Chapter 12
Sands and Escalante
Disclaimer: They aren't mine. If they were I would have run away to Mexico with them a few chapters back and you would never have heard from me again. They actually belong to Robert Rodriguez.
Rating: R for language and violence.
Summary: It all ends. The final confrontation with Ramon Escalante.
Note: Some of the events in the start of this chapter overlap with the previous chapter.
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The hacienda where Ramon Escalante lived, the center of activity for his cartel, was beautiful. Soft yellow stone, jasmine and honeysuckle bushes, a cupola with a gold bell atop the roof. It was the picture of genteel wealth, a mixture of old Spain and new Mexico, the epitome of grandeur while somehow appearing modest and humble.
Or so Sands supposed. He had no fucking idea what the house looked like.
He stood just outside the arched entryway to the courtyard. El had left him here some time ago and told him to "shoot anything that moved." Only too happy to comply, Sands had grinned.
"What happens if I accidentally shoot you?"
"You wouldn't dare," El had said.
Sands smiled. "You know, I shot the last man who said that to me."
"Why?" El asked.
"Why?" Sands shook his head, thinking of Bellini. "Because he was a slimy bastard and I hated him, that's why." He paused. "But the answer you're really looking for is that I shot him because he found out one of my secrets."
El said nothing to this.
Sands laughed. "You really have no imagination, do you? Doesn't it occur to you that you know too many of my secrets? Aren't you worried that I'll shoot you next?"
"No," El had said shortly. "Because if you were going to do it, you would have done it weeks ago." He had walked away.
El had been inside the hacienda for a while; Sands had no idea how long. Frankly he didn't care.
Things were quiet now. First there had been a very large explosion. That had been followed by a lot of shooting. Men had run across the courtyard, and Sands had stepped into the archway and shot them all. A few of them had only been wounded, but their pained cries had guided his aim, and he had quickly corrected his mistakes. The guns in his hands were hot to the touch now, and he had scorched his fingertips from reloading so often.
He had rarely been happier.
El was right. He was a gunfighter. Screw the CIA. This was what he had been born to do.
The courtyard was quiet now. El had been in the house for a long time. There could not be many left alive inside.
So where was El?
He wondered suddenly if El was dead. He might never know. Hours could pass, while he wondered when he should consider it all over. He could spend days out here trying to figure out how to get into the house, stumbling over dead bodies, patting them down to see if one was the mariachi.
"You better not," Sands muttered to himself. "You're not allowed to die, you shit."
If El died, he would be left alone. Alone, in the dark. With no way of going back. He had no idea where they were, or the layout of the land. He didn't know if reinforcements from the cartel would show up soon. Surely not all of the members had been at the hacienda, surely some were still out there. How long before they arrived, expecting to find their friends and finding only slaughter and one frightened, blind CIA agent?
No. No. No fucking way. You are not going to stand here and freak out.
But it was too easy to stand there and imagine all kinds of horrors. Without El, he was helpless. Sure, he could turn around and walk away. And then what? In two days he would find himself without food and water, wandering the desert or falling down a mountainside. That would be a laugh.
You could do it, a voice in his head said brightly. You know you could.
He knew that voice. It was the voice of his madness, the voice that urged him to pull the trigger, to make that call, to do the brilliant, the insane, the impossible. That voice had been quiet for a long time, but it was awake now, making him practically bounce with restless energy, the need to take action, to shout, to do something.
Go in the house, the voice whispered. You're missing out on all the fun!
How could he refuse? Sands started forward, intending to enter the courtyard.
And he heard the jingling sounds of El Mariachi's approach.
Immediately he flattened himself against the wall, still safely out of sight. Because he had heard two things in those footsteps, and they were both very wrong. The first was the dragging gait of someone who was hurt.
The second was that El was not alone.
"Hola!" El called. "Estas aqui?"
Are you here?
Sands tightened his grip on the guns in his hands and said nothing.
"Estan muerte," El said. They're all dead. He stopped walking. "You can come out now. It's safe. It's over." He continued to speak in Spanish.
Not once, in all the time they had spent together, had El talked to him in Spanish. It was a warning, Sands realized, and shook his head. If he had still had his eyes, he would have rolled them. El really underestimated him, if the man didn't know he would have figured out the situation all by himself, without resorting to stupid spy tricks like switching languages.
"You're sure?" he called. He spoke in English. Just to make El nervous.
"Si," El said. "Es verdad." It's true.
"Anyone left alive?" he called.
"Nadie," El said. No one.
"I guess this means we get to celebrate. How many beers are you going to have?"
"Solamente uno," El replied. Only one.
Sands nodded. Just the one man, then. He had heard right.
