Ready or Not, Here I Come

Disclaimer: I don't own the oh-so-beautiful El Mariachi and the oh-so-psychotic Agent Sands.

Rating: This chapter is definitely rated R for violence and all around nastiness.

Summary: The deadly game begins in earnest.

Author's Note: As much as I love writing action, it can be frustrating sometimes to make sure everyone is seeing the same thing in their heads that I am. So for the sake of clarity, please imagine the bar in this chapter to be the same as Cheech's bar in Desperado. Minus Cheech.

Also, I'd just like to note that these guys are now both officially insane. To everyone who wrote to me, and I wrote back that I was afraid for El? Well....my fears have come true.

*****

As it turned out, over a year passed before he saw Sands again.

****

The owner of the bar was named Bill. He was an American, and El hated him right away. Bill was one of those Americans who came went south of the border thinking to get rich quick off the dumb Mexicans. Most of them realized almost right away that this was not going to happen, and they turned around and went back home. The ones who stayed, like Bill, were bitter and mean.

"Look," Bill said now, "I already told you guys everything I know about him. What are you asking me again for?"

El gave the man a long look. "You didn't tell me."

"Fine." Bill threw up his hands. "He's been coming here for the past two weeks. Sniffing around. Asking about you guys."

The American thought he was cartel, El realized. He nodded. That suited him just fine.

"Now, you guys promised you wouldn't shoot up the bar," Bill said. He had dark eyes and bad skin. "Right? You'll take him out back or something."

"I didn't promise you anything," El said quietly. It did not bother him one bit that this man had ratted on Sands. He finished his beer and set the glass down on the bar.

"Oh, come on, man!" Bill said. He gave El a pleading look, from one buddy to another. "I gotta make a living here, you know."

For a moment El entertained the fantasy of grabbing the bartender's short gray crewcut and slamming his face into the bar. He wrapped his hands about his beer glass and drew in a deep breath through his nose. "You said this is going down tonight?"

"Yeah." Bill nodded. He was starting to look suspiciously at El.

It was not yet five o'clock. The place was almost empty, except for a few drunks slumped at tables scattered throughout the room.

The bar itself was oval-shaped, with the back half of the oval actually being the back wall of the room. Behind the bar was a huge mirror fronted with shelves that held dusty bottles of liquor. There was a cutout in the short curve on the left which Bill the bartender and any help he might have could use to go into the main room. Right now there was no help, but Bill had bragged that the bar was "pretty hopping" around ten or eleven o'clock. Supposedly he had a waitress or two who worked for him during the evenings.

El gave Bill a cold smile. "I am going to sit over there." He pointed to the table nearest the curve in the bar that held the cutout. "You are not going to talk to me, look at me, or even think about me. Comprende?"

Bill nodded. "Sure thing. Whatever you want. Just don't go shooting up my bar, okay?" He gave El an ingratiating smile. "And uh, my reward, right? Fifty thousands pesos, right?"

"The men who come here tonight are not supposed to know I am here," El said. "It is important that they do their job without knowing they are being watched."

"Oh!" Bill the bartender tipped El a wink. "I gotcha. You're here to evaluate them."

El wondered what Bill would look like with a broken nose. "You are very clever."

"Ah, well." Bill rocked back on his heels. "Hey, I'm just trying to help out, you know?"

"I do know," El said. He let go of his beer glass before it shattered beneath his hands.

"Now, ah, about that reward," Bill began.

"That is not my department," El said. He rose from the barstool and walked across the bar toward the bathrooms.

When the door had shut behind him, he moved over to the sink. The mirror was cracked and cloudy, but it reflected his image just fine.

He scarcely recognized himself anymore. The man who stared back at him had long dark hair and piercing dark eyes. There was no warmth in those eyes. It was like looking at two flat stones.

It had taken him a year to find Sands again. Four times he had almost had the man, then Sands had slipped through his fingers somehow. He had long ago stopped being amazed by Sands' ability to smell a trap.

And every time he lost the trail, he merely started over again, calmly persistent. He knew he would win eventually. One day Sands would not be able to make an escape, and then the hunt would truly be over.

