Sands knew exactly where they were going when they reached the city, giving him not only an address, but confident and accurate directions.

This was nothing like visiting the boy's house. This was a wealthier part of Culiacán, low walls around gardens, and trees to screen the roads from view. Not rich, but a long way from poor.

They left the car out on the street, Sands following El closely up the curving pathway to the house. Only part of the building was visible from the gate - single-storey in a modest design, simple window frames and screens. The front of the house was obscured by the placing of sweetly aromatic bushes of some kind. El wasn't much interested in gardening, and only ever bothered to remember which ones had spines when he crawled through them.

They were over half way along the path when El realised all his attention was sweeping out in front of and alongside him. He was aware of Sands' footsteps behind him, matching his own, there, and more than that almost unimportant.

He stopped, muscles flash-frozen by the depth of chill.

Sands had taken one more step before he too locked down, right behind him now. He could hear him breathing, light and slow, hear the slide of hair over a collar as Sands tipped his head to listen.

"Something wrong?" Sands' voice was so low he barely heard it, but he could feel it, the movement of air past his ear.

"No, nothing." He spoke in a normal voice.

Nothing, except he had started to trust Sands.

Maybe Sands had been right when he told him he was already dead.

He began to move again, keeping his steps relaxed and natural with an effort. The shot of adrenaline shivering through his muscles was read by his body as fighting, not walking up someone's path to knock on the door.

Sands remained still a second or two longer before he followed, and El's quick glance over his shoulder showed his face utterly intent, still walking with that odd-looking tilt to his head.

Sands didn't believe it was nothing, but that wasn't his problem.

"Steps, three of them, onto a verandah." Sands followed him up without pause.

The door was solid, no windows near it, no way to see as someone came to answer. He rang the bell, a well-worn metal button-push, and stood aside, leaving Sands to deal with his 'friend'.

The footsteps that came a moment later were firm and confident, no attempt at stealth, but they halted behind the door, and El knew they were being checked.

The door opened a little cautiously, behind it a man with a creeping hairline and a neat beard, watchful eyes fixed on Sands.

He knew this man. The one who was fighting Barillo before he killed him.

The man glanced at El, the recognition sharp in his eyes, but his real focus stayed with Sands. "I wondered what had happened to you."

"That's a real nice change of heart, Jorge. You didn't seem so concerned before."

'Jorge' ignored the comment, but the damning flicker of guilt was too obvious to El.

"El, meet Jorge Ramírez, intermittently retired from the FBI," Sands continued. "Jorge, you should feel privileged. You get to meet the legendary El Mariachi himself."

El flashed a pointless glare at Sands, before his attention snapped back to Ramírez.

Ramírez was looking to El again, studying more closely this time. "I knew you had to be another of his players," he said, his eyes flicking briefly to Sands, "but I wouldn't have thought it of that name."

El stared back evenly, easing the pressure from his teeth. He was at the man's home, and they were here asking for favours. "I had my own reasons," he said.

"As did we all." Ramírez gave him a sharp look. "I still don't know that we did more good than harm."

"I do," El said quietly.

Ramírez raised his eyebrows fast. "Really? A lot of civilians died so that three evil men could die with them." His eyes hardened. "Just how much did you know, or suspect? How much did you ignore for your 'own reasons', when instead you might have stopped him. "His eyes swept over Sands.

He'd thought of it, many times, if he'd acted differently instead of simply taking the deal. "I couldn't have stopped it," he said. "It was too big. No one man could have stopped it, I think. Not even him."

"As it happens, no, I probably couldn't have, not by then," Sands interrupted, vivid, cheerful contrast. "Even if I'd wanted to, which I didn't," he added, with a flashed smile. "I'm perfectly happy for you two to carry on hashing over old times, though, but I'd suggest not out here."

Ramírez' stare flicked between them, and El could imagine how much he didn't want them in his house. But he stood aside eventually, and El stepped forward first, with Sands shadowing.

Ramírez led them through to a room at the back of the house. Its furnishings were simple, elegant in a slightly old-fashioned way, very much in line with the style of the house and of the man himself. El brushed his leg along the arm of the chair nearest the door, slight jar and catch of fabric shifting his chains out of time. Sands settled into it easily as he took the next one himself. Ramírez sat opposite them, careful, and made no gesture of playing host.

"Why are you here?" His eyes wandered between them, asking clearly why they were here together.