Abruptly he wondered what would happen if he didn't play his part in this game. What if he just stood here, and did nothing? What if the man in the courtyard got tired of waiting and decided to shoot El in the head?
Setting aside the fact that he probably wouldn't get very far if he was left on his own, how would he feel if El died?
It was a good question. One to take time to consider. Maybe El had his little mariachi buddies, but Sands had no one. Mostly this had been by choice -- it wasn't just recently that he had developed trust issues. But occasionally through the years there had been people he had genuinely liked, relationships he had tried for whatever reason to cultivate. Sometimes this had happened with women, sometimes with men. If the person in question was a woman, sometimes sex was involved, but not always. Usually he had just been seeking friendship.
But something within him didn't seem to want him to have friends. He danced too close to the edge of sanity. And no one was quite smart enough, or funny enough, or tough enough. No one could measure up. If he couldn't respect someone, how on earth could he stand them enough to want to be around them? And when he had wanted to be around them, he had always wanted to be in control, and so inevitably they had all left.
Except for El.
Sands knew the mariachi had stayed because El didn't think he had a choice. But that logic only applied one way. For Sands, there were no other options. El, however, could have walked away at any moment. The man didn't seem to understand that, but it was true. El could have left, any time he wanted.
Only he hadn't. He had stayed, for reasons known only to him, and now Sands was faced with an annoying dilemma. Did he let the man who might be the only friend he had ever had die a grisly death, or did he try to save that man, and surely die himself in the process?
He had heard the hesitation in El's footsteps. He knew the mariachi was injured. The only question was how badly. El was still walking, and that was a good sign, but then again, a man could find the strength to do an awful lot when he had a gun pointed at the back of his head.
The man holding El hostage lost his patience. "Come out!" he shouted in heavily accented English. Was it Escalante himself? Sands supposed it could be. He wouldn't know. He did know that the man sounded awfully familiar, enough to make the hair on the back of his neck rise. "Come out, and we will not kill you."
We? Sands thought. What we? Your friends are dead, buddy.
But of course, he wasn't supposed to know that. He was blind, which translated to ignorant, in the minds of men like Escalante.
Fair enough. Sands could play ignorant.
"How do I know you're telling the truth?" he called.
And he listened. No one moved in the courtyard. Escalante – if it was really him – was bluffing.
"You will know when you are not dead," came the reply. "Throw your weapons out. Now!"
Sands hesitated. This was supposed to be his moment, his chance to prove himself. Was he really going to throw that all away, for a mariachi?
Then he shrugged. Que sera, sera.
He threw two of his pistols out into the courtyard, hesitated, then pulled a third from one of his shoulder holsters and tossed it away. The fourth he kept. He wished for his prosthetic arm then, wished for it more than anything. That handy little prop (ha ha, no pun intended) had saved his life more than once. But it was lost now, having been left in the plaza on the day he had killed Ajedrez. By the time he had thought to send the kid for it, it had been long gone, just another casualty of Marquez's botched coup.
"Now step out into the courtyard! Slowly!"
"All right!" he called. "I'm coming! Don't shoot!" Come on, El. Talk to me, damnit. I can't fucking see!
And El, through some miracle, knew what he needed. The mariachi began to speak, guiding Sands with the sound of his voice. He sounded close to the other man, and that had to mean the man was holding El physically captive. "We need to be sure that you will do as you say. I know you are a man of your word, but there is still some doubt, you must understand." On and on El droned, and with every word Sands could hear the pain he was in.
He gripped the gun in his left hand and sidled up to the archway. He waved with his right. "Okay!" he shouted. "I'm coming out."
El kept talking, babbling on about honor and trust. Sands moved a little to his right, so Escalante could see him. He kept his left hand behind the stone wall.
"Let me see your hands," ordered the man.
"Who are you?" Sands asked. He was curious. He knew that voice, somehow, although he couldn't remember from where. If this man really was Escalante, he wanted to know.
"I am Ramon Escalante," said the man. "And you are Sands."
The whole nature of the day changed. Somewhere up above, Sands could almost swear he heard a heavenly choir break into song.
"Pleased to meet you," he drawled. He kept his voice light and cheerful so Escalante would not know the excitement that had filled him upon hearing the name. Everything was happening just like he had intended. He had wanted this chance, and lo and behold, here it was.
He had to work hard to keep from grinning insanely. He had not lost his touch. Even blind, he was still in control.
Life was good.
"Step into the courtyard," Escalante said. "Slowly. My men will shoot you if you take so much as one step that I do not wish."
Sands nodded. Some of the grin slipped out onto his face, but he was beyond caring. "Sure." He did not move.
He heard movement in the courtyard, and then El gave a pained groan, a sound unlike anything Sands had ever heard him make before. "You need to stop fucking around, and do as I say, Agent Sands," Escalante said.
