The man snatched one of the large weapons from one of the dead men, and positioned it on top of the barricade, pointed at El's previous position. Now at ground level, El had no shot at him. El took cover and waited to see what the immense barrel would shoot.

Flames.

The weapon shot a stream of some kind of fuel, ignited. It might have been more effective had the vegetation not been wet. Or had it actually been aimed at where El was.

Under cover of the mighty distraction of the flamethrower, El broke cover and raced, head low, to just on the other side of the barricade from the man. He moved to below where the flames had been, popped up over the wall of sandbags, and fired.

Blood covered him. He had shot the man in the throat. Very messy.

He returned to the cover of the jungle and continued his maneuvering around to the back of the bunker, stepping over more trip wires as he went. The back of the building had no openings at all, he found. The builders had only allowed assault from the front. Of course, that meant the back of the building was blind.

El adjusted his spurs, created his grappling hook, and scaled the back of the bunker. He ran across the roof as quietly as he could to the front and lay down on his stomach.

This next part would rely heavily on his injured hands, so El took a moment to steel himself for the pain. He changed guns, setting this new one on semi-automatic. Then he slid over the side of the roof, hanging by one hand, and fired into one of the window slits. He shot in every direction he could reach by twisting his wrist. The hand supporting him screamed its objections, and his firing hand was hard pressed to hold position against the bursts from the gun.

In pain, El found he wasn't strong enough to pull himself back up to the roof. He was forced to drop down among the bodies behind the barricades. He'd be a sitting duck for anyone inside as soon as they were brave enough to approach the window slit again. He got to his feet, appropriated three guns from the dead guards and slid right in front of the locked door, pressed against it. The depth and narrowness of the "windows" ensured no one inside could see far enough to the side to see the door.

He caught his breath and nursed his throbbing hands, waiting for someone to get curious and open the door.

A long time passed.

An even longer time passed.

El usually had no trouble using patience as a tactic, but he was hot and sticky with blood. He was surprised that the Delgado thugs had not appeared, but then realized they were probably frozen in fear of the trip wires.

Finally, bored, El slid alongside the building, away from the firing slits, and around a corner. He then re-entered the jungle, cautious, and went looking for his watchdogs. Someone whistled, and El followed the sound. He found Fat Man.

"Those motherfuckers!" the man exclaimed. "They've rigged explosives all over the god-damned jungle! One of them killed Dominguez!"

"So sorry to hear that," El said, dryly.

"You...you knew. You're walking around here like it's nothing. This is your fault!"

"Balls," El said. "I'm just not afraid to die. If you want your cocaine, you're going to have to blow up the door."

He watched as Fat Man struggled with his fury and fear and his desire to place blame for his compatriot's grisly death. El remembered there had been screaming after the explosion, and wondered for a moment how long it had taken Dominguez to die.

"They've turtled into their building," El reminded him, "and probably called for help. We don't have a lot of time."

Actually El had only just thought of that. Damn. They were only a few minutes by air from Villahermosa.

"I'm not touching this shit," declared Fat Man. He unslung a backpack from his shoulders and shoved it at El. "You blow the door."

"Work, work, work," said El, accepting the backpack. El was enjoying himself. He was good at this, and after the pain and frustration of the last few days it felt good to be able to move and to kill bad people.

Explosives, admittedly, were not his area, but he had had enough experience with them to do.

He returned to the door the way he'd come, staying in the cover of the jungle, watching for the trip wires. In the backpack he found cylinders of plastic explosive and detonators. He knew how to apply them, but he didn't know how much. With a grim smile he put all of it around the door. What did he care if the explosion buried the stuff under concrete rubble? He took the detonator with him around the side of the building and back into the jungle. He hit it.

A second explosion boomed across the jungle, much louder than the dynamite. A plume of grey smoke rose gracefully above the bunker. As it cleared, El saw, to his dismay, no change on the front of the building. Then, movement. He gripped his guns.

The thick steel door, warped and deprived of its support, toppled slowly forward, thudding onto the ground. Damaged concrete rimming the hole it left behind, crumbled and fell.

The explosive had been exactly enough. El was almost disappointed.

He trotted into the clearing, head down, to position himself on the outside of the sandbag barricade. He fired a burst of automatic fire into the doorway, leaped the barricade, and rolled inside, still firing forward. He ended up squatting, just inside the door, a gun in each hand.

A body lay in a pool of blood near one of the window slits. The room held a card table with cards, five folding chairs, three plastic coolers and three camping lamps. El's bullets had made a mess of the table and chairs, and water streamed from holes in one of the coolers. In the corner were rifles and ammunition. There was no one else and no other rooms.

El was not surprised. He'd noticed that the defenders in the bunker had never fired out into the jungle at random after his assault from the roof. He'd guessed he'd killed them all.

But one thing was missing. El kicked the lids off of the coolers. Inside were ice, beer and water. There was no cocaine. Anywhere.

Not his problem. He had plenty of guns, what he needed was a phone. He knelt beside the dead man and searched him. A thrill of excitement went through him as he found the phone on the man's belt.

He glanced out the tiny window. No sign yet of his keepers.

He opened the phone. Yes, it had a signal. El took a steadying breath and carefully reviewed the notes Sands had been singing as well as his own translation into the numbers. He dialed.

"Bueno," a man answered.

"Marco," El said.

"Who is this?" The man spoke Colombian-accented Spanish. Sands had said the number belonged to Marco, Delgado's old cocaine supplier, but El had half expected that he was calling the CIA. That seemed less likely, now.

"Information."

A pause. "One moment."

The voice returned. "Who are you with?"

El hesitated. "Sands," he said, his heart pounding.

"I don't know any Sands."

"Delgado is growing a new crop. The plants can live through freezing temperatures."

"Where?"

"I don't know. But you can find it. Look for his property too high in the mountains for ordinary coca to grow."

Another pause. "What's in this for you?"

"Revenge."

El glimpsed movement outside. He closed the phone and replaced it on the dead man's belt.

Fat Man and the three remaining Delgado men must have screwed up their courage to move out of the jungle. There wasn't much risk that the Orozcos had booby trapped their own fortifications at the front door.

"Mariachi!" Fat Man called.

"Come on in," El replied.

The others filled the room. Astute as ever, Fat Man asked, "Where's the stuff?"

El shrugged. "You tell me."

The men dumped the coolers and threw around the chairs and table with frustrated cries. El turned his back on them, thinking. Four men wouldn't defend to the death an empty building. Hadn't Sands said the cache was in a basement? But the floor here was dirt.

El kicked at the dirt. He moved to another place and kicked at the dirt. Two of the men noticed what he was doing, and imitated him. One of them cried out.

In a corner they had found concrete where there should have been dirt. Clearing it further, they found it was a door. In seconds they had it open. El stood back. Only four Orozco thugs were dead, and there were five chairs. Also, no one had brushed the dirt back over the door to hide it. The last man through that door had left no one behind to cover his trail. No one alive.

The door opened without incident. The men peered into it. From where El stood, he could only see the top of a wooden ladder leading into darkness. The men grabbed one of the lanterns, lit it, and lowered it into the hole.

"It's not a basement," someone said. "It's a tunnel."

Puzzle pieces clicked into place for El.

"You. Mariachi," said Fat Man, "you go in first."

"No," said El. "You stay here and make sure no one comes out of it. I know where it ends. I'm going there."

Angry but practical, Fat Man asked, "Where?"

"The ruins," El said, reloading his guns from the ammo in the corner. "They had tunnels so the priests could put on a good show."

As El headed out the door, he heard Fat Man ordering two of the watchdogs to stay behind and one to help him follow El.

El hadn't seen the ruins, except in the slide show, and those pictures had been taken from the air. All he could do was to set off in the correct direction, machete in hand. Behind him, Fat Man panted and talked on his phone, updating Vasquez.

Feeling strangely reckless, El didn't worry overmuch about trip wires and other traps. Moving fast was one way to leave Fatso behind. Besides, in seeking the path of least resistance he had fallen into what was probably the route used by the Orozcos themselves to move from the building to the ruins.

Sensing a thinning of the vegetation ahead of him, he slowed. He peered through the curtain of green at a small mound of yellow-white bricks, tumbled and weed-invested, with nothing to recommend it in terms of carvings or interesting inscriptions. The remains of a low wall banded the base of the mound, intact for only three or four meters. Other than that and the regular shape of the bricks, it could almost be a natural rock fill.

Even his brief sprint had left the Delgado watchdogs behind. El broke cover cautiously, bent down. When nothing happened, he crept forward as quietly as he could.

Not quietly enough, apparently. A burst of semi-automatic fire from somewhere above him parted his hair, ripped his jacket, and sent him face down, painfully, among the rocks. With little cover it was vital that he return fire, and he did, reflexively, but he couldn't afford to let this become a siege. He set both his guns on fully automatic, and rushed the top of the mound behind a hailstorm of shots, arriving with the clip of one gun completely exhausted. There was no one in sight. El whirled, searching the edges of the small clearing, but still saw no one.

A stinging feeling in his shoulder grew to the pain a full-blown wound, but El had had enough experience with bullet wounds before to know nothing had entered his arm, only creased it. He'd check the damage later.

He threw aside the empty gun and began a feverish search of the top of the rubble. He had just located the hole, somewhat disguised by a clumsy application of the ancient bricks, when the Delgado men joined him.

"In there?" Fat Man asked.

"After you," El said with an inviting motion of his uninjured arm.

"Get in the hole, Chingado," sneered the man.

El shrugged, suppressing a wince at the pain in his shoulder. He had no objection to finishing this fight.

Except that someone down there was expecting him. Too bad he didn't have a grenade.

The worst part, he decided, would be the initial drop into the unknown. Despite himself, his skin crawled at the anticipation of bullet wounds. Shrugging, this time mentally, he sent a small prayer to Carolina, and jumped into the hole.

The hole sloped almost immediately, and El let the slant of the earth slide him onto his back. He fired, on principal, into the darkness, and could tell by the sounds of the slugs which direction was open. Toward the bunker, of course. At the bottom of the slope, only about two meters below the opening, he rolled to the side and pressed against the stone and earth wall, so as not to be where a shooter would expect him or where his shots had just come from.

He waited in the silence, for his eyes to adjust. Or for someone to shoot him.

After a moment he found himself, yet again, to be alive, and he could see in the gloom. He took a minute to muffle all his chains with the Velcro straps Carolina had made for him. The tunnel was high enough for a man to walk bent over, so El started forward, cautious. A half dozen steps brought him to where the tunnel was mostly blocked by piles of what looked like yellow boxes. El crouched low, thinking his shooter might be on the other side.

They were not boxes. They were packing-box sized, plastic-wrapped blocks made up of single kilo "bricks" of cocaine powder, stacked neatly on wooden industrial pallets. There were things El didn't know about cocaine, but he did know the street value of a single kilo—around 120,000 pesos. He was leaning against an unimaginable fortune and the ruin of countless human souls.

But it might have other uses. El knew his shooter, or possibly, shooters, were in this tunnel somewhere, and they knew he was here, but he decided to take the time to invest against an uncertain future. He used one of his razor sharp spurs to slice the plastic sheet wrapping, and removed one kilo brick. He opened it and poured the yellow-white powder into his boots, surrounding his ankles with the stuff. The powder poured well enough, but a hazy residue wafted upward in the gloom as he poured, and El had to struggle not to sneeze. He snorted out, hoping not to absorb any of the stuff into his own bloodstream.

He thought of Sands, hooked against his will, his brilliant but sociopathic mind enslaved to the provider of the drug, but still able, perhaps on an almost subconscious level, to plot his enemy's downfall. Whether Sands had memorized the sound of Marco's phone number for his own use or for El's, he had certainly not done it to serve Delgado in any way. Agent Sands had many levels, El realized. One level was unquestionably loyal to Delgado, the source of the drug he craved, but another level acted reflexively to manipulate, betray, and destroy. El felt an odd pang of regret that, if his plan for the day worked out, Sands would be left behind, in his bar-less prison he was powerless to leave.