He thought that time had finally come. He had picked up on a lead meant for the cartel, and it had panned out. The cartel presence in this area was still new and disorganized, and although El did not doubt they would show up tonight, he also did not doubt that he would have the upper hand. The men who came here tonight looking for Sands were only going to find death.

And Sands?

El smiled at his image. It was not a happy smile.

****

Bill the bartender was full of shit, but apparently he was not a liar. By nine o'clock the bar was filling up. Loud music played from the jukebox, and the room reeked of beer and tequila. Two waitresses dressed in outfits that looked salvaged from a much fancier cocktail bar squeezed between the tables, bringing drinks and insults to their patrons.

El sat alone at his chosen table. There were four chairs crammed around its small circumference, but no one had even attempted to sit in any of them. His guitar case was under the table. He rested his feet atop it, reassured by the physical contact with his weapons.

Around nine-thirty, four men in dark suits came in. They sat at a table in the corner and ordered drinks, but did not touch them. They watched the door.

El finished his beer and asked for another. The waitress barely glanced at him as he placed his order.

At ten-thirty Sands walked in. He had lost none of his deadly grace since the last time El had seen him. He was dressed all in black, a vest over a long-sleeved shirt, and dark boots and jeans. He made his way through the crowded bar with ease, the fingers of one hand trailing over tables and chairs. The dark sunglasses hid his face. He took a seat along the curved section of the bar, not five feet from El's table.

Outwardly El's expression did not change. Inside, he was grinning that cold grin again.

Sands ordered a tequila with lime. He turned on his barstool so that he faced out into the room.

In the corner, the four men in suits stood up.

Bill the bartender set Sands' drink on the bar and quoted the price. Sands counted out exact change and laid it on the fake wood surface.

The four men in the suits fanned out, walking slowly but steadily forward.

Bill reached for the money. The moment his hand touched the coins, Sands seized his wrist and pulled a gun. He jammed the muzzle of the pistol against Bill's skull and dragged the American halfway across the bar.

El watched all this happen.

Bill shouted in pain and surprise. The patrons of the bar looked around in puzzlement. They saw the gun in Sands' hand. And they saw the four men open their suit jackets to reveal their own weapons.

Panic erupted in the bar. Women screamed. Men overturned tables in their haste to get out of the killing zone.

"I was starting to wonder if you had lost your nerve," Sands remarked to Bill. "If you were ever going to make that call."

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Bill stuttered. He was awkwardly draped across the surface of the bar. He stared at the four men in suits, pleading with his eyes. "I didn't do nothing!"

"No," Sands said.

The four men in suits stopped a few in front of Sands. The bar was almost empty now, except for a few brave – or morbid – souls who lurked in the back corners, wanting to see someone get killed.

And El.

"Hey, man," Bill said. "Look, you've scared away my customers. Put the gun away, man. Come on."

"Your fucking face scares away your customers," Sands said lightly. He dug the gun deep into Bill's skull. "And just because I can't see doesn't mean I am stupid."

No, not stupid, but El could see that this was one fight Sands was not going to win. One of the cartel men had climbed over the bar and was now creeping up behind Bill, on Sands' left. The other three continued to stand in front of him, their guns aimed at his head.

"How much did they promise you, Bill?" Sands asked. He had hold of Bill's right arm with his left hand. His right arm passed under Bill's chin, so he could press the gun to Bill's left temple. "I hope it was worth it."

He pulled the trigger. Bill screamed. But it was not Bill who fell. At the last second Sands had shifted his aim, and the man in the dark suit who had been sneaking up behind Bill was the one who fell.

El sat where he was. Once again he had underestimated Sands.

Things happened very fast after that.

Sands dropped his arm from around Bill's throat and fired again, dropping the man standing leftmost in front of the bar.

At the same time, Bill stepped up on something behind the bar and threw himself over the wooden cutout. From under his stained jacket, he had produced a silver pistol of his own.

The two remaining cartel members opened fire. One of them aimed at the man flying through the air at them. The other aimed at Sands.

Sands dropped a third man. Bill landed on the fourth. The two of them struck a chair, and they went down in a flurry of limbs and broken wood. Sands brought his gun around and Bill rolled out of the way, and Sands fired, and the fourth man was dead.

Still sitting with his feet resting on his guitar case, El watched it all. He was coldly smiling.

