Chapter 6
Sands Comes Up With A Plan
Disclaimer: I do not own El and Sands. That honor belongs to Robert Rodriguez.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: A terrible plan, and a startling confession.
Author's Note: I've been horribly remiss in not saying this earlier. Thank you, thank you, thank you, to all my reviewers. You guys are the best. I love reading your comments. Often the things you say influence the story, and what happens next. So keep letting me know what you think, and I'll keep writing back to you when I can, and hopefully I'll also keep writing a story that you enjoy.
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The sleepy town of Villa de Cos was rocked to the core by the violence that had occurred at El Mariachi's house. Most of them had only heard stories about gunfights, and they had never seen anything like this before, except on TV. For nearly three weeks wild stories went through the town with rapid speed, passed from neighbor to neighbor. El Mariachi, they said, had killed six men and suffered not a scratch. And when he was done, he had walked right out the front door and gone after the ones who had sent the soldiers.
El knew all this because he was still in Villa de Cos, although only three other people knew that. One was Sands. The second was the doctor. The third was a man who had owed El a favor. This man had agreed to let El to stay at his house, and then he had left town in order to spread rumors of the mariachi's presence, and create a false trail for the CIA to follow.
Whatever the man had done, it had worked. There had been no sign of either soldiers or CIA agents in Villa de Cos for three whole weeks.
It was time to leave.
****
The sky in the west was ablaze with color. The first, bravest stars were already shining. Down the street, some children were playing a loud game involving a lot of running and shouting. It was a beautiful Wednesday in March.
El sat in the backyard of the house where he had been hiding for three weeks. A low stone wall ran the length of the yard, separating the grass from a flower garden. The stone was warm beneath his legs; the grass had grown high, and it covered the toes of his boots.
He took a satisfying drag of his cigarette, exhaling slowly, holding the smoke in his lungs as long as he could. He could do this without wincing now. His ribs were healed. His arm was healed. He was free from pain.
In fact, right at this moment, El Mariachi was content.
He could not remember the last time he had done this. Simply sat still, quietly, without talking, without moving, without any unnecessary thinking. Just...sitting.
Once he had known how to find stillness, without any effort on his part. A musician knew how to find the downbeats, the pauses, the rests. Once he had sat for hours under the sun with his friends, sometimes sharing stories and laughing, other times quiet and thoughtful.
Those days were long gone, but life, as El had come to realize, moved in cycles. Men might die, times might move on, but here he was, still sitting under the sun with a friend.
Sands was sitting on the grass, his back to the stone wall. One leg was stretched before him, the other was drawn up; his wrist rested on his bent knee, and a cigarette dangled from his fingers. His face was upturned, catching the last rays of sun. He was silent.
He had not said much at all, in fact, since they had left the death and destruction in El's house. At first El had been suspicious of that silence. Then he had felt the first insidious tendrils of worry creeping in -- silence was very unlike Sands. Finally he had just accepted it. For whatever reason, Sands simply didn't feel like talking these days.
He had talked at first, though, his words laced with bitter anger. He had been furious with El for bringing him to Villa de Cos. For lying about the safety of the town. The morning after their arrival at the house, he had knocked El out cold with a single punch. El had woken with a throbbing lump on his jaw to remind him of the consequences of fucking over a man like Sands.
The hell of it was, he blamed himself too. He had known full well the danger of returning. But he had done it anyway. He had stood there on the porch of Ramirez's house and he had lied. No amount of rationalization, no pretty excuses, could justify what he had done.
El didn't like guilt. He wore it badly. He took a final drag on the cigarette and stubbed it out on the stone next to him.
"We could go now," he said.
Sands did not reply.
El knew the agent was angry with himself too. Sands had said nothing to indicate this was true, but El knew it anyway. Sands was pissed that he had believed El, even when he should have known better.
El himself thought it was very telling that Sands had believed the lie, but he had not said this out loud. He didn't want another punch to the jaw.
He shifted his weight ever so slightly on the wall, so the edges of the stones didn't dig into the backs of his thighs. He was ready to go. He was healthy again. He had clean clothes, his guitar, and the few possessions he could not bear to leave behind. He had his guns. As far as he was concerned, there was no reason to stay in Villa de Cos another day.
"We could go now," he repeated, trying not to sound too eager.
Sands just sat there. He gave no sign that he had heard.