"Straight to the point, as ever." Sands was drawing out that lazy voice of his still further, deliberately annoying. "It's good to know you haven't changed."

"And nor have you, it seems," Ramírez said, his quiet words tight with distaste. "But I doubt that you could."

"Oh, you'd be surprised what can change when you're not looking carefully enough." He spoke in the distinct, casual tone that El recognised as pure threat.

Ramírez breathed out slowly, and his shoulders lost their stiffness. "I'm not going to play your games," he said, flat and hinting at frustration. "Just tell me what it is you've come for."

Sands drew his hands up beneath his chin, creak of gloves as he steepled his fingers together. "I suspect you've been doing a bit more than putting your feet up and sampling your way through your wine cellar since we last met, Jorge, my old friend. So I was wondering if you'd care to share with us what you know about the reorganisation of the former Barillo cartel."

Ramírez didn't answer right away, watching Sands and weighing his choice of words before he spoke. "My business with those people is done."

Sands tilted his head, raised eyebrows and faint smile, a mockery of polite interest. "You know, you probably do believe that," he said slowly. "You probably believe you were never going to do anything with the information, just put it aside for a rainy day when you might need some insurance." His lips twitched at one corner. "If nothing else, you'd poke around a little to keep your hand in, stop yourself from getting bored. Agents don't retire, remember, Jorge."

"And that's why you're here - because you are not retired." His eyes swept across, including El in the statement.

"Well, the cartel certainly aren't, and I don't like it when they come looking for us."

"So you will get them first."

"With a little help from my friends," Sands said lightly, sudden bright smile hanging in place.

Ramírez held himself expressionless all through, every muscle in his face still except to shape his words; this man revealed very little of what he was thinking, unless he wanted to. "Nobody really knows about my involvement," he said eventually. His gaze passed briefly from Sands to El. "Anyone who knew was dead, or disappeared. Oh, they came, and they asked their questions, and so I lied. With no other witnesses, they were stuck with believing me. Or pretending to, which comes down to the same thing." He rubbed his hand thoughtfully over his chin. "I have nothing at all to gain by talking to you, and an awful lot to lose."

Sands drew his legs in beside his chair and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "Did it feel good, Jorge?" he asked, smiling. "Killing them? Watching them die?"

Ramírez watched him with his own tight smile. "You know it did."

"Well, there you are. I gave you what you wanted."

"Only because you thought it would get you what you wanted."

"Yes, well, that part of it didn't quite go to plan." The mocking tone dropped from his voice, and he finished flat and drawling. "The bottom line, Jorge, my friend, is you got the score and I got screwed. You owe me."

Ramírez settled back into his chair, his hands sitting clearly visible in his lap. An old-style clock ticked loud somewhere in the house, counting through the lengths of silence before he spoke. "Be sure this is what you want from me, because you don't get to come back later for more." He switched his stare to El. "Either of you."

"Oh, I think we can agree to that."

Sands' instant acceptance of the condition wasn't right. El would have expected him to negotiate, to blackmail, to keep Ramírez available for information-tapping in the future.

Sands could simply be lying, of course, but that seemed less his style than to play with the truth.

It bothered him that he didn't know why.

Ramírez continued to watch Sands, and El suspected it bothered him too.

Sands sat, content to wait, a delicate stretch to his lips.

Ramírez took a single, slow breath and then he began to talk.

And he turned out to be everything that Sands had predicted.

He had followed the obvious stories of infighting and the invasion of neighbouring cartels into Sinaloan territory after the disastrous coup. More deaths, more disappearances - all of that was effectively public knowledge, available to anyone reading the papers and buying drinks for a few members of the local police. But he knew too the details of what had happened when the overt battles ended, the deals that were struck, and the sell-outs. El continued mostly to listen, content not to interfere - Sands asked many of the same questions and clarifications that he would have himself, and Sands knew this man and how to work around him.

The cartel had reformed under the control of a man named Montejo, one of Barillo's people who had been in charge of shipments and supply routes. He'd been away from Culiacán when everything happened, and unlike many, who bolted from the influx of AFN and government soldiers in the aftermath, he headed straight back to the city. It was his organisation that had kept at least some of the drugs moving, and with it the cash to pay the men. That and the strategic yielding of certain areas to a Tijuana-based outfit had ensured the survival of the cartel as an independent entity, and his reward was that the money now all came to him.

