Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Robert Rodriguez and assorted. And this is all Sands' fault.
FIRST BLOOD
by Beth (renfri@astercity.net)
They say they came from the north.
There were two of them, they say. But 'they', the ever-elusive and all-encompassing 'they', don't have any details beyond dark clothes and dark hair, and really, in this hellhole of a country it could describe anybody.
Sands knows better than the ones he listens to. Photographic memory and all that. Is photographic memory still photographic when you've got no eyes?
He remembers.
They attracted little attention and no recognition. Probably because a lack of blood and guns did make a difference in their image. So no-one disturbed them as they walked through the city night, nor when they entered a chapel built of glass bricks. It was empty, and they settled down to wait.
One strummed a few notes on a worn guitar. The other walked his fingers along stone walls as he hummed in counterpoint.
"Have you ever wondered if you'll have one of those built to you?" he asked quietly.
The strumming stopped. "One of which?"
"Shrines. Chapels. With people leaving prayers and offerings. 'Oh Saint Mariachi, please help me kill my enemies and improve my guitar skills'."
"I'm no saint."
Sands shrugged. "Neither was he."
In front of them, the face of Jesus Malverde, patron of the poor, repressed and drug-smuggling, looked at them with benefaction in dark eyes. The candles burned and threw shadows. In the flickering light Sands' face was all smooth planes and soft angles. El bent over the guitar, and his face was hidden in the darkness of his hair.
Footsteps outside, and they shifted in their seats.
The man was sweating in the chilly night, and his movements were jerky as a puppet's. "Are - are you there?" he asked in English, with a heavy Spanish accent, as he entered the candle-lit chapel.
"Of course I am, Lopez," Sands said. "Do you have my answer?"
"It... it is 'no'."
"Excuse me?" Sands still did not get up, nor turn his head towards the man.
"Senor Hernandez says 'no'. He is not scared by your threat, nor by the evidence you have."
"Evidence?" Now Sands did turn his head and smile. "Who mentioned evidence? Me, I'm just threatening. For the hell of it, you might say."
"Senor Hernandez thinks-"
"If that fucker Hernandez wants me to know what he thinks, he should've dragged his own fat ass here. I won't talk with him through a goon like you, so you can just head right back to your fucking boss and say I'll be coming to talk with him eye-to-eye."
"This is not-" Lopez was sweating even more now, his hands twitching in the direction of the gun on his hip.
"The fuck it isn't. I said go!"
As he left, Lopez was walking much faster than when he'd come in. Sands did not think it was accidental.
"When?" El asked.
"I was thinking eight in the morning. Just enough time for them to have a sleepless night."
"Lopez will tell them they are dealing with a madman." El's head remained bowed, but there was a shade of a smile in his voice.
"Yeah. I've still got it." Sands' smile was bordering on manic as the agent stood up. "Let's go, there's no reason why we should get no sleep as well."
As they exited the chapel, Sands turned and raised his hand in a lazy salute to the statue of the legendary bandit saint. One rogue to another, honor among thieves and all that shit...
Morning, Sands decided later, was his favorite time of day in Mexico. The sun was just high enough to dispel the chill of the night, but not high enough to bake the earth into the dusty hell it would be in the afternoon. At eight the streets were already fairly busy. They passed small shops just opening and street vendors who were laying out their wares. Right in front of the unassuming building in Avenida Juarez that was their destination, a money-changer talked with a young man as she waited for the first people who'd want to change packets of dollars - often ill-gotten and still with traces of white powder - into pesos. She laughed as they passed, and her earrings jangled.
There were six armed men behind the door, and they rolled their eyes. Metaphorically in Sands' case, of course. The guns remained trained on them as they walked up the stairs, the chains on El's pants jangling and Sands quieter than a dormouse. Hernandez waited for them in the hall. The smuggler had not lost any weight since the time Sands saw him last, if you judged by his heavy breathing.
"I heard you were dead," Hernandez said.
"You shouldn't trust everything you hear." Sands' voice was as light-hearted as if they were talking over coffee and cakes, not with six loaded weapons pointed at his head. "Take it from me: I trust only what I see."
"Not all of us can do that," Hernandez scoffed. "In this business, I have to hear things. And I don't like what I hear lately."
"Let me guess, that the Cubs lost?"
"You threatened my people."
"Did I? Oh yeah, I did. The way I see it, it's nothing personal. It's just that your partners across the border got in a bit of trouble. Now there's some people want to fuck them up, and that kind of draws attention. So some other people - I think we're on the third group now - gathered papers that show maybe your hands aren't as clean as you thought."
Hernandez' heavy breathing sped up. "What about it?"
"Well, at first sight I'd say trouble. Extradition, even. But if we can make a deal - a favor or two, nothing too big - things can happen. You never know."
Silence. Then, "You were the one who gathered the proof."
Sands didn't say anything.
"I am not afraid of you. Nor your bodyguard. And I don't need your help."
The agent shrugged. "Suit yourself. Be seeing you."
They didn't walk three steps down when Hernandez came after them. "We can... talk further," the smuggler offered.
