The Isle: A refuge for fan fiction: Movies: Once Upon A Time In Mexico

Sons of Mexico
By Mojave Dragonfly

Rating: M | Status: Complete | Genre: Action | Series: None
Summary: A few months after the movie, Sands and El are both prisoners of a cartel. Can they trust each other enough to work together?

Warnings: This story is for mature audiences only. Do not read if you are under 16 years of age.

Go to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Part 3

A long time passed.

An even longer time passed.

El usually had no trouble using patience as a tactic, but he was hot and sticky with blood. He was surprised that the Delgado thugs had not appeared, but then realized they were probably frozen in fear of the trip wires.

Finally, bored, El slid alongside the building, away from the firing slits, and around a corner. He then re-entered the jungle, cautious, and went looking for his watchdogs. Someone whistled, and El followed the sound. He found Fat Man.

"Those motherfuckers!" the man exclaimed. "They've rigged explosives all over the god-damned jungle! One of them killed Dominguez!"

"So sorry to hear that," El said, dryly.

"You . . . you knew. You're walking around here like it's nothing. This is your fault!"

"Balls," El said. "I'm just not afraid to die. If you want your cocaine, you're going to have to blow up the door."

He watched as Fat Man struggled with his fury and fear and his desire to place blame for his compatriot's grisly death. El remembered there had been screaming after the explosion, and wondered for a moment how long it had taken Dominguez to die.

"They've turtled into their building," El reminded him, "and probably called for help. We don't have a lot of time."

Actually El had only just thought of that. Damn. They were only a few minutes by air from Villahermosa.

"I'm not touching this shit," declared Fat Man. He unslung a backpack from his shoulders and shoved it at El. "You blow the door."

"Work, work, work," said El, accepting the backpack. El was enjoying himself. He was good at this, and after the pain and frustration of the last few days it felt good to be able to move and to kill bad people.

Explosives, admittedly, were not his area, but he had had enough experience with them to do.

He returned to the door the way he'd come, staying in the cover of the jungle, watching for the trip wires. In the backpack he found cylinders of plastic explosive and detonators. He knew how to apply them, but he didn't know how much. With a grim smile he put all of it around the door. What did he care if the explosion buried the stuff under concrete rubble? He took the detonator with him around the side of the building and back into the jungle. He hit it.

A second explosion boomed across the jungle, much louder than the dynamite. A plume of grey smoke rose gracefully above the bunker. As it cleared, El saw, to his dismay, no change on the front of the building. Then, movement. He gripped his guns.

The thick steel door, warped and deprived of its support, toppled slowly forward, thudding onto the ground. Damaged concrete rimming the hole it left behind, crumbled and fell.

The explosive had been exactly enough. El was almost disappointed.

He trotted into the clearing, head down, to position himself on the outside of the sandbag barricade. He fired a burst of automatic fire into the doorway, leaped the barricade, and rolled inside, still firing forward. He ended up squatting, just inside the door, a gun in each hand.

A body lay in a pool of blood near one of the window slits. The room held a card table with cards, five folding chairs, three plastic coolers and three camping lamps. El's bullets had made a mess of the table and chairs, and water streamed from holes in one of the coolers. In the corner were rifles and ammunition. There was no one else and no other rooms.

El was not surprised. He'd noticed that the defenders in the bunker had never fired out into the jungle at random after his assault from the roof. He'd guessed he'd killed them all.

But one thing was missing. El kicked the lids off of the coolers. Inside were ice, beer and water. There was no cocaine. Anywhere.

Not his problem. He had plenty of guns, what he needed was a phone. He knelt beside the dead man and searched him. A thrill of excitement went through him as he found the phone on the man's belt.

He glanced out the tiny window. No sign yet of his keepers.

He opened the phone. Yes, it had a signal. El took a steadying breath and carefully reviewed the notes Sands had been singing as well as his own translation into the numbers. He dialed.

"Bueno," a man answered.

"Marco," El said.

"Who is this?" The man spoke Colombian-accented Spanish. Sands had said the number belonged to Marco, Delgado's old cocaine supplier, but El had half expected that he was calling the CIA. That seemed less likely, now.

"Information."

A pause. "One moment."

The voice returned. "Who are you with?"

El hesitated. "Sands," he said, his heart pounding.

"I don't know any Sands."

"Delgado is growing a new crop. The plants can live through freezing temperatures."

"Where?"

"I don't know. But you can find it. Look for his property too high in the mountains for ordinary coca to grow."

Another pause. "What's in this for you?"

"Revenge."

El glimpsed movement outside. He closed the phone and replaced it on the dead man's belt.

