Chapter 11

El and the Cartel

Disclaimer: I'm running out of ways to say this bit. Does anybody read these things anyway? El and Sands aren't mine.

Rating: You guessed it. R for language and violence.

Summary: The beginning of the end. The confrontation with the cartel, from El's perspective.

Author's Note: There will be overlap between this chapter and the next. Don't be confused. It's just that El is reporting on events in this chapter, and Sands narrates the next chapter, so they both speak about the same things, at certain points.

On with the show.

****

The hacienda where Ramon Escalante lived was built of yellow stone and draped with honeysuckle. It was sprawling, imposing, and Escalante probably fancied it the most beautiful building in all of Mexico.

El Mariachi thought it was the ugliest house he had ever seen.

This wasn't really the house's fault, however. By itself the house was nothing special, non-assuming and easily dismissed. It was the man inside the house that made the difference.

Armando Barillo had been a monster. But if the stories were true – and El had no reason to believe they weren't -- Ramon Escalante made Barillo look like a saint. Over the past few months El had heard things about Escalante that had frozen him to the core.

Escalante, it was rumored, enjoyed cockfighting, dogfights, and he also enjoyed pitting his men against each other in fights to the death. The winner was promoted within the ranks of the cartel. The loser was buried in the backyard.

Escalante beat women, had been known to shoot children, and ruled his cartel ruthlessly. Since Barillo's death and his takeover, the output of drugs flowing into the U.S. had been on the increase. Word was Escalante wanted production doubled within six more months. He wanted to be the biggest cartel in all of Mexico. It was said he even had his sights set on the cartels in Colombia.

El had no intention of allowing Escalante to achieve any of those goals.

The day was still young; dawn was just breaking. Under cover of darkness, he and Sands had slipped through the hills until they stood just outside the hacienda.

They were both heavily armed. Sands wore four guns, two on his hips and two in shoulder holsters. El carried his favorite snub shotgun, three pistols and enough spare shot to weigh him down when he walked. He also had a sizable chunk of plastic explosive Fideo had given him.

The hacienda had a large courtyard, which was open and airy. It gave access to most points in the house, and on three sides its outer wall was the house itself. The fourth side faced outward, and here it was solid stone, except for a wide archway in the middle of the wall. The arch was wide enough for a truck to drive through, and it was deep. Two men could easily have stood within it, and remained under the arch over their heads.

"You understand?" El asked.

"Oh my Christ," Sands swore in disgust. "I'm blind, not six."

El nodded. "I just want to be sure you understand how it all looks." He had carefully described the courtyard, all the doors that led into it from the house, the location of the archway in relation to everything else. "I'm going inside. You stay here, and shoot anything that moves."

Sands grinned. "What happens if I accidentally shoot you?"

This made El pause. For long periods of time he would almost forget the CIA agent was insane, and then Sands would forcibly remind him, usually by saying something like this.

"You wouldn't dare," he said.

Five minutes later he was inside the house, in the kitchen. It smelled strongly of fish from last night's dinner, and El wrinkled up his nose. Today was Saturday. Apparently Ramon Escalante, whatever else he might be, was also a good Catholic who didn't eat meat on Fridays.

At this early hour, there was no one in the kitchen. El took out the explosive he had gotten from Fideo. He opened the oven and peered inside. A grease-spattered sheet was on the rack. El carefully placed the block on the sheet, closed the door, and turned the oven on.

He left the kitchen and made his way down the hall. When he found a room far enough away, he ducked inside and waited. This was not like the ugly house Ajedrez had owned. He could not go through this place, shooting indiscriminately. Now was the time to exercise patience. Let them come to him.

Idly he thought about Sands. He wondered if the CIA agent was bored yet, or if he would do something stupid, like try to join El in the house.

When the explosive went off in the kitchen, the resulting pillar of fire consumed half the house. Men died instantly, never even knowing they were in any danger. The entire hacienda trembled, and El clapped his hands over his ears as a painful wall of sound washed over him.

When his ears stopped ringing, he heard men shouting. They knew he was here now.

It was time.

Lorenzo and Fideo had wanted to come with him. He had told them his plan and their eyes had lit up. But he had rejected their offer of help, saying he didn't need them. This was true, but there had been something else, another reason for his refusal.

The truth was, a part of El enjoyed doing this. It was only a tiny part, granted, and it was a part of himself that he hated, but he could not deny that he only seemed to come alive anymore when there was a gun in his hand and the taste of fear was in his mouth. The way he felt alive now. He stalked out of the room, guns in hand, and immediately met two surprised members of the cartel. He shot them both before they even had time to register that he was not one of them, then kept right on walking, reloading the shotgun as he went.

Out in the courtyard, he heard gunfire, and he grinned a hard, humorless grin.

He reached a flight of stairs. It seemed the house had three floors, and he had entered on the second floor. Straight ahead the stairs went up, and to his right, off a landing with a wrought-iron balcony, they went down.