"To Durango?" he tried. The city was between Culiacan and the interior of the country, where they were now. El had to admit, as far as strategic locations went, it was a good choice. From there the CIA agents could have the soldiers fan out in their search, and look in all directions.
He hoped the man who owed him a favor was leading them far away, and that he was not putting himself in too much danger by doing so.
"Sands?" The man still had not moved.
"They're not going to stop," Sands said.
El had to concede this was probably true.
"I won't go back."
El nodded. He understood. The one thing Sands feared – probably the only thing he feared – was losing his freedom. He would have feared it in the days of the Barillo cartel, but now that he was blind, he clung to his independence even more fiercely than before. It was all he had. If the CIA took that away, it would be worse than killing him.
To spend a life in captivity was not a fate El would wish on anyone. He himself would never stop fighting. He had told Carolina once that all he wanted was to be free, and he still believed that. Free to play his music, to sit under the sun and smoke. Free to live his life by his own rules, not someone else's.
"Then we go to Durango," he said. He slapped his hands on his thighs, eager to be on the road.
"I have a plan," Sands said. "Do you want to hear it?"
El slumped a little. It was obvious they weren't going to be leaving tonight. He nodded, remembered Sands couldn't see him, and grunted his agreement.
"They won't stop hunting me," Sands said, "unless, they believe I am dead."
"They will only believe that if they see a body," El pointed out.
"Well, they're not going to!" Sands snapped.
El smiled. Finally. For three weeks Sands had been morosely silent most of the time. Now it looked like the Sands of old was back.
"I said, I have a plan." Sands took one final drag on his cigarette, then ground it out. "Are you going to listen, or are you going to interrupt?"
El waved a hand, ceding the floor. "Tell me your plan."
"They have to believe I'm dead. The only way that will happen is if they see a body, like you said. Or, if they see me being fatally injured, and then someone tells them that I died."
"You're going to let them shoot you?"
"No." Sands smiled, that scary smile that had no humor in it whatsoever. "You are."
Taken aback, El could think nothing to say. This was not at all what he had expected.
"Are you listening? We're going to get in your car, drive to Durango, and we are going to find the CIA. We are going to let them surround us. You are then going to make an escape, in full view of every soldier and agent they have."
"And you?" El asked.
"I will make myself right at home in their headquarters, the newest guest of the Central Intelligence Agency."
El couldn't believe he had heard right. "You're going to give yourself up to them?"
"Only for a little while," Sands said. He spoke in that lazy drawl, the voice he used when he was excited about something. "Because you, El my dear friend, are going to rescue me. And you're going to shoot me, so everyone can see. Oh, and you can shoot anyone else you like, while you're at it.
"You will then take me – who will just so happen to be on death's doorstep – out of the building. We will make our getaway. Later you can go back and report that I died. They will have seen me all shot up, so they will have every reason to believe you."
El just stared at him. He had never in all his life heard a worse plan.
He didn't even know where to begin. Setting aside the fact that Sands' plan made no provisions for the search the CIA had mounted for himself, there were just too many ways things could go wrong.
"Well?" Sands demanded. "Are we on?"
The sun had slipped behind the horizon now. The color in the sky was beginning to fade. "No," El said.
"No?"
"No," he repeated. He shook his head, trying to put his thoughts in order. "Why would I shoot you if I'm trying to rescue you?"
"I don't know!" Sands waved his hands about, making something up on the spot. "Some…weird…mariachi honor…thing…like you'd rather see me dead than in the hands of my enemies."
"That only works if you're a mariachi," El said dryly.
"Oh for Christ's sake! You'll think of something, all right?"
El sighed. An awful lot of the responsibility in this scheme rested on his shoulders. Not only was he supposed to fight his way out from a group of armed men, he was then supposed to go back, retrieve Sands, and fight his way out yet again. This time with a wounded man to worry about. A wounded, blind man.
"I'm surprised you don't want to just kill them all," he said, half-hoping Sands would jump on this idea. The rest of him was appalled that he would even suggest such a terrible thing.
"I do!" Sands said. He shook his head. "But I can't. If I do that, there will be a whole fucking platoon of Marines down here next, and this country isn't big enough to hide from them."
"It won't work," El said.
"Well then you think of something!" Sands shouted. "Because I am not going to spend one more day hiding from those fuckers."
"You have to hide from the cartels," El said reasonably. "How is this any different?"
"It just is," Sands said irritably. The hand that had held his cigarette curled into a fist.