Bill got to his feet, a bit slowly, one hand pressed to his side. "Damn," he grunted in pain. He looked pissed off.

Sands did not move. He still held the gun out, but he subtly shifted his aim so it was no longer pointed at the floor.

El took all this in. He sat so still the sleazy American bartender – who should have known better -- never even looked at him.

He had to admit to being surprised. He had not guessed Bill and Sands were allies. But it made sense, in a twisted way. Bill would lure cartel here, and Sands would blow them away. They would take the reward money the cartel had brought, and split the money between them. It was quite a nice little scheme, and El had to reluctantly congratulate the slimy bartender for doing such a good job. He had fallen for the act this morning. That pissed him off – it did not make him feel better to think that the cartels had done the exact same thing. He was supposed to be better than them, smarter than them. He wasn't supposed to buy the same horseshit they did.

"You got 'em all," Bill said.

"Not quite," Sands said, and shot Bill.

The bartender fell backward and landed heavily on the floor. He lay amid the broken kindling of the chair and the spreading pools of blood emanating from the cartel members. He raised one hand into the air. His eyes were wide and confused. "Hey," he said weakly. "Hey, Sands."

Sands cocked his head. "Yes?"

With the toe of his boot, El undid the clasps on his guitar case.

"I thought we had a deal," Bill wheezed. Blood ran from the hole in his chest. "I help you, you help me."

"Deal's off," Sands said. He sounded supremely bored.

"Why, man?" Bill implored. His injury was not fatal, El saw. There was still a chance he could get out of this alive, and he knew it. What he didn't know – yet – was that this was not going to happen. Men like Sands did not give chances. They took them away.

"Because I don't trust you," Sands said. "You rat me out now because I tell you to, but what's to prevent you from ratting me out in the future because you want to?"

"I wouldn't do that to you," Bill babbled. "You know I wouldn't."

Sands gave him a thin smile. "Do I?" He pulled the trigger. Twice.

In the silence that fell, the last remaining souls in the bar ran for the door. Sands did not even look up as they hurried out.

El sat where he was. He wanted to see what happened next.

Sands stood still for a moment. He put the gun in a shoulder holster that had been cleverly concealed by the black vest. As if he did this sort of thing every day, he began rifling through the dead men's pockets. When he got blood on his hands he calmly wiped them clean on the men's clothes. He took all their money, and even some of their jewelry, unerringly leaving the fake watches on the hairy wrists they adorned.

The last body he examined was Bill's. He gave the dead bartender a pat on the cheek. "Look on the bright side," he said. "At least you finally got to leave Mexico."

And then he was standing up, spinning around, drawing a gun and aiming it at El. "If you're going to sit there and stare, the least you could do is politely applaud."

El said nothing. Sands was only aiming in his general direction. If he spoke, however, the round eye of that gun would find him unerringly.

"I know you're there," Sands said. "Now, do I start target practice, or are you going to say something?"

"You know I am here," El admitted, "but do you know if I am alone?" Using his words as cover, he used his boot to lift the lid of the guitar case.

For a second Sands almost seemed thrown by the question. Then he drew a second gun from his other shoulder holster. "All right. One for each of you. But somehow I don't think I'll need what's in gun number two. You always were a loner, El."

"How did you know I was here?" El asked.

"I saw you in the mirror," Sands said. He fired.

El had been expecting this.

There were two glasses on his table; one empty and one half-full of stale beer. As he let himself fall off the chair, he threw both glasses. The empty one he threw against the wall to his right. The one with the beer in it went straight for Sands' head.

His aim was dead on. The glass shattered as hit Sands in the temple, spraying beer, blood and broken glass in all directions. Sands' sunglasses were knocked askew, and he staggered back.

El hit the floor. He plunged both hands into his guitar case.

The second, empty beerglass hit the wall. Sands turned that way out of startled reflex. He fired twice before he could bring his treacherous hand under control.

By then El was on his feet again, a pistol in one hand and his favorite snub shotgun in the other.

Sands heard the jangle as he stood. The CIA officer spun around, firing as he went.

El dove for the bar. He stepped on one of the chairs that stood at his table, using it to launch himself forward. He hit the wood surface with his left hip and tumbled over it, to land in the inner part of the oval.

