Chapter 21
Rescuing
Disclaimer: I don't own El or Sands, although I think I'm going to ask for them for Christmas.
Rating: A strong R for language and violence
Summary: El kicks some ass
Author's Note: The POV changes in this chapter as well, between El and Sands' perspective.
****
They returned at night. Chiclet was good at stealth, to El's pleasant surprise. It came from having so many siblings, he told El. Like all little boys around the world, he had long ago learned how to spy on his older brothers without them being aware of it. Sneaking around came quite naturally to him.
Only a thin crescent of moon glimmered up above; clouds were filling up the sky, and the moon moved in and out of shadow. El wore black, the better to blend in with this dark backdrop. Stealth was essential for this mission to succeed.
He had to kill as many men as possible without raising an alarm. He had to get inside the house without anyone knowing he was there. He had to free Sands without anyone seeing him, and then they had to get out of the house. Sands was adept at moving silently, so no worries there. The only difficulties as El saw them were being able to guide Sands effectively while shooting their way out, and the very real possibility that Sands would be physically unable to walk out under his own power.
But he would deal with that when the time came.
He looked at Chiclet. "Now, you know what to do?"
The boy nodded. He too wore dark clothing. "Sí."
They were crouched on the very same hilltop where El had sat earlier in the day and watched Diego Sanchez eat lunch. El undid the clasps on his guitar case and lifted the lid, revealing the instrument within. As he unlatched the guitar itself, he heard Chiclet make a funny little sighing sound.
The guns were there, waiting for him, innocent machines that came to life in his hands. It was not their fault that they knew how to spill blood. He had never resented them their purpose, although sometimes he did hate them.
He screwed silencers onto his pistols. He loaded his pockets with spare clips of ammunition. He reached into the guitar case and withdrew a wide black belt with many thin loops. He buckled this about his waist and slowly began sliding the throwing knives into the loops.
The throwing knives. After experiencing firsthand the damage they could do to a person, he had set about learning them. Carolina had joined him in these lessons, but whereas he had gone about the learning process with grim methodical routine, she had enjoyed it. She had become very good with the knives, far better than him. He had not used them in years -- not since her death, in fact. Holding the small, lethal blades now filled him with sorrow.
You must follow your heart, Carolina had said. Que quieres en la vida?
What do you want in life?
The sorrow left him. His resolve hardened. He would use these knives tonight, and in doing so he would honor Carolina's memory one last time. He would lay her to rest tonight, for good.
He turned to Chiclet. "Be patient," he said. "Do not worry. But if the sun begins to rise, and we are not back, leave. Go back to town. Take the bus back to your home, and never think about us again."
He started down the hillside.
****
On silent feet, El crept down the hill. They were expecting him, all right. He doubted there were this many men standing guard on any other night. No, they knew he was coming.
And they wanted him.
The stone wall was just as easy to climb today as it had been two years ago. The only difference was a slight stiffness in his limbs that hadn't been there on that day – a subtle reminder that although things like stone did not change, he was human, and a captive of time.
He had chosen to approach the wall at the far back corner. He reached the top and cautiously laid one hand flat on the surface.
No alarms sounded. No one shot at him.
In one fluid movement he slithered over the wall and dropped down on the other side, onto Diego Sanchez's property. The red-flowered bushes broke his fall, and also served to hide him.
He crouched behind the nearest bush, wondering how to go about this. The security cameras looked out into the yard; anyone monitoring them from inside the house would immediately spot him if he crossed the lawn.
As always, long-range planning eluded El Mariachi. His strengths had always lain in spontaneity, and flexibility.
Keeping close to the wall, still crouched down low, El began to move. He had to do this very slowly, mindful of rustling the bushes too much, and letting the sounds of his passage slip into the quiet night. He followed the wall around to the right side of the house. Two men stood at the back corner, the same corner where once he had stood and shot a member of Ramon Escalante's cartel. Just ahead, dimly reflecting the vague starlight, was the glass of the bathroom window, and the ledge he had used to climb onto the roof.
He had come as close as he dared. Slowly he pulled two of the throwing knives.
The men at the corner were smoking. They did not talk. They stared out into the night with grim faces. One of them kept glancing at the bushes El was currently hiding behind, and El knew that man had heard him approach. Just a rustling noise, perhaps. Not enough for him to tell his partner, but enough to grab his attention.
El shifted position slightly, so he had an opening in the bushes that he could throw through. He held the knives carefully, waiting for the night breeze to drop.
The wind died. El threw.
The two men fell, silver knives stuck in their foreheads.
El waited. He wondered what Chiclet, high up on the hill with the binoculars, made of this.
No alarms sounded.
However, the two men standing guard at the front corner of the house had seen their companions fall. They started running forward, bringing their weapons up. One of them raised a radio to his mouth.