El went up, and found himself in a large living room. Men were moving around here, loading guns, asking in rapid in Spanish what was happening. In short succession, El killed two and downed a third.

The members of the cartel opened fire.

El leaped backward, clearing the steps in one jump, ending up on the landing below. He dropped to one knee, and when two men appeared at the top of the stairs, he shot them. They toppled forward and their bodes slid down the steps a little before coming to a halt.

Quickly, before others could see him, he spun around so he was on the steps going down, immediately beneath the steps going up.

Above him, two men started down, mindful not to tread on the bodies of their fallen comrades. They stopped, probably looking around,wondering where he had gone. The riser they stood on sagged a little with their combined weight.

El put the muzzle of the shotgun on the bottom of the step, ducked his head, and pulled the trigger.

The men screamed as their feet were blown apart. El turned and trotted quickly down the stairs. He turned to his left, and started down a hallway.

The hall was lined with closed doors that he assumed led to bedrooms. He opened none of them. He backed slowly down the hall, glancing often over his shoulder, arms spread wide so one gun was aimed ahead of him, and the other pointed behind him.

The hall ended in a music room. A grand piano sat in one corner. The stool before it was cushioned in red velvet. A piece of sheet music sat open on the stand; El had never heard of the tune before. He sat at the piano and played a few notes, then stopped to listen.

From deep in the house, he could hear shouting.

For no particular reason, he found himself suddenly remembering a conversation he and Sands had shared a few weeks back. This had been a few days after the incident with Miguel in the bar, after El had experimented with blindness.

They had been sitting in a cafe, eating breakfast. Or rather, El had been eating. Sands had been smoking, gazing morosely toward the window and the light he could not see. And El had asked, "Why did you seek me out? For your coup?"

Sands had shrugged. "I had to have someone, didn't I?"

"But why me?" he had insisted.

"Because." Sands had shaken his head. "One of my informants recommended you. I was looking for someone who could handle himself in a fight. Someone smart."

El had just sat there, waiting for the inevitable insult to his intelligence, something like, Instead I ended up with you. But surprisingly, Sands had let the opportunity go. "And your name came up. Or rather, your lack of a name, I should say."

Someone who could handle himself in a fight. He ran his fingers over the keys. Played a little. He made a mental note to ask Sands if he could play the piano.

The shouting was getting closer. El stood up and pulled the lid over the ivory keys. He drew his guns and backed into the corner of the room, as far from the piano as he could get. He did not want such a fine instrument to be damaged.

He waited.

For a long while no one came. He wondered how close the fire was, if he should begin to think about leaving the house before it burned down all around him.

At last he heard footsteps. He tensed, and his fingers tightened imperceptibly on the triggers of his guns.

Only one man appeared in the doorway. He poked his head in and gave the room a perfunctory glance. It was clear he did not expect to find anyone in here. El shot him in the head and moved swiftly to the door. He did not want to be trapped in here, where there was only one way in and one way out.

He stepped over the body in the door and moved down the hall. There was nobody down here that he could see.

That did not mean they were not there. El lowered his head and went on the hunt.

****

Twenty minutes later, covered in the blood of dead men, he found himself back at the staircase.

He had cleared out the house – at least the sections that were not on fire. But one man still remained, the man he had come here to kill.

He had not found Escalante on the second floor, or this, the first level. "All right," he said aloud.

Back upstairs.

He mounted the steps and turned the corner of the landing, intending to climb up to the third floor, to where Escalante was hiding. He saw the man crouched there, waiting for him, and pulled the trigger, but he was a beat too slow. The other man had fired first, and El found himself tumbling backward down the stairs, his left side on fire.

He landed hard, his shoulders and head on the floor, the rest of his body still draped on the stairs, uncomfortably angled upward. The man raised his gun and said, "Drop it."

El weighed his options, and released the gun.

"Away from you," the man ordered.

El gave the gun a shove, and it skittered across the carpet.

"Now the others. Slowly."

He hesitated. The man made a small gesture with the gun, and El did as he was told. When he pushed the shotgun away from him, he felt a small pang in his chest.

"Now get up."

"I can't," El said. "You shot me."

"Would you like me to shoot you again?" asked the man. He was thin, and a thick mustache covered his upper lip. He wore his hair long, in a fashion similar to El's, and he was dressed very well, in neat gray pants and a white silk shirt.

El shook his head. "No." With an effort, he got to his feet. He leaned to the left, favoring his injured side. Hot blood soaked his shirt and jacket. "What happens now?"

"We go outside," said the man with the gun. "To your friend."

"I don't know what you're talking about," El said.

The man fired again. El was spun about as the bullet embedded itself in his leg. He tried to keep his balance, and fell anyway, wringing a cry of pain from him as he hit the ground.

He lay still, breathing hard, fighting the pain. The man with the gun walked slowly down the stairs. "Now," he said. "We are going outside."

El could only nod his surrender.

****

To be continued in Chapter 12