Hearing the man say his name suddenly jolted his memory. His grin died.
He knew where he had heard Escalante before.
Escalante had been there. That day. The day that his life had forever changed. Escalante had been one of the men who had laughed him.
Escalante had said, "It's a bright day out there, Agent Sands. You wouldn't want to forget these." Escalante had pushed the sunglasses onto his face, waking the pain that the drugs had successfully masked up until that point, making him scream and fall to his knees.
"Sands." El's voice was strained, tight with pain.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he muttered, still half-caught by the memory.
This is it.
Oh yeah. Escalante was going down.
Sands stepped into the archway.
He made no effort to hide the gun as he switched it to his right hand. Casually he held it high, sideways, aimed at a point he fervently prayed was Escalante's head. "Drop it, amigo."
El made that pained noise again. "You do not have the upper hand here, Agent Sands," said Escalante. "If you do not lower your weapon, you leave me no choice but to kill your friend here."
"Oh, he's not my friend," Sands said airily. He moved his wrist a fraction to the left, using the sound of Escalante's voice to correct his aim. "Kill him if you want. It makes no difference to me. All I care about is you."
"And if I call your bluff?" asked Escalante. He sounded bored.
"It's no bluff," Sands said. He shrugged. "Go ahead."
Escalante said nothing. The courtyard was silent.
It was the Day of the Dead all over again, Sands thought. Just him and the bad guy, facing off under the hot sun.
A lot had changed since then, though. On that day he had been half-dead already, reckless to the point of being suicidal. Nothing had mattered except killing the men who had hurt him in ways he had never even imagined could happen. He had not cared whether he lived or died, so long as he took them with him.
Today, thoughts of dying were the furthest thing from Sands' mind. He completely forgot that he had been planning to kill himself if this day did not go well. "The things you've done," he said, his tone faintly scolding, like he was talking to a five year-old. "Why, I hear you shot a kid in Los Remedios."
He could almost hear the puzzled look on Escalante's face.
He let his voice turn cold as he said his next words, the last words he had ever heard while he could still see. "We must make sure that doesn't happen again."
He pulled the trigger.
And missed.
Escalante's gun boomed, and a split second later Sands was spinning around as a bullet tore into his arm. Hey, we've already done this! shouted the voice in his head, then it went prudently silent.
He raised the gun again. His left arm had gone dead at his side. There was no pain.
Escalante fired a second time.
This time there was pain. A lot of it. He fell, landing on his back in the dirt.
"I must say," Escalante said, "I am impressed, Agent Sands. Most men in your position would have not have gotten as far as you."
"I've always been a can-do kind of guy," Sands said. He had to fight for the necessary air to speak, force the words out past the pain in his chest. He had lost his grip on his gun when he fell, and he inched his hand to the right, trying to find it.
A bullet spanged into the dust, inches from his fingers. "Don't move," Escalante ordered. Sands wondered if he had meant to miss.
What the fuck are you doing now, El? Just standing there? Having fun yet, watching the blind man bleed to death? Move, you asshole!
"You have done well," Escalante said. He did not sound bored now. Far from it. "But in the end, you still failed. Now you will both die."
And then noise filled the air, a confusing mix of sounds Sands could barely sort out. It was like the day he had been blinded, stepping out into the sunlight and being overwhelmed by the sounds of the street. He groped for his gun, and found it. His fingers closed round it, and he cried out in triumph.
With the gun in his hand, everything suddenly became very clear. El Mariachi and Ramon Escalante were struggling to overpower each other. The two men staggered across the courtyard like wrestlers, fighting for control of the gun Escalante still held.
Sands rose to one knee. "Move!" he roared.
There was the sound of a fist striking flesh, the most beautiful right cross Sands had ever heard. The two men separated, and their footsteps suddenly became distinguishable from each other again.
Sands took aim, and fired.
Escalante made no sound, but Sands knew his shot had hit home. The leader of the cartel took one drunken step backward, and collapsed.
A moment later, El dropped to the dirt.
Slowly, Sands lowered himself to the ground, until he was lying on his back. The pain in his chest was terrible. It was difficult to breathe. He coughed, and tasted blood in the back of his throat.
For a long moment he just lay there. Then he heard El stir. The mariachi began to crawl toward him.
"Are you still standing?" he whispered.
"Still," El whispered back.
"We did it," he said. "Chalk one up for the good guys."
"Now you are a good guy?"
"Figure of speech," he said.
"Sands. Do you play the piano?"
"What? No."
"You saved my life," El said.
"Yeah? Don't get used to it, though."
"Don't worry. I won't."
"Good. Now let's get the fuck out here."
"Can you walk?"
"Oh sure. You?"
"No problem."
"Then let's go."
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