El stood up and threw the next two knives without having time to aim. The throws were sloppy – Carolina would have scoffed – but they were true.
As the men were still falling, their bodies arching backward to accommodate the knives that had suddenly sprouted in their throats, El sprang from the bushes. He moved with the agile grace of the mariachi, a grace he only used anymore for the dance of killing.
He was so fast he was able to catch one body before it hit the ground. He plucked the knives from the men's skulls and held them between the fingers of his right hand. He listened hard, but he could hear nothing. No alarms. No voices. No footsteps.
They still did not know he was there.
Carefully he moved to the front corner of the house, keeping the ugly pink stone to his back. A security camera hummed over his head. Two more men stood in front of the great wood double doors leading to the foyer – El did not recognize these doors and he surmised that Diego Sanchez had had them installed.
Not that it mattered. He was getting inside that house, no matter what doors stood in his way.
Two more men were at the gated entrance to the driveway. These men were smoking and laughing. The men at the front door were not.
El stepped around the corner and whipped the bloody knives at the men in front of the door. As soon as the blades had left his fingers, his hand plunged down to the gun at his hip. He drew and fired two silenced shots.
All four men fell as one.
And still there were no alarms.
Keeping to the wall of the house, El walked right up to the front door. This time he did not retrieve his knives.
****
As he dropped to the stone floor, retching and heaving, Sands, ever the CIA agent and information gatherer, made a mental note: Apparently it really was possible to scream one's guts out.
Diego Sanchez was the perfect host. He waited for his guest to finish vomiting before starting in again.
****
Now that he was inside the house, El moved fast. He knew he only had a few precious minutes – at most – before the dead men outside were discovered.
Two men were in the front hall, talking in low, urgent whispers; money was exchanging hands. El's hands blurred down and he had thrown two more knives before the cartel men could even begin to react to his sudden presence.
Their bodies tumbled to the ground. El looked at them for a moment, then drew his guns. He would not need the knives any more tonight.
****
Sanchez's cell phone chirped. With an impatient grunt, the cartel leader flipped it open. "Digáme." He listened for a moment, then in a low, satisfied voice he said, "Well, it's about time."
He started to walk away. "You, come with me. And you two, stay here with him, but don't touch him."
Footsteps walked away. Sands lay still and thanked all the gods that were for his reprieve. He had come close to begging for that first promised death tonight.
Too close.
****
El heard nothing, but he felt the house change. Tension suddenly oozed from the very walls. The floor seemed to recoil beneath his feet as he stepped forward.
They knew he was here.
****
The men talked back and forth in quiet whispers. Sands didn't even try to listen to them. He was hearing another voice right now, this one just a quiet sniggering laugh.
It was back. For maybe the last hour – hell, he didn't know how long – it had been there, lurking in one corner of his mind. Not talking. Just laughing. It was amused by what was happening to him.
He knew what it wanted. It wanted him to say, That's it, I can't take any more. You do this. You take over. It wanted him to give up, the way he had as a child, in need of a protector. It wanted him to surrender control.
Only he wasn't a scared child anymore, and he wasn't going to give up anything.
"Hey." This voice was close, and he flinched back, startled.
"Hey, you listening? Your buddy's here. El Mariachi." A grin tightened the man's voice. "We're gonna fucking kill him. Gonna fucking kill you both."
****
Over the years El had come to rely on his intuition. He trusted it. It had kept him alive many times when a cooler, more rational head would only have gotten him killed. So when his intuition shrilled warning at him, he didn't stop to think.
He only acted.
Not a moment too soon. As he ducked inside the hall closet, footsteps and men's voices approached. They walked right past his hiding spot, and it was not until they were gone again that El let himself breathe a little.
Time was growing dangerously short. He had to find Sands. Now.
He eased open the closet door and moved back out into the hallway. Where are you? Where? He could hear things now, voices in back rooms, cell phones ringing, booted feet hurrying.
And from a room beneath the house, a scream. It was the scream of someone in agony.
El's entire body clenched. He came within a hair's-breadth of pulling the trigger on both guns as his hands tried to spasm into fists.
Don't think. Just move. Now you know where he is.
Purposefully, El began searching for the kitchen, and the door he knew would lead him downstairs, to Sands.
****
A smelly boot crushed his windpipe, cutting the scream off and his air, too. Sands struggled weakly to breathe. Oh God please don't let me die with this fucker's stinky foot in my face. Please.
"Christ, Lupe! You're gonna fucking kill him!" laughed Goon Number One.
Goon Two, he of the steel-toed boots, made an "Enhh," sound. "He'll live." He withdrew his foot, and Sands drank in a thin breath that burned all the way down. Air had never tasted better.
"Sanchez said not to touch him."
