Chapter Twelve
Collaboration
"I forgot," Maria said softly. She took a plastic cup to the sink and filled it. Then she poured two large pills out of a pill bottle and held them out to El. "Take these. They're for swelling."
"No, no," said El. "I'm not taking anything from them."
Sands unfolded to his feet. "I will! Give them to me." He grabbed the pills from Maria's hand before she could react. He swallowed them without water in an eager gulp, then sat on the edge of his bed.
Maria and El watched him, El holding his breath. After a long moment, Sands made a sound that was half laugh and half sob.
"Go ahead and take them," he said. "It's not cocaine." Sands spoke with a level of grief in his voice El had usually heard reserved for the death of loved ones. Sands pulled back into a ball and began rocking on his bed. "Goddamn it!"
Maria came carefully to Sands, holding the plastic cup of water. "Señor, have some water," she said cautiously.
Sands knocked the cup from her hand, again as if he could see. "Water is not what I need," he snarled at her.
Maria recoiled back to El.
"You don't need cocaine," El told him. "You only think you do."
"Like you know fuck all about it!" Sands roared. He launched himself off his bed, straight for El.
El threw up his arm to block the attack, and Sands landed on both El and Maria in a tangle of punches and kicks.
Maria shrieked and scrambled to the corner by the door. Sands managed, despite El's defense, to grab El by the hair and pound his head against the wall. El twisted and punched, but Sands wasn't where he had been. They rolled and flailed, and fell off the bed. Suddenly Sands was every thug who'd beaten El in the last few days. Fury filled him with the exhilaration he usually only felt in a gunfight, and he deftly trapped Sands in a headlock and punched him viciously in the kidneys. He felt Sands sag in his arms, and it was all he could do to keep from pounding the man senseless. Panting, he threw the agent to the wall opposite the door.
"Delgado," El said. "You should be angry at him, not at me."
Sands held his stomach and gasped. His sunglasses were gone again, but El was learning to look at the man despite his ghastly face. His bare agony went beyond any damage El had done him. He gasped and moaned as if unseen demons tormented him.
El strode to loom over him. "Don't you want to see him dead? Why are you helping him?"
"Dead?" cried Sands, sounding on the edge of hysteria. "Dead doesn't touch it. I want to see him blind and helpless and desperate and choking on rat poison." Still gasping with pain, the agent struggled to his feet. "I want to see him stripped naked, flayed alive and rolling in his own piss." Sands's back was to the wall and his death mask of a face was half a meter from El's own. He reached out shaking hands and grabbed the front of El's shirt. "I want to see him lose everything he loves - his power, his money, his fucking family."
El raised his own hands and grasped the man's arms. "Then help me fight him. Tell me everything you know about the security here. Tell me quickly." Somehow El sensed that Sands had only a fleeting moment of clarity to work with.
"No," Sands cried.
El shook him. "Yes. How big is the estate? You can tell me this."
El thought at first that he wouldn't answer. Sands tipped his head back against the wall and rolled it back and forth. Then, "About five acres," he said.
"Security systems?" Sands was shaking in El's grasp, but he didn't try to get away.
"Trip wires on the grounds. Everywhere beyond the walkways except for the inside courtyards. There's an outer wall - ten feet high with razor wire. Motion detectors on the outside, and guards walk the perimeter. Also, there are dogs."
"Tell me their weaknesses."
Sands squirmed and panted, as if he were fighting something internally.
"I know you've learned them," El urged. "What are they?"
"The midnight to dawn shift - they like to drink and play cards on the east side," Sands spoke in a rush. "The motion detectors are infrared, dust should show the beams, and the dogs lose their sense of smell if they snuff cocaine."
Suddenly, Sands collapsed. "God!" he yelled. "I need a fix. You've gotta get me something, please!"
El let go of him, triumphant. "I knew you had thought of escape," he said.
"No! No! No escape for me. No." Sitting on the floor, Sands held out a hand. "Maria! You can bring me something. I know you can get it. Give them anything. Fuck anyone you have to. Please!"
El moved away, to take Maria's hand. The girl looked revolted. "You should leave," El told her gently.
In fact, El had an idea, since he was feeling so much better. "Where is your and Lorenzo's room?" he asked.
"I can't . . . no nightcap," Sands moaned. "I can't make it to coffee. I can't."
"In the same place as this one, on the other side of the courtyard," she said, glancing from El to Sands.
"Coffee," Sands breathed, like a prayer. "He said I could have coffee. Coffee, coffee, coffee."
El looked down at her shoes - ankle strap sandals. "Can you run?"
Maria nodded.
"Get ready, then."
El glanced once around the room, now seeing it as part of his stage of combat. He knocked on the door. "Hola! Gomez! Or Martinez, whoever's out there! It's time for the girl to go."
There was no reply.
He tried again.
"The Señora didn't want her to stay the night. Or to stay with Sands. I don't want her with Sands, either."
"All right," said a voice. "Stand back from the door."
El moved to right behind the door, holding Maria behind him with one arm.
As he had done before, the man entered the room gun hand first.
El slammed the door against the arm as hard as he could. The man cried out and dropped the gun, which El caught neatly. Before the man could make another sound, El threw open the door, hauled him inside by his arm, closed the door, shoved the gun against the man's chest for what silencing he could get, and shot him in the heart.