Chapter 12
Showdown with the CIA
Disclaimer: Sands and El don't belong to me. They belong to Robert Rodriguez.
Rating: Strong R for language and violence. Remember that I did warn you…
Summary: Let's get it on, Part 2. El and Sands make their way out of the CIA headquarters.
Author's Note: I love you guys. Your reactions to the last chapter were completely unexpected, and very touching. I didn't actually think I could get away with El's dream – I thought for sure everyone would know what I was doing right from the start, and be annoyed with me for it. Rest assured, if I ever kill Sands, he will go out in a blaze of glory, not just one sentence. The poor guy deserves a noble death, if nothing else, after everything I've put him through.
****
El Mariachi and Belinda Harrison walked through the house. No one saw them. Had she been a different kind of woman, El reflected, that would not have been true, and his plan would have been doomed to failure right from the start. But she was determined to show the world -- and men in particular -- that she was in charge, and so there were no soldiers inside, no guards. He understood now what Sands had meant when the agent had said she made it difficult for men working with her. The soldiers probably hated her. It was little wonder they were not in the house.
The door to the bedroom was closed. It looked nothing like the door from his nightmare, and that made El feel better. But he could not prevent himself from feeling a jolt of worry. He had changed Sands' plan around to make it easier for himself, to allow him to walk away from the CIA with a minimum of fuss. But he never should have agreed to the plan at all. He knew that now. It had been insanity to come here.
And he knew one other thing. There was no way he could shoot Sands. He just couldn't do it.
"Open it," he said gruffly.
She balked. "If you leave now, I won't say anything. No one will ever need to know what happened." She lifted her chin. "This is the only chance you'll get. I suggest you take it."
El pressed the gun harder against her skull. "Open it."
She reached out with her free hand and opened the door. It swung inward on its hinges. A blast of cold air escaped out into the hall, and El suddenly knew why the rest of the house was so hot. They had closed the vents, and redirected all the cold into this one room.
He felt a slow boil begin in his veins.
He shoved her forward, forcing her to walk ahead of him. They stepped into the room, and El kicked the door closed behind him. Not all the way though -- he didn't want it shutting and possibly locking him in. He made sure the door was cracked open, then turned around and finally let himself see.
The only furniture in the room was a metal folding table and two matching folding chairs. Sands sat in the foremost chair, his hands cuffed behind him. His head was thrown back. He was shuddering with cold, but when he heard the door open he smiled wearily. "I knew you'd come back, bitch."
This comment had obviously been aimed at Belinda Harrison. Before she could reply, El said, "I told you I would."
Sands started in surprise. That little gesture made El's fury grow a little more. Two days ago Sands would have known the instant he walked into the room. The agent had to be hurting badly if his focus was off so much.
Sands tried to laugh, then winced. "I don't believe it," he breathed. "You came back."
El heard the relief in his voice. And it was little wonder. The right side of Sands' face was a mass of color, a horrid mix of dried blood and vivid bruising. Most of the blood had come from his eyesocket, and El felt his stomach turn over at the sight. He could not imagine what they had done to him to make him bleed like that.
He tried to keep his voice light, so Sands would not know how badly affected he was by all this. "Well, I had nothing better to do today," he said.
This time Sands did not laugh. "Develop a sense of humor later," he snapped. He lifted his head and sat up as straight as he could, his breath catching on a gasp of pain. "Get me the fuck out of here." He sounded tired and hurt, but he was obviously not dying. Only a healthy man could sound as petulant as Sands did now.
The lingering fear from his dream faded away completely. El grinned.
He turned to Harrison. His smile died. That simmering in his blood was much stronger now. "Unlock him."
"I don't have the key," she said.
He had never struck a woman before, but El found himself nearly quivering with the need to release his pent-up rage on Belinda Harrison. He twisted her broken wrist, stopping himself only at the last minute from doing serious damage. She uttered a sharp cry of pain and tried to kick him. He cocked her gun, and jammed the barrel harder against her head.