"Yeah, well, he ain't gonna know, is he?"
"Hell, half of Mexico knows, after that scream. If you're gonna do that, gag him first."
"Nah." Goon Two shrugged, leather jacket creaking. "We better get serious. El Mariachi could be here any minute."
****
El took a step forward and placed his gun against the man in the leather jacket's head. "He is already here."
He pulled the trigger.
****
Two quick shots, and it was over.
El dropped to his knees. "Sands." He transferred the gun in his right hand to his left, so he held both pistols at once, and reached out.
Then he drew his hand back, hesitating. Sands was battered from head to toe, so bloody and bruised El didn't know if it was safe to touch him without hurting him. "Sands?"
"El." There was no mistaking the relief in that single word.
"Where is the key?" he asked. Sands' hands were shackled in front of him, which made escape more difficult, but not impossible.
They were in a wine cellar. Racks of dusty wine bottles lined the walls. A sturdy staircase led up to a trapdoor set in the ceiling; a padlock held this door securely closed. El looked around the small room, searching frantically for the small key to the handcuffs.
"Sanchez has it." Sands' voice was hoarse – from screaming, no doubt. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
Fuck. No key. El blinked. "Rescuing you," he said.
"What for?" Sands demanded. "You're fucking up my plan."
"Some plan," El said, a short chuckle escaping him in spite of himself. "You didn't really think I'd let them have you, did you?"
"You were supposed to," Sands said sulkily.
"When have I ever done what I was supposed to do?" El asked. His amusement died. They had to get out of here. Now. "Can you walk?"
"Sure." Sands sighed. "Actually, I have no fucking idea."
El leaned forward and slid an arm about Sands' shoulders. He helped the agent sit up, wincing in sympathetic pain when Sands' breath caught and a whimper escaped him. "Stopstopstop," Sands pleaded.
El froze. He had managed to get Sands into a sitting position, but it didn't seem like they were going to be able to manage much more than that. "What is it?" he asked.
"It fucking hurts," Sands snarled through clenched teeth. "What the fuck do you think?" He was shaking with pain, his breath coming in short gasps. El saw with growing anger that he had nearly bitten his lip through in his earlier efforts to stay silent under their torture.
"All right," he said. "Slowly then. And don't you pass out. I don't have time to carry you."
"Oh, fuck you," Sands said wearily. But El heard the gathering strength in his voice, too, and he nodded to himself. Anger was a good motivator.
This time Sands was able to stand up. He went deathly white, and nearly fell, but El held him upright with one arm about his shoulders. "We have to be fast," he said. "They know I'm here."
For a long moment Sands did not respond. Or maybe he wasn't able to. He just stood there with his head bowed, letting El support him. But at last he got his feet under him. He raised his head a little and muttered, "What the hell are you wearing?"
El glanced down at himself. They were standing close together, his right side pressed to Sands' left, and the agent could feel the strange sensation of the belt and throwing knives. "Weapons," he said.
The word had no sooner left his mouth than he heard voices, and clunking footsteps – the men were coming back, hurrying down the stairs that led from the kitchen to the basements.
El glanced behind him. In his quick scan of the room he had seen a door that might prove useful. A storage space underneath the other stairway, the stairs that led to the locked trapdoor.
The men were coming. There was no time to think. He let go of Sands and dashed forward, deliberately stepping into the puddle of vomit on the floor, then walking forward a few steps, leaving gruesome footprints behind him. When he had left three of these, he wiped the sole of his boot on his pant leg and hurried back to Sands. He grabbed the agent's arm. "Come on."
Sands stumbled along beside him. El opened the door under the stairs and pushed him inside, then stepped in himself and pulled the door closed. Not all the way – he didn't want it to latch and lock them in.
The space under the stairs was cramped and narrow. Things with many legs skittered in the corners. El stepped back so he stood shoulder to shoulder with Sands. "They'll think we already left," he whispered.
He felt rather than saw, Sands nod. "You better be right," the agent breathed.
El transferred the second gun in his left hand back to his right. He hoped he was right, too. But if not…. Well, he had no intention of going quietly.
The voices and footsteps came closer. One of the voices belonged to Diego Sanchez. And he sounded pissed.
"Go after them, goddamnit! They can't have gone far yet. They'll need to have a car close by, so they can get away. Look along the road. Get them!"
Men hurried to obey. The footsteps scattered. El had a terrible moment when he wondered what Chiclet was doing, high up on the hill. He felt fairly confident that Sanchez's men would not find the boy, but of course there was no way to be sure of that. He would just have to trust to fate.
Outside their hiding place, the wine cellar went quiet. El relaxed a little, even though he knew it could be a trap -- Sanchez could have signaled silently to some of his men to stay behind, so the moment his prey stepped out of the hiding space, they would be taken.
