The drive was just over an hour, empty roads and colourless landscape sucked of life by low, distorting moon-cast.
He killed the lights for the last few miles, following dirt curves slow into the hills. He didn't know how much of a watch they kept at this hour, but he wouldn't invite attention by arcing twin beams across the valley sides, even beams weak as those of a rusting Ford.
He slung the binoculars and a short grapple line from his shoulder - he could climb anything he could get his hands onto, but almost four metres of predictably smooth wall was that bit too much. They angled their way along and a little way up the hill until they had a line of sight across to the house, crouching behind brush.
Sands double-checked the M16/203 while El ran the binoculars over the house. There were lights along the wall, as he'd guessed, but the place wasn't glowing like the Christmas department store he'd half-expected. Someone inside must prefer darkness for sleeping.
He didn't see anything that differed from the plans, no obvious later additions or changes. Nothing that would affect the details they'd discussed on the way.
There were two men standing by the main door, no others obviously in sight.
That would change.
He focussed on down the left wall, checking for assets or obstructions and finding neither.
He lowered the binoculars as Sands unclipped the strap from the front of the M16 so there was no risk it would interfere with the grenades. "Start with thirty degrees elevation at two-o-clock," he told him as he got to his feet. "Give me thirty seconds to reach the wall. Ten minutes, then I'll be inside."
Sands half-turned his face, quick grin in profile. "Got it."
"Count slowly," he told him, knowing well how accurate Sands' sense of timing was when he concentrated, and he was off towards the wall before Sands could retort, keeping low among the scrub as he rounded the hill.
He zig-zagged fast between the bushes, holding a tight basic course but taking the cover that offered itself along the way. The murky, slanting light of the drive seemed to morph now, the moon splintering bright around him to throw dramatic contrast between undergrowth and bare earth, and presumably approaching mariachi if anyone cared to look at the wrong moment.
He slowed a little as he came closer, his footfalls lighter and more deliberately chosen.
He wasn't quite at the wall when the first launch coughed behind him - he had a suspicion that might just be Sands' choice of payback for his parting comment.
The grenade flashed brilliant some way off to his right, hurling thunder and pressure and dirt just outside the compound, and he took the last metres in a dead sprint, seeking the cover of the wall before anyone started looking outwards for the source of the blast, pounding footsteps buried in the heavy thump and shiver of earth.
Every light brightened within seconds, interlocking beams leaping outward over soil and scrub, inward to drown the house with light, blinking out much of the arc of night sky.
Voices raised from inside the compound, broken chatter on radios, loud calls along the length of wall for damage reports, yelled questions and directions.
He trotted along the base of the wall, half-crouched in the relative shadow below the beams. Another distant whump, a second grenade shattering somewhere behind him, and he picked up speed again with the cover of the noise, rounding the corner of the grounds.
The explosions fractured on through the night as he skirted the walls, not-quite-regular. Reload time, aim correction, and then a variable gap to throw off anyone trying to track the source of the attack. Once the gap was longer, and El imagined Sands crawling along the hillside, varying position.
Sands wouldn't make himself easy to target.
He gauged his distance along the rear wall, the house between him and all the activity out at the front, but not wanting to go in too close to this door. Most of the men would have been sent to deal with the obvious assault, but there would still be guards left in the important places.
He waited for another grenade before he swung the grapple line, cover for the noise it made, or any he made as he shimmied up and over, risk of metal singing on stone.
He dropped down into the compound, rolling automatically as he landed while he established no gunfire tracking him and no shout.
There were some things plans wouldn't tell, and it had been too much to hope for that the grounds would be lush planted with tall bushes and a glut of ugly stonework like the old Barillo estate. The land nearest the house had been worked on, but he had some seventy metres of near-raw packed earth with a few trees and straggling bushes before he reached it.
Maybe Montejo had future plans now that the cash was rolling in, or maybe he just wasn't much for gardening either.
He drew both P14s, silencers on, and used what there was, dashing between drought-scraggy cover with the vicious flash-howls of high explosive. He was barely tracking events on the other side of the building now, registering and using the detonations automatically while his attention focussed closer, reaching for the low sounds beneath, for the slight movement sweeping across hearing or vision that would hand him the extra second.
He made it to the building almost on schedule and undiscovered. From here it would be easier.
Irregular walls to keep the house 'interesting' let him slide along to within sight of the door, pausing to check on a few windows along the way.
Two men on guard with the inevitable automatics, and too much of their attention on what was happening on the other side of the building. A camera on the wall above them - no way to know if they fell in its field of vision or anyone was watching it.
He waited, counting the seconds. Reload, aim correction... pause...
Four rounds whisper-clustered into each man and they crumpled, almost together, clatter of guns on stone deadened by the fading shock of the grenade.
The door would be locked. They would have keys if he searched them, but without knowing what he might find on the other side, he preferred to take a less obvious way in.
