Chapter Thirty

On The Road

They awaited the dawn in a wooded area beyond the exit from Delgado's escape tunnel where El could easily see the leaping flames and explosions at the distant estate. Cocaine had revived Sands to where he could walk and function, but even hopped up the agent's strength and endurance was shot. El was exhausted himself, so neither man had had to discuss it much. They got under good cover and rested.

Sands leaned his thin frame against a tree trunk. By the tilt of his head, El thought he was listening to the explosions. "Rockets," he concluded. "Two choppers?"

El muttered an affirmative.

"So what's in the bag?"

Wearily, El got out the little drawstring bag and tossed it. Impossibly, Sands caught it. He dumped the contents into his hand, his head bent down as if he could look. Curious, El dragged himself closer. Sands held out a hand full of glinting stones.

"They look like diamonds," El said.

"We're rich," Sands said with a grin.

"Bueno," El said without much enthusiasm. "We can fence them in Mexico City."

"Not Mexico City," Sands said. "Señora lives there, with a grandson. Even if the remnants of the Delgado cartel didn't want revenge, they'll certainly come after us for these little trinkets."

"Where then?" El asked wearily.

Sands was silent, fingering the jewels.

"I don't know," he finally said, with uncharacteristic reticence. "I can't think. You decide."

So, at dawn, El led them, via foot, hitchhiking, and bus, toward his home.

Traveling with Sands, El found himself closely bound up with the schedule of the agent's needs. At first he had been uncertain about how much cocaine to give the man; and Sands himself was no help. He always insisted he needed more.

"Aren't you tired of begging?" El had asked him, irritably.

"I'm used to it now," Sands had replied.

And, in truth, it became clear that Sands was seldom experiencing the same high that had put him to singing show tunes in the Delgado estate. All the drug seemed to do for him now was to stave off the agony of its absence, and not for very long, either.

The first day, El yielded to the man's begging for a larger dose, but they both paid the price in a huge anxiety attack where Sands fled from El and from other imaginary pursuers. A number of bruises and a chase through a village later, El had the agent back under his control, but he decided then that it would be only his own judgment that would decide how much and how often Sands would receive cocaine. Based on how much of the powder El still possessed, El declared that Sands would receive a set dose every six to eight hours, and if Sands didn't like it, El would leave him at the next village to fend for himself.

El had half-expected Sands to take him up on the threat, but, like it had with Delgado, Sands's need for the certain fix overruled his dislike for his situation.

"Now I'm your slave," Sands had complained.

"You are a slave, yes," El had preached at him, "but not to a man."

"Fuck you."

Unfortunately, the arrangement meant Sands spent a good deal of their journey exhausted, depressed, and suffering from headaches and cravings. El stuck scrupulously to the schedule, since it seemed to help Sands endure his misery to know he could count on it ending, however briefly. El wasn't fond of his role and he wasn't fond of the agent. He intended to be rid of both, but not until he had kept his word.

In the meantime, Sands needed care. El couldn't remember seeing him eat anything of any substance, and the agent was clearly malnourished. His nose bled every time he snorted, and often when he didn't. He slept irregularly, which was hard on El's sleep, and when he did, he suffered from nightmares. One encouraging sign was that, as a dose of cocaine wore off, Sands's appetite often returned, sometimes voraciously. Where El never yielded to Sands's begging for more dope, he tried to get him all the food he asked for, sometimes going without, himself, like he would have to feed his little daughter.

They stayed away from roads until El felt they were well out of the vicinity of the estate. Then they hitchhiked as far as they could get. Though Sands grumbled that men with a fortune in diamonds should be able to afford hotels, El had them sleep out of doors most nights. El sold his empty AK-47 for cash in one village, and that gave them food money and bus fare. It was enough, and low profile.

El began to have the odd feeling that Sands was more complicit in El's unstated plans than he appeared to be on the surface. The agent was anything but a fool, but Sands never asked how much longer the cocaine would last, or what they would do when it was gone. Promptly at six hours he would begin nagging for his next fix, which wearied El at first, until he realized the man was desperately holding his tongue until then. El didn't tell him where he kept the cocaine, and Sands didn't seem to try to learn it. Nor did Sands ever try to take El's guns, though his increasing paranoia must have made remaining unarmed a torment. Even his sharp tongue was dulled, as if Sands didn't want to piss El off. The overall effect was that Sands seemed to be truly trusting El, and that trust had to be difficult to give. El couldn't help but be a little affected.

El reminded himself that Sands had been hooked against his own will, that first dose as he lay dying notwithstanding. The man had a brilliant intellect and an admirable ability to face his own reality, however dark. He clung to one piece of denial, though, to El's puzzlement. He refused to agree that he had done anything to bring down Delgado's empire.

"You gave me the phone number to their Colombian suppliers. You told me how much they would want to know where Delgado was getting his drugs."

"So? I was just singing a tune I'd heard, El. Why would I expect you to recognize the notes?"

"Because you know I am a musician."

Sands merely snorted, then dabbed at the blood issuing from his nose.

It was strange. Even Tomás had seen how Sands had manipulated events, not merely to escape, but to destroy his enemies. El could only conclude that Sands's enslavement to cocaine, which had not abated, made it impossible for him to admit he could have done anything to jeopardize his source. But some part of him had done so, and that part of the agent also knew what was yet to come. And, so long as they did not talk about it, that part of Sands was El's ally.

That part of Sands - the part that had chosen to risk trusting El, the part that had kept Delgado from using drugs on him, the part that had killed Maria to buy the mariachis' freedom, the man who now struggled against his cravings, his own nasty nature, his blindness, and maybe even his psychosis - was one of the bravest men El had ever met. But he still needed his coke on schedule.

So El arrived in his little village in the company of a man he loathed and admired.