She went still right away. "In my pocket," she said sullenly.
"Why, Bel, you do not sound happy at all," Sands said with mock sympathy, in between shivers. "Whatever could be bothering you?"
"Shut the fuck up, Sheldon," she snapped.
Sands laughed. It hurt him to laugh, El saw, but he laughed anyway.
Harrison got the key out of her pocket. She had to reach awkwardly across her body with her right hand in order to do it, but El made no move to help. He knew the moment he let go of her, she would turn on him.
When she had the key, he walked her up to the chair where Sands sat. She unlocked the cuffs, and let them drop to the floor.
Sands groaned in relief. Thin raw circles ringed both his wrists, and trails of blood ran down his fingers. He pulled his arms around the chair and let his hands rest in his lap. He bowed his head, and for a moment El thought he was going to faint. "Don't kill her too quickly," he said. "I want to get a few licks in first."
"You better not kill me," Belinda Harrison said. She did not sound very brave though.
"Can you walk?" El asked. Despite his jacket, he was starting to shiver. It was freezing in this room.
"Yeah."
El looked at Harrison again. "Where are his sunglasses?"
She looked at him like he had spoken a foreign language. "What?"
"He said, 'Where are his sunglasses?' Bitch." Sands smirked. "That last part was all mine, though."
El punctuated the point with another squeeze of her wrist. She gasped. "In my back pocket!"
"Get them," El said.
Slowly she took the sunglasses from her back pocket. They looked a little bent from having been sat on, but they were still intact. She shoved them into Sands' hand with a moue of disgust. "Here."
"You're too kind," Sands murmured. He slid the sunglasses on gingerly, his breath hissing through his teeth. His fingers hovered over his broken cheek, not quite daring to touch it. "Fuck."
El turned her so she was facing the door. "Time to go."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Sands took a deep breath and stood up. He swayed, and reached out with one hand to grab hold of the chair. "Ready when you are."
El waited to see if the agent was going to fall down, then decided Sands would be all right. He nudged Harrison toward the door. "Open it."
"What do you think you're going to do?" she demanded. "You can't just walk out of this house. My men will gun you down the moment they see you."
El stopped. He looked back at Sands, trying not to panic. He had absolutely no idea what to do next.
And Sands stepped up, providing the help El needed. "Oh, I think we'll do just fine," he drawled. "I figure we'll just use that little underground tunnel to the garage. No one will even know we're gone."
Harrison's face twisted in hatred. "You fucking prick," she said, each word clear and distinct.
Sands smiled so hard the cut on his cheek broke open and began bleeding again. "That's me, baby. I'm just a prick with legs."
"How did you know that?" El asked.
"I heard them talking," Sands said. He shrugged. To Harrison he said, "Don't blame your goons. It's hard to tell when the man with no eyes is unconscious, and when he can hear your every word."
She stiffened in El's grip, and he tensed, waiting for her to fight him. Then she went limp. "What happens now?"
"We are leaving," El said.
****
The underground tunnel was accessed through a door in the basement. El had no idea why the original occupants of the house had built such a thing, but he was grateful for it.
He less than thrilled, however, about walking through the tunnel. It was unlit, and he couldn't see a thing. Beside him, Belinda Harrison was quiet. She seemed to have given up all thoughts of escape, and that alone made El distrust her. He knew she wouldn't have surrendered this easily. Sooner or later, she was going to try something.
Sands walked behind them, using the sound of their footsteps to guide him. His gait was uneven, and he kept bumping into the walls. As they had made their way through the house, he had walked into an end table in the living room and nearly fallen. Since both his hands were occupied with Belinda Harrison, El had been unable to help him. But he was worried. For the first time since El had known him, Sands was acting like a blind man.
And that worry only made him angrier.
The darkness was absolute. El had no idea what lay ahead of him. His knee hurt where he had slammed it into the table, and he was forced to limp. He did not want to walk into a post or stumble on a clod of dirt, or do anything to give Harrison the chance she was waiting for. So he moved slowly, inching along through the dark.