Silence fell in the room. El crouched down, trying to control his breathing. He could not see Sands, and Sands could not see him, but Sands had the advantage, because Sands' hearing was that much better.

He slid his left hand -- the one that held the pistol – up over the top of the bar and fired off a warning shot. "Do you know why I'm here?" he called. He was strangely excited, full of an energy he had not felt in a very long time.

"If you came for the karaoke, you missed out," Sands called. His voice came from El's left. "They moved that to Saturday nights."

"I came here for you!" El crowed. He felt ridiculously light-headed. Still crouched down, he duck-walked down the length of the bar, firing an occasional shot over the wooden counter. "Aren't you even going to ask me why?"

Shots plowed along the back wall of the bar. The mirror shattered. Bottles of booze splintered. Liquor rained down, mixed with a hail of silver shards of glass. The pungent smell of alcohol was so strong El nearly retched. He covered his head with both hands and waited for that deadly rain to dry up.

When the shots finally stopped, he scrambled to his feet. Sands was standing on a long rectangular table halfway toward the double doors leading outside. He was grinning. "Is it because you missed my company?" He threw himself into a backwards roll off the table just as El fired, turning a neat somersault and landing on his feet.

Not for long, however. He dropped to the ground, using a chair as cover. He fired a single shot toward the bar, but it was close enough to force El to sink behind the bar again.

"What, no snappy comeback? You really need to work on that biting wit, El!" Sands called. Chairs shifted and a glass fell off a table as he made his way through the room.

Crouched down, not wanting to sit on the floor among the spilled liquor and broken glass, El dug into his pocket and pulled out new shells. He loaded the shotgun. "No more running," he said.

Gripping both guns tightly, he rose to his feet and strafed the room with gunfire. Sands dove from one table to the next, somehow always managing to stay one step ahead of the destruction El was creating.

And incredibly, he was laughing.

Inevitably, El's guns went empty. Still laughing, Sands popped up from behind a table that he had knocked over. He pulled the trigger on both guns. One bullet smashed into the front of the bar, and then only the sound of dry clicks filled the room.

For a moment they faced each other. Then El ran to his right. For his guitar case.

Sands began grasping anything and everything within reach and throwing it at El. As El flung open the cutout in the bar, a chair leg struck him in the head. He reeled to the right, his vision momentarily graying out. There was no pain.

"Come on!" Sands shouted. He held out both arms. Blood ran down his face from where the glass had struck him. It looked as though he was weeping tears of blood. But only from one eye. And he was still smiling.

He looked as though he was having the time of his life.

At the last second, El changed his mind about wanting the contents of his guitar case. He veered to the left and charged headlong into the center of the room.

Sands met him halfway. They collided in a fury. Without knowing how it happened, El found himself on the floor, one ear ringing and the side of his face flaming with pain. He stared blearily up at the ceiling for a moment, unable to remember where he was.

"Oh, shit," Sands groaned. "I think you just poked my eye out." He giggled.

El sat up. Sands was kneeling beside a smashed table. He held his sunglasses in one hand. The damage caused by the glass El had thrown was clearly visible. Including the shard of glass he was pulling from his eyesocket.

Revolted, El grabbed hold of a chair and used it to haul himself to his feet. The high whining in his left ear would not stop. He reached up to touch it and was not surprised to see blood on his fingertips. He wondered what Sands had hit him with.

Sands dropped the bloody piece of glass and replaced his sunglasses. "Ding-ding. Round two?" He gave El a quick grin.

El was ready. He balled his right hand into a fist.

The room suddenly lit up as headlights splashed through the window. Outside, people began to shout. The police had arrived.

"Oh, is it time to go already?" Sands said. He shook his head. Already he was backing away, tripping and stumbling over the debris on the floor. He was heading for the hall that led to the bathrooms. "Why we've hardly had a chance to catch up."

"I will find you again," El vowed. He glanced behind him, to his guitar case.

"I'm sure you will," Sands said. "But until then...arrivederci." He fetched up against the wall. Immediately he turned and began following it, trailing his fingers along the surface, using it to find the hall. With his free hand he sketched a salute. "See you around."

He was gone.

El turned around and stalked back to his table. He slammed the lid of the guitar case closed and latched it. He picked it up, retrieved his guns, and then left the bar the same way Sands had.

******