No-one else came, so he could discount the camera. Anyone checking them was probably concentrating on the ones at the front.
He scooped up a fallen AK and slipped back around to one of those interesting windows. A darkened room, a closed door sealing it, and the key left in the window lock. Nobody here was worried about burglars, and the security alarms would have been turned off now everyone was up and moving around.
Wait, ready, and the butt of the AK smashed through one of the smaller panes with the next explosion.
He was past his ten minutes now and Sands was supposed to have stopped the high explosive assault so he didn't accidentally kill him, but it was turning out too useful to be more than mildly annoying. He seemed to be keeping the range deliberately short; nothing had come near this side of the house.
He opened the window and dropped through onto a muffling rug in a sitting room, the furniture sparse and elegant in a highly ornate way; a woman's taste. He slid up behind the door, plans filtering through his mind - corridor outside, with the door he'd seen some metres to the left; multiple rooms both ways, but more to the right, stairs at the end.
It could get complicated.
He listened, ear cocked against the wood - voice speaking low to the right, intermittent in a way that meant radio or cellphone, too low to catch the words. A second voice occasionally adding brief comments.
He wondered where he would find Montejo. Nowhere obvious like the master bedroom, not any more, but if he was typical of his kind he wouldn't be too near the doors either. Not when he had so many guards with guns taking his money for those risks.
He checked up against the walls to the sides, but he couldn't hear anything obvious from the rooms next to this one. He hoped that meant they were empty.
Last seconds at the door, hearing nothing this time; call over, it seemed. He turned the handle enough to free the latch, opening it just a crack, the P14 right back in his hand. Light shattered through the gap, and he peered into it, blinking, still but for the shiver-dance of his pulse with every humming second.
Faint sounds from the right again - not voices, just life and breath uncontained, careless in the air. Not enough to hint whether two men still or just one now. His eyes altered and settled, light resolving into a wall and the sharp edge of a doorframe, hints of curved shadow telling him of lamps above in both directions.
He edged the toe of his boot into the crack in the doorway.
Sweeping the door aside, stepping through with a .45 raised to cover each slice of hallway, looking right and trigger murmuring an arc of death across the two men standing by the staircase.
A change in the air, a whisper in pressure, and he whipped left, firing reflexively before his eyes had settled on the man in the half-open doorway. The two behind him dropped with echoing force, bodies thumping and guns rattling over tile. A shout from upstairs, feet starting to move, and the target in front had a gun on him just before his chest shattered in clusters of red, a shot-blast and a single bullet whistling past El while he dived to twist back the other way.
Both pistols on the man headed downstairs, the right clicking empty, the left taking him down before it ran dry, but there were others already following. He dropped the P14s, flicking the Glocks down into his hands instead, far faster than reloading and silence blazed into ashes as an ally.
The sound of them exploded in his head.
Everything was bullets and movement, shooting by instinct, jagging between the noises at stairway and door, guards running and shooting from both directions. He ducked back into a doorway; quick, clicking reload on the Glocks, shoving one into his waistband and reaching back for the shotgun holstered along his spine. Fast, forced breaths, oxygen rushing back into his muscles, and he pushed out again into the focus.
Targeted before he even passed the frame, dropping low and rolling straight through into the doorway opposite, emptying the shotgun at the crowd on the stairs, Glock blasting the man at the door. The vase by the wall fragmented as he slid into cover, hanging shattered in the air for moments before it and the small table beneath it crashed to the tiles, the sound of it nothing in the choking enclosed echo of gunfire.
On his feet against the wall, reload, double click. Three left near the stairs that he had seen.
Swinging out again and no hiding this time, angling across the hallway through the shower of dust fragments to take them, whipping the Glock around behind to bullet-halt the movement screaming in the corner of his vision.
Wall sharp against his shoulders, house quiet. Stillness through the plaster haze hanging along the hallway, swirling with the currents from the half-open door.
Reload.
Slow along the wall, one leg across the other, gaze flashing each way. Pausing to pick up his P14s, far too good to leave; stepping over chunks of shattered wall and decor, over bodies and blood as he approached the stairs.
So much for the Señora's elegant lifestyle.
There was gunfire outside, behind him, distant through the crackle of flame, quick bursts of three or four rounds, sometimes the strung-out rattlesnake warning of an automatic.
That was Sands covering the gate now, taking down the ones who thought to flee.
He moved on past the staircase, checking further along the corridor, glancing into rooms and closing doors as he went. He didn't want to be followed up the stairs, or at least not without warning.
He went as far as the door on the east side of the house, opening it wide to kill any guards. There was only a corpse and the remnants of a shattered trellis, wooden beams barring the entrance at every angle, still trailing stems and leaves of the plant they had supported.
He lifted his eyebrows with a flickering smile. Dangerous, but useful.