No, El thought. They fell for it. They did.
"El?" He could barely hear his name.
"What?" He turned so he faced Sands. He heard a rustle of movement and reached out blindly, catching Sands just as the agent collapsed.
He didn't want to sit or kneel on the floor, where bugs and other things crawled. Carefully he tightened his arms, holding Sands up. "Stay with me," he whispered.
Sands gave a small nod, but said nothing. His breathing was shallow and pained. Slowly he let his head rest on El's shoulder. It was a gesture of simple trust, and El felt something tighten in his chest. Now was not the time to say the words he wanted to say, and he knew that, but he had to fight hard to swallow them back.
He let one hand drift down until he found the metal of the handcuffs. Sands hissed and pulled his hands away. "What are you doing?"
"I want to see how badly you're hurt," he replied.
"Christ, El, I've been wanting to cut my own hand off all day to make them stop touching it. What the hell makes you think I'm going to let you?"
El said simply, "Because you know I don't want to hurt you."
Sands sighed. He let El examine his left hand, and he did not make a sound, although El could feel him shaking all over. "Broken, dislocated, you name it," he said. "Sorry, El, but I think our days of playing dueling guitars is over with."
El swallowed hard against the rage building in his throat. He was no doctor, but he thought Sands was right. There were so few things left in life that Sands enjoyed, and now another one had been taken away from him. The injustice of it burned at El's heart.
"Don't say that," he said. They had each been badly injured before in their hands, and yet they had defied the doctors' predictions and rediscovered the guitar. Maybe that would happen again. "You never know."
"Whatever," Sands whispered.
El's fingers skated over the chain of the handcuffs, to Sands' right hand. He couldn't feel any injuries there, but the cuff was tight, and he touched Sands' swollen wrist. "Broken?"
"I don't think so. Sprained." El thought of Sanchez hitting him so hard he had fallen off the chair, and the way he had sprawled on the ground except for his right arm, and cursed under his breath. There was no way Sands could handle a gun right now, and aid their escape.
"El?"
"What?"
"It's back."
At first he heard, He's back, and he listened hard for the sound of footsteps. Then he realized what Sands had truly said, and he felt a sinking sensation. "Fight it," he urged.
"I am," Sands said, his face pressed to El's shoulder. He repeated it, softer. "I am."
El raised his hand and gently took Sands' chin. He lifted Sands' face and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth.
Sands flinched, but he managed a small smile.
But as quickly as it had come, the smile died. "Wait. I forgot. I'm pissed at you."
El frowned. "Why? For coming to rescue you?"
"For keeping secrets from me."
His frown deepened. What secrets? His love? Was Sands mad at him for not figuring things out sooner?
"You can tell me later," he said. "Right now we have to get out of here." They had been hiding long enough. The majority of Sanchez's men would be dispersed by now. If they waited too long, the men would begin returning empty-handed to the house. If they were going to get out, it had to be now. "Come on," he said.
"Good," Sands said. He pushed himself off El's chest, standing under his own power.
El reached out and slowly pushed open the door of the storage space, listening carefully. He could not hear anything, and he nodded to himself. "We must be quick," he said in a low voice. "We have to get out before they come back. Can you keep up?"
"Oh, don't worry about me," Sands said airily. "Do what you have to do."
They started to walk out of the storage space. "Wait," Sands said. "Give me a gun."
El looked at him. The door had opened enough to allow some light into the space, and he could see Sands' face now. Beneath the blood and bruises, he saw nothing but determination. "You can't even hold one," he said.
"Give me a fucking gun," Sands snapped. "Don't you know a man can do anything when it comes to his own survival?" He gave El a thin, crooked smile. "Besides, I need it. And if I don't get one now, I'm liable to grab one from you later, and with my luck you'd think you were being attacked and you'd shoot me."
El did not deny this. His nerves were already wound too tight. If he was surprised like that, there was no telling what he would do. He held out one of the pistols, reversing it so he held the barrel. When Sands felt the cool steel, he gripped it tight in his right hand without so much as a wince. In fact, to El's eye, he seemed to relax a little, even.
"Let's go," Sands said.
El gave him a hard grin. "Let's go."
Moving together, they stepped out of the storage space, and back into the wine cellar.
To stand right in front of Diego Sanchez. The cartel leader was holding a silver pistol. As El and Sands stopped dead, he cocked his gun. "El Mariachi. Welcome to my home. It is a pleasure to finally meet you."
******
Author's Note: Originally the rescue was supposed to happen all in one big chapter. But as usual, El screwed up my plans. He never does what he's supposed to! So look for things to conclude in the next chapter.
However, the story doesn't end there. Just the rescue. There are still things that need to be resolved before this story ends, and I honestly don't know how long that will take.
I'll post chapter 22 as quickly as I can.