He ran his operations from a large house some way outside the city, and had been kept busy shifting routes away from the renewed government interference and re-establishing contracts. That had bought them the last three months. Until now, when operations were back to normal and running smoothly, and Montejo was finally able to spare men against outsiders.

And El was once again important enough to chase.

"That's everything I know." Ramírez said eventually. He looked between them for a moment, appearing to consider something, then stood. "I have one more thing for you." He moved to the door, and looked back over his shoulder at El. "Wait here," he said, eyes and voice making it more than a request.

El didn't like not knowing what the man was doing. He knew exactly who they were, and the easiest way to guarantee that peaceful life he wanted was to be rid of both of them.

He looked to Sands, who was listening automatically, his head drifting around as he tracked the sound of footsteps through the house. He sprawled easily enough in his chair, his hands settled on his thighs instead of by a gun as one gloved index finger tapped thoughtfully in time with Ramírez' steps. His tension was at the most basic of levels as he counted and marked directions, and El had watched him long enough now to tell the reality from the pretence.

He didn't trust Ramírez, any more than he trusted anyone, but he wasn't expecting deceit here.

El wondered what gave him that confidence, and then remembered the flash of guilt at the door.

Ramírez' choice of hiding place must be accessible enough if you knew where to look - his footsteps were returning already, and El's eyes moved back to the door. Ramírez was watching them in turn as he walked in - both of them, but always more centred on Sands. He carried a roll of papers beneath one arm, and he stopped by Sands' chair. "This is a copy of the plans to the house." He didn't offer it, he pushed it forward until it touched his hand and Sands took it from him.

He knew. Either he was incredibly perceptive, or he had already known.

Sands just smiled and handed the papers over to El. "Well, thank you, Jorge. I knew all along I could rely on you to come through for us, but that's a little more than even I was hoping for."

Ramírez still stood near the door, impassive. "I'll show you out," he said. His voice hollowed all the normal polite overtones from the words.

"Oh, don't worry, we won't be out-staying our welcome." Sands was sliding to his feet as he spoke, and El took the cue to do the same. "There's really nothing worse than a guest you can't persuade to leave, so I'm always happy to take a hint."

El stepped ahead of Sands and met Ramírez' eyes. "Can you tell me what Montejo looks like?" he asked.

Ramírez laughed soft and short, a flashing glimpse of someone almost friendly and much younger. "I can do better than that. He's already started establishing himself with the local communities." He crossed the room to a magazine rack, rustling through it, then tossed El a copy of the local weekly. "Page five."

He opened it to find an article on Montejo's donation for much-needed repairs to a local school. There was a picture of a man almost ready to be called middle-aged, smiling wide beneath his moustache as he stood by the peeling sign outside the school.

Always the cartels bought the people. It never changed.

"Thank you," he said quietly, refolding the paper and tucking it beneath his arm with the plans.

Ramírez turned and walked out down the hallway to open the door for them. He stopped El as he reached him, looking him in the eyes - not hard, but direct. "I mean it. Don't come back."

"We already had this discussion, Jorge," Sands said lightly from behind him. "I might be offended that you don't trust me."

Ramírez ignored Sands, clearly placing no value on what he said. El held his gaze and nodded.

He still didn't look convinced, but he could gain nothing further in reassurance from a man he knew only by reputation.

El turned away down the steps, Sands moving with him instantly, echoing the creak of his footsteps on the sagging wood.

Ramírez didn't give him the feeling of a man who couldn't be trusted, and Sands and his own senses would tell him if the man made any unwanted movement. El looked back only briefly.

He stood silent on the verandah where they had left him, his shape melding into the wood of the frame he leaned against, watching with flat eyes.

El had the feeling he would stand there until they were long gone from his property.

He unlocked the car, tossed the papers into the back with his guitar case, and slid behind the wheel. He waited as Sands trailed a hand light along the hood, faintest trace through the scattered dust, following the curve of metal to his own door and his own seat; waited until the door closed and Sands stilled.

He held the keys in his hand, his finger sliding back and forth around the sun-warm metal of the ignition. "Don't ever tell people who I am."

Sands shrugged, the movement distinct even as he reached forward to the glove compartment for a new pack of cigarettes. "You shouldn't get yourself too worked up over that. I won't be making a habit of it, but Jorge's safe enough."

"You don't trust him."

