Disclaimer: Robert Rodriguez's Mexico is not mine.
Author's Note: In researching for this story, I was startled to discover how much of OUATIM's plot is derived from real life. There was, for instance, a cartel kingpin in Culiacan named Amado Carillo, who died of complications from a botched plastic surgery back in 1997. Interesting, no?
I realize there is not much of Sands in this chapter, so bear with me. Also, I have tried to weave the Spanish words into the dialogue so that they can be understood in context. I hope this is effective and not annoying.
A Note on Names: I have taken the liberty of giving Ajedrez Ms. Mendes' first name; it seemed to fit her. However, though "Sheldon Jeffrey Sands" should be by rights only an alias, as its owner actually uses it while on the job in Mexico, I could not bear to rename him.
Dead Eyes
Chapter Two
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
Allen Ginsberg, "America"
Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico
November 3rd, 2003
The man in the white suit was not old, in his late twenties or early thirties; he was tall and dark, well-groomed and well-tailored, but his features were just a little too sharp to be handsome. He stood gazing out over the orange orchard that shaded the modest villa, fingering a medallion that bore the image of a saint, though this particular saint had never been beatified by the Holy Roman Catholic Church. The warm late-morning air blowing through the open window was fragrant with citrus and melodic with birdsong.
The door behind him opened and shut; another man entered. He looked like a soldier, despite the fact that he'd been "politely requested" to leave his AK-47 with the beefy guards in the hall. He also looked nervous.
"So. It is true," said the man at the window, without turning around.
"Sí, comandante. The president escaped, unharmed."
"Chingadera," cursed the comandante. "What of Marquez?"
"Dead."
"He was a fool. His men?"
"Masacrado."
"The entire army?" The cultured voice dripped with disbelief. "El presidente must have better security than we ever dreamed possible."
"The people of Culiacan, señor. They fought Marquez's army in the streets."
"Then they, too, are fools. Swayed by all that garbage rhetoric about Mexico and freedom." The man's eyes followed the flash of bird's wings among the trees. "Ungrateful. We have done much for them in the past." He smiled a little. "But they will pay. My father will see to it."
"Señor," whispered the messenger. "Está muerto también, señor."
"I see." A pause. "¿Y Eva?"
"Murió. Lo siento, señor."
The man in the white suit stood very still. His eyes were hard. After a moment, he said evenly, "Is it known who has done this thing?"
"There are rumors, yes." The soldier hesitated. "But I do not think they can be true."
"What rumors, Miguel?" The three words were quiet, precisely enunciated, and sharp as knives.
Miguel licked his lips. "El Mariachi."
"A dead man," said his employer, thoughtfully.
"They say his gun shoots real bullets, señor. If it is true, he cannot be a ghost."
"No matter," answered the other. "Ghost or man, he is still dead."
"They say he had help," Miguel added. "From el Pistolero Ciego. The man who killed your sister."
"The blind gunman? Never heard of him." The man at the window laughed, softly. "But he is dead, also. He just doesn't know it yet."
His hand moved almost too quickly to be seen; the soldier flinched back, seeing the gun come up barely a second before the shot shattered the peaceful air of morning.
Outside, a scattering of leaves and bright feathers drifted to the earth. Felix Barillo leaned over the sill, and smiled when he caught sight of the little body struggling in the dust at the roots of the closest orange tree, its right wing a bloody ruin. He watched it for a minute or so, fascinated, listening to the creature's desperate, reedy cries.
"Maria?" he called. "Why don't you let the cat out, querida mía?" He turned back from the window, and looked at the trembling henchman with genuine surprise. "Miguel, mi amigo. You're still here?"
"I am gone, señor," Miguel gasped; and fled.
Barillo watched him go, and then crossed to the door, pushed the button on the intercom.
"¿Sí, Felix?--¿Qué paso?"
"Ramón," he said. "My father is dead. We must go to Sinaloa." He touched the medallion at his throat again, thinking of Eva Ajedrez Barillo. "And Ramón? Prepare for war."
Aboard Aeromexico Flight #637
En route to Culiacan, Sinaloa
November 3rd, 2003
"Damn you, Sands," Jules muttered. "Why couldn't you have screwed up in Turkey or fucking Myanmar or something? Why Mexico, for God's sake? We don't do shit in Mexico."
Correction. We didn't do shit, until he got there. And then it all hit the fan.
She frowned at the thick dossier open in front of her.
Or did we?
Something about these files was nagging at her. Something missing. Hollister had made it clear that she would be receiving information on a strictly need-to-know basis, which meant he was providing her with the minimum level of intelligence necessary for her to do her job. But that was routine. This...was different. And it tied in somehow with why Sands was down there making trouble in what she had always heard dismissed as a backwards and backwater country, a dreaded assignment, only minimally better than a desk job. Tied in with El Presidente being targeted by both CIA and cartel.