Fat Man and the three remaining Delgado men must have screwed up their courage to move out of the jungle. There wasn't much risk that the Orozcos had booby trapped their own fortifications at the front door.

"Mariachi!" Fat Man called.

"Come on in," El replied.

The others filled the room. Astute as ever, Fat Man asked, "Where's the stuff?"

El shrugged. "You tell me."

The men dumped the coolers and threw around the chairs and table with frustrated cries. El turned his back on them, thinking. Four men wouldn't defend to the death an empty building. Hadn't Sands said the cache was in a basement? But the floor here was dirt.

El kicked at the dirt. He moved to another place and kicked at the dirt. Two of the men noticed what he was doing, and imitated him. One of them cried out.

In a corner they had found concrete where there should have been dirt. Clearing it further, they found it was a door. In seconds they had it open. El stood back. Only four Orozco thugs were dead, and there were five chairs. Also, no one had brushed the dirt back over the door to hide it. The last man through that door had left no one behind to cover his trail. No one alive.

The door opened without incident. The men peered into it. From where El stood, he could only see the top of a wooden ladder leading into darkness. The men grabbed one of the lanterns, lit it, and lowered it into the hole.

"It's not a basement," someone said. "It's a tunnel."

Puzzle pieces clicked into place for El.

"You. Mariachi," said Fat Man, "you go in first."

"No," said El. "You stay here and make sure no one comes out of it. I know where it ends. I'm going there."

Angry but practical, Fat Man asked, "Where?"

"The ruins," El said, reloading his guns from the ammo in the corner. "They had tunnels so the priests could put on a good show."

As El headed out the door, he heard Fat Man ordering two of the watchdogs to stay behind and one to help him follow El.

El hadn't seen the ruins, except in the slide show, and those pictures had been taken from the air. All he could do was to set off in the correct direction, machete in hand. Behind him, Fat Man panted and talked on his phone, updating Vasquez.

Feeling strangely reckless, El didn't worry overmuch about trip wires and other traps. Moving fast was one way to leave Fatso behind. Besides, in seeking the path of least resistance he had fallen into what was probably the route used by the Orozcos themselves to move from the building to the ruins.

Sensing a thinning of the vegetation ahead of him, he slowed. He peered through the curtain of green at a small mound of yellow-white bricks, tumbled and weed-invested, with nothing to recommend it in terms of carvings or interesting inscriptions. The remains of a low wall banded the base of the mound, intact for only three or four meters. Other than that and the regular shape of the bricks, it could almost be a natural rock fill.

Even his brief sprint had left the Delgado watchdogs behind. El broke cover cautiously, bent down. When nothing happened, he crept forward as quietly as he could.

Not quietly enough, apparently. A burst of semi-automatic fire from somewhere above him parted his hair, ripped his jacket, and sent him face down, painfully, among the rocks. With little cover it was vital that he return fire, and he did, reflexively, but he couldn't afford to let this become a siege. He set both his guns on fully automatic, and rushed the top of the mound behind a hailstorm of shots, arriving with the clip of one gun completely exhausted. There was no one in sight. El whirled, searching the edges of the small clearing, but still saw no one.

A stinging feeling in his shoulder grew to the pain a full-blown wound, but El had had enough experience with bullet wounds before to know nothing had entered his arm, only creased it. He'd check the damage later.

He threw aside the empty gun and began a feverish search of the top of the rubble. He had just located the hole, somewhat disguised by a clumsy application of the ancient bricks, when the Delgado men joined him.

"In there?" Fat Man asked.

"After you," El said with an inviting motion of his uninjured arm.

"Get in the hole, Chingado," sneered the man.

El shrugged, suppressing a wince at the pain in his shoulder. He had no objection to finishing this fight.

Except that someone down there was expecting him. Too bad he didn't have a grenade.

The worst part, he decided, would be the initial drop into the unknown. Despite himself, his skin crawled at the anticipation of bullet wounds. Shrugging, this time mentally, he sent a small prayer to Carolina, and jumped into the hole.

The hole sloped almost immediately, and El let the slant of the earth slide him onto his back. He fired, on principal, into the darkness, and could tell by the sounds of the slugs which direction was open. Toward the bunker, of course. At the bottom of the slope, only about two meters below the opening, he rolled to the side and pressed against the stone and earth wall, so as not to be where a shooter would expect him or where his shots had just come from.

He waited in the silence, for his eyes to adjust. Or for someone to shoot him.

After a moment he found himself, yet again, to be alive, and he could see in the gloom. He took a minute to muffle all his chains with the Velcro straps Carolina had made for him. The tunnel was high enough for a man to walk bent over, so El started forward, cautious. A half dozen steps brought him to where the tunnel was mostly blocked by piles of what looked like yellow boxes. El crouched low, thinking his shooter might be on the other side.