He sat back in his seat, speaking slow and in unusually good humour. "You know, in an odd sort of way, I kind of do, but only because I know exactly how far I can trust him." Plastic rustled between his hands as he felt for the pull tab with leather-clumsy fingers. "He's one of those lovely people who never change; one moment to the next, one year to the next, he's completely inflexible in what he believes, and he considers it a virtue."

Sands pushed the freed wrapper deep into his pocket before he took and lit his cigarette. No untidiness around Sands ever, absolute knowledge of where everything was, even the truly insignificant.

"He regrets it." As he spoke, he wondered whether Sands needed to know this, whether the past might be better left. "Whatever it was when you met before, the guilt has followed him."

"Oh, I thought it might," Sands said. He smiled slowly. "Jorge likes to think of himself as one of the good guys. He can do things that most people would consider completely shocking, and still firmly believe he's right every last inch of the way, at least while he does it. Don't you think that's interesting?"

Sands didn't even bother to turn towards him. El got the point anyway.

He was no wiser on if he'd done the right thing.

He started the car and drove back through too-familiar streets towards the centre.

The temptation brushed at him to go to the boy's house to check, to see if anyone had been looking there, to make sure they had stayed away; as he drew closer, its fingers seeped deeper through him, near-corrosive. But it would be a bad idea to create that connection again if there was any chance at all it might fade.

He hadn't told Sands that Honaker had mentioned the child. That conversation would only make one of them pointlessly angry and frustrated. Most likely himself when Sands simply didn't care.

If the family were being tracked, the only thing they could do to help was what they were doing anyway - destroy those who chased them.

He stopped at the stores and bought a large scale terrain map of the area around the house and a newspaper, then found them a hotel. El took Sands back to his room - he could go through his obsessive, deliberate checks of his own later.

There would be no drive-past and no surveillance of this house. It stood alone in the hills outside the city, and any vehicle in the area would be too obvious.

El studied Ramírez' plans, and the map, letting them settle together in his head and describing the resulting picture to Sands. He covered all the angles on layout and approach, first running over generalities, and then adding layers of specifics and exact scale. Sands mostly listened in silence, questioning details occasionally, making scathing comments on Montejo's taste in architectural styles rather more often.

Eventually Sands sat back, playing thoughtfully with the unlit cigarette between his lips. "Well, that definitely makes this one a night job. Too much exposure otherwise, unless your old friend El Presidente's willing to lend us a tank."

El had come to the same conclusion with his first look at the plans twenty minutes earlier. "I don't think his thanks will go quite that far."

"Save the life of a President and all you get for it is a pretty sash. Sign another one onto the list of what's fucked up about this country, El."

He shrugged. "There was the money too, if I'd wanted it."

Sands laughed, his real humour with no glass between the layers. "That was never his to start with. It's no big burn to the soul to start handing out someone else's carefully hoarded dough."

His words slipped through his smile as an exaggerated lilt. "And yet I don't think you would have been so happy to do it."

"Well, no," Sands said with perfect honesty, "but I'm not the President. I never claimed to be about the high ideals."

El thought that was a very good thing - it was one deception in which Sands would never be able to convince.

He looked down to the map again, to the planning and the killing. "We'll have to leave the car where the road curves around the final hill. Beyond that, we'll be in full view."

Sands followed his shift back into business, shedding humour without pause. "What's the range from there?"

He shifted his attention between map and plans, feeling for a more accurate idea of low level scale. "One hundred metres to the wall, maybe a little more."

Sands tipped his head, quick concentration shifting over him. "Three hundred and thirty feet, and another couple hundred to the house from there." He smiled. "That's a good sort of range for the M203. I wonder how Montejo will like waking up to a few grenades?"

El's eyes swivelled up from the table. "Who do you think will be firing these grenades?"

Sands angled patronising eyebrows at him, his whole forehead wrinkling deep with it. "Well, me, who else?"

"You can't aim," he told him. Not in the night's silence, and from a distance.

"It doesn't matter a damn where the first one hits, they'll all start running around and yelling once it goes off, and then I'll know exactly where to aim."

That was true to a point. The house was surrounded only by empty hillside, deliberately isolated to protect it. There were no innocent bystanders if Sands missed the compound. "Even if you're accurate, the weapon isn't," he said. "You won't know whether or not you hit your target."