"You could always leave Mexico," he offered.
"No. No. No. No fucking way. Barillo made me a citizen of this country when he took my eyes. Besides, I'm not running anymore, from anybody. Savvy?"
El shrugged. He had not expected Sands to agree. He had only said it to see how the man reacted. "It is too risky," he said.
"Well, I'm waiting to hear your plan," Sands said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "Come on, talk. I'm all ears, El."
He scowled. Thought about giving Sands a swift kick in the head. Of course he didn't have a plan. How the hell was he supposed to have a plan? He hadn't even known they needed a plan, until five minutes ago.
But Sands was right. The CIA would never stop hunting for their rogue agent who had gone insane down in Mexico, who needed to be brought in before he orchestrated even more chaos and disaster. What the CIA didn't know was that Sands had no more interest in sowing chaos. All Sands cared about these days was the same thing El cared about.
Libertad.
Freedom.
The CIA needed a reason to stop hunting Sands. Which meant they either had to believe he was no threat to them and their interests, or they had to believe he was dead.
Of the two, El thought proving the latter would be easier. Well, not easy exactly, but it would certainly be easier to do that than to make the CIA – or anyone, for that matter – believe that Sands was not dangerous. Even a single glance at the man told you all you needed to know. No one with any brains would ever mistake Sands for anything other than what he was: a killer.
"So," he said. "They think you are dead, and they stop hunting for you. But they will still look for me."
"Yeah, probably, but you can handle yourself."
"So can you. You evaded them for six months."
"I can't fucking see!" Sands cried. He slammed his fist down on the ground. "How am I supposed to stay ahead of an enemy I can't even see?" There was a desperate, raw edge to his voice that El did not like. He had heard it once before, and he would never forget it.
But he understood the source of Sands' desperation. He remembered what it had felt like to walk down the street with his eyes closed, the fear that had made his heart pound, the doubts that had made him question everything he did. For him, though, it had been easy to banish the fear. All he had had to do was open his eyes and see again. Sands would never have that option.
And he remembered, too, what had happened in Puerto Vallarta, and he sighed. He had seen too much. He knew too much. He and Sands were bound together now, whether they liked it or not.
"What makes you think I can shoot you, and you will live?" he asked, trying to inject some sort of logic into the ridiculous scheme.
"You're a gunfighter, El. You can do it."
"They will have you for at least a whole day. What will they do to you?"
"Are you asking if they'll torture me? I doubt it. I'm an American, and besides, the CIA prides itself on being able to get answers from its prisoners without resorting to such barbaric methods. If they do anything, they'll use sodium pentothal. Most likely they'll just try to talk me to death."
El remained silent, skeptical about this. Maybe that was how the Americans handled their prisoners, but that was not how it was done in Mexico.
Sands sighed. "Look, even if they do break out the thumbscrews, which isn't going to happen, I'll be fine. I mean, think about it. I had my eyes ripped from my skull by a doctor who probably got his medical license at the local butcher's college. Do you really think there's anything the CIA can do to hurt me?"
El had to admit this was a good point. Which left only one question. "What if I don't come back for you?"
Sands was silent for a long time. He dropped his head, and El could see a muscle in his jaw twitch. The hand that had dropped to the grass grabbed a fistful of the green blades, squeezing them tight. "You will," he said.
"I might not," El said, keeping his voice light with an effort, as though he hadn't made up his mind yet whether he was going to help.
"You have to," Sands said, very quietly.
"No, I don't," El replied.
"You have to," Sands repeated.
"Why?" El asked.
The silence was deafening. Sands sat there, his head bowed. The last of the color drained from the sky. Overhead, a thousand stars sparked and shone.
At last, so quietly he almost couldn't hear, Sands said, "You have to come back because I trust you to."
El didn't know whether to laugh or shout in astonishment. "You do?"
"Yes!" Sands lifted his head, and El saw that he was furious at having been forced into this confession. "Are you happy you got to hear me say it? Yes, I trust you. But right now I'm about to fucking kill you. So tell me, are you with me, or are you not?"
El thought about it for a long moment. There were an awful lot of holes in Sands' plan, and if it went wrong, it would go horribly, terribly wrong. But he could not lie to himself. He was excited to give it a try.
It was truly a terrible plan. But it was the only one they had. And if it worked, he would be free of the CIA's clutches, too – he would see to that.
They would both be free.
"I'm with you," he said.
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