A drawling voice in his head said, Welcome to my world, El. He kept moving, and did his best to ignore the voice.
He began to wonder what he should do with his captive. She could not come with them, but he was reluctant to kill her, even after all she had done. Maybe he could knock her unconscious and leave her here in the tunnel.
"You'll have to kill her," Sands said, seemingly reading his mind.
Harrison jerked in El's grip. "You can't," she gasped.
"Well, you're not coming with us," Sands said from behind her. "And we can't let you go, because then you'll just hunt us down again."
"No, we won't," Harrison said. "I give you my word. But the only way that will happen is if you let me go. I can't stop the hunt if I'm dead. Let me go, and I promise we'll leave you alone."
"No good," El said, throwing her own words back in her face. "I've learned not to trust the promises women make."
She snarled with rage. "If you kill me, they'll send more soldiers and more agents. You won't be able to take a piss without us knowing it."
"Quiet!" Sands snapped. "Shut up!"
He was not just silencing her out of anger, El realized. There was a warning note to his voice. Someone was out there, and the agent had heard them.
Despite the danger of their situation, El smiled.
Sands was back in the game.
He leaned in close to Belinda Harrison. He put his lips right by her ear and breathed, "If you make so much as a single sound, I will kill you first, and then whoever is out there." He knew she wouldn't care about the other person, but he hoped she would take the threat to herself seriously.
She gulped and nodded.
El listened. After a moment he could hear it: the sound of footsteps. They were still far away, and they were very quiet, but they were unmistakably there.
He shook his head. Sands had heard those footsteps, even over the sound of Belinda Harrison's voice. El had known his hearing was good, but he was amazed all over again at just how good.
But they needed weapons. The only gun between all of three of them was currently aimed at Belinda Harrison's head. He dared not give it to Sands.
And then he remembered.
"Sands." He kept his voice a low whisper. "My right boot."
Sands muttered something El could not hear, then came forward. He knelt down with a muffled curse. El felt a hand lightly touch his knee, and he jumped instinctively at the strangeness of the sensation.
"Stay still, goddamnit," Sands whispered. His hand moved downward, finding the bottom of El's pant leg. He lifted it up, and the chains on the fabric jingled merrily.
"Oh, Christ," Sands swore. "Go on ahead. Quietly." He pulled the dagger out from El's boot and stood up.
El applied pressure to Harrison's arm. She hissed in pain, but made no other sound. She walked obediently forward. El moved with her, as silently as he could, cursing his clothing.
He stopped after a few steps. He did not want to get too far ahead.
Behind him, Sands waited.
Out in the tunnel, the footsteps drew nearer. They were hesitant, and not terribly quiet. It occurred to El that whoever was coming was just as blind as they all were. The man was in total darkness, with no idea of what was around him. No doubt he was frightened – the man had probably never spent any length of time in darkness.
But Sands had lived in the dark for over a year. He knew it intimately, and he was not afraid of it.
The other man never had a chance. He drew near, and El heard a sudden blur of movement. Then the sick sound of a knife entering flesh. The man in the tunnel uttered a thick gagging sound. Something clattered to the ground.
The man collapsed.
Harrison gave a soft sigh. El expected her to lash out, but she did not move.
He heard Sands kneel down. The knife slid back into its sheath, and from there into Sands' boot. The former agent let out a mirthless chuckle. "Well, hello, Boston. You sick fuck."
Belinda Harrison stiffened. "Rick?"
"Was that his name?" Sands asked. He stood up. Something clattered, and then El heard the distinct sound of a gun being cocked.
Two flashes lit up the tunnel. The gunshots were deafening in such an enclosed space. Several feet away, two men tumbled to the floor.
El's breath caught. He had never even heard the other two men. They had been creeping through the tunnel, using the sound of the CIA agent's footsteps to hide their own progress. They had been better than the man Sands had called Boston, but not good enough.