They were not boxes. They were packing-box sized, plastic-wrapped blocks made up of single kilo "bricks" of cocaine powder, stacked neatly on wooden industrial pallets. There were things El didn't know about cocaine, but he did know the street value of a single kilo - around 120,000 pesos. He was leaning against an unimaginable fortune and the ruin of countless human souls.

But it might have other uses. El knew his shooter, or possibly, shooters, were in this tunnel somewhere, and they knew he was here, but he decided to take the time to invest against an uncertain future. He used one of his razor sharp spurs to slice the plastic sheet wrapping, and removed one kilo brick. He opened it and poured the yellow-white powder into his boots, surrounding his ankles with the stuff. The powder poured well enough, but a hazy residue wafted upward in the gloom as he poured, and El had to struggle not to sneeze. He snorted out, hoping not to absorb any of the stuff into his own bloodstream.

He thought of Sands, hooked against his will, his brilliant but sociopathic mind enslaved to the provider of the drug, but still able, perhaps on an almost subconscious level, to plot his enemy's downfall. Whether Sands had memorized the sound of Marco's phone number for his own use or for El's, he had certainly not done it to serve Delgado in any way. Agent Sands had many levels, El realized. One level was unquestionably loyal to Delgado, the source of the drug he craved, but another level acted reflexively to manipulate, betray, and destroy. El felt an odd pang of regret that, if his plan for the day worked out, Sands would be left behind, in his bar-less prison he was powerless to leave.

But, back to business. Should he go around the pallets or climb over them? More surprise in climbing over them. In fact, if he were the other man or men in this tunnel, considering how long El had crouched here in silence, he would already be crawling over the . . .

El looked up, just in time to see and shoot the man above him. The body tumbled headfirst to the ground, blood spraying the cocaine.

With a bound, El was on top of the priceless packs of powder, crawling forward, swiftly. To his right he saw now a second tunnel, intersecting this first one and vanishing into darkness. That's where he would be, if he were a defender here. He set one gun on automatic and fired into the tunnel. He heard something the size of a body hit the ground.

His instincts told him there was no one else. Already he had killed one man more than there were chairs in the concrete building. Still, he was cautious as he descended the pedestal of kilo bricks and entered the side tunnel. He found the second tunnel man easily. It hadn’t been a clean kill and the man was wheezing out his final breaths. El found his head in the dark, whispered a benediction, more, admittedly, for his own forgiveness than for the other man's, and shot a single shot into his skull. He then moved uneasily down the tunnel, reminded once again of being blindfolded.

The tunnel ended before long, somewhat to El's surprise. He had expected another exit, but found no sign of one. However, while searching, he tripped over what had to be a cache of weapons. Well, well. His groping hand encountered a flashlight, and, in its beam he confirmed that the Orozcos had stored a small arsenal in this tunnel. How helpful.

"Mariachi!" a voice called from a distance. "Are they all dead?"

"Sí!" he answered back, cheerfully.

"Come out, then!" The voice belonged to Vasquez, not to the Fat Man.

So El's enemies were now in two places, not in three. If they came in the tunnel, from either direction, he would shoot them. He had no food or water, but the Delgados couldn't afford a siege; the Orozcos could arrive at any moment to defend their property. El had probably already used all of their explosives, besides, explosions risked burying or irrevocably scattering the merchandise. No, El fervently hoped Lorenzo's plan had worked, because he liked his position here.

"You come in!" he invited pleasantly, moving to the intersection of the two tunnels. "There's enough cocaine for everyone!"

He smiled at the pause his announcement engendered.

"Come out, now," said Vasquez. "I'm ordering you."

"What's the matter, don't you trust me?" This close to freedom, El felt light-headed.

"Mariachi," said Vasquez in an ominous tone, "you know the rules. If you disobey me your friend suffers. If you betray us, he dies."

Was it because of the Señora, El wondered, that they made no threats against Maria? Well, the threat to her was implicit, he reasoned. He prayed they were both safe.

"You don't have my friend."

"Idiot! You saw him!"

"I don't know that you have him now."

"Que . . ." Vasquez made a strangled sound and then El heard distant angry voices, but couldn't make out what they said.

El calmly checked, loaded, and arranged for ease of use, at least a dozen guns from the Orozcos' cache while the Delgados debated what to do. He was in very good spirits and his injured shoulder didn't hurt at all.

"Mariachi!" Vasquez called. "I'm getting your friend on the phone. Then you'll know we still have your cojones!"

El nodded. "Go ahead!" he called. One hitch in the timing of Lorenzