Sands, THREE
Corruption bore the name of "Sands".
One debacle and you're penalized.
Two, and you're demoted.
Three: you're stationed in Alaska.
But irony new his name, no matter which one he used, and "Jeffrey" died the day the agency told him "Mexico".
Three: you're penalized, called a nuisance, and stationed in Mexico.
They named him numerous names, gave him a gun, advanced pay, and orders not to leave the country.
He smiled, fired at and missed the first person he saw in Mexico, spent a chunk of that pay on bad clothes, and found the border specifically so he could drive back and forth over it. In a stolen Mexican-made monster-car, with the seats duck-taped down and together, and a bottle of 100 proof under his feet no less. Because he could. Because three all-cap letters on a laminated plastic square and the mention of "federal officer" told him so.
CIA. Thou shalt not question, under penalty of dubious things.
He had a plan, and stuck to it. If you don't have anything else, have a plan. He wrote it down on a bar napkin and stuck it in his pocket like it actually meant something. Decided to make as much money as he possibly could, bag something pretty, and disappear to a distant corner in a distant land, never to be heard from again. Still in Mexico enough for that nice who-the-fuck-cares feeling, but nowhere near its veins, or the festering centre that'd snare him by the neck and gut him down the middle. Safe as anything gets.
Sands found a pretty thing, kept himself in the know, established connections, ate his weight in pork every week, meddled with expensive information and third arms, and built a quiet empire under the cartel's noses. All in less than a year, and liked to brag about it.
But he'd tripped up on someone somewhere. Read a face wrong. Missed the loop. Let something foul slip through, and the empire toppled. Just at the moment every plan crested, it took a breath and snapped to the ground. But it didn't crumble. He stood, he walked away, stumbling. He remembered a certain face and that nothing really was as sweet as revenge.
end