Belinda Harrison was just as stunned. "Oh my God. How did you know they were there?"
Sands walked right up to her, brushing past El as if the mariachi wasn't even there. "I'm blind, you bitch. Not deaf."
She laughed, a short ugly sound. "You could have been. Rick wanted to, you know. He wanted to stick a needle in your ear and see if you talked then." Her voice dropped to a snarl full of hatred. "I should have let him."
El closed his eyes in horror. He could not be rid of this woman fast enough. She was pure poison, all the way through.
"You would have liked that, wouldn't you?" Sands drew his arm back and hit Belinda Harrison across the face. She was knocked backward into El, who staggered with her added weight. She dropped like a stone. He didn't bother trying to catch her. He just let her hit the ground.
"Well," Sands said, "should I do it? Should I live out the American dream, and shoot my boss in the head?"
"She is not your boss anymore," El said.
"No, she isn't," Sands agreed. He sounded as though he might fall down at any moment. "Which actually makes it easier to kill her. But -- we still need her. She's our ticket out of here."
He knelt down again. He must have done something to wake Harrison, because she yelped and sat up quickly. And she came up swinging. One of her fists struck El on his injured kee, making him gasp. The other fist connected with Sands' face. The agent let out a sharp cry of pain, and hit her again.
Whimpering, she tumbled backward, into El's legs. He leaned down and scooped her up. He pressed her gun to the back of her head. "We're leaving now," he said. "You tell them not to shoot at us. Comprende?"
She nodded sullenly. "I will get you fuckers," she vowed. Her voice sounded muffled; her mouth was bleeding.
El started to push her forward, then stopped. "Sands?" The agent was still kneeling down in front of them, a clear sign that all was not well with him.
"Yeah," came the whispered reply.
El frowned. He dared not let go of Harrison. He didn't want to ask, Are you all right? and humiliate his friend in front of this woman. So he asked, "Are you still standing?"
A long silence was his only response. He was about to throw Harrison to the ground and kneel down when he heard Sands chuckle wearily. "Still," Sands said. He rose to his feet, rather unsteadily, bumping into the wall.
"You don't sound like you're doing very well, Sheldon," said Belinda Harrison in a sickly-sweet voice. "Maybe you ought to see a doctor." She stressed the word "see", imbuing it with as much sarcasm as she could.
El gave her broken wrist a vicious squeeze, prompting her to cry out and arch against him. "Shut up," he ordered.
Sands would not be baited. He turned around. "Let's get out of here," he said. He started walking forward.
Pushing his captive in front of him, El followed.
****
The tunnel sloped upward for a stretch, then ended at a door. Sands stood aside so Belinda Harrison could reach the knob. "Open it," he said.
"Listen," she said. She tried one more time to persuade them to let her go, until El cocked the gun and shoved it under her chin. She fell silent, but not before El heard her voice thicken with tears of rage.
She opened the door. Light spilled in, and El winced back from it. Already his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the light from the garage seemed unnaturally bright.
"Halt where you are!" shouted a voice from within the garage.
"Tell them not to shoot us," El told Harrison. "To let us go."
She hesitated, and he gave her wrist another hard squeeze. She yelped, and cried, "Don't shoot! Put down your weapons. Let them go!"
With her in the lead, they stepped into the garage. El's eyes began to adjust to the light, and he could see once more.
The wide garage doors were raised. Three cars were parked inside. Eight soldiers in fatigues stood in a loose semicircle across the garage floor, their weapons aimed at El. They seemed disinclined to lower those weapons.
"Do it!" Belinda Harrison shouted. "Let them go!"
The man in the middle of the circle glanced at his comrades, then abruptly lowered his rifle. The others followed suit, some more reluctantly than others.
"Good ol' Bel," Sands muttered. "Still keeping those men hopping."
El looked at him. Harrison's blow had re-opened his wounds, and he was bleeding again from his cheek and his eyesocket. Blood coated his face all way down to his throat. He looked like shit. But he was upright, smiling snidely at the soldiers forced to obey a woman's orders.