But, back to business. Should he go around the pallets or climb over them? More surprise in climbing over them. In fact, if he were the other man or men in this tunnel, considering how long El had crouched here in silence, he would already be crawling over the...

El looked up, just in time to see and shoot the man above him. The body tumbled headfirst to the ground, blood spraying the cocaine.

With a bound, El was on top of the priceless packs of powder, crawling forward, swiftly. To his right he saw now a second tunnel, intersecting this first one and vanishing into darkness. That's where he would be, if he were a defender here. He set one gun on automatic and fired into the tunnel. He heard something the size of a body hit the ground.

His instincts told him there was no one else. Already he had killed one man more than there were chairs in the concrete building. Still, he was cautious as he descended the pedestal of kilo bricks and entered the side tunnel. He found the second tunnel man easily. It hadn't been a clean kill and the man was wheezing out his final breaths. El found his head in the dark, whispered a benediction, more, admittedly, for his own forgiveness than for the other man's, and shot a single shot into his skull. He then moved uneasily down the tunnel, reminded once again of being blindfolded.

The tunnel ended before long, somewhat to El's surprise. He had expected another exit, but found no sign of one. However, while searching, he tripped over what had to be a cache of weapons. Well, well. His groping hand encountered a flashlight, and, in its beam he confirmed that the Orozcos had stored a small arsenal in this tunnel. How helpful.

"Mariachi!" a voice called from a distance. "Are they all dead?"

"Sí!" he answered back, cheerfully.

"Come out, then!" The voice belonged to Vasquez, not to the Fat Man.

So El's enemies were now in two places, not in three. If they came in the tunnel, from either direction, he would shoot them. He had no food or water, but the Delgados couldn't afford a siege; the Orozcos could arrive at any moment to defend their property. El had probably already used all of their explosives, besides, explosions risked burying or irrevocably scattering the merchandise. No, El fervently hoped Lorenzo's plan had worked, because he liked his position here.

"You come in!" he invited pleasantly, moving to the intersection of the two tunnels. "There's enough cocaine for everyone!"

He smiled at the pause his announcement engendered.

"Come out, now," said Vasquez. "I'm ordering you."

"What's the matter, don't you trust me?" This close to freedom, El felt light-headed.

"Mariachi," said Vasquez in an ominous tone, "you know the rules. If you disobey me your friend suffers. If you betray us, he dies."

Was it because of the Señora, El wondered, that they made no threats against Maria? Well, the threat to her was implicit, he reasoned. He prayed they were both safe.

"You don't have my friend."

"Idiot! You saw him!"

"I don't know that you have him now."

"Que..." Vasquez made a strangled sound and then El heard distant angry voices, but couldn't make out what they said.

El calmly checked, loaded, and arranged for ease of use, at least a dozen guns from the Orozcos' cache while the Delgados debated what to do. He was in very good spirits and his injured shoulder didn't hurt at all.

"Mariachi!" Vasquez called. "I'm getting your friend on the phone. Then you'll know we still have your cojones!"

El nodded. "Go ahead!" he called. One hitch in the timing of Lorenzo's plan was that there was no way of knowing when someone would come into his room for something. If Lorenzo had not already ambushed some messengers, this would finally send some in to get him. Good luck, my friend.

El readied more guns.

"Mariachi!" Vasquez called again, and El's heart sank. He could hear the smirk in the man's voice. The ancient masonry, though in disrepair, focused sound down the hollows of the tunnels. A cell phone on high volume tinkled.

"It didn't work, Amigo," he plainly heard Lorenzo's voice. "The asshole with the whip is right here, ready to kill me."

"Lorrie," El called, in despair.

"You got that, Mariachi?" Vasquez called. "Get your ass out here!"

"Amigo," called Lorenzo's tinny voice. "They knew. Somebody told them..."

He was cut off by the click of the cell phone snapping shut.

---

Still numb with disappointment, El watched the ruins drop away beneath him as the helicopter lifted and banked, the chopper more heavily laden than before. As they crested the rise, heading toward the city, someone from the ground shot at them, the flash of the weapon sparking beneath the trees. The Orozcos, El guessed, were approaching over land. Too late.

He dreaded what was to come, back at the estate. Delgado could even afford to kill Lorenzo, since he had a second hostage to hold over El. Surely Lorenzo's own value as a gunman would prevent that!

They had searched him and found the two weapons he had hidden about his person. His boots they had only squeezed, feeling for irregularities. Cocaine powder must have felt regular around his ankles, for they hadn't removed his boots. So he had a kilo of cocaine and no guns.

His hands and fingertips throbbed, and his bleeding shoulder was now on fire. He hardly cared. Depression, like a familiar blanket, had settled over him. For a fleeting moment, he considered trying some of the powder in his boots, as a pick-me-up. What was he thinking? He knew cocaine could cause cravings for more almost from its first use. Had he inhaled some in the tunnel after all? No, no, no.

He set aside thoughts of cocaine, but he couldn't avoid thinking very dark thoughts about Sands. The agent had blown yet another escape plan.

It wasn't until they were circling above the estate, preparing to settle onto the helopad that El remembered. Sands hadn't heard about Lorenzo's plan. He hadn't been in the room.

---

Delgado was in very good spirits over the recovery of his shipment. He was all smiles as he received Vasquez's report, even when he heard of Dominguez's death. El and the other men stood before him in a beautiful interior courtyard where Delgado was seated in comfortable lawn furniture. On the table before him was a bottle of port and many crystal glasses.

"We must celebrate, Gentlemen!" he declared, pouring the port. "And we will drink to Dominguez, who gave his life so that we may all be rich."

Vasquez and the other men, still tired and hot from the day's labors, relaxed and accepted their glasses. Delgado held out the last glass to El, still smiling. "You must drink too, Mariachi. Vasquez gives other men only one word of praise for every three they deserve. So I know how much I owe to you today."

El was parched, weary, and depressed. He wanted the glass. "I only drink with friends," he said.

"Ah," replied Delgado, with a glint of the dangerous in his eye. He poured El's glass of what was surely expensive liquor onto the ground, ritually, then raised his toast. The others all toasted and drank.

El waited.

"You may all go," Delgado said, staring at El. "You did well and will all receive bonuses."

El did not move; he knew it wasn't meant for him.

Some smirking, the other men put down their glasses and left for wherever they were housed. Vasquez stayed.

"You disobeyed," Delgado said, less pleasantly, "and you tried to betray me."

"Are you surprised?" El asked.

Delgado smiled at that, and El thought it was a genuine smile.

"No. But, as Agent Sands tells me, punishment and reward requires consistency. Follow me."

His heart sinking, accompanied by Vasquez and the ever-present guards, El followed Delgado into the hidden courtyard. Lorenzo was already strung up, and the punishment had already been administered. Lorenzo was conscious, gasping. His back was torn and bleeding.

"You fucking bastard," El said, rushing to Lorenzo's side.

"What? You mention my mother?" Delgado asked genially. "Have a care, 'El.'"

El climbed the scaffolding and began working feverishly to loosen the ropes holding his friend's wrists. Lorenzo's hands were blue, and sweat covered his face. How long had he been here?

"He received one stripe for your refusal to wait for my men," Delgado continued calmly, "and six for your attempt to betray me. Vasquez wants you punished for Dominguez's death, but I don't agree with him that you are responsible for another man's misstep. You see, I can be quite reasonable."

"Here, Lorrie," El said, supporting the other man as his arms came down painfully, and he sank to his knees.

"Don't...worry...about me," Lorenzo said between gritted teeth. He opened his eyes and looked right at El. "Kick their ass."

El tightened his lips together. He was grateful for the sacrifice Lorenzo was willing to make, but he couldn't bear to accept it.

"They say Our Lord took 39 lashes and still lived," Delgado mused. "But after seeing my cousin's handiwork with only nine, I wonder if scripture might have exaggerated."

Indeed, Lorenzo's back looked like ground hamburger. "He needs treatment," El said.

"Then I expect you to be very well behaved from now on."

El clenched his jaw at hearing Delgado speak to him as he did to Sands, but he nodded.

"Fetch the medicos," Delgado ordered a man, regarding El with satisfaction.

"Sands did not do this?" El asked, not sure whether he asked Delgado or Lorenzo.

"He would have if I had asked him to," Delgado replied. "But thank you for reminding me of our little laboratory rat. Come with me."

"I'm staying with Romero," El said.

Delgado shook his head in bemusement. "You see, already you defy me. Do I really have to flog him some more?"

The white-coated men entered just then, carrying medical supplies. Reluctantly El relinquished Lorenzo to them and stood.

"Follow me," Delgado ordered, his eyes glittering.

El followed.

Delgado seemed to be leading him toward the ballroom, but before they reached it, they heard shouting ahead. Delgado veered toward the sound, calling the guards forward. Vasquez stayed close behind Delgado, leaving El alone at the back of the pack. He started calculating his chances of falling behind and escaping in whatever chaos was ahead of them.

Vasquez, however, kept a suspicious eye on him, and a handgun in his hand.

Men were still shouting, and leaping through the gardens. A shot was fired, but El thought it had been fired as a warning, or by accident. Considering how many firearms were around this place, there would have been a firefight going on had the guards felt they needed to shoot someone.

"I have him! Help me!" someone yelled. The running men began to converge in the bushes.

"Let go!" yelled a familiar, cranky voice, in English. "Get off me! Let me go, God damn it!"

Struggles and yells continued as Delgado's group neared. A pile of men, four or five, fought to stay on top of Sands, who was face down in the dirt and fighting as if his life depended on it. Impossibly, the agent could actually throw some of them from him in a Herculean display of strength and scrabble a small distance before his attackers had him again. Even pinned, he fought and screamed such that El wondered that his bones did not break.

Delgado strode into the melee. "Agent Sands!" he commanded. "Stop this immediately!"

It made no difference. Sands's screaming took on a hysterical note.

"Señor!" gasped one of the thugs. "I swear we did nothing to him. He went loco and bolted."

"Did you give him the stuff?" Delgado asked.

"Yes!"

"Get the doctor here, now!" Delgado ordered. There was no one free to obey his order, except Vasquez and El. All the other men were holding any part of Sands they could grasp, pinning him in the dirt, and the agent still struggled so successfully that no one dared let go.

With a glance around, Vasquez left.

"Mariachi! Help them," Delgado said.

With visions of Lorenzo's back still fresh in his memory, El reluctantly obeyed. He found a place holding one of Sands's legs, beside three other men.

Even Sands's English grew incoherent, to El's hearing, and the man's mouth was half in the dirt. But the tone was clear to El. Sands was not merely angry, he was terrified.

The young man who had coolly treated El's own injuries hurried in, accompanied by another man in a white coat, one of the men whom El had just left with Lorenzo. The doctor had a ready hypodermic in his hand and he shouldered into the crowd.

"Hold him," he said, which earned him some exasperated looks from the guards who had been struggling to do just that for the last five minutes. The doctor found his target and injected his patient.

Sands howled, "What are you doing to me?!" and then slowly went limp.

Having no stake in whether Sands was faking or not, El released him immediately. He disliked being used to subdue a fellow prisoner, even Sands. The other guards were more cautious, but slowly they came off of him, wiping dirt and sweat from their clothes and faces. Vasquez returned, bringing a pair of handcuffs. He cuffed Sands's hands behind his back and rolled the agent onto his back. Sands's sunglasses were gone, and his red eye sockets looked up into a leafy bush. Dirt plastered one side of his bruised face, and was probably in one empty socket, too.

"You may return to your posts," Delgado said to the guards, without taking his frowning gaze from Sands. To the doctor, he said, "We tested the new powder on him. I must know; did the cocaine cause this? Is the merchandise defective?"

The doctor knelt down beside Sands and examined him with a stethoscope and with his hands.

"We should test the powder in the lab," the doctor finally answered, "but I don't think it is necessarily defective. This was bound to happen. Sands has been a heavy user for some time. He should begin to experience paranoia, possibly extreme paranoia and delusions. This man may burn out on you before long, Señor."

"I was okay," Sands spoke in a slurred voice. Everyone looked at him, startled. "Until someone dropped that house on my sister."

"I gave him enough tranquilizer to knock out a cow," the doctor protested.

El suppressed a grin.

"The flying cow," Sands muttered. "The last time someone stuck me with a needle. I really hate that."

"So," Delgado said, straightening, "we may have given him very pure stuff. He got too much?"

"It's possible. I'd give him smaller doses in the future, to be safe. And watch him. He may grow irrational."

How could you tell? El wondered, but he regarded the American with a sense of apprehension that felt strangely like worry. Delgado wouldn't bother with Sands if he thought the agent was no longer a dependable source of information and scheming. One way or the other, Sands was running out of time.

---

El lay on his bed in the dark, thinking. He didn't like where his thoughts were taking him. He hadn't removed his boots—if he did, he'd have to dump the cocaine in order to get them back on. Sands had not returned to the room. And, as Delgado had ordered El back to his prison, he'd called him by his real name. His full name, just to show he knew it.

The door opened, and Maria, covered by many machine guns, came in with her first aid kit. When the door closed and locked, the room was in darkness again.

"Why is the light out?" she asked.

"Turn it on, if you like," El said.

Maria moved to the small stand and switched on the light.

El sat up.

Maria sat opposite him, on Sands's bed. "Are you all right?" she asked, her eyes wide and worried. "What happened today?"

"I got their cocaine back." He studied her for a moment before he went on. "And I had time to use one man's cell phone."

"You did? Who did you call?"

El looked away from her excited young face. "The CIA," he said, his mouth dry. "Sands gave me a number for them. They are coming to rescue him."

"That's wonderful! Do you know when?"

"No, but sometime. You must have hope. Now you tell me." He dragged his gaze back to her. "What happened when Lorenzo tried to escape today?"

"He was hurt too badly. He wasn't strong enough to hold himself above the door very long, and they heard him and turned and saw him."

It sounded plausible. Maybe he was mistaken. "Lorenzo said someone told them what he was going to do," he told her.

"I don't understand. How would he know that?"

El shrugged. "By the way they acted when they came in, or by something they said."

"Well, maybe he didn't want to admit how he failed. He made it someone else's fault."

El felt faintly sick. "No, Maria, he wouldn't do that." El stretched a cramp out of his leg. "Maria, why are you here?"

"What do you mean? To help you, like before."

"Lorenzo needs your care, not me. Are you really a nursing student?"

"Yes, of course." She looked bewildered.

"Then why weren't you in school?"

"What?"

"Why were you at Lorenzo's in the middle of the day in the middle of the week?"

Tears came to the girl's eyes. "Why are you asking me these things?"

Indeed, El felt like a colossal heel. But his instincts rarely failed him, and he didn't think they had now. "Maria, this room is not bugged. I searched."

"I don't understand what you're talking about."

"So I don't believe Lorenzo's room is bugged. If Delgado were going to bug only one room, it would be this one."

"What is it you are saying?"

"The Delgados didn't have Lorenzo's house watched for months just to catch me. Someone called them. Someone who was always there. When the gunmen took you hostage, they knew you were his sister. They knew you. Maria, you told them of Lorenzo's escape plan. You've been working with them from the start."

The tears in the girl's eyes spilled over. "How can you say that? How can you even think such a thing?"

El sighed and leaned back against the wall. "They have medicos. But they sent you to our rooms to spy on us. Did the Señora know, or not?"

Still crying, Maria stumbled to the door, and pounded against it with the heel of her palm. "Let me out! Take me back. He doesn't want my help." The door opened, all too readily.

"And you told them my name!" he called after her, though they could have tortured that information from Lorenzo. But he didn't think they had. He was alone again.

Not nursing school, he thought, acting school. She was good. He wondered if she had betrayed her brother for money or for love. Her plain face would not win her many suitors.

El did not feel bad about the confrontation. He preferred accusations to secrets. It had been a trying day, and he slept well.

Until some time in the middle of the night when the door opened and light streamed in, blinding him. He expected Sands to enter, but instead, the guards rousted him up and escorted him out.

The estate was dark, except for the bright corridor lights. El saw that, although there might be patrols outside the wall, as Sands had described, few night guards stood duty inside the estate. Even the guards with him had an unkempt look, as if they had been awakened, too.

A light breeze brought the scent of jasmine, and a night bird twittered.

El's instincts awoke. Something was up.

Across the courtyard, another cluster of activity bustled at Lorenzo's door. El saw Lorenzo led out of his door and turned in the same direction as El's group was heading.

They were both taken to the glassed-in ballroom. The chandeliers were dark, and much of what El thought of as "the throne room" was in shadow. At the far end, near the "throne," floor and desk lamps threw eerie shapes, glinting off the glass and reflecting over and over into infinity. At night, the glass walls, rather than allowing lovely vistas of the surrounding gardens, isolated the room from the dark outside.

At the throne end, Delgado, still looking fresh in his flowing silk leisure suit and twinkling rings, his brother David, Pablo, whose family relationship El had not determined, but whom he guessed to be David's son, and Vasquez were gathered. All the men had a tension in their stance that warned El further of danger. They stood around the table that had held the breakfast buffet however many mornings ago. Now it appeared to have papers, possibly maps, on it.

El noted other things about the room. In Señora's absence, no care had been given to making it look elegant. The lovely furniture had been pushed aside, and the place seemed to be being used for temporary storage. In fact, the pallets of cocaine kilos were stacked to one side, and, interestingly, next to them were two piles of weapons. The room appeared to hold everything they had taken from the Orozcos.

El regarded the two piles of weapons. He knew what they were. The larger pile was the Orozcos' weapons cache from the back of the tunnel. The smaller pile was his own collection from that cache, loaded and readied.

As they neared the light, El could see Lorenzo better. Someone had given him a T-shirt, and El could see bandages poking out of the shirt's neck. Lorenzo walked stiffly, but he could walk, which cheered El.

The door behind them opened again, and Sands entered, with one guard and one medico—not the doctor. Maybe the doctor had someone else watch Sands on the midnight shift.

Sands looked clean and neat, and wore a fresh set of black clothes that only enhanced his pallor to where he looked truly spectral. He wore a new pair of sunglasses. He walked steadily enough, but he stopped every three or four paces, and his guard had to urge him forward with a shove or a threat.

At Delgado's signal, Sands's guard pushed him to the high-backed, carved chair that Señora had used. Sands sat in it and slumped as the guard handcuffed his right wrist to the arm of the chair. El thought the image would stay with him for however long he lived, like some tarot card of skeletal Death on a medieval throne, captive.

"The crop is gone," Delgado announced, looking mainly at El. "The lab, the preparation facility, everything. Most of my people are dead, and the new shipment being prepared is destroyed."

El was well and truly startled. He said nothing, trying to think how this changed things. Not for the better, he feared. Not for Delgado's prisoners.

"No shit," said Sands, sounding impressed.

Well, thought El, the man must be lucid again. As lucid as he ever was.

Delgado turned to stand directly in front of Sands's chair, which put his back to El and Lorenzo. "A paramilitary operation. That's all the survivors could tell me." He spoke quietly, deadly threat in his voice. "Agent Sands, if you reported to the CIA, you will die a slow and agonizing death. After suffering through detox hell."

Everyone in the room was silent as if they all held their breaths.

El sneaked a glance at Lorenzo. This was the first time other than the flogging that the two of them had been together in the same room. Delgado no doubt believed their cooperation was ensured by Maria's absence. Lorenzo stared at Delgado.
Sands's expression was impossible to read. His dark glasses, so out of place, indoors, at night, made him look like he was behind a Mardi Gras mask.

Sands finally spoke, clearly and plainly, and to El's surprise, in good Spanish. "I haven't reported anything to the CIA since before you met me. They wouldn't care two balls about your crop."

Delgado glared, processing this. Abruptly he whirled to face El, producing a handgun and aiming it at Lorenzo's stomach. "Mariachi! Who did you call? If you lie to me, I'll make your friend here look like Swiss cheese."

Pablo grinned. The guards who had brought Lorenzo stepped away from him.

El thought Sands's approach to be wisest under the circumstances. No evasions, no sarcasm or insults, no answering a question with a question. Just answer the man swiftly and truthfully. Except, in his case, without the truth. "I called no one," he said, meeting Delgado's gaze.

Delgado fired the gun.

Everyone jumped and adrenaline surged through El. Just before he did something he would regret, he caught himself. Delgado had shot past Lorenzo, not into him. The bullet hit the tiled floor, spitting up chips.

Lorenzo's face paled beneath his tan, almost matching Sands's pallor. He had flinched, but he recovered quickly, only his fast breathing betraying his fear.

"The truth!" yelled Delgado. "Sands gave you a number for the CIA!"

"No," El's voice rang out. And here he could be absolutely truthful. "It was a test for the girl. She failed." He saw this register on Delgado's face, and risked pushing a little. "You don't believe me, but you know Sands can't lie to you."

Delgado whirled back to the agent. Behind him, David and Pablo spoke together briefly. "You gave the Mariachi a number to call the CIA," Delgado said, pointing the gun at Sands, who couldn't see it.

"No," Sands said, and, in English again, "I didn't."

"Then who destroyed my entire facility?! We are wiped out!!"

"My money's on the Colombians," Sands mused. "Their various security forces are paramilitary, and they know you were cutting them out."

El saw Delgado glance at David and Vasquez, who gave little nods. David pounded his fist on the table. "What do I do?" Delgado asked. Then, as if realizing how that sounded, "What is your advice?"

"My advice?" Sands smiled a demented smile. "Run."

El began assessing the location of the furniture with respect to the pile of guns he knew to be loaded.

"What?"

"Take the fortune in jewels you have in your safe, and pull up stakes, tonight. An operation like they launched? They won't put the brakes on. They'll want to close the whole show."

"Nonsense!" Vasquez cried. "He's paranoid delusional, like the doctor said." He nodded at the white-coated man who still stood near Sands.

Pablo and David started yelling arguments. Around the room men started looking uneasy. El caught Lorenzo's eye and tried to indicate the pile of loaded weapons.

Sands continued speaking, his English penetrating the din. "Your own men will be a problem. If they know you're ditching them, they'll bite you in the keister. I suggest you either shoot the men who are here in the room with you, or else buy them off right now."

"That's enough!" yelled Delgado, outraged.

Outside, lights and sirens came on, alarms sounded, dogs barked, and, from the distance came the sound of gunfire.

"Bingo," said Sands.

El used the alarms and the consternation they caused as his cue. Two guards apiece on himself and Lorenzo. The first three seconds before he could reach the weapons would be extremely hazardous. Oh well.

It was an insane idea, of course, that he could take on the four Delgados and five guards, even with Lorenzo's help, starting from nothing, unarmed.

But he did it anyway.

He crouched, leaped, and spun a flying kick at one man's head, intending to land where he could easily reach a second. Unfortunately, the second man moved, and, though the first man went down, his gun went flying away. Now there were three weapons turning straight at El.

Make that two. Lorenzo also knew their only chance when he heard it, and he sucker-punched one guard into immediate unconsciousness. That man's handgun also flew, and El caught it. Lorenzo grappled with his second guard, trying to get his Uzi, so El shot the fourth man.

Two of his three seconds of surprise were gone and he had only a 9mm handgun and no cover. He and Lorenzo stood too close to each other—a single burst of fire could kill them both. All the Delgados were armed, though only Julio Delgado had his gun in his hand, and Sands's single guard ...

Was about to shoot El.

El sprinted, shooting, for the pile of weapons stacked by the cocaine pallets. He didn't deserve to make it, but luck was on his side. He didn't hit the guard, but, having no cover at all, the man was sufficiently frightened by El's hail of bullets that his aim became worthless. Behind the guard, Sands, still 'cuffed to the arm of the chair, leaped over it to use the high back of the chair as cover. His medical watchdog, apparently unarmed, also cowered back there.

Delgado shot at El, but missed him, his slugs crashing into the large plates of glass that comprised one wall of the large room. Lorenzo and his opponent, still in a tight clinch for possession of the Uzi, fell to the floor.

El reached the weapons, dropped his 9mm, and scooped up the first two weapons that came to his hands, a shotgun and a .44 Magnum. He leaped on top of the stacks of cocaine bricks, landing on his stomach. Delgado. He wanted Delgado, but the drug lord now ran forward, head down, toward the three other men at the map table. He managed to move right into the area of El's view that was blocked by the forward corner of the cocaine pallets he lay on.

El had only to wriggle forward to get his shot, but behind him, the entire glass wall split and fell, showering El with shards, some large enough to impale him. El covered his head and prayed.

"Kill them all," roared Delgado.

As if El and Lorenzo were the ones obeying him, Lorenzo finally won free his guard's Uzi, and ended the man's life, while El lifted his head and shot Sands's guard, the only man he could see while glass rained on him. The recoil from the Magnum reminded him painfully of his injured hands.

His .44 round went through Sand's guard and still had enough force to explode one side and arm of the thick wooden chair Sands had been sitting on. Sands was now free, something for El to keep in mind.

For later. Right now, Lorenzo had no cover, and, drawing, the Delgado men were half-seconds from firing their own, personal weapons. El came to a kneeling position amid the twinkling glass and fired both his guns. The range to the men clustered at the table was too short for the shotgun blast to have much spread, but it would delay their own shots. What he aimed at, with the .44, was the anchor of the immense chandelier that hung above the map table.

"Over here, Lorrie!" he yelled. The closest thing to useful cover in the whole damn room was the pile of cocaine bricks. The furniture, with the possible exception of the "throne" was too small and too insubstantial.

The power of the Magnum splintered into the huge wooden beam supporting the chandelier, just like it had splintered the entire arm and side of Sands's chair. The chandelier, tiered to a point like an upside down wedding cake, began to pry loose.

Pablo screamed as the buckshot from the 20 gauge shotgun tore his arm into ribbons. Pablo had not hit the floor as quickly as had David and Vasquez. The shot that didn't grate Pablo's arm barreled past the men, finally spreading out just in time to hit the glass. A second glass wall, already penetrated by El's shots at Sands's guard, shuddered, cracked, and toppled, not far behind Sands's chair. The room which had been inside was now outside, and the sounds of fighting on the grounds were now part of their combat arena.

Someone, possibly Delgado himself, had had the presence of mind to fire at Lorenzo despite the shotgun blast and Pablo's screaming. Lorenzo was forced to use the guard's dead body as a shield and didn't dare join El by the cocaine stack yet.

Plastic and cocaine powder exploded next to El. Without any orders from his conscious mind, he tumbled off the stack, landing next to his stash of weapons. Someone had shot at him from what had been the outside.

Mierda! So much for any kind of cover.

Lorenzo, still on the floor, reached over the dead guard and fired his Uzi on semi-automatic, low, beneath the table at the Delgados. Pablo stopped screaming. Good, that gave El a chance to deal with the men behind him, in the courtyard. He scooped up a fully automatic machine gun and emptied an entire clip into the topiary. He followed that with the second barrel of the shotgun, which did some impressive damage to the landscaping. Someone in the brush screamed.

Back in the ballroom a huge tinkling crash announced the fall of the immense chandelier. Whether it killed anyone or not, it isolated the mariachis from the Delgados for a few moments. Lorenzo scrambled to El's side.

Keeping one eye on the garden and another on the area around the still collapsing chandelier, El stuffed every weapon he could manage onto his person. Lorenzo slung two rifles over his shoulders, which had to hurt. The younger man's face was pinched with pain, but he seemed to be moving all right.

"Delgado," Lorenzo said.

El glanced up as the sound of a helicopter approached. This really was a paramilitary operation.

They were entirely too exposed, surrounded by enemies, and under attack by a force that wouldn't distinguish them from its prey. As much as El also wanted to make sure Delgado was dead, and, if he wasn't, to blast the man's face off, there was a time to run, and this was it.

Before El could answer him, powerful weapons fire from the helicopter peppered their entire area.

"Puta Madre!" El yelled. "Run!"

They charged, directionless, into the courtyard, using the slender trunks of palmettos for cover. Fortunately the airborne gunmen didn't seem interested in pursuing them and the helicopter lumbered on, over another part of the estate.

"The gate is this way!" El yelled, heading for a corridor that would take them outside the immediate building of the estate.

"Maria!" Lorenzo yelled back. He turned around and started for an opposite corridor, leading back toward their rooms.

"No! Wait! Lorrie!"

El cursed, but followed him.

As they ran, they shot anyone they saw. A simple system that only required seeing the other guys first. They picked off men from doors, corners, and rooftops. But El was extremely uneasy to be running in when they should have been running out.

Still, the number of guards they encountered dwindled. Perhaps they were all defending the walls.

There were no guards on Lorenzo's room, nor was the door locked. No Maria. Lorenzo gave El a panicked look.

"Lorenzo, she's with them," El said. "They won't hurt her."

"Bullshit," said Lorenzo.

El hadn't had time to explain it to him. And he didn't have time now. Lorenzo might not even care. "We'll never find her. We've got to get out of here."

"Maria!" Lorenzo yelled.

A door across the courtyard opened, but since the man who appeared wasn't Maria, Lorenzo shot him, still with a brooding expression on his face.

The sound of the helicopter neared, and their courtyard was brightly lit. "Lorrie, maybe we'll come across her," El cried.

"All right," Lorenzo gave in. "Which way?"

El decided against the front gate, after all. He imagined a pitched firefight happening there. "The back. We'll go over the wall."

The helicopter moved into view and hovered at barely roof height. A shooter appeared in an open door of the chopper and a red laser sight appeared on El's jacket.

As El tensed to dive away, Lorenzo tackled him with explosive force, throwing them both well away from the shot. El hit concrete, painfully. The rifle shot threw concrete chips high in the air.

"Hey!" yelled Lorenzo, and, with that casual manner he had of shooting, he raised his gun and shot the man in the helicopter in the head. Lorenzo had hardly even looked.

They both scrambled to their feet as the chopper pilot gave the engine more power and lifted higher. "This way," El gasped, hauling Lorenzo with him.

As they ran through the lighted corridors, El noticed that at every running step he took puffy white clouds spilled out of his boots. Good. That should help deal with the dogs. El didn't want to shoot dogs. As for the other security measures Sands had described, motion detectors and trip wires, they would be rigged to sound alarms. No one would notice another alarm in all the din. That left a high wall and razor wire. Shouldn't be too hard.

El thought of Sands, and genuinely wished for a moment that there'd been a way to get him out, too. Not that he would have come.

They found a service corridor that led them into the industrial equipment for the compound. Generators hummed loudly, and a strong smell of septic treated waste permeated this back side of the estate. There were also large propane tanks. Beyond these things was darkness. The wall had to be out there somewhere, but El couldn't see it.

Then he could see the wall. As they crested the slight rise above the utility area, they must have tripped something, for spotlights on the wall burned into life and lit the entire area.

"There they are," called a woman's voice. "That's them!"

Still somewhat blinded by the light, El instinctively dropped to the ground.

"You bastards!" screamed the voice of Julio Delgado. "You killed my brother!"

"Maria?" called Lorenzo.

"Get down!" El said, pulling the younger man down as machine gun fire whistled over their heads.

El pulled his own automatic into position as his eyes adjusted. Below and behind them, back at the area with all the industrial machinery, he saw Delgado, his silk suit crimson with blood, firing into their hillside. With him were Maria, Tomás the torturer, Vasquez, and Sands. They all stood in front of a small utility building, all but Sands blinking up at them. Neither Sands nor Maria appeared to be prisoners, though Tomás stood near to Sands, and, by his body language, El guessed he was the agent's current watchdog.

His clip exhausted, Delgado ranted on, fumbling for a second clip. "And Pablo! You motherfuckers!"

El opened fire with his own automatic, though he didn't accomplish much before Lorenzo landed on him and pushed his gun off-line.

"You'll hit Maria!" Lorenzo hissed.

El fought his friend for control of the gun. "She's with them, Lorrie. You saw!"

"I don't care! You can't shoot her!"

El wrested the gun from Lorenzo's grip, and looked down the hill. Vasquez, he saw with satisfaction, lay dead on the ground. The others, though, had scampered inside the brick utility building, and were now completely under cover. El cursed. He could have had Delgado.

He scrambled to his feet and so did Lorenzo. The bright lights showed Lorenzo's stricken expression as he gazed at where his sister had been. Another day El might feel sorry for him, but right now he was only irritated.

"The wall's not far," El said, wearily.

"Mariachis!" came Delgado's booming voice.

Both men crouched, as much out of view as they could manage, guns ready.

There was movement at the open-corner corridor that served as a door to the building, like the labyrinthine walls leading into public restrooms. El held his fire when he saw it was Maria.

She was held around the chest by Agent Sands, whose one hand held a gun to her head while his other grasped her breast. Both El and Lorenzo tensed.

"Romero!" called Delgado. "I will count to five. Come out in the open with your hands in the air or she dies. One."

"Lorenzo, no," said El. "He only wants you dead, now, for revenge. You're of no use to him."

"I can't watch him kill her," Lorenzo cried. "Even if we could hit Sands, Delgado can just shoot her from inside."

"You know my good little agent will do it, Romero!" Delgado called. "Two. Both of you. Hands in the air!"

Once before El had allowed himself to be taken because of this girl and his own love for her brother. He had been surprised, then, to be left alive. He had no illusions that it would happen again.

"Lorrie, I'm not going, so she's dead anyway. Don't throw your own life away, my friend."

Lorenzo's brown eyes glittered with tears. He raised his arm and pointed his gun at El's chest. "You are going," he choked. "I'm sorry."

"Three," called Delgado.

El and Lorenzo stared at each other, El in shock, and a gunshot went off. They both looked down the hill.

Agent Sands, smoke trailing from his gun, stood over Maria's body, head down as if he could look at her.

"Idiot!" screamed Delgado.

"Oops." Sands shrugged. "Most people only go to three."

"No!" wailed Lorenzo and he turned his gun toward Sands. El leaped on the arm, twisting, and Lorenzo's shot went wild. The two of them tumbled into prickly bushes, wrestling.

Which saved Lorenzo's life, as it turned out, because a single round shot right through where the younger mariachi had been. What the fuck? Sands had fired right at Lorenzo, aiming only by hearing his yell. "What...are you doing?" asked Lorenzo. "He killed Maria. He killed Maria!"

El was on top of him, holding his wrists down. "We are free, Lorenzo! We are free! There's nothing to hold us."

Lorenzo heaved El off of him and rolled to his hands and knees. Tears streamed from his eyes. "You stopped me, you bastard. You stopped me."

El regarded Lorenzo—injured, grieving, in shock and in pain—and reluctantly gave up the idea of pursuing and punishing Delgado. He had to get Lorenzo out; the man was falling apart. El slamming his back into sticker bushes probably had done him little good, too.

"So we're even," El said gruffly, and hauled Lorenzo to his feet. "We are leaving, Amigo." He shook Lorenzo by the shoulders, trying to avoid the man's back. Lorenzo was barefoot, and he bled from many scratches. His face was a mask of grief. El scooped up the gun and put it in Lorenzo's hand. "Don't shoot me."

El started for the wall and Lorenzo, to his relief, followed. Again, they saw nothing in the way of guards, although the sounds of combat continued from the far side of the estate, and El could see two helicopters circling there.

Lorenzo, still weeping, looked up at the top of the wall. Vicious loops of razor wire clustered everywhere atop it. "Nothing to worry about, my friend," El said. He took aim with his AK-47, and blew the wire and parts of the top of the wall to smithereens. "Take my jacket." El gave Lorenzo his black jacket in case he needed protection from any remains on the wall. "Up you go."

Obediently, Lorenzo allowed El to boost him up. He groaned at the effort it took him to pull himself up to the top. Lorenzo looked around. "All clear," he said.

"Watch for dogs," El said, throwing Lorenzo one of his rifles.

Lorenzo caught it. "You're coming?"

"You go," El said. "Stay away from roads. I'll meet you in two weeks at noon at La Pileta."

"What? No!"

"Yes. I want you away, Lorenzo, understand? So there are no holds on me." That was cruel, El admitted to himself, making Lorenzo think he was a liability to El, but he needed the other man to go.

Lorenzo set his jaw, and El feared he would refuse. "You will avenge Maria?" Lorenzo asked, finally.

"I will. I swear it. Go."

Lorenzo nodded and dropped over the other side.

El put a fresh clip in the AK-47 and headed back. The old euphoria filled him. He had weapons, he had a target, and he had no ties.

Now to figure out what Delgado was doing at the back of the estate. His empire was in ruins, his home was being invaded, his family killed, and Delgado ran to the back door. With him he had taken everyone of any value to him who yet lived. Probably, El concluded, he was doing what Lorenzo and El had been doing. Escaping. He might have already gotten away. Damn.

El quickened his pace through the spotlit acreage, aiming for the little utility building they had been in. It sat next to an open septic waste pit and a shack holding a humming generator. Lying in front of the building were the sad remains of Maria and the crumpled form of Vasquez.

Watching in every direction, still cognizant of sounds of the distant war zone over the estate, El approached. The scrub brush of the undeveloped part of the grounds provided very little cover, but he still felt very exposed when he left it to step onto the cement sidewalks around the machinery.

He heard a familiar voice and almost jumped. A voice he hated almost as much as Delgado's. Tomás, the fastidious Castilian-accented torturer. And he sounded scared. "I don't understand how they found us. You're supposed to be the brain, tell me. Maybe they find the crop, but then they find the estate within the next day? It doesn't make sense."

Tomás was not speaking inside the utility building. He was standing beside it, next to the open sewer reservoir. El sniffed. Beneath the stench he smelled cigarette smoke. El pressed himself against the front of the building and inched toward the corner.

To El's surprise, it was Sands who answered. His tone held the sound El recognized now, of urgent need. How many hours had it been since his paranoid ravings in the garden? At least twelve. Had they given him nothing since then? He had seemed well contained as he sat on Señora's throne.

"I know how they found us," Sands said. "Let me have a drag and I'll tell you."

"Tell me and I won't break your fingers."

Sands gasped in pain. "All right! It's not a state secret or anything, Jeez."

"Well?"

"I think they followed David and Pablo from the coast. They were trying to be seen there, and so someone saw them. Do you have a finger fetish or something?"

"You are the one who told them to have high profiles. Julio doesn't see it, but I know somehow you arranged all this."

"Where the hell is he?" Sands complained. "Fuck, I hope he didn't get killed. I really need a fix."

"Tell me, what is your pain like? I have a professional interest."

"Fuck you, you sick puppy."

So Delgado wasn't here, but was expected soon. Time to appear. El stepped around the side of the building to find, gratifyingly, that he had the drop on them. Tomás was puffing nervously on the last of a quick cigarette, a gun in his other hand. Sands was on his knees, his arms across his stomach. What had Tomás been doing to him?

"Don't move," El said. "But drop the gun."

Tomás looked at him, wide-eyed, over his cigarette. Sands cocked his head.

"Drop the gun. I won't tell you again."

Tomás complied, also spitting out the butt of his cigarette.

Sands, apparently assuming that El's order not to move didn't apply to him, scooped up the gun and got to his feet.

"Step over there," El ordered Tomás, keeping one eye on Sands.

Tight-lipped, Tomás moved to the edge of the waste pit and faced El, his hands in the air, not quite reaching the large heavy cables that ran above the septic reservoir from the generator house.

"Step back," El said.

Tomás glanced uneasily behind him. "Back? Into..."

"Yes. Now."

Sands, El observed, stood by unmoving.

Tomás stepped back, gingerly, and sank knee deep in sewage. His horror and fear was plain on his face. "Sands," he appealed in a shaking voice.

"What can I do?" Sands said. "I'm a blind man. I wouldn't know where to shoot."

Tomás turned back to El. "It would be dishonorable to shoot an unarmed man," he said.

El smiled. "I'm not going to shoot you."

He pointed his gun up and shredded the electrical cables. A shower of sparks rained down and the live cables dropped into the sludge. Tomás screamed, jerked like a puppet on its strings, and dropped dead into the sewage.

El spat.

"I bet that felt good," Sands commented.

"It did," said El.

Sands raised his gun and aimed it at El. "Don't you move," he said. "I will hear you."

Startled, El didn't move. He believed him.

"Give me the gun in your hand. Now." Sands held out his hand.

"Sands, listen. Come away with me. I can get you out of here."

Sands fired into the ground at El's feet. El couldn't help but jump.

"Give me your gun."

Unnerved, El handed over the gun.

"Now do not move."

El considered carefully how likely it was that Sands would know if he went for another gun. He decided against trying it. The man was unstable, trigger-happy, and hurting. He could shoot El for imagining he heard El disobey. El stayed very still.

"You keep making the mistake of assuming I'm on your side," Sands said. He came forward carefully, and removed El's other weapons, tossing them down the slight slope behind the utility building and septic pool.

"Then why didn't you stop me from killing him?" El asked. The cables still twisted and danced, spitting sparks whenever they rose above the surface of the liquid.

"You're not the sharpest crayon in the box, are you, El? Why do you think I let you kill him? Delgado won't suspect that I could have stopped you. And I'll be teacher's pet when I give you to him. Dead or alive, El, it doesn't matter much." Sands's tone changed. "God, I wish he'd get back here."

"Sands, we can escape," El said.

"I can't, El." Pain shimmered in the man's every word. "You know I can't. I'd fuck a cow right now for a fix. Delgado is bringing the stuff, and I follow the cocaine."

"I have cocaine. You can have it. Come with me."

"You're lying. How stupid do you think I am?"

"If you could see, I'd show it to you. But you'll just have to trust me."

"It's a stupid trick from a stupid man."

"You think I want you along that badly? Keep the gun and kill me later if I'm lying. But first we have to get away from here."

"Like you would want to help me. You just want to get away."

"I want to get away, and I also want to help you. I am one of the—what did you say—white hats. You have to take the chance."

"It's too big a chance. I need it now. Right now, El. I know Delgado has the shit."

In truth, under these bright lights, El could easily see signs of Sands's withdrawal pains. He was surprised the man was holding together as well as he was.

"Do you think the Delgados will survive and keep feeding you? Or do you plan to beg for your fix from the Colombians?"

"Give it to me, then." Sands didn't believe him, El could tell by his disinterested tone.

El swallowed. He had talked himself into a very dangerous position. If he gave Sands a sample, nothing at all would stop the man from shooting him for the rest of it. Nothing. At. All. He had to make Sands believe him without triggering a junkie's fit, which one of them, probably El, would not survive.

"Later. You have to trust me and come with me."

Sands snorted. "Give it to me now, or I'll take it off your corpse."

El's mouth went very dry. There was no winning this either way. Only Sands himself could make the choice of a possible fix and possible freedom over a certain fix and certain slavery. Sands could decide to make him a cooperative corpse just at the suggestion that he might have cocaine on him. What the fuck had he done?

"You are the sharp crayon," El said carefully, though he thought the man used the oddest metaphors. "You know why I dare not prove to you that I have cocaine."

Sands said nothing to that.

El made himself take a breath. "You know why. I swear on Carolina's grave I will give you cocaine as soon as we are out of here. But I can not give you any while you hold a gun on me and if you kill me, you will never be free. Trust me, Sands."

Sands's hand holding the gun began to shake.

"I...can't."

"Yes, you can. I am your only chance." Suddenly El realized something. "This is why you sent for me."

Sands stiffened, as if he'd just heard an unwelcome truth.

In slow motion, El saw his death coming. It started with the straightening of Sands's arm, and then the tension in the gun hand, followed by the pulling of the trigger finger. And he could not react in time.

Sands moved his arm off-line, and shot into a propane tank. Then he shot a second one. In quick succession, both tanks exploded into brilliant fireballs, hurting El's ears.

"Let's go," said Sands.

Relief flooded El, forcing him to take a moment to just breathe. Then he moved to gather the weapons Sands had thrown down the slight slope behind the septic pool, alert to any sounds or movement. The huge bonfires from the propane tanks were bound to attract the attention of anyone left to notice, even if the gunfire hadn't.

Abruptly the floodlights went out, plunging this back area of the estate into a darkness lit only by the leaping flames. Instinctively, El dived for the ground, which saved his life as automatic fire whistled above him. Rolling, El fired back into the shadows beyond the utility building, up onto the hillside where he and Lorenzo had crouched before. He ceased firing but continued rolling, so as not to be where he had fired from.

El raised his head to look, but the sudden darkness still had him almost blind. Sands he could make out as a dark form against the lighter bricks of the back of the building. The agent had taken cover around the corner, on El's side, but the gunfire had not been aimed at Sands.

Stillness, but for the roaring flames.

El didn't know where to shoot, but neither did his attacker. Sands's position made El uneasy, too. If Sands believed their assailant to be Delgado, would he be able to resist acting on Delgado's behalf in hopes of a reward? Sands knew where El was, El had no doubt, and could easily shoot him.

El's anxiety climbed as their attacker confirmed his identity with a shout.

"Mariachi!" Delgado yelled from somewhere on the hill.

El considered shooting Sands himself, as a precaution against betrayal, but having asked the man to trust him, he couldn't do it.

"You'll never..." Delgado began an imperious speech.

Sands reached around the corner, exposing nothing more than his gun hand, and fired two shots into the darkness. Delgado said nothing more.

It could be a trick. It was hard to believe Sands's shooting could be so accurate, though El had not forgotten how Sands had targeted Lorenzo from only the mariachi's shout. And the sudden darkness made no difference to the agent.

El lay unmoving, but Sands showed no such caution. The agent leaped out of cover, bent over low, and vanished into the darkness, toward Delgado. El cursed and followed.

His eyes adjusted as he crossed the concrete between the utility building and the septic pit, and the nearness of the flaming tanks also helped him spy Sands and a prone form up in the brush.

"God damn it!" Sands yelled.

The lights flooded the area again, as someone tripped a motion sensor. El muttered another oath as his eyes struggled yet again to adjust. He reached Sands and Delgado still squinting.

Sands, swearing curses in English El had never heard before, tore feverishly at Delgado's clothing, searching.

"I can't believe you shot him," El said, impressed that Sands could turn on the man who had owned him, body and soul.

"Of course I shot him; he has my dope," Sands said, his voice gaining a hysterical edge. "Except he didn't fucking bring it! It's not here!"

El's skin crawled as he remembered Sands's loyalty was not to a person, but to one overriding goal. And now El had the only source of it.

Of course I shot him...

Delgado was gut-shot, and it hadn't yet killed him. He opened his eyes.

"He brought the fucking jewels!" Sands pulled a black velvet drawstring bag out of Delgado's pocket and flung it aside. "He brought the key to the fucking tunnel!" He tossed aside a key-card. "But he didn't bring my dope!" This last he almost screamed.

Tunnel? Jewels? El picked up the little bag and the card. "Sands," he said, "he's not dead."

"Good!" the agent yelled, getting to his feet. "Help me with him." With strength born of his fury, Sands hauled Delgado down the hill, toward the building.

"Wait! The fire!" El called after him. Unburned fuel was spreading from the propane tanks over the concrete walkways, luring greedy flames with it.

"Fuck the fire!" answered Sands. He avoided the licking tongues himself, but dragged Delgado right through them.

El followed, not helping. Sands didn't seem to need it, and he wasn't sure what the man was doing. Delgado left a trail of blood where he passed.

Panting and perspiring, Sands hauled the terrified looking drug lord to the still-charged septic pit. He stopped at its edge—how the blind man kept such accurate track of the terrain, El couldn't imagine.

"I just wish," Sands snarled in a voice that made El's hair stand up, "that I could see you fry." With a last gasp of effort, Sands kicked Delgado into the pit, falling backwards onto the concrete as his strength gave out.

The electricity combined with the chemicals made an eerie greenish effect over Delgado's body that hadn't been there for Tomás. Delgado rolled slowly in the sewage, his face and mouth frozen in a grimace of agony. Finally he stopped rolling and floated, face down, just below the surface of the liquid.

Flames of burning fuel licked ever closer to El and Sands, but El ignored them, caught in the dark beauty of the moment. This could be how Satan felt as he witnessed the agonies of the wicked.

El looked at the exhausted devil collapsed at his feet. "I bet that felt good," El said.

Sands gasped an indeterminate sound. "I forgot...to strip him...naked," he said.

Smiling felt foreign to El's face as he reached down and removed the gun Sands had stuck in his waistband. "I can't let you keep this," he said gently.

Sands grabbed his arm, and El tensed for a struggle over the weapon. But Sands merely held on. Firelight made hellish shadows flicker over the man's deathly-pale face and dark glasses. "Fuck...God, El," he said, sounding more vulnerable than El had heard him sound, even when he had moaned in their cell over his lost nightcap. And, in fact, he probably was more afraid now, El realized. Then he had had a known source he could still bargain with. "Please tell me...you weren't lying."

"Let me have the gun," El said.

Trembling, Sands released his arm.

"I wasn't lying."

---

They awaited the dawn in a wooded area beyond the exit from Delgado's escape tunnel where El could easily see the leaping flames and explosions at the distant estate. Cocaine had revived Sands to where he could walk and function, but even hopped up the agent's strength and endurance was shot. El was exhausted himself, so neither man had had to discuss it much. They got under good cover and rested.

Sands leaned his thin frame against a palmetto trunk. By the tilt of his head, El thought he was listening to the explosions. "Rockets," he concluded. "Two choppers?"

El muttered an affirmative.

"So what's in the bag?"

Wearily, El got out the little drawstring bag and tossed it. Impossibly, Sands caught it. He dumped the contents into his hand, his head bent down as if he could look. Curious, El dragged himself closer. Sands held out a hand full of glinting stones.

"They look like diamonds," El said.

"We're rich," Sands said with a grin.

"Bueno," El said without much enthusiasm. "We can fence them in Mexico City."

"Not Mexico City," Sands said. "Señora lives there, with a grandson. Even if the remnants of the Delgado cartel didn't want revenge, they'll certainly come after us for these little trinkets."

"Where then?" El asked wearily.

Sands was silent, fingering the jewels.

"I don't know," he finally said, with uncharacteristic reticence. "I can't think. You decide."

So, at dawn, El led them, via foot, hitchhiking, and bus, toward his home.

Traveling with Sands, El found himself closely bound up with the schedule of the agent's needs. At first he had been uncertain about how much cocaine to give the man; and Sands himself was no help. He always insisted he needed more.

"Aren't you tired of begging?" El had asked him, irritably.

"I'm used to it now," Sands had replied.

And, in truth, it became clear that Sands was seldom experiencing the same high that had put him to singing show tunes in the Delgado estate. All the drug seemed to do for him now was to stave off the agony of its absence, and not for very long, either.

The first day, El yielded to the man's begging for a larger dose, but they both paid the price in a huge panic attack where Sands fled from El and from other imaginary pursuers. A number of bruises and a chase through a village later, El had the agent back under his control, but he decided then that it would be only his own judgment that would decide how much and how often Sands would receive cocaine. Based on how much of the powder El still possessed, El declared that Sands would receive a set dose every six to eight hours, and if Sands didn't like it, El would leave him at the next village to fend for himself.

El had half-expected Sands to take him up on the threat, but, like it had with Delgado, Sands's need for the certain fix overruled his dislike for his situation.

"Now I'm your slave," Sands had complained.

"You are a slave, yes," El had preached at him, "but not to a man."

"Fuck you."

Unfortunately, the arrangement meant Sands spent a good deal of their journey exhausted, depressed, and suffering from headaches and cravings. El was careful to stick scrupulously to the schedule, since it seemed to help Sands endure his misery to know he could count on it ending, however briefly. El wasn't fond of his role and he wasn't fond of the agent. He intended to be rid of both, but not until he had kept his word.

In the meantime, Sands needed care. El couldn't remember seeing him eat anything of any substance, and the agent was clearly malnourished. His nose bled every time he snorted, and often when he didn't. He slept irregularly, which was hard on El's sleep, and when he did, he suffered from nightmares. One encouraging sign was that, as a dose of cocaine wore off, Sands's appetite often returned, sometimes voraciously. Where El never yielded to Sands's begging for more dope, he tried to get him all the food he asked for, sometimes going without, himself, like he would have to feed his little daughter.

They stayed away from roads until El felt they were well out of the vicinity of the estate. Then they hitchhiked as far as they could get. Though Sands grumbled that men with a fortune in diamonds should be able to afford hotels, El had them sleep out of doors most nights. El sold his empty AK-47 for cash in one village, and that gave them food money and bus fare. It was enough, and low profile.

El began to have the feeling that Sands was more complicit in El's unstated plans than he appeared to be on the surface. The agent was anything but a fool, but Sands never asked how much longer the cocaine would last, or what they would do when it was gone. Promptly at six hours he would begin nagging for his next fix, no matter where they were or who might overhear, which wearied El at first, until he realized the man was desperately holding his tongue until then. El didn't tell him where he kept the cocaine, and Sands didn't seem to try to learn it. Nor did Sands ever try to take El's guns, though his increasing paranoia must have made remaining unarmed a torment. Even his sharp tongue was dulled, as if Sands didn't want to piss El off. Sands seemed to be truly trusting El, and that trust had to be difficult to give. El couldn't help but be a little affected.

El reminded himself that Sands had been hooked against his own will, that first dose as he lay dying notwithstanding. The man had a brilliant intellect and an admirable ability to face his own reality, however dark. He clung to one piece of denial, though, to El's puzzlement. He refused to agree that he had done anything to bring down Delgado's empire.

"You gave me the phone number to their Colombian suppliers. You told me how much they would want to know where Delgado was getting his drugs."

"So? I was just singing a tune I'd heard, El. Why would I expect you to recognize the notes?"

"Because you know I am a musician."

Sands merely snorted, then dabbed at the blood issuing from his nose.

It was strange. Even Tomás had seen how Sands had manipulated events, not merely to escape his enemies, but to destroy them. El could only conclude that Sands's enslavement to cocaine, which had not abated, made it impossible for him to admit he could have done anything to jeopardize his source. But some part of Sands had done so, and that part of the agent also knew what was yet to come. And, so long as they did not talk about it, that part of Sands was El's ally.

That part of Sands—the part that had risked trusting El, the part that had kept Delgado from using drugs on El, the part that had killed Maria to buy the mariachis' freedom, the man who now struggled against his cravings, his blindness, and maybe even his own nasty nature—was one of the bravest men El had ever met. But he still needed his coke on schedule.

So El arrived in his little village in the company of a man he loathed and admired.

---

The dominant feature of Guitar Town was an immense edificio, long abandoned. The Spanish had built it as a fort: then, when this part of the interior no longer needed fortification, the edificio became a convent. The Church made it into a lovely structure, not that the Sisters valued frivolity, but in order to better glorify Christ. After the Order was disbanded, the building, still nominally under the control of the Church, stood empty. Had there been the interest and the resources, it could have been an orphanage or hospital, but the region around Guitar Town was out of the way and underpopulated, so the building stood unused.

The village's priest, Father Soto, was the accepted authority over the use of the old fort. El and Carolina had lived in it, with his permission, until they could build their own little house, and so had others at various times. El had spent many hours playing his guitar on its ramparts, and that is where he had been the day Marquez destroyed his world. That is where El took Sands.

He went first to the kitchen, and found it undamaged, only dusty.

"Table and four chairs, counters around the walls, two large stoves," he told Sands automatically. The agent had reacted hostilely to El's early attempts to lead him, preferring even the occasional blind stumble to feeling that dependant. He had seldom objected to being briefed on his surroundings, though, and even when in pain he showed an uncanny ability to adapt to what he could not see.

Sands found a chair and sank into it. They had been walking for many miles. "Home sweet home?" he asked.

"For now," El said. El had a house in this town, but he wasn't taking Sands there.

El started a fire in the wood stove and put water on to boil. The Sisters had installed running water and plumbing, considering them essential to good health, but they had eschewed electricity, considering it self-indulgent.

El left Sands with his head down on the little table, and prowled the habitable parts of the fort. He knew many areas had been renovated into small apartments over the years, for various uses. He found the one he wanted—a single windowless room with an attached bath and water closet, with a bolt lock on the outside of the door. Why the Sisters had felt so many of their rooms needed to lock from the outside, El had never cared to consider too closely. He knew where to find bedding, and it was still good. The mattress on the rickety bed, however, was infested, making El suspicious of other mattresses. He decided to take the bed out and just arrange the bedding on the floor.

He and Carolina had used oil lamps for light at night, but light wouldn't be necessary in this room. El checked that the water worked in the bath and he tasted it to be sure it was drinkable. He looked around the spare cell, summoning his hardest heart. He was the man who had killed his own brother. He could do this.

He put all his weapons in a hiding place and returned to the kitchen. Sands was slumped in the same position, but he had explored the kitchen, El could tell. He had removed the boiling water to let it cool. El had suspected that Sands learned a place as thoroughly as he could as soon as El was out of sight. Some remnant of pride made him not want El to see him grope like a blind man.

El poured the boiled water into a large jug. "How are you?" he asked, uneasily. It was the kind of question they both understood El was not to ask.

Sands raised his head, his face pinched and wan.

El expected a barbed answer, but Sands said, "I am so tired of this shit."

He knows, El thought, and his blood ran cold. I can do this.

"I have a room ready for you. This way." El lifted the water jug and set out for the room. Sands followed. He could always find his way by merely listening to El's footsteps. El had to pause to wait for the man, because the agent followed very slowly. "I'll have to find a real bed," El chattered nervously, "the mattress was full of bugs." El reached the room and opened the door, setting the water jug just inside it. He waited for Sands who approached at a snail's pace. "Here," El said, to indicate that he stood at the door of the room.

Sands stopped in front of the room. After a long pause, Sands asked, "Does it lock?"

El's heart pounded. "Only on the outside," he said.

Sands froze. Then he spread his hands and took a step back. "El, listen," he said in a level, reasonable tone. "We don't have to do this now. I'm all for it, you understand, but not today. I'm not in shape for it. We can do this anytime."

"No," said El. "The cocaine is all gone."

"What?!"

"I gave you enough to get you here. Now it's gone."

Sands stumbled back a few more steps, one hand going out to the wall. "Well, use the diamonds and get me some more. Fuck, El!"

"No," said El.

Sands bolted.

El chased and tackled him. He'd expected this. Sands fought him, desperately. He was stronger than before, El noticed, but El was healthier, and Sands wasted some opportunities groping at El's belt for weapons that weren't there. El finally dragged him, howling, to the door.

Bracing his lanky limbs against the two sides of the open door, Sands resisted being forced into the room. No amount of shoving or pulling would budge him. Sands shifted from howling incoherently to screaming curses at El, and after a while, El had had enough. He kicked the man in the kidneys, hard. Repeatedly. Until Sands finally broke his hold on the door and crumpled into the room.

El slammed the door and locked it.

Sands was pounding on the door in an instant. "El, you motherfucker! What do you care? Who gives a shit if I'm clean?"

El waited, catching his breath.

"Let me out of here, God damn it! Throw me out on the street! You can never see me again. What the fuck do you care if I get clean or not?"

The door trembled as the man must have thrown his entire weight against it.

"Consider it," El answered, loudly and clearly, "revenge for Maria."

His line delivered, El backed away from the door, shaking. He hit the wall opposite the room and his knees gave out. He sank to the floor.

El didn't even hear the rants and curses issuing from the room. He was too busy trying to figure out what was wrong with him. His heart was racing and his stomach felt like throbbing rubber. He gasped his breaths and wiped sweaty palms against his trousers.

It had been so long since something had truly frightened him that he had forgotten what the reaction afterward felt like.

He had planned this from the moment he realized Sands would escape the estate with him, even to his line about revenge for Maria, but he hadn't known if he could pull it off. And he hadn't expected to feel this wretched about the betrayal. Sentencing Sands to detox had seemed a just vengeance for Maria's murder when El had first conceived of it. More compassionate than killing him, since El did understand the cold necessity of Sands's deed.

But now...

El got to his feet and fled the building.

He needed to see the Padre about using the old fort anyway, right?

Father Soto was at home, to El's relief. He could usually be found in the village center, helping sand the guitars, but El had not wanted to be seen by the villagers just yet.

The priest poured him a glass of iced tea, reached over the rail of his small porch to pluck a few leaves of mint from his garden, plopped them in the tea and handed El the glass.

El's hand shook as he accepted it. Here he was, enjoying tea with mint, while Sands...

"Padre, what if he dies? A week ago, I thought about shooting him myself, but this..."

The priest had acted as El's infrequent confessor at times, so he took this sinful admission in stride. His open, genial face reassured El that he, at least, saw nothing to be concerned about.

"You are right to worry about your friend," said the priest. El had to bite his cheek to keep from insisting Sands was not his friend. "But you needn't worry that he will die. I have known men to die from taking cocaine. I have never known one to die from not taking it."

El swallowed some tea, forcing himself to believe the man. Though El was wanted by every drug cartel in Mexico, he had little experience with drug use. Father Soto had seen a good deal of it.

"What concerns me more is why you did this. Revenge, you say. How many times have I reminded you that vengeance is the Lord's?"

"Once or twice," El allowed, studying the glass of tea.

"Once or twice," Soto repeated dryly, studying El.

El wondered for a moment how he appeared. His dark hair was over-long, he knew, and stubble shadowed his face. At least he didn't bristle with weapons. Not at the moment.

"Padre," El began. He still hadn't gotten to the heart of his distress. "I feel like I have thrown him into Hell and locked the door behind him."

"And so you have," said Soto quietly. "But if revenge was really what you wanted, you would feel good about that, wouldn't you?"

So, what was he saying? That he didn't want revenge? Why else had he done it?

"I promised Lorenzo I would avenge her. I don't even like the gringo."

Soto smiled and drank the last of his tea. "I think there is hope for you yet, my son." He stood and looked across his garden at the former convent. The afternoon sun washed out the yellow adobe, so the building looked white. "Here is your penance."

El put both palms around the coolness of the glass. "This wasn't a confession," he protested.

Soto ignored him. "You must stay with him. Go to your home, get some clothes and food and blankets. Take a guitar. You'll need lamps..."

"I don't want to be anywhere near him!"

"You don't have to be in the room. Not if he tries to hurt you."

"Which he will!!"

Soto nodded and poured himself another glass of tea. "Just stay nearby and hear him when he screams."

Screams? El gasped. "You go if you care so much for him. I've told you what he's like!"

A change came over the grandfatherly man. El had seen it before. He turned from genial guitar maker to Prophet of Doom. "You are worried sick for this gringo you hate. If you stay away you won't eat or sleep and you won't be able to shoot straight."

That startled El.

"You have thrown him into the dark, alone, with no hope. I don't care what he's done or what he's like. You are responsible for him, now. If you stay away, you are damned."

El hated it when Father Soto talked like that. He hated it.

"Come with me, Father?" El begged.

The grandfather returned. "I will visit. I will bring my little radio." He sipped his tea.

"A radio?"

"He can't watch TV, right? Give him something to distract him. The one with batteries."

That made El feel even worse. He covered his face with his hands. He saw in his mind the bare room Sands was suffering in. He thought of the myriad little repetitive things he'd seen Sands using to distract himself during the last hours before his scheduled fix. The damn priest was right. He had to go back. He had to be there.

It was after dark by the time El returned. Having made up his mind, he'd been able to eat a hasty dinner, bathe and change clothes in his own home. The comfort of the familiar after two weeks of misery had lessened some of his anxiety. For once, returning to his empty house had not assaulted him with painful memories of his missing family.

The corridor was dark, of course, so El approached Sands's door with an oil lamp in one hand. He held a bedroll in the other. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that being with Sands had no meaning for the agent if he didn't know El was there. "Sands," he called. The man's hearing was excellent; El shouldn't have to do any more.

"El! Christ!" The American's voice was full of hope. "You came back!"

As if El could feel any more guilty.

"Let me out of here, man. Come on!"

"No," El croaked.

"Jesus, El, it's a fucking cell." Sands managed to sound perfectly rational. "I've been in nothing but cells for months. Open it up. We can talk about this."

"No," El said.

"Why not? I mean it. Why not? You don't want me around. I'll just leave and get out of your hair. You can keep the diamonds."

"No."

"Shit, do you know how to say anything besides no? You sound like a two-year-old." Sands's control was cracking. "Talk to me, fuckmook. Talk in Spanish if you have to; I can take it."

El swallowed. "You're staying here until it's over. Maybe five days." El prayed the priest was right about that. If he promised five days and it took longer...

Sands said nothing.

Then, when he did speak, El could hear the old tone of desperate need.

"Listen, El, about Maria,"

"It's not about Maria."

"What?"

"It's not about Maria," El said, more confidently. "I shouldn't have told you that."

"Well, God damn it, you fucking mariachi, if it's not about Maria, then what?"

"You're going to get clean, Agent Sands. That's what it's about."

"You motherfucking cocksucker! I have a bazillion arguments ready about Maria! Now you're going all God damned Dear Abby on me?"

"I am a white hat."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Sands yelled. "At the end of it...at the end...I had this great finale...where I tell you how Maria wouldn't want you to do this. It was a masterpiece!"

El actually smiled.

"You wasted your time. I'm not letting you out. You talk to me. Tell me how to help you. Talk in English, I can take it."

A low keening sound came from behind the door.

El waited.

"El?" Sands sounded frightened.

"Sí."

"Get me some smokes, man. For the love of Christ...get me some cigs. Lots."

El found himself nodding in the darkness.

"And don't leave me."

"I can't do both, Sands."

"Christ on a crutch! Get me the cigs and then don't leave me, fuckmook! This isn't funny!"

Fuckmook?

"I will do it," El promised.

He left, feeling much better. Thank God he'd gone back.

The other villagers greeted him enthusiastically. The men wanted to buy him drinks and hear about his visit to El Presidente. The women wanted to know if he still needed a wife, and the children wanted, as ever, a fresh adult to play their games with them. No one asked if he had brought them another fortune from his travels, so El didn't bring it up. He hadn't yet figured out how to safely fence Delgado's diamonds.

El was warmed by the reception, and he warned everyone about his—he had to use the word "friend" in order to not explain more than he had time for—who was kicking a cocaine habit. If he should get free, he needed everyone to stay clear of him and to find El. And not to shoot him.

And, as always, he needed them not to talk to anyone else about El's whereabouts, or about his friend.

As El gathered food, a carton of cigarettes, and everything he could think of that a blind man could entertain himself with, he realized his one serious logistical problem. He couldn't enter the room and still have it locked from the outside. He needed the Padre.

The priest agreed to come, and the two of them stopped in the kitchen, still well out of Sands's hearing. Father Soto switched on his industrial-strength portable floodlight.

"Father, I don't want you to get hurt. If he gets past me, just stay out of his way."

"Why don't you hold a gun on him?"

"For that to work, Father, he has to see I have a gun. He has to give a shit whether he gets shot or not—sorry Father—and most of all, I have to be willing to use it on him. No guns. There's no point."

They entered the corridor. Sands heard them. "El!" he called. "El! Did you bring my stuff? Have you got it?"

"I have your cigarettes."

"Cigarettes? No, damn it, I need..." His voice trailed off. "Shit."

El frowned. It had barely been half a day since the agent's last fix, but already his symptoms had progressed to this kind of mental confusion?

"El, listen, we've got to stop this. We've got to stop this now. We can do this another time. Not now. I can't do this now."

El shook his head. He glanced at the Padre, but his face by flashlight was hard to read. "Sands, I'm coming in. Back away from the door."

"Did you hear me, you fucking cunt?!!" Sands roared. "I said I can't do this! Get me some fucking cocaine!"

El licked his dry lips. Maybe this wasn't the best time to go in. He looked at the Padre, who smiled and tipped his head toward the door, encouraging him.

El sighed. "Sands, get away from the door, or you're not getting anything. Let me hear you from the other side of the room."

"Fuck you!"

"Still too close."

"You've got coke, right? You're bringing me coke?" The man's voice came from a little farther back.

El frowned again. "I'm not lying to you. I don't have coke. There isn't any cocaine I know of in this whole region. I'm bringing you food and cigarettes and some other things."

Sands's voice came from as far away as El estimated was possible. "No, you've got some. I know you. You wouldn't have wasted it."

With a nod at Father Soto, El opened the door and ducked in. As he struggled to bring in the things, including a guitar, Sands launched himself out of the darkness at the door. Father Soto tried to close it as Sands tried to force it open. El struggled with the man in the dark and finally heard the door close and lock.

The sound sickened him. He hadn't entirely recovered, apparently, from the experience at the Delgado estate. Even Sands sagged in his arms, and El had the feeling that he was stunned by memories of the sound, too. And he had many more of them. El pushed Sands away from him, and groped around for his flashlight.

The beam showed Sands sitting where he'd fallen, a picture of dejection.

"El, please," Sands panted. "Get me a fix. Somewhere. I know you can do it." His words begged, but his listless tone told the tale that Sands knew it was pointless.

"Here are your cigarettes, and some lighters. There is food in this box here." El thumped the box as he set it down. Here is a radio and guitar. And this..." El felt silly getting these things out in the darkness, but he knew Sands could hear and mark where he set them. "This is a little game of my daughter's. It's..." He found his English insufficient for explaining a little girl's loom with elastic bands for weaving into potholders. These were things he'd never had to say in English. "You use these...bands. They stretch across. Over and under. It makes...for hot things." El gave up.

"Oh, my Christ," moaned Sands. "Give me the cigs. God." He sounded like a man in pain from a wound.

El pushed the carton across the floor in Sands's general direction, followed by a lighter. As the American fumbled with the cigarettes, El said, "If you set your clothing or the bedding on fire, I will take them away from you."

"Fuck you," Sands said shakily. Sands's inhuman face glowed eerily in the trembling flame from a lighter. A cigarette ignited.

The smell abruptly made El want a cigarette, and he had given them up long ago, even before he met Carolina, when he had realized how they impaired him physically. El set the flashlight on the floor.

"I didn't know you smoked."

Sands said nothing, sucking down the cigarette so fast he hardly seemed to exhale. He stubbed the butt out against the floor and lit another one. The smoke was thick.

"Está bien?" asked the Padre.

"It's all right," El called, reassured to know the man was still out there. Not that he wouldn't be, but it took a lot of trust to let someone lock you in a room

"Who's out there?" Sands asked, between frantic puffs.

"Father Soto, the priest from the village."

"Friend of yours?" Sands asked, too innocently.

"Sands," El said with a warning.

Sands stubbed out the second cigarette angrily, and got to his feet. "Yes? What is it, oh great fucking mariachi?" He paced to the wall and then to the other wall.

"What is your name?" El asked. "Your Christian name?"

"There's nothing wrong with Sands." Still pacing.

"It's hard to say."

"Only for a fucking Mexican." Sands stopped at one wall and banged his forehead against it repeatedly.

El told him his own name. His Christian name only.

"So why," Sands stopped and leaned over, as if he needed blood in his head. "Do you keep it such a secret?" he gasped.

"I have family."