The stray grenade, and the man who had sent it.
Back to the stairs, faster now, confident along a hall of sealed doorways, the promise of noise to warn him before any attack. Wall sliding curved along his back as he climbed up past the dead men, and the scrape of a shoe on tile flash-loud from above as one appeared still living.
Both barrels, an explosive jar of noise and blood, and the man slumped to slide down towards his friends, blood streaking unevenly over the stone.
He slid the empty shotgun away, .45 in each hand as he reached the floor above.
Another corridor full of gaping doorways. Wonderful.
With the men he'd shot who had come from upstairs, he hoped there weren't too many left.
Edging forwards along one wall, attention flickering over the doors in turn.
A barrel swung out two doors ahead, and he was diving before the spray of unsighted bullets crossed the width of the hallway at chest height. Twisting and sliding to lie unmoving with his back to the wall when the firing stopped.
Long seconds of reaching echo, then the low, quick murmur of words.
The man stepped out fast to check, shrieking as the bullets took his knees, silenced as El's aim moved over his chest.
That was suddenly looking the most interesting room in the house.
He was on his feet and crouched at the doorframe, swinging around it, his guns flowing through air to target the two men standing armed, one of them a lined face and a distinctively clipped moustache.
Montejo.
He shifted his aim as he fired, two rounds through his arm, and the gun clattered to the floor before it had even been fully aimed. Montejo shrieked high once, reaching for shattered bone with his other hand instinctively, and pulling back just as fast before he touched it.
The other man had already dropped after El emptied the second Glock into him.
This room was the security centre, computers at several desks with monitors covering the grounds out at the front, dark smoke roiling across in waves. One screen sparked briefly in the quiet, ripped into dead plastic and glass by a through round.
His face had washed white in shocked pain, but Montejo steadied himself to face him again, speaking past jagged breaths. "So I guess this would make you El Mariachi?"
He'd known the man who could force a fractured cartel to hold together wouldn't be a coward. The lack of whining or screaming only made this easier. "How many know where to find me?" he demanded, holding him with both pistols. Montejo didn't know one was out. "Answer or I shoot the other arm."
"All of them," Montejo answered instantly. "Every last man who works for me knows, and killing as many as you can find even outside here won't help, because there'll always be more."
That was a lie. If everyone knew, more people would have come looking for him, hoping to be first to the money.
If he had to lie about it, most likely the information had been passed to very few, and there was a good chance that killing Montejo and those here would be the end of it, at least this time. "Then I guess my only hope is to make sure there's no-one to pay the reward," he said, and pulled the trigger, four .45 rounds direct to the chest and a final one to the head to be sure.
He turned away even as the blood still spattered towards him, was at the door when the body hit with a dull thud. He paused to reload all the guns, swapping a Glock back out for his shotgun.
This side of the house was darker, quieter, the restless snapping of the fires outside muted by the depth of walls.
He listened, and heard nothing. If there was anyone else up here, they weren't obviously coming to get him.
He hooked up an MP5 from the floor and fired into the computers in case any cameras had picked him up along the way. They shattered into a satisfying pile of plastic and circuitry before the clip clicked dry, and he tossed the gun back to its corpse.
He ducked out into the hallway and spun, but nothing moved. He slipped along to the end of the corridor and a cursory check into the last of the rooms, and found no-one else.
He made his way down the other staircase, cautious, paused again to listen at the bottom.
There.
Someone further along the hall, slow, careful steps, quiet, but not enough. He moved to one of the rooms, just inside the doorway.
The footsteps slowed, paused - he'd reached the bend in the hallway. Two steps, loud, fast, he'd be swinging out with gun raised -
Wait.
Steady and even shoe-scrapes now, relaxing again as he walked along the empty corridor, and El dodged out from the doorway, both guns, shotgun round to the face and an arc of semi-automatic bullets across the width of the hall.
The man dropped with a ringing clatter of rifle on tile, metallic note hanging loud even after the shotgun blast.
El slid along the wall towards him a little, reloading the shotgun as he went. Stop, listen.
Move again.
Three clustered gunshots whispered ahead of him, and he dropped into a crouch instinctively, though there were no bullets and the silencer echoed too distant, some way beyond that bend.
He held there, listening. There was a thump, and no further gunfire.
Silence.
A fast, even tap-tap-tap that wasn't familiar and he knew should be; footsteps below it, slower and lower-pitched than that light rhythm. Footsteps absolutely steady and regular, unchanged on the approach to the corner where most men would slow.
He waited, still, as the cane snicked into sight and Sands paused where the wall fell away, head shifting in blanked concentration.
He took the corner sharp, towards him, following the wall in those measured steps until the cane's tap missed, resting on the leg of the man El had just shot. Sands prodded a little harder, checking the consistency, his face twisting briefly as he felt his way along the corpse to the feet, shaping his path between body and wall.