If it had been Lebanon, or Turkey, or the Philippines, or any of a number of small South Asian nations, she would at least know the direction and strength of the currents that ran beneath the surface of events, unseen and uncomprehended by outsiders. But in Mexico she would be navigating strange, murky waters. And her map was incomplete.
She rubbed the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes briefly, turning her head from side to side to ease the crick in her neck.
God, how she hated working on planes. Even in first class, which at least offered the necessary privacy, she had no room to spread out, no surface to shuffle and reshuffle scraps of information until she saw the patterns fall into place. But today she had no choice. The twelve-hour-and-then-some flight, with stops, was all the time she had to achieve a working understanding of the peculiar circumstances, policies, and problems surrounding a country with which she had previously been only superficially familiar: the newly elected presidente and his crime-fighting campaign, the cartels, of which there were anywhere between four and eight operating at any given time, the rot of corruption at the core of nearly every government agency, the nation's struggle to graduate from third-world country to major player in North American politics. It was a lot of information to assimilate in twelve hours; and, at the same time, not nearly enough.
And that was another thing that didn't quite feel right. She couldn't remember ever being sent to a brand new posting, even for a "get in, get out" mission like this one, with so little briefing and so little time to prepare. In fact, HQ had given her barely an hour this morning to pack her bags and say her hasty goodbyes, sparse as they were. She'd been informed that she'd be working with a small team in Culiacan, but that they would rendezvous with her on location. No specified names, no specified times, no specified meeting place. And that meant no guarantees. It probably also meant that the team in question had not yet been assembled, let alone contacted.
Either they trusted her implicitly, or the situation in Mexico had spun alarmingly out of control, and Sands was an even bigger risk than Hollister had implied.
Her money was on the latter.
She'd called her mother long-distance to San Diego before she left for the airport, told her she'd have to postpone her visit, told her she'd be out of touch for awhile again. There had been a long pause on the other end. "You work too much," said her mother, finally. "Government job...pah! Don't they know you have family? How you ever supposed to get married, living like this?" And she had lapsed into Vietnamese, the way she did when she was upset, and Jules had only partially understood the words. Something about lonely old mothers who hardly knew their own daughters. Jules pretended she didn't understand that part at all.
"It's all right, Ma," she had said, ignoring the guilt knotting in her gut that was the relic of another life, of a small, pigtailed girl well-versed in familial duty and the heavy shame of breaking a promise. "I like my job. Truly." This, she decided, was not the time to tell Phuong Cassidy that Gerald had broken off their engagement last week. ("It's like we don't even know each other anymore," he'd said earnestly, using the same phrase her mother might have used if she had spoken in English. "Every time you come home, it gets worse and worse. We're like strangers now, Julie. This isn't how it's supposed to be."
"I'm not a stranger, Gerry," she'd protested. "I know it's been a long time, but I'm still me. I'm still your Juliette."
"No, you're not," he said. "You're different. You've changed. And so have I...")
And he'd been right; they were both right, he and her mother, the people who should have known her best. They didn't know the real Jules Cassidy, any more than she knew the little girl who'd worn pigtails and her face. How could they? Her real life was elsewhere, a life they could never share in places she couldn't take them. Lived under a score of different names and identities, versions of her that they would never meet. By now, the Jules they thought they saw was just another mask, the one she happened to wear when she was undercover as a normal person with a normal life.
Hell, sometimes she wondered if she herself knew the real Jules, whether any of the masks were real.
"How long will it be this time?" her mother had asked, with a deep sigh that was designed to tighten the knot of guilt at Jules' core.
"I don't know," she said. The sigh had done its work; she said, "I'm really sorry, Ma. I'll try to visit as soon as I can, okay?"
"Okay, my daughter." Another gusty sigh. Mrs. Cassidy was merciless. "You travel safe, now. You don't go where there's fighting, right?"
"I'll be safe," Jules promised. "No war zones for me." Not this time.
Not officially, at least...
She had hung up the phone, looked around her apartment at the empty walls, at the dead brown leaves of the plants that had gone unwatered for nine months, at Gerry's coat hanging from the back of a kitchen chair where he'd abandoned it in his haste to leave her, and the pang of conscience she had felt gave way easily to a fierce sense of relief.
She didn't live there; she just stayed there occasionally while on her way somewhere else. And she had short hair now. The pigtailed girl was lost to the past, where she belonged.
She hadn't cried when Gerry had told her it was over, though he had, to her dismay. She'd listened to his explanations and apologies as if from a significant distance, and when he was done, she'd stood up and asked him to leave. He'd stood there in her kitchen for a moment, eyes like a kicked puppy's as if she'd just dumped him instead of the other way around, and she had to say it again. "Gerry," she'd said evenly. "Get out, please. Now."
He'd taken a step back, then, and his expression changed. "Okay," he said, and there was something odd in his voice. "Okay, I'm going, Julie."