El marched Harrison to the closest car and made her open the door. Sands followed them, moving with definite difficulty now.
"Tell them not to follow us," El said into her ear. "We will drop you off when we are away from the ranch. If they follow us, we will dump your dead body on the road."
She swallowed hard. Blood darkened her lips and chin from where Sands had struck her. "Stay here," she said to the soldiers. "Don't follow."
They got into the car. El sat right next to her, squashed into the driver's seat with her. He continued holding the gun on her, and he did not let go of her injured arm. Sands climbed in back, rolled down the window, and aimed his stolen gun in the general direction of the soldiers. He had to hold it with both hands, El saw, to keep from dropping it.
Harrison reached up and removed the keys from atop the sun visor. She started the car. "Where am I going?" she asked.
"Just drive," El said.
She pulled out of the garage. The soldiers came together in a group as they watched the car leave. One of them raised a radio to his mouth and spoke into it.
Just as the car turned out of the garage, Sands started shooting. He didn't come close to hitting any of the soldiers, but that had not been his intention. The soldiers hurried to take cover behind the other cars, giving them a clean escape.
Sands fired the gun empty, then tossed it out the window.
They drove up to the gate. The two soldiers standing there looked furious. "Don't follow us," Belinda Harrison snapped. "I'll be fine."
"That's what you think," Sands muttered. She tensed at this, but said nothing.
"Turn left," El said. He couldn't wait to get rid of this woman. She stank of sweat, and the left side of her body was pressed against him, making him feel distinctly dirty, even through his clothes. He couldn't help the irrational feeling that her poison was seeping into him through their close contact. If he was not rid of her fast, he would end up as crazy as she was.
She swung the car to the left, onto the road. El glanced into the side mirror and saw that the soldiers had all left the garage in order to watch. They still carried their weapons, but none of them made any move to fire.
He could not help wondering just what those men were thinking. Perhaps they were glad to see her go.
When his own car came into view, he ordered her to stop. She slammed on the brakes, hard. El saw the look on her face and knew what she meant to do, so he was able to brace himself, but Sands went flying headfirst into the seat-back in front of him. He made a strangled sound of pain and fury, then slumped.
As soon as the car was safely stopped, El opened the door. He leaned over, took the keys out of the ignition, thrust them into her hand, and dragged her out of the car by her injured arm. He had never killed a woman in cold blood before, but he found himself severely tempted now.
He marched her to the back of the car. "Open the trunk."
"No." She went very pale.
"Do it," El said coldly.
Her hands shook as she opened the trunk.
"Get in," El said.
"No!" she said. She rounded on him, kicking at his hurt knee and hitting at him with her free hand.
El had expected this. He pulled the gun back and brought it down on her skull. Instantly she slumped. The fist that had been aimed at his face dropped, and her arm draped over his shoulder as she collapsed, her eyes rolling up in her head.
El laid her in the trunk, tossed the keys in beside her, and shut the door. He walked around the car and opened the back door.
Sands was crumpled on the floor of the back seat. He was just coming to. "El."
"I'm here," El said.
Sands stumbled from the car. He walked under his own power at first, but after three steps his knees buckled and he fell. "Shit," he whispered.
El slung an arm about his shoulders and pulled him up. To his surprise, Sands did not resist.
He guided Sands to his car, and into the back seat. He thrust the water bottle into the agent's hand. "Here."
Sands lay his head back on the seat. "Is it tequila?" he asked with a weary smile.
"No," El said. "It's Sunday. They don't sell tequila on Sundays."
"Damn the luck," Sands sighed. He uncapped the bottle and drank deeply.
El got in the car and removed the keys from his pocket. He started it up, glanced in the rearview mirror, and pulled onto the road.
Five minutes later, they were outside the Durango city limits, heading west.
****
Author's Note: I have absolutely no idea if Mexico has blue laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol on Sundays. I just thought that line of El's was too cute, though, so I decided to keep it.