Chapter Twenty-Seven
Libertad
"No!" wailed Lorenzo and he turned his gun toward Sands.
El leaped on the arm, twisting, and Lorenzo's shot went wild. The two of them tumbled into prickly bushes, wrestling.
Which saved Lorenzo's life, as it turned out, because a single round shot right through where the younger mariachi had been. What the fuck? Sands had fired right at Lorenzo, aiming only by hearing his yell.
"What . . . are you doing?" asked Lorenzo. "He killed Maria. He killed Maria!"
El was on top of him, holding his wrists down. "We are free, Lorenzo! We are free! There's nothing to hold us."
Lorenzo heaved El off of him and rolled to his hands and knees. Tears streamed from his eyes. "You stopped me, you bastard. You stopped me."
El regarded Lorenzo - injured, grieving, in shock and in pain - and reluctantly gave up the idea of pursuing and punishing Delgado. He had to get Lorenzo out; the man was falling apart.
El slamming his back into sticker bushes probably had done him little good, too.
"So we're even," El said gruffly, and hauled Lorenzo to his feet. "We are leaving, Amigo." He shook Lorenzo by the shoulders, trying to avoid the man's back. Lorenzo was barefoot, and he bled from many scratches. His face was a mask of grief. El scooped up the gun and put it in Lorenzo's hand. "Don't shoot me."
El started for the wall and Lorenzo, to his relief, followed.
Again, they saw nothing in the way of guards, although the sounds of combat continued from the far side of the estate, and El could see two helicopters circling there.
Lorenzo, still weeping, looked up at the top of the wall. Vicious loops of razor wire clustered everywhere atop it.
"Nothing to worry about, my friend," El said. He took aim with his AK-47, and blew the wire and parts of the top of the wall to smithereens. "Take my jacket." El gave Lorenzo his black jacket in case he needed protection from any remains on the wall. "Up you go."
Obediently, Lorenzo allowed El to boost him up. He groaned at the effort it took him to pull himself up to the top. Lorenzo looked around.
"All clear," he said.
"Watch for dogs," El said, throwing Lorenzo one of his rifles.
Lorenzo caught it. "You're coming?"
"You go," El said. "Stay away from roads. I'll meet you in one week at noon at La Pileta."
"What? No!"
"Yes. I want you away, Lorenzo, understand? So there are no holds on me." That was cruel, El admitted to himself, making Lorenzo think he was a liability to El, but he needed the other man to go.
Lorenzo set his jaw, and El feared he would refuse.
"You will avenge Maria?" Lorenzo asked, finally.
"I will. I swear it. Go."
Lorenzo nodded and dropped over the other side.
El put a fresh clip in the AK-47 and headed back.
The old euphoria filled him. He had weapons, he had a target, and he had no ties.
Now to figure out what Delgado was doing at the back of the estate. His empire was in ruins, his home was being invaded, his family killed, and Delgado ran to the back door. With him he had taken everyone of any value to him who yet lived. Probably, El concluded, he was doing what Lorenzo and El had been doing. Escaping. He might have already gotten away. Damn.
El quickened his pace through the spotlit acreage, aiming for the little utility building they had been in. It sat next to an open septic waste pit and a shack holding a humming generator. Lying in front of the building were the sad remains of Maria.
Watching in every direction, still cognizant of sounds of the distant war zone over the estate, El approached. The scrub brush of the undeveloped part of the grounds provided very little cover, but he still felt very exposed when he left it to step onto the cement sidewalks around the machinery.
He heard a familiar voice and almost jumped. A voice he hated almost as much as Delgado's.
Tomás, the fastidious Castillian-accented torturer. And he sounded scared.
"I don't understand how they found us. You're supposed to be the brain, tell me. Maybe they find the crop, but then they find the estate within the next day? It doesn't make sense."
Tomás was not speaking inside the utility building. He was standing beside it, next to the open sewer reservoir. El sniffed. Beneath the stench he smelled cigarette smoke. El pressed himself against the front of the building and inched toward the corner.
To El's surprise, it was Sands who answered. His tone held the sound El recognized now, of urgent need. How many hours had it been since his paranoid ravings in the garden? At least twelve. Had they given him nothing since then? He had seemed well contained as he sat on Señora's throne.
"I know how they found us," Sands said. "Let me have a drag and I'll tell you."
"Tell me and I won't break your fingers."
Sands gasped in pain. "All right! It's not a state secret or anything, Jeez."
"Well?"
"I think they followed David and Pablo from the coast. They were trying to be seen there, and so someone saw them. Do you have a finger fetish or something?"
"You are the one who told them to have high profiles. Julio doesn't see it, but I know somehow you arranged all this."
"Where the hell is he?" Sands complained. "Fuck, I hope he didn't get killed. I really need a fix."
"Tell me, what is your pain like? I have a professional interest."
"Fuck you, you sick puppy."
So Delgado wasn't here, but was expected soon. Time to appear.
El stepped around the side of the building to find, gratifyingly, that he had the drop on them. Tomás was puffing nervously on the last of a quick cigarette, a gun in his other hand. Sands was on his knees, his arms across his stomach. What exactly had Tomás been doing to him?
"Don't move," El said.
Tomás looked at him, wide-eyed, over his cigarette. Sands cocked his head.
"Drop the gun. Drop it!"
Tomás complied, also spitting out the butt of his cigarette.
Sands, apparently assuming that El's order not to move didn't apply to him, scooped up the gun and got to his feet.
"Step over there," El ordered Tomás, keeping one eye on Sands.
Tight-lipped, Tomás moved to the edge of the waste pit and faced El, his hands in the air. Above the septic reservoir ran large heavy cables from the generator house.
"Step back," El said.
Tomás glanced uneasily behind him. "Back? Into . . . "
"Yes. Now."
Sands, El observed, stood by unmoving.
Tomás stepped back, gingerly, and sank knee deep in sewage. His horror and fear was plain on his face. "Sands," he appealed in a shaking voice.
"What can I do?" Sands said. "I'm a blind man. I wouldn't know where to shoot."
"It would be dishonorable to shoot an unarmed man," Tomás said to El.
El smiled. "I'm not going to shoot you."
He pointed his gun up and shredded the electrical cables. A shower of sparks rained down and the live cables dropped into the sludge. Tomás screamed, jerked like a puppet on its strings, and dropped dead into the sewage.
El spat.
"I bet that felt good," Sands commented.
"It did," said El.
Sands raised his gun and aimed it at El. "Don't move," he said. "I will hear you."