It was only after her front door slammed, leaving her alone, that she realized what she'd seen on his face. Fear. Despite her best efforts, she'd let the mask slip, and what he'd glimpsed there had scared him. And she hadn't even been thinking about hurting him.
Well. The thought of the illegal switchblade she kept among her steak knives had crossed her mind. But she hadn't entertained it seriously.
Gerry didn't know what she really did in the Company, of course, though he had guessed that she was CIA a few months after they started dating. She had denied it, as she'd been trained to do, but he hadn't believed her; eventually she'd given up and related an extremely sanitized version of her job description.
"Have you ever killed anyone?" he'd asked then. They'd been in bed together, naked, lazy with a surfeit of sex; she'd been tracing patterns on his bare chest as she talked.
She'd laughed, and kissed him. "Of course not, silly," she said lightly. "You've been watching too many James Bond movies. Real spying isn't like that. A lot of paperwork, actually."
And it would have been true, if she were a regular case officer instead of black ops. She had kissed him again, gently to sweeten the lie, and then harder, to drive away the memory of death, its sound and sight and smell; touched him until her hands forgot the slippery warmth of blood.
That had been a long time ago. Since then, she'd stopped trying to forget; she found she'd remember at night anyway, vividly, in her dreams. And somewhere along the line, those things had ceased to be a source of horror to her. Sometimes a few people had to die for the good of the many, and it was her job to bring that about. And she was good at it. Sometimes she even enjoyed it—the risks, the challenges, the joy of the hunt, the elaborate traps she laid and sprang. It got messy occasionally, but that came with the territory.
Sands was good at it, too. And he had always enjoyed it, right from the start.
Jules thought about the Sands she had known. The mask she'd known. How she'd first met him, in CST orientation. He'd set himself apart from the rest of the group, lounging in a chair at the back of the room with a lazy, predatory grace, and winked at her when he caught her gaze, that smug smile playing around his mouth. A leer. She'd flipped him off and turned away, still feeling his dark eyes on her as a prickling at the back of her neck and down her spine, a sudden warmth pooling between her legs.
The second time they met, at one of the Company-organized mixers the new recruits were forced to attend, he'd patronized her. She detested him, but found herself watching him surreptitiously for the rest of the evening, until once again he'd caught her at it. His raised eyebrow had been a challenge and a proposition, and somehow baldly indecent. She'd fantasized about the sound of her fist connecting with one of those gorgeous cheekbones.
The third time they met, on their first day of combat training, she laid him out in front of their entire class. It was every bit as satisfying as she'd imagined. Her small frame and fine bone structure—product of her Irish-Vietnamese heritage—made her look delicate, and she knew how to use the illusion to her advantage. Like most men, he'd made the mistake of underestimating her.
He'd never made that mistake again. Nor had any of the other guys in the class.
After that, it had been war. She made top marks at the Farm because of Sheldon Sands; they both had, trying constantly to best one another. He played dirty, but she learned fast. Their rivalry had been bitter and dead-serious, and much talked-of among the rest of the Clandestine Service Trainees, who laid bets on who would come out on top each week.
What the rest of the class hadn't known was that the fourth time they'd met, they ended up fucking on the training room floor.
She had been on top, that time.
They had kept their sexual relationship as private as their rivalry was public, and laughed when they heard that another pool had been started, this time for wagers on when they would finally "get it over with and get it on already." Relationship, she called it, for there was nothing of romance in what they were, what they did, their couplings often as violent and antagonistic as their competition in the field. He scared the shit out of her, and pissed her off, and fascinated her. He could be very charming when he wanted to be—like a snake, she had told herself, even as she let herself be drawn in by the silky voice and the dark, magnetic gaze. He was danger, adrenaline, mystery. Intoxicating.
Hollister had called them lovers. Had she loved Sands? He had not, she knew, loved her. She didn't think he could; he had no more use for love than he did for compassion. But he had known her, known the secret parts of her, the darkness they shared that no one else recognized or understood.
He had seen the real Jules Cassidy; though she had never been quite sure how much of the Sands she saw was real.
No, not love, she decided. More like addiction. Sands had been a drug to her veins, a rush that she had always known, somewhere in the back of her mind, to be deadly. As he almost had been...
Not lovers, but they'd been partners. In their last weeks at the farm, during covert ops training, they'd been paired up together. They'd practiced setting traps together. Shared the thrill of the hunt. She'd made a mistake, then. She let herself trust him. Believed she knew him, believed she saw beneath the mask.
And in the end, he'd almost killed her.
She stirred, dragging her attention back to the cramped type of the page before her.
Now, she would be laying a trap for him. Hunting the hunter. The ultimate challenge.
If he is alive, that is.
If he's dead, I get to finish my vacation…
She hoped he was alive. Somehow, though, she doubted he was dead.
Sands was like her, in that way. A killer, yes.
But also a survivor.