One boot left vivid footprints that faded only slightly with each step.
He stopped a metre away. "You missed a couple," he said.
El checked back along the length of corridor over his shoulder. "What are you doing here?"
"I was getting bored."
"How did you get inside?"
"I walked." His head angled towards the body he had felt his way past, and his nose wrinkled. "Of course, it would have been easier if you hadn't left such a mess behind you."
El thought of the explosions outside and the screens upstairs, and wasn't sure that walking completely covered how a blind man navigated through that. "I only make a mess with the people. I don't think I want to know what you've done to the yard." He pressed himself back to the wall and took the opportunity to reload his pistol, half-empty clip swapped out to the side of his belt. "Is that all of them now?"
Sands tipped his head, listening. The flames outside were dying down, the glow over the walls static instead of dancing, the crackles muted. El stood motionless as the seconds stretched out towards a minute, and heard nothing. "If there are any left, they're staying quiet," Sands said, matching his own assessment. "We don't have the luxury of going digging through the cupboards to check."
The house was isolated, but the explosions and flame would be attracting attention from a few miles around. Someone would make the gesture of calling the police eventually. Montejo might have called in extra men too once El showed up inside, but there the distances definitely worked in their favour.
"Christ, it fucking stinks in here." Sands swung his cane up beneath his arm, drawing a second pistol instead. "The east door's closest."
El was battered by the gunpowder, blood and piss thick in his every breath.
He'd grown used to it until it was mentioned, and he wished Sands had kept his complaints to himself. "It's also buried," he said. "We'll go the way you came in."
"North door, then," Sands amended, and El moved off along the corridor, silent now as they felt for enemies.
He skirted bodies and light debris instead of stepping over as he normally would, Sands following his curving paths without hesitation or question. His presence was simply there, an underlying tone constant through his senses, and the memory of that realisation outside Ramirez' house dragged ghost fingers over him when he thought of it.
But it occurred to him then that Sands had been forcing himself to trust all along, because his first choice had been to trust and follow or to shiver uncertain in the dark.
He took the lengths of wall steady and almost rapid, fast as would avoid harsh-echoing footfalls. He slowed for doorways and corners, edging lower, quieter, before taking the turn as a lunge and a spin, guns raised to cover the spread of room, and Sands trailed him near-faultless through all of it. After the first couple of doorways, he slowed almost exactly as El did, judging distance to the next turn by memory and steps and adapting himself easily to El's habits.
When he fought alone, El had no fear, swamped in awareness and knowledge and reaction; immediate decision-movement, where risk existed only as a relative thing to steer him.
It could work that way when he fought with others too, adrenaline pounding the repeating rhythm of a gun's kick to each hand, time slurring and then steadying, altered, around him, the world all movement and killing.
The problem came in the half-fight, caution without gunfire, senses empty and too much thought loose and tangling in his head. That was when the fear shackled him into a maze of second-guesses and misgiving, never fear for himself, only for that someone else.
The problem came now.
Except with Sands, it didn't. El felt himself light and fluid, melting through hallways and doorways with the plans he'd studied superimposed over the rooms he saw, effortless pre-knowledge of everything he was going to do.
He trusted Sands to notice danger, to kill, yes, but that had been true of Carolina, was true of Lorenzo. That wasn't the difference.
It worked now because Sands wasn't a friend.
He didn't want the man to die here, would go to some effort to cover him if he ever needed to. But if the mistake happened and Sands dropped behind him to bleed at his feet, it wouldn't tear a gaping hole through his life with only guilt and blame to fill it. It left him to move through the building as he would have alone, with only the barest of changes to allow for the man who followed.
It was a strange combination - the luxury of trust, the absence of tension over attack from behind, and without the sapping doubt that had accompanied it in the past.
It set the killer entirely free.
Everything focussed ahead, seeking out, no caution, just the hunt.
He quivered; breathed, and launched himself into the next lifeless room.
It was almost disappointment.
Uncurling again and moving on, corridors and rooms sharp even in the blur of movement, guns silent, unneeded, until he reached the main door, looking out over the curve of driveway to the gate.
The door was three quarters open, held that way by the body sprawled across its frame and half-slumped against the wood. El stood pressed back by an internal archway where the entrance widened into the main hall. "Five steps to the door," he said, turning to Sands, low-voiced. "Mind the corpse."
"Ah, I know the one." Sands' mouth shrank right down, too much humour slinking at the edges to be real distaste. "He makes a messy doorstop, sorry, but he was the best I could find at the time."
"You put him there?" No surprise in him, just curiosity.
"Well, if I had to leave again at short notice, I didn't want to be shot in the back while I stood there feeling around for the door handle."
Practical enough. A blind man in a hurry might still trip over a body even if he knew it was there, but down on the floor wasn't always the worst place to be.
