Chapter 5
Restoring the Balance, by Agent Sands
Disclaimer: The beautiful but psychotic Agent Sands does not belong to me. I can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe I'll let Robert Rodriguez keep him, and just take Johnny Depp instead. :-)
Rating: A definite R, for language and graphic images.
Summary: Welcome to Agent Sands' head. It isn't a pretty place.
Author's Note: I didn't think I was going to be able to write this chapter. Getting into Sands' head was very hard, and not terribly fun. He's definitely one screwed-up guy. But he's so lovely to look at, I can't really hold his questionable sanity against him.
Then again, he does channel Jack Sparrow here, for one brief, aggravating moment. That annoyed me. But he kept insisting on saying it. So give yourself a prize if you can find the reference.
Thanks again to everyone who has reviewed. Your comments make my day, and keep me writing. This story started out being just for me, but it belongs to all of you now.
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Other agents would have made a fuss at being posted to a godforsaken place like Mexico. Sands had just accepted the transfer with a smile.
In Mexico, he would finally be in control. The country was just begging for someone like him to come in and create order out of chaos, balance out of extremity. Here was his chance to put his talent for manipulation into play.
Everyone had said he was brilliant at what he did. He could get into anyone's head, find out what made them tick, and then use that information for his own purposes. His teachers at the academy had said that if he had joined the FBI, he would have been a profiler, using his talent to get into a serial killer's head so others could catch the bastard. This had appealed to him immensely, and for about a week he had almost regretted his decision to join the CIA. But then reason had reasserted itself. Reading about other people's sick, twisted acts was fun, but not as much fun as being the one to pull the strings and commit said sick, twisted acts.
Once he had realized that, there had been no regrets. He had never doubted he would graduate, become a field agent. After all, the biggest stumbling block – the psych evaluation – had already come and gone.
That one had given him pause. For a few days he had been forced to be very careful. He couldn't let his secret out. He was borderline psychotic and he knew it. But so what? Who cared? He was going to serve his country, walk his beat, restore the balance. Maybe a man had to be a little unbalanced himself to do all those things and stay sane.
The car jolted over another pothole, and Sands grimaced. They had been driving for hours, and the sun beating through the windshield was merciless. Beside him, El was silent, giving away nothing.
Sands would have died before admitting it, but he was afraid. He thought El's story of taking on the cartel was just so much bullshit. El was going to the cartel, all right, but to turn him in, collect the bounty that surely had to be on his head. Here, El would say, he's the one who caused all this. Now you can finish what Barillo started. Why don't you take his balls next? I'll just stand here and watch.
Well, maybe not. But it was what he would say, if the roles were reversed. Still, he couldn't be sure. El was liable to do anything, and the thought made him feel cold all over. The CIA trained its agents to cope with torture, but Sands was here to say that the CIA knew fuck-all about real pain.
The car was slowing, and he heard the click of a turn signal. "Gasolina," El muttered.
Sands sat up a little, trying not to look like he was handcuffed to the door. "Get me something to drink, will you?" he asked, forcing the words out, hoping he sounded casual.
El mumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like a refusal. Sands clenched his jaw so hard it hurt, to keep from snapping at the man. Normally he would not have bothered, but he was hardly in a position to fight back, should El choose to attack.
Besides, his head hurt like hell. As the driver's side door slammed shut, Sands winced. Ramirez had had some wonderful painkillers, but those were long gone, back at the house with the retired FBI agent.
He heard the gas cap open, then the sounds of the pump working. They were coming from the driver's side of the car. Sands let himself slide down a little in his seat, turned his head so El could not see him, and uttered a thin keening noise. The sound had been building in his throat for nearly an hour, rising along with the pain, until the combined effect of both was nearly unbearable. He wanted to clutch his head and curl up and scream and die.
Maybe, he thought, with a bitter laugh, he should just ask El to shoot him now. Take him to the side of the road and put him out of his misery. It would be the simplest solution, the easiest for everyone involved. He wouldn't even fight. Much.
Then the survival instinct reared its head again, telling him no way, no way was he ever going to beg. If he had ever been going to let this whole fuck-up kill him, he would have done it when Ajedrez found him bleeding on the street and pressed the barrel of her gun under his chin. That was the moment he could have given it all in. But he hadn't. And he would be damned if he gave in now.
El finished with the gas pump and walked away, the chains on his pants jingling merrily. Sands slid a little further in the seat and let his forehead rest on the window. The pain in his head was unreal. It was stupid that two things that didn't even exist anymore could scream so loudly, but that didn't stop his eyes from hollering at him, begging him to acknowledge them.
He wondered vaguely what had happened to them. Were they in a jar somewhere? A keepsake for the new leader of the cartel? Something to show, perhaps, to people as a threat. A warning. Look carefully. This is what happens to those who cross us.
He heard El returning, and he sat up, ignoring the bolt of pain that crossed his skull. No matter what, he refused to let El know how badly he was hurting. That was just not an option.
El got in the car and started the engine. Sands heard the sound of a bottle cap being opened, and against his will he felt himself leaning to the left, yearning for that bottle. He was so thirsty it hurt to swallow.
El drank, capped the bottle, put the car in reverse. They backed out of the gas station and got back on the road. Sands counted to twenty, then again, and finally snapped. "Give me that."
"You didn't pay for it," El said absently.
Sands was about to shout at the man when something heavy and cylindrical landed in his lap, reminding him painfully that he had also been shot in the thigh not too long ago. He fumbled to reach the bottle with his cuffed hands, and had to lower his head in order to drink.
The liquid was warm, flat soda. Sands didn't care. At this point anything would do. He drank deeply, then the bottle was torn from his grasp. "You have to share," El said, in a voice he might have used on a small child.
"Oh, fuck you," Sands sighed. He wiped his mouth and sat back. He tugged ineffectively on the handcuffs, more for something to do than out of any hope that he could free himself. When the cuffs showed no sign of giving, he sighed and rested his aching head on the window.
All right then. It was time to take stock. Assess the situation. Figure out his next plan of action.
What he really hoped for was time. Because all he needed was one chance. Just one. He had already realized that El was shockingly complacent for a man who had supposedly been hunted for years by the most vicious drug cartel in all of Mexico. It wouldn't take much to get the upper hand against a man like that. All he needed was that one chance, that opportune moment.
"How long are you going to keep me tied up like this?" he asked, testing his theory.
"That depends," El said, "on how long you are going to keep fighting me."
Sands hid his smile. It was too easy. Men like El were all the same. They fought hard and dirty, but only when forced to. All he had to do was feign surrender, and El would stop treating him like shit, and then he would have his chance.
"Are you going to tell me where you're taking me?" he asked.
Metal jingled as El shifted in his seat. He did not say anything.
He doesn't know, Sands thought suddenly. This cheered him immensely. Maybe El wasn't taking him to the cartel, after all. He began to relax.
Immediately a voice in his head started squalling. No! Don't you dare!
He stiffened. No. The voice was right. He dared not trust El, not even the slightest imaginable smidgen of trust. The last time he had trusted someone, he had wound up strapped to a table while some sadistic doctor ripped his eyes out.
Never again.
Sands curled his hands into fists to still their trembling. He had lied, of course, to Ramirez. He remembered everything.
Ajedrez, that beautiful bitch. Oh how he wished he had killed her more slowly. Her goon had stuck that needle in his neck, and she had just sat there the whole time, smiling. He hadn't even bothered trying to fight; the effects of the drug had come on him too quick. There had just been time to look her in the eye and promise to kill her, and then the world had dissolved into black.
Funny how the world worked. He had told the kid on the bike that he never wanted to see him again. Guess he had gotten his wish. And if he had known that afternoon that those were the last hours he was ever going to walk and talk and see and be normal, he sure as hell wouldn't have gone into that little cantina. He would have done something memorable, like watch the sunrise, or shoot someone just to watch them bleed to death.
Never, never in all his life, even if through some miracle he lived to next June and reached the ripe old age of forty-one, would he ever forget their laughter when they had let him up off that table. Reeling with drugs and pain, he had stumbled from one pair of hands to another as they had pushed him toward the door, laughing at him and the blood streaming from the holes where his eyes had been. Someone had shoved his sunglasses onto his face, and he had screamed and fallen. Someone else had hauled him upright and given him a good shove, right through the door.
And the sickening thing was that he couldn't stop thinking of it, reliving it. The horror was just too close. He had come dangerously close to losing it for good this morning, after El had tossed him through Ramirez's porch. The mariachi had grabbed him and in that instant all reason had fled. He had panicked, suddenly thrust back into that room, feeling their hands as they held him down…
Sands shuddered. Barillo's men had let him go purely for the sport of it. They had expected him to stagger out into the street and either get creamed by a car, or else picked off at their leisure by the goon waiting on the sidewalk.
He wasn't supposed to have lived. And his only hope, the only weapon he had in the coming battle against the cartel – if indeed that was El's intention -- was that they didn't know this. Things had been chaotic on that day. It was entirely possible that they believed he had died.
He fervently hoped so.
That still, however, left the problem of what to do about El. Even supposing he could overpower the man and kill him, he had no idea where he was, or how to get back to civilization. He couldn't drive the car and they had been on the road for hours – there was no way he could walk the distance. He'd probably end up falling down a ravine anyway, with his luck.
With a sinking sensation, Sands realized he was completely in El Mariachi's power.
Okay, he told himself. Okay, okay. Don't freak out. Just. Stay. Calm.
Stay calm. It was good advice. He would have to remember it. He would be quiet and still. Let El think he had given in. Sooner or later the man would let down his guard, and the instant that happened, Sands was going to kill him.
He would deal with the consequences later. He had survived this long. He would continue to survive.
Besides, who knew what lay ahead? In the next town they came to, there might be a kid. Maybe even a kind-hearted little boy with a bike who he could take advantage of.
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