Waking

This made D'Artagnan even happier. He leaped back and forth across El, exacerbating the problem, and licking furiously. "D'Artagnan, no. Down," El said. "Help?" he called, weakly. His strength truly was fading. He knew that from experience, too. He'd only stay conscious for short periods at first, and then would need rest, his body using all its resources to heal.

Señora Perez, Father Soto, Isabel, and another woman from the village, all piled into the room, wearing broad smiles. Mercifully, someone removed D'Artagnan, but El was fading fast and couldn't find the strength to thank them. He slept.

He woke not too much later though, when the painkiller wore off. The rain still drummed on the roof and windows. Despite himself, he groaned. Sara arrived in his hazy field of vision, with water and two pills. He swallowed them, but decided not to wait for them to take effect before asking some questions. He didn't want her to go and leave him with only Sands. The agent still sat on a chair by the door, but now, rather than cleaning the guns, he seemed to be caressing them.

"Sara," he said, indicating the IV pole with a gesture, "is there a doctor?" Their village only had a midwife, no doctor.

"We got the doctor from Aguadulce to come. You had a lot of medical supplies in your cellar."

That was right. He and Carolina had seemed to need a lot of doctoring, and usually they had only each other to do it.

"You got lucky," Sands commented from across the room, in English, which would be meaningless to Sara. "Those toads must have been using military surplus. Their rounds were FMJs, not hollow points."

"Sara, do you know how bad my leg is?"

"The doctor doesn't know if it hit the bone or not, but if your bone is undamaged, then it isn't very bad. Do you want some more water? We're supposed to give you water and pills whenever you're awake. The doctor is bringing back something to put in your drip so you don't have to take the pills."

El waved off the water. "He's from Aguadulce?" he asked, vaguely trying to remember something.

Sara nodded.

El wheezed, his lungs sore. This was new. Actually, it was old. Marquez had shot him in the chest and his lungs had hurt throughout his recovery. It was as if this recent ravage of his body had activated ancient injuries. Great. More pain.

Sands spoke again. "I told them you'd be able to tell us if your thigh bone was hit or not. You know, from your vast experience of being shot."

That was preposterous. Except, actually, it wasn't. He knew well the splintered, grinding feeling of broken or shattered bones. All he had to do was move around some in the right ways, and yes, he probably would be able to tell. But he wasn't going to experiment just yet. He was still fighting tsunamis of pain. He closed his eyes and floated.

He heard Sara leave the room.

"What are you still doing here?" he asked in English when he felt up to conversing with the bastard in his house.

"You brought me here, you ought to know."

"You should take the fucking diamonds and go back to the United States."

"No, I don't think so."

"Why not? No one wants you here. Screwing young girls, inviting cartel men into my village . . . I'll kill you myself when I can."

"Fine. Now, you're willing to kill me. If I'd known all it took was some shagging …"

"You're disgusting. They're children."

Sands shrugged. "Gee, your Honor, she certainly felt old enough."

El lowered his voice. Even speaking English, he knew how names tended to carry. "And Sara? Did she feel old enough for you, or do you just live to kill cooks and molest children?"

"Hey, she was there. It was hardly polite to make her watch and not invite her. You'd have done the same thing."

El looked around for something to throw at him. "I hope D'Artagnan bit you hard."

"Considering I'm the one sitting here with an arsenal, you're talking pretty big." Sands sounded mildly amused. El should have been relieved he hadn't pushed the psycho the wrong way, but anger had worked through his pain, and he didn't care what Sands did so long as he left.

"Go away and leave us all alone. Leave my whole country alone."

"And I'll have you know, I'm Mr. Popularity around here for saving you. Even the Padre has given me amnesty for now."

"Why don't you leave? Doesn't the CIA want you back? Or are they glad to be rid of you? What's Mexico to them, anyway? A place to dump their failures?" These last words came out very wheezy. The burst of strength anger had given him was exhausted, and El felt a fever wash over him leaving behind a chill.

Sands leaned forward. "There are only two countries that physically border the U.S. Do you really think our fuck-ups are sent there, moron? Now, you need to tell me some things before you conk out again. What happened on your way here? If you were really so dumb that you let yourself be followed, you'd never have lived this long."

"Fuck you," El said, and sank into a feverish sleep, passing through a realm of his subconscious where some part of his mind was still working on the problem of Aguadulce.

The next time he woke it was night. His eyes adjusted quickly while his ears and nose told him it was still raining. In the corner, on the chair, Sands slept, his lanky body draped in a sprawl, his head tipped forward onto his chest. In his lap he held a repeating rifle and his sunglasses lay spilled on the floor nearby. El studied him for a while, listening to the rain. His pain stayed distant, as if he had left it behind in his sleep. Something about Sands's posture - he looked like … a guard. Was El a prisoner? Ridiculous, surely, but it was the mysterious time of night when all El's regrets and fears came out to play.

"Sands," he whispered.

The agent jerked to alertness, gripping the rifle at the ready.

"What?" he whispered back, cocking his head.

"What are you doing?"

Slowly Sands relaxed. El saw him take a deep breath. The movement put his head up to where El could see the empty eyesockets. In the dark Sands looked like a poster child for the Day of the Dead.

"Making sure we're ready if Señora sends any more grandsons our direction." Sands stood and stretched his long limbs, still gripping the rifle by the barrel. "You want a beer?" He pushed open the bedroom door and stepped through it.

"You double-crossed them," El called after him. "And you have their diamonds. It's you they'll be coming for."

Sands re-entered, holding two beer bottles. He approached and held one out. El took it, though he knew perfectly well he shouldn't be mixing it with his medicines. Sands undoubtedly knew that too. Sands sat back down and drank.

"El," Sands said, wearily, sounding more like the disheartened creature El had left behind when he'd gone to see the President, "for some stupid reason, I love that you think I set this up. I only set things up if I can watch them fall, and I can't watch shit anymore."

El considered what he was saying. "You . . . didn't call the Delgados?"

"If I had let that genie out, it would have been damn hard to get it back in the bottle." Sands drank again. "Once, I could have done it . . ."

"So, how did they find me? Us."

"Exactimundo. Someone must have followed you."

"Someone did. But I ditched them."

"Tell me everything. The pills are on the table by your head. I tried some. They're lip-smacking good."