He peered out across the arc of grounds he could see beyond the door, his senses reaching out and past the distractions he had fully detailed in that first instant.
Two cars burned in the road not far beyond the open gates, blackened hulks with remnant flame and dense smoke coiling upwards to obscure a shifting cone of stars. The orange cast shimmering along the wall said at least one more inside the grounds, over to the right outside his line of sight. The lights along the wall and driveway were all out, fires and moon slurring colours and shadows indistinct, but the grenade-shattered earth and the sprawl of dark-clothed corpses stood out to his eyes anyway.
Only the flame-driven shadows shifting, silence to hear above the low burn.
Habit-driven flash-glance back the way they had come, then out fast to the door, angle of view sweeping, widening, and still nothing to hint of the living. Sands followed a second after, settling his back to the wall, guns aimed on into the house as his head shifted.
El waited, his own thoughts confirmed by Sands' continued silence.
The yard wasn't a good place to cross, far too open. If anyone still in the house was going to take shots at them from the upstairs windows, there would be nothing they could do except run.
On the positive side, if anyone had been going to do that, Sands would have been shot on the way in. The risk was probably low.
He set out steadily, erring more towards stealth, not wanting to advertise to anyone who might still think they were inside. He tracked shadow where he could, but it was far from perfect.
"You might want to pick it up a bit," Sands said, close, sudden flow of air past his ear. "There's still quite a walk to the car, and I'd prefer to be gone before anyone else turns up."
El doubted anyone was coming just yet.
Sands' involvement with Mexican law enforcement would have been almost exclusively AFN, and they were different. The local police were slow enough to react to incidents in the cities, and anything that smelled of a drugs war basically guaranteed they'd wait an hour or so until it was safe before they came to investigate.
He thought nothing of them at all.
"We could have taken one of their cars, if you hadn't blown them up," he said.
"The point of this was that none of them got away. They started the engines, I took them out." Sands tipped his head just a few degrees, and smiled, fire-glow flashing over his teeth. "Besides, it was amusing."
He'd suspected it for a long time, that part of Sands had always been crazy. Reliant almost entirely on his hearing now, still he would compromise it to sow chaos, seconds of his sensory input destroyed in blast for the entertainment of making others react around him, when half a clip in the engine would have been enough.
The recklessness that had shattered his plans in Culiacán hadn't left him, because it was innate.
"You weren't supposed to fire that thing once I was in here," El reminded him.
"It was obvious enough where you were," Sands said. "No changes there."
El still didn't think its aim reliable enough to want to risk his life on. But he was still here, again, and he wasn't shot, which happened sometimes, and it wasn't worth arguing a point that was done with.
He stayed close to the wall on the approach to the gate. It was the easiest way to avoid most of the bodies and parts of burned vehicle instead of picking his way between them. He took the gateway a little cautiously, but it was clear, and they followed the edge of the estate towards the car.
"Keep an eye out for the M16, won't you?" Sands said. "I left it by the wall before I went in."
It made sense. It wasn't ever going to be a one-handed weapon. "Where?"
"Well, I don't know exactly where. Not too much further, I guess."
El turned to stare back over his shoulder as he walked.
"What? Yeah, so I lost count a couple of times on the way in. It got a bit distracting now and then."
El looked ahead again, his eyes casting over the ground, leaving his ears and Sands to warn him if anyone was still going to show up.
The basic mistakes, the very human ones, almost threw him more.
He found the rifle laid precisely along the base of the stone, the moon-edged dark of it obvious against the bare earth. If Sands had come back this way alone, cane following the wall, he couldn't have missed it.
He picked it up and swung it around to tap against Sands' hand. "You brought it, you carry it."
"And I was counting on you as my personal pack-donkey," Sands said, holstering his pistols to take it. His fingers slid along the underside of the barrel to reattach the strap to the front clip and then checked the safety before he slung it over his shoulder.
The short trek back to the car was uneventful. No sign of movement, no night animals after all the disturbance, and the crackle of flames dying back fast with distance and the absence of fuel.
Sands tucked his cane higher under his arm and lit two cigarettes, holding one out to El.
The smoke wisped upwards lazily past his nose. He shrugged, and took it.
"Open the trunk, will you?" Sands pushed the M16 into his bag, along with the cane and the other weapons Honaker had supplied him, all except the M99 which wasn't going to fit. El dry-swallowed an ibuprofen from the pot in the glove compartment and smoked slowly, long, satisfying pulls drawn back to hang in his lungs, watching Sands puff irritatedly at the cigarette clamped between his lips.
"Shit, well I guess I need a bigger bag," Sands said as he gave up on trying to rearrange it, and left the rifle in the trunk while the bag went on the back seat as usual.
