Chapter Four

Pain or Pleasure?

WARNING: Torture ahead. Not graphic, IMO, but, you know . . . it's torture.

The ride was long and bumpy. Blindfolded and bound, El couldn't tell where they were headed, but he was sure they had left Mexico City. They traveled in a panel truck with no windows in the back and two armed guards. Lorenzo and Maria were with him, but none of them were permitted to speak.

With nothing to do but try to learn about their captors, El considered. The three of them had been taken alive, which surprised him. Clearly their identities were known: these men had even known who Maria was. If there was a cartel in Mexico that didn't want El dead, he didn't know of it. El didn't think he was of any use as a hostage. There was no one who would ransom him. El Presidente? There was a thought. Perhaps someone believed El Mariachi had information about El Presidente's plans.

Finally he exhausted his speculations, and still they drove. He had long ago grown used to the idea that he might not live beyond the next day. He had known when he left his village that he was returning to the world of death and pain, but he also had always known he couldn't hide from it indefinitely. He only hoped to involve as few innocents in his fate as possible. He would not have stayed in the guitar town had he not been able to arm the entire village.

He wondered how El Presidente had found him.

He relaxed, harboring his strength, and rested his thoughts in memories of Carolina. He had never sought death, but at least he had the comfort that she would be waiting there for him, with their little daughter.

Lorenzo and Maria did not deserve this, though. He sighed. Always there was something to make him care.

They arrived somewhere late at night. The air was cool and scented with the aromas of many flowers. El was stiff with inaction as he was pushed, his hands still bound behind him, along an uneven stone-lined walkway, and now that he had to walk blindfolded, he was extremely nervous. His captor did not lead him, so he had no way of knowing if he was running into anything. Where was cover, where were the vantage points? He had never realized before how automatically he evaluated his surroundings, and his inability to calculate shooting tactics made him feel worse than blind. Three times he tripped as the walkway turned beneath his feet. Each time someone hit him in the back of the head with what was probably a gun butt.

Maria and Lorenzo stumbled behind him.

Ahead of him, growing nearer, he heard voices.

"Puta madre!" someone yelled. "Antonio and Juan. Nine men!"

A cynical laugh from another man, who spoke in English. "I told you to send more men," he said. "And smarter ones."

El nearly stumbled again, in surprise. He knew that voice! If only they would take off his blindfold!

"Shut up," said the first man, also in English. Rough hands checked El, probably right in front of the speaker. El didn't think they had entered a door. He guessed they might be in a courtyard.

"So this," the man spoke grandly, stepping close to El, "is the great Mariachi."

It was not a statement that called for a response, but CIA Agent Sands had one anyway.

"Don't ask me. How would I know? Is he dressed in black with a tormented look?"

Cold hatred welled up in El.

Then the first man was yelling at El, inches from him. "You are El Mariachi! You killed two of my best men!"

This did seem to call for a response. "Get used to it," El said, and braced for what he knew was coming. He wished again, futilely, that he could see.

Sands, a few meters away, laughed.

The hand that hit him had large sharp rings on it. He tasted blood.

The man grabbed the front of El's shirt, and hauled him to inches from his face. El could smell cigarettes and garlic on the man's breath.

"Some men I tame with pleasure, some with pain. Which should it be for El Mariachi?"

"Pain," said Sands.

"You surprise me. Surely he's familiar with pain. Perhaps you are just selfish."

There were chuckles around the area, though El didn't think Sands's was among them.

"You wanted my advice," said Sands in a bored tone. "Men like him are the way they are because they can't take real pain."

"Pain it is, then. It's cheaper, and more entertaining."

The man threw El to a cold floor, where he landed hard on his shoulder. He had only a moment to worry about what they would do to Lorenzo and Maria before someone dragged him out by his bound wrists, face down, along the walkway.

At least they took the blindfold off. El could see the reinforced concrete room they put him in, with its one bare low-wattage bulb, and table of torture implements. One little man with a craggy face hovered hungrily over the tools, while the other two men softened El up with a beating. Bruised and bleeding, with one possible broken rib and his cheekbone blazing with pain where one thug had clubbed him with the stock of a rifle, he kept thinking, "at least they took the blindfold off." He hoped his relief had not been too obvious.

El had been beaten before. He endured this beating in silence, using the pain to block his apprehension about what was to come. Sands was dead wrong. Pain and El were old acquaintances. He'd endured being shot nearly to death in the chest at the same moment he lost Carolina and his daughter. No pain, physical or spiritual, had ever matched that.

Eventually the two thugs backed off, leering, as the craggy-faced man approached with what looked no more elaborate than a pair of pliers.

"I'm a traditionalist," the man said pleasantly, in good Castilian. "We'll start with fingernails."

A/N: Here's Sands. Don't hate me; there's more to the story.