"Oh, that's right!" Sands yelled. "You're this big fucking legend! The great gunslinging mariachi, scourge of the drug cartels. The man who couldn't even protect his wife and daughter against one motherfucker general."

El got to his feet, flashlight in hand.

"So you beat up on everyone else, huh? Overcompensating a bit, were we, El?"

El knocked on the door. "Time to go," he said, keeping a wary eye on Sands, and trying not to remember going through the same procedure at the Delgado estate.

Sands approached him as the lock slid free. "What did she think of you in those last seconds of life, El? As her daughter died in her arms?"

The door cracked open.

"Maybe she didn't marry that well, after all?"

El clocked the asshole with the hand holding the flashlight. Strictly in order to prevent him escaping, of course.

In the corridor, El confronted Father Soto.

"You want me to listen to that?" he demanded.

"I see what you mean," said the priest.

"This man," El said, and he hoped Sands was listening. "Remember the day El Cucuy came to town and killed Señor Perez in cold blood? He was working for this man."

Soto shrugged. "You live in a dangerous world. Sometimes it follows you here." He nodded toward Sands's room. "And sometimes you bring it with you."

Father Soto pronounced a blessing over El and over Sands's door, and then they retreated to the kitchen.

El brought out a single diamond. The priest's words had reminded him that in order to enjoy this refuge, he needed to do whatever he could to protect the villagers, and, in simple truth, to buy their loyalty. "Padre, I need you to see if you can sell this quietly. Get it appraised first. Whatever you do, don't admit you received it recently. Say the Church has had it under lock, or something. And try to avoid buyers in Mexico City. And drug cartels."

"Thou Shalt Not Steal," Soto admonished teasingly.

"Except from the undeserving, right, Father? Believe me, he was very undeserving. And now he's dead."

"I'll have to take my fee," he said, grinning.

"Take whatever you think is fair. Share the rest with the village."

"Bless you, my son."

"Yeah, yeah."

Soto went home, and El reluctantly took his bedroll to the corridor outside Sands's room. Sands had the radio on, El was somehow glad to hear.

"Sands, I'm here," he said.

"Great. I think you broke my jaw."

El didn't think so. "Serves you right."

"El?"

"Yes?"

"El, listen." Sands's voice was very shaky. "You've got to give me something. Something to...at Delgado's, I could still hope for coffee. I could hope. Tell me anything. Tell me you are fencing the diamonds and getting some coke. Even— if it's days. Give me something. I—I've got nothing here."

The appeal was so genuine and agonized that it wrung El's heart, and he resented feeling so sorry for the American bastard. It made his response harsh.

"In days you will be clean. Look forward to that. The only coffee here is real coffee."

The sound from the room could only be sobbing. El felt like a complete heel, but he truly had no hope to give him.

He wondered how you weep when you have no eyes.

It was a very long night. Sands, El was sure, didn't sleep at all. El heard him moving restlessly, doggedly around the room and moaning. The smell of cigarette smoke seldom abated. Occasionally he yelled insults at El, but El managed to detach himself enough to find them entertaining. He got the impression that Sands was using them to distract himself, for he constructed highly original, florid, and anatomically unlikely insults in English and then he yelled them in Spanish. It was the most Spanish El had heard from Sands, and often he was sure Sands was translating curses from other languages. It was very educational.

Despite his sleepiness, El made himself respond now and then, so Sands would know he was there.

After one rant where Sands detailed El's descent from dung-smeared, spittle covered camels with mad-camel disease, El laughed. It was a small laugh, but El couldn't remember the last time he had laughed. He decided he owed the American something for that.

"Sands," he called. "Your Spanish is very good."

He waited for the inevitable "Fuck you," but it didn't come.

Instead there was a moment of silence, followed by a slight thud on the door. Sands, El could picture in his mind's eye, had collapsed against the door and slid to sit on the floor.

"Shelly," he said, his voice muffled and strained.

El wasn't sure what he had heard.

"What?"

"You can—call me—Shelly—if it's easier."

An unusual moniker, it seemed to El. He tried to imagine what it might be short for, but couldn't think of anything.

"Okay," he said. "Thank you."

It was the last civil, and almost the last coherent thing he got out of the man. By morning his moans had progressed to screams, and El couldn't bear it anymore. What horrific cravings could set a man to screaming? He had to move away and get some sleep.

"Shelly," he called, trying out the name, "I'm leaving for a few hours. I'm still here in the fort. I will come back."

He had no idea if the man had even heard him.

El did manage to snatch some sleep, and then he made himself a meal. He could hear Sands's screams even in the kitchen. He was immensely grateful when Father Soto arrived, bringing light gossip about the village, and, best of all, beer.

"Father," El said, "I have to check on him. I have no idea if he's eating or drinking. Or if he's...hurt."

Another distant scream.

Soto shook his head. "You won't be able to make him eat or drink, if he isn't. I think you can wait until tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"By tomorrow, I predict he won't have the strength to escape if you left his door open."

So El spent as much time as he could bear at the agent's door, talking to him, telling him the gossip from the village, for lack of anything else to talk about, and the rest of his time exploring the fort when he needed a break. Sands seldom answered him, and was seldom coherent when he did. By evening, Sands either had no strength or no voice, for his screaming subsided. The batteries must have died on the radio, for it was off.

El seated himself on his bedroll in the dim corridor, lit the oil lamp, and played and sang. Sands said nothing. El slept uneasily, waking often and listening. At first he heard sounds coming from the room, but later he woke to silence. The silence unnerved him, and he was grateful when dawn filtered light into his corridor.

As quietly as he could, he slid the bolt on the door, and pushed it open. A cloud of residual smoke rolled out and El coughed. Light from the corridor forced its way into the room, and El could make out the form of Sands, his shirt off, lying face down among some blankets. Beneath the smell of smoke was a smell of urine.

El crouched down beside him. The man had pissed himself, either from not caring or from not being able to get up. What disturbed El more was the waves of heat radiating off of him. It was like crouching by hot coals.

"Sands?"

Sure enough, touching his skin was like touching a sidewalk in the hot sun. El's daughter had run fevers this hot when she was an infant, but El had never seen such a thing in an adult. And his daughter's fevers had panicked him, too.

He stripped the remaining clothes off the unresponsive agent, and carried him into the tiny bath. The faucet on the tub had a hose attachment, and El washed off the traces of excrement with it, before plugging the drain and filling the tub with the tepid water. As the tub filled, he carefully tipped Sands's head back on the edge, so it couldn't easily fall forward, and he got his first good look at the agent's empty eye sockets.

Before, he had clearly perceived them to be red-colored. Now they were black. El tried to think; did that mean an absence of blood flow? Sands had a pulse—slow and not very strong. One side of his jaw was purple where El had punched him, and the other cheekbone bore a fading bruise from Delgado.

El turned off the water, and sat back on his heels. Did the fever mean an infection was killing the agent? El saw only scars on the man, no wounds. How he wished he knew what to do. If only Sands were conscious enough to tell him if something hurt.

"Sands? Shelly?"

The water, he noticed, had quickly warmed from the overheated body immersed in it. El drained the tub and filled it again. He had repeated the process three times when he heard Father Soto calling his name.

"Here!" he yelled. "Come here!"

Father Soto entered cautiously and looked into the bath.

"Madre de Dios!" he exclaimed.

"What?" asked El, alarmed.

"His eyes!"

"Oh. I told you he was blind."

"You didn't tell me his eyes were gone!"

True. That hadn't been what had mattered in the telling.

"Father, he's running a high fever and he's unconscious."

Soto nodded, recovering his composure. "You're doing the right thing," he said.

"Is this normal?"

"I've seen it before. Keep him in the water until the fever comes down."

"Should I get ice?"

"I don't think so. Not yet."

So El and the Padre took turns watching Sands in the bath, and refreshing the water. When it was not his turn El looked around the little room. The bedclothes were soiled, so he replaced them. Some of the food had been eaten, and the boiled water was gone. Cigarette butts and ash were everywhere, so El swept them out. The room needed a good airing. He replaced the batteries in the radio.

The child's loom—to El's amazement, Sands had bothered to learn the little toy, and had used up the entire bag of colored bands. The completed potholders were strewn around the room as if Sands had thrown them after finishing them. El picked one up. Impossibly, the little things were tied and finished, even with a small loop for hanging. Sand's only failure in the craft was with the colors. He couldn't alternate the colored bands.

The guitar, however—Sands had smashed the guitar, literally into kindling, for it looked like he had then started to burn the wood. El fingered the charred pieces, his heart aching for the loss of a good instrument, and found them damp. Sands had put the fire out, as well.

El shook his head. What a paradox of skill and destructiveness that man was.

He returned to the bath.

"Is he any better?"

"I think he may be conscious," said the priest, wide-eyed.

El saw Sand's throat working, as if the man tried to swallow. Father Soto stood and yielded his place. There wasn't room for two of them.

"Sands?" El asked.

Sands rolled his head to face El. He tried to lick his lips.

El turned the faucet on low force, and put the hose at Sands's mouth. The agent put his mouth around the end, and drank.

El gave Father Soto a triumphant grin. It seemed like a victory. Sands drank and rested and drank again.

Father Soto stayed until the agent's fever was clearly weaker, and then apologized, saying he had other duties to tend to.

After he was gone, Sands lifted his head on his own.

"Sands?" El asked.

Sands worked his throat, trying to say something.

"How do you feel?" El asked the forbidden question.

"Fuck. You." Sands whispered.

After that, things got a little better, for El, anyway. He could leave Sands's door not only unlocked, but open, so he, at least, could see in the daytime. El would have been glad to see Sands try to escape. The agent didn't have the strength of a newborn; he only lay on his pallet and moaned. El could get him to drink through a straw, but food was out of the question. His fever abated, but not entirely, so the man continued to suffer from the heat. Occasionally El helped him back to the bath to give him some relief. El lit cigarettes for him, resisting the temptation to inhale, and put them in Sands's mouth. El considered it a good sign when Sands lifted a shaking hand to hold the cigarette himself. El didn't think Sands was unconscious again, but he slept most of the day.

On the fourth day, a young boy came to the fort.

"Señor," he said, "the Padre needs you at his house. You have a phone call."

"A phone call?"

"Sí, Señor. It's El Presidente." The boy looked very impressed.

So El left to go to the phone, and returned in a thoughtful mood. He needed to talk to CIA Agent Sands.

He entered the room where the man lay on his back, one arm across his eyes as if he needed to shield them from the light. It was a headache, El knew. Earlier, Sands had found the strength to ask for aspirin.

"I just got off the phone with El Presidente," El said. "He wants to give me a medal. He's invented a new one. Calls it the Sons of Mexico medal. He wants to give it to Lorenzo, too, and maybe Fideo for the other business."

Sands said nothing, but a slight snort told El he was listening.

"I asked him about you. He said the medal can only go to Mexicans, but he might make an exception if I ask him to."

Sands made no response. El sat on the floor next to him.

"I asked him something else. I asked him how he knew where to find me. I've been thinking. Everyone who knew about my village from before was dead. Except for you."

El waited.

"So?" Sands finally asked.

"He said someone called and gave him a tip. This caller wanted to collect the bounty the government used to have on me, or that's what he said. When they told him the bounty was off, this man gave my location anyway, for nothing. But you know all this, don't you?"

Sands licked his lips, but said nothing.

"Why me, Sands? Delgado didn't really need new muscle. Many men could have helped bring down the cartel. The CIA could have helped. Why did you want me?"

Sands said nothing. Eventually, El stood to go. As he reached the door, he heard,

"I knew— you would do this—you sanctimonious—son of a bitch."

El left the room, tired, his mind chewing over the unfamiliar English word. He recognized the Latin in it, but doubted very much that Sands had called him "holy." It had to be an insult, and El was weary of insults.

He stopped in mid stride as the further nuance of the English sentence—the first complete sentence Sands had said in some time—struck him. Sands, he realized with shock, had given him more than an insult: he had given him an answer.

He went to the kitchen, smiling. Somehow, he vowed, he would get Sands to accept that medal.

The End.

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