He took the dirt roads faster on the way out, no reason not to use the lights. No-one who saw them leaving would interfere, and Mexico had no shortage of old white Fords. The authorities wouldn't be out here yet, and he wanted to be on busier roads when they met them.
The scrub bushes swept by, dark and twisted in the beams as he rounded the curves, the engine note burning high as he pushed out of them.
"You shouldn't have come in," he said. Out in the night, no-one would realise they were being targeted by a blind man. Wandering round the house with a stick wasn't something they'd discussed.
"It had all gone kind of quiet, I figured you hadn't left too many kicking around."
He was watching the road, not Sands, but he picked up no concern at all from the words. He took the car around a pothole, black in the silvered road, unslowed. "If you're seen, word will spread. They'll know you're alive."
"Well, that's one of the reasons I shot the ones who saw me."
"You don't know that." He never had seen Montejo's wife in there; maybe she wasn't home, but more likely she'd been hiding. And while part of him was glad about that, it meant there could have been others doing the same.
Maybe just hiding. Maybe hiding and watching.
"What would anyone say, exactly? That Montejo's place was taken apart by a blind man with a cane? I don't think that'd sound too good coming from one of his stray bodyguards, not if they're looking for a new employer."
El glanced over at Sands, who was not-staring back at him with a twisted hint of smile. "The stories are out there," he said quietly. "People have heard them."
Sands laughed outright then, harsh-bright in the closed space. "Nobody believes that crap, El. A drugged up blind guy roaming around Culiacán in the middle of a coup, shooting cartel? Please. Even I find it unlikely, and I was almost there for most of it."
El thought of Honaker, and all his probing suspicions. "A few people are willing to believe," he said. "The ones who knew you."
And that would include some within the CIA.
Sands only grinned, vivid echo of teeth in the dark windscreen catching his attention. "Well, I guess it's always nice to be remembered, but I still have a way to go before my reputation reaches yours."
He looked back to the road. "You wouldn't want it to," he said quietly.
"No, I really wouldn't," he answered, suddenly more serious. "A legend like that's a little too much trouble for my taste."
For his own too, but it was far too late to change it.
He wondered how long he'd bought himself this time - another few years, or merely months again.
They changed their jackets in the car and wiped themselves of blood and dust enough to pass a glancing inspection. They stank unmistakeably of gunpowder and sweat, but it was still before six when they arrived back in Culiacán, and easy to keep a distance from anyone on the way into the hotel.
They spread weaponry across the floor of El's room, the gun cleaning kit between them as they worked, sitting with their backs against the bed frame. The limitation of a single multi-bore cleaning rod for all the handguns might have been annoying, but El anticipated and arranged his use of it while Sands was busy with his automatics.
His shirt was sealed along the length of his back, and all down the skin of his arms. His hair hung in greasy straggles before him as he hunched over the pistols, hints of blood stench still clinging. His body crawled for a shower, but there was no point to cleaning up before he cleaned the guns.
Sands looked no better, and El watched him as his hands slid and flowed over the weapons.
Sands had always been a killer, but his way was neat and fast, limited, not this ongoing destruction with blood clotting underfoot. He remembered Sands bandaged in a hotel room, dripping derision about his 'charming lifestyle', and wondered how he felt now about tasting it.
At the time, the adrenaline and raw survival absorbed anything. It wasn't the same feeling an hour later, rinsing the flecks of someone's brains from his hair.
Sands tilted his head to face him, silent, knowing he was watching. His movements seemed entirely natural, no sign he was disturbed by El or by anything else, and El supposed that odd disconnection of his mind that separated him from all guilt and consequence would protect him equally from his state now.
Sands clicked the barrel back onto his semi, oiling and working the slide action, then wiped the whole thing down. He reached for his cigarettes, lit one, held the pack towards El. "You?"
"No." He didn't feel the need for it now, for the drug or for the motion, his hands and his mind occupied enough.
Sands slid the pack back away and got to his feet. "Ashtray?"
He didn't have to look up. "Table by the TV." This room was a mirror of the layout in Sands', and he found it easily enough, dropping back into his spot by the bed with the ashtray next to his leg.
Sands reached for the M16, ejected the magazine and began the routine of cocking, safety, bolt, chamber check. "I'm going to stop by and pay Jorge a visit before we head out again," he said.
El paused in his inspection of the Glock. "He didn't want us to go back there."
"El, I would have thought you of all people would have got past the idea that everyone can have what they want in this world." Sands' words held a hint of a slur as his lips curled round the cigarette, his hands busy with the gun in his lap.
El unlocked and pushed the slide, rephrasing more forcefully over the clicks. "I told him I wouldn't go back."
"I didn't hear you say anything like that." Sands turned to face him then, the truth of it not-innocent in his smile. "But you're missing the point here. You're not going to see him, I am. If you have issues about playing the chauffeur for this particular trip, there are a few hundred cab drivers around who'll be happy to take my cash."