"All right then." And Sands' smile was positively angelic. "Let's take a walk outside. Get things in the open?"
They stopped just outside the door. The guns disappeared as they stood in full sight of Avenida Juarez. The money-changer was counting a thick sheaf of pesos as the man tried to talk her into a weekend trip out of town.
"See that?" Sands asked. "That's the Mexico you made here. Everyone living off stuff that kills, living off killing. I think it's time to turn the tables."
"Kill everyone?" Hernandez' eyes darted to El.
The mariachi regarded him calmly. "Kill your kind."
"You think you can get away with it?"
"We can try."
Sands heard the smile in El's voice and wondered what it looked like. Judging by the way Hernandez backed away a step, not too friendly.
Then Hernandez took the agent by the elbow and led him a few paces away from El and his own goons. Sands tensed and consciously stopped himself from breaking a few bones for breaching his personal face. Not worth the effort of digging around in that fat, for one.
"That man is like those who fought Marquez. A Mexico fanatic, an ignorant. But you... I hear things. I hear you are CIA." Hernandez pronounced the name of the agency the Mexican way, "Siya". "What do you care about Mexico?"
"Maybe I don't. Maybe I just want to see fat narco bastards like you six feet under. But I'll settle for behind bars."
This, after a fashion, did the trick.
Hernandez' weight made his strength all the more astonishing. His punch turned Sands around and sent him crashing into someone five meters away.
Someone soft, floral perfume. Jangling earrings and something was pressed into his hand. A whisper. "Street's empty. Give'em hell."
And then he was alone, and the money-changer screamed shrilly as the man she'd been talking to pulled her behind a parked car. The sound drowned out the click of safety catches.
"You are the one with the proof. So you die," Hernandez spat.
The first shot, and Sands realized he was less than two hundred meters from his first gunfight, what he thought of as his first real gunfight outside Barillo's impromptu clinic. But now he knew what to do.
Let them fire. It gave him targets, and a claim of self-defense for later. Ahead on both counts, beat that, and those guys couldn't, couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Okay, maybe El wasn't helping them - by the sound of it he had used a moment of distraction (and thank you, bastard, that was me nearly getting my jaw broken there) to wrestle a gun from one of the goons. Sands stood up from his roll and aimed. Thought took a backseat to reflexes and he got off four shots before he realized he'd pulled the trigger.
A wounded bull's roar, and Sands felt the rush of air as he whirled to avoid Hernandez' wild charge. He didn't manage to evade completely - no fucking fair for a guy that large to move that fast - and his glasses fell to the ground.
Breeze on his eyes, on what used to be his eyes, Hernandez suddenly paralyzed with fear.
Exactly time enough for Sands to put an ounce of lead in the drug lord's forehead.
Then the street was quiet, too quiet for downtown Culiacan in the morning. The mariachi's chains jangled as their owner approached. A pause, and then Sands reached out to take back his shades.
"Let's take it this way, it can only get better from here," the agent said. "Because it sure as fuck can't get worse."
"You mean the next time we'll blow up the whole street?" Lorenzo demanded as he and Davis left their hideout behind the car.
Davis took off her outside shirt with a ripping sound of artificial silk. She used it to wipe at her garish money-changer makeup. "Next time, we get enough dirt on the bastards that we don't have to distract the main boss while the rest of the team wraps up the loot."
"And by the way?" Sands turned his head towards her.
"Garrett called, cat's in the bag and the cops love us to pieces. And Garrett loves playing team vice-leader, which as I remember-"
Sands shook his head. "We needed reliable backup here," he reminded her.
"Besides, this was more fun than digging up drugs," Lorenzo protested. "Carmen-"
"YOU," she hissed, "try to remember the name's Davis-"
Sands left his team vice-leaders to their bickering and walked to where El was standing at the door of Hernandez' office. He could tell the mariachi's exact position even when the chains were silent; there was a peculiar quiet warmth to the man's presence. Sands' leather-clad fingers touched a strong arm.
"I did not want to kill today."
"You heard the lade, if we get our act together we won't have to." Sands' voice was low, hypnotic. "And just think of how many people they've killed. Fuck, think of your beloved Mexico."
"Balance for my country?"
Sands made a sound halfway between a laugh and a choked-off sigh. "Justice. The old-fashioned kind with lots of blood and wailing."
"Blind justice." El smiled.
"Fucking A." Sands draped an arm around El's shoulder. "Now help an eyeless man whose sixth sense's been working overtime today. We should get going before Davis and your mariachi buddy manage to kill each other."
When they left Culiacan, the sun was right above their heads and the air smelled of spring. Yes, Sands remembers it well.
Now all he has to do is write it in a report in a way that'll let him get away with it.
~FINIS?~
While Malverde and the money-changing girls in Avenida Juarez are real, they were brought to my attention by Arturo Perez-Reverte in "Queen of the South".
I've no idea why Sands and El are so chummy all of a sudden, but El says he can tell me that story. He also says it'll be called "The Ballad of the Blind Gunman." Sands just smiles, eyeless and sharp like a shattered mirror.
Add comment? (yes/no/bang!)