"Oh, I think they'll scream differently when there's a grenade right there." Sands was grinning, pure focussed delight; the blood behind it almost visible, welling up between his teeth. "They're going to tell me everything I could want to know."

He didn't like this obvious joy in killing. It might be there, inside, because that was how it was, but he didn't have to revel in it. "If we're doing this at night, we might as well try and do it quietly."

"El, you never did anything quietly in your life. I'll bet you wake the neighbours every time you fuck." The cigarette between his lips tilted upwards with his smile, and El's mouth dropped open for an instant retort before he clamped his teeth back together hard. He wasn't going to start discussing his sex life with anyone, and not with Sands. "And besides," Sands went on, oblivious, or more likely pretending to be, "it's a big place, and at the tail end of a drugs war that means a whole lot of goons. If you'd prefer, you could give your friends a call and see if they'd be willing to help out."

"No." His voice was flat. That wouldn't ever be negotiable.

"Right, so that makes it you and me and one chance at surprise." His mouth kept the quirk, but his face slipped sharper in the pause. "I'm really not so hot on the catburglar creeping and climbing angle, and you can take maybe five, six with a silencer before someone knows you're there and everyone in the place comes at you. And while I'm not doubting your ability to somehow make that work for you, it's much easier to take out as many as we can right off and save the one-on-one for when they're scattered."

El shifted in his chair until he was facing him direct. "Ramírez said Montejo has a wife," he said quietly.

"So?"

"If I went in there, I would spare her. That weapon will not."

"Barillo had a daughter, as I recall." His voice stretched, swinging tones pushed further with each syllable. Two months ago El would have been annoyed, with Sands so blatantly amused, patronising. Now he knew he wasn't quite reaching it. "Would you have let her live too?"

He might. He'd met women who fought, as if Carolina would ever let him forget, but not so many - the cartel men more often chased looks than brains or courage. If she was holding a gun, he would kill her without thought, but if she wasn't, he doubted he would shoot.

Sands' smirk twisted and fractured, a flickering moment of everything acid-warped inside him. "You should take real good care of your eyeballs, El, you'll miss them when they're gone."

He looked away, over to the window, to the traffic noise rising from the street. "You think there's a reason to justify killing anyone. The innocent, the bystanders."

"I believe I was just saying how this is a screwed up kind of country you have here, El," Sands said, flipping back into a tone of airy conversation. "One of the things I've noticed while I've been here is that revenge is quite the popular deal. Sometimes they'll come after you right away, and sometimes they wait for years and then show up one day when you thought they'd forgotten all about you; but if you leave someone alive they'll always come back to get you."

It wasn't something he could deny. He'd done that to others, and others had done it to him.

And Sands... Sands was about to come back to complete his own revenge that had waited since the Day of the Dead.

He didn't like it still, but this fight was about Sands' revenge perhaps even more than his own. It wasn't anyone's place to interfere with that. "Fine. We can do it both ways. As long as you stop firing that thing when I go in."

"Well, it won't be any fun for me if my designated driver doesn't show after the party, stuck out in the middle of Mexican mulesville. I might get thirsty before I find a store." He angled his eyebrows upwards. "So that only leaves the question of when."

El shook open the newspaper. "It will stay clear tonight." Anything else would have been unusual for winter in Culiacán. "Half moon."

Sands tipped his head a fraction. "That could be too much."

"It makes no difference. There will be perimeter lights." Sands might have advantages in darkness, firing with a range weapon, but he liked to be able to see.

And he had done far too much waiting now.

"Wind?"

"Seven kilometres." Low enough for the grenade launcher.

Sands reached to the table beside him for his lighter, finally touching flame to the cigarette that angled from his mouth. "I know it's something of a cliché, but I'd recommend the early hours. Jorge didn't exactly paint Montejo as a party animal, but I'd prefer the best chance of catching everyone asleep." His words were patterns in the air, clouds and curls of smoke spreading between them. "What time's dawn these days anyway?"

"Around six-twenty. No light before six." He didn't need the newspaper for that.

Sands pushed his chair back, harsh, multi-pitched squeak of wood over tile. "So I guess I'll get some sleep in, and see you around three." He swept the lighter up into his pocket as he stood and smiled. "I'll assume I can rely on you for that, or else I could leave a wake-up call with the desk?"

He didn't bother to answer that. He pushed up onto his feet to go with Sands to his room, trying to ignore the anticipation that unfurled, twisted, within him.

He never could.