He saw no point in answering a statement that was obviously true.
Culiacán was Sands' city. He'd catch a bus if he had to, though El didn't imagine he would enjoy it much.
"Why are you going back?"
The rifle lay loose across Sands' knees now, his hand waving in El's direction. "Well, he did prove a little useful this trip out, I'll admit." The cigarette angled upwards as his smile widened. "Don't tell me you think I should just let him go so easily."
He'd never expected Sands to leave Ramírez alone; not when he'd made the offer and not now.
He wondered what Sands held over the man, what he would use to work his way back in. He was still missing something, that same awareness he'd had at the house the day before; something important in the history that he didn't know.
He would only find out what that was if he was there.
He looked back to the Glock, pulling the barrel from the slide. "Okay," he said. "I'll take you. But I won't help you if I don't like what you're doing."
"I never expected anything else from you, El."
They worked through the last of the guns, El pushing all the used cloths and patches into a pocket of the guitar case - they looked a little too obvious in the trash. Sands finished with a solvent wipe to clean the bloodstains from the tip of his cane. "Did I get everything? I'd hate to shock the guests in the hallway."
El climbed to his feet when the door closed behind Sands, one hand pushing off from the bed. His muscles had started to stiffen during the drive back despite the drug, and another hour sitting on the floor bent over the guns hadn't helped that at all.
He felt hunched and uneven as he moved through into the bathroom, shoulders protesting as he shed his jacket onto the floor, pulled his shirt over his head. He swallowed another ibuprofen and ran the water a little hotter than usual, needing to soak the ache out fast before he got back in the car.
Sands, more or less his own age, maybe a couple of years younger, had slid up onto his feet and reached back down for his bag with utter grace, even with the more recent gunshot wounds. But Sands' part in the attack hadn't involved running, dropping, spinning, nor had he spent years destroying his body.
His muscles still did whatever he asked of them to keep himself alive, but he paid more for it later, too many old injuries half-neglected and badly healed. He could feel every one of them, remember the bullets and knives and the wrench of the joint strains as he twisted under the flow, steering the force of the stream onto each echoed pain.
The drain was slow, water collecting in the tub, circling lazy and faintly pink from where blood had seeped through his clothes onto his skin.
He closed his eyes and pushed his head forward beneath the flow, too hot on his face, soaking all through to his scalp and trickling round the sides of his neck. He groped blind for the shampoo, eyelids held tight as he washed twice through his hair, suds and water coursing down over him, the knots in him gradually starting to ease.
When he opened his eyes again, soap clouded the water round his feet, and everything looked clean.
He took his time over the rest of the shower - he might as well get something from the hotel for his money, since he hadn't slept in the bed, and they weren't going to be checking out until an hour that would be unremarkable for a tourist. By the time he'd towelled off and dressed in clean clothes, he felt considerably better than a man who'd just done the things he had had much right to.
It had always been that way, any guilt born more from a knowledge of what should be than a real sensation.
Sands, when he went to collect him, looked immaculate in the part of the freshly-risen traveller off to another destination, at least to anyone who didn't see the guns beneath the jacket. He'd shaved, of course - he always did, sometimes twice a day, because he refused to ever look as if he couldn't - and his hair was tied back, still damp. El had passed on the shaving in favour of simply soaking for longer.
It wasn't easy to see the killer as Sands stood in the doorway and smiled. "Ready to go?"
He pulled out the tie and shook his hair forwards as he bent to pick up the bag. The glasses weren't enough to cover the damage from every angle.
"So, do you know where you're going?" Sands asked, arms crossed on the roof of the Ford as El arranged the guitar case behind his seat.
El contented himself with a glare, sure that Sands got the idea.
He knew Culiacán now better than he would ever have wanted to.
The drive to Ramírez' house wasn't long, but the morning traffic was heavy and frustrating. More frustrating was the itch to question Sands about Ramírez and knowing there would be no point.
"Fucking fumes," Sands muttered, and wound his window closed, trapping them with his smoke and the already-rising heat instead. "Christ, it's like there's not a car in the goddamn country under twenty unless it's owned by cartel." He smiled crookedly over at El. "Maybe you can ask El Presidente for that reward of yours, and have all these toxic heaps scrapped by government health order. He might even go for it - it would solve those congestion hassles he's been whining about so much too."
He slouched lazily in the passenger seat, seeming no different from the man he'd been yesterday, and little changed even from before the Day of the Dead. "How does it feel," El asked, "to have your revenge?"
Sands didn't answer right away, drawing several times on his cigarette, smoke drifting from his nose with each cycle of breath. "How did it ever feel to get yours?"
That was always how it seemed to be.
"Temporary," he said.
He'd thought once that Bucho would be the end of it. After he'd found César, and Carolina, he'd been convinced it was the end. The grand gesture with the guitar case, throwing away the guns.
If he hadn't gone back, they would have died within days.
"Well, that sounds realistic." Sands tipped his head a little and smiled faintly. "I'll have to think about mine and let you know."
The traffic cleared as they moved away from the centre, and they made better time. El wasn't even sure Ramírez was going to be there. They'd found him at home yesterday, but that had been the end of the afternoon, sinking towards dusk and still too early for most people to head for the bars and restaurants. There was a much higher chance mid-morning would find him gone.
He parked on the street by the gate as before, leading Sands along the curving path through the garden. When they rounded the bushes and the front of the house came into sight, Ramírez was already standing by the door.
He stared briefly at El, but most of his attention was aimed over his shoulder at Sands. "I told you not to come back here."
"I know you did, Jorge," Sands said, as he climbed the steps onto the verandah. "Don't worry, we don't plan on staying."
El stepped to one side, no intention of taking any part in the conversation, and Sands pulled out a silenced semi-automatic and shot Ramírez four times in the chest.
El grabbed his wrist and twisted, whipping around behind him and sliding his shotgun under Sands' jaw as the pistol fell and skittered over the planks. "Nice moves, El," Sands said, entirely calm, no hint of fighting him.
"Why did you kill him?"
Sands smiled. "That was revenge." He tilted his head towards El, the flesh of his chin folding to scrape across the barrels. "You should understand."
"Revenge for what?" he demanded, low and harsh.
"How much did you find out about the Day of the Dead, El?" From the shapes of his words, Sands could have been discussing the weather, except Sands only used those tones for killing. "Did you ever hear about the part where he walked right past me? He stopped by for a quick chat and returned my cellphone, which was thoughtful of him, I suppose, and then he strolled off home and left me to die in the street with the rats."
El released him and took several fast steps back along the deck, keeping the shotgun on Sands. When Sands still made no move, he risked a glance down at Ramírez.
There was no doubt the man was dead, or close enough that it made no difference. He had a .38 revolver by his hand, but he'd waited to draw until after Sands attacked, and that would never have been fast enough.
Ramírez had obviously never truly understood who he was dealing with in Sands. "You should have told him about the cook," he said darkly.
Sands laughed. "Why, El, it's a little early in the day for you to have found your sense of humour." He took a stride forward alongside Ramírez' body and reached down for his gun, his fingers sliding over just a few inches of boards before he gripped it.
"It's not a good idea to shoot FBI," El said, "even in Mexico."
"Late of the FBI," Sands said lightly. "That's a very important distinction to make. He was really just another boring civilian, and if there's one good thing I have to say about this sewer-fried country of yours, it's how easy it is to shoot someone and have nobody worry too much."
He knew that too well. It had played in his favour many times, but it wasn't something he considered admirable about the workings of his world.
His life would have been different if the police had cared about a terrified young mariachi being chased through the streets of Acuña. But they had been paid too well to care.
"I might have left fingerprints in the house," he said. The doorbell would be a mess of unusable streaky prints - had he touched anything else? He couldn't recall anything specific, but it was hard to be sure.
Sands only found it amusing. "You're worrying about that now? Christ, El, you've left prints all over half the murder scenes in three states. It really doesn't matter when no-one has you on file, except as 'Unknown gunman number six thousand and seventeen'."
Sands didn't understand. "This," he waved a hand vaguely at Ramírez, "is not me." He had enough that he had done to take the blame for.
"Worried about your reputation, El Zorro?" Sands' smile glinted condescending, tightening El's fingers around the stock of the shotgun still in his hand. "At least I didn't shoot him in the back."
El looked away to the man on the floor, his blood spreading and dripping between the boards of his own home. "That doesn't make so much difference."
Sands actually laughed then, soft and too real. "So now you agree with me? If I'd known all I had to do was shoot someone to get you to see things my way, I'd have done it weeks ago."
The blood pool shifted and curled at the edges, creeping out over the planks towards them. It wouldn't touch them, already slowing, too much lost down through the wood. "Must you make everything into a joke?"
"That's how he left me." Sands stretched out a foot until the toe of his boot poked Ramírez in the ribs, enough for the body just to rock, as if he would try to get up again. "See you later, Jorge. But not too soon, I hope."
His gun disappeared back inside his jacket and his fingers drifted out to the rail, tracing his way along it and down the steps. He stopped when he reached the bottom, the hard click of soles on concrete. "I was good enough to use a silencer," he said, without turning, "but we should probably still leave now."
El shivered out of his stillness and slid the shotgun back into its holster, planks creaking beneath him as he took the steps down two at a time.
He walked on past Sands, unspeaking, making no allowance in his speed for blindness and an uneven path. He didn't care if Sands couldn't follow him. He just wanted to be somewhere that wasn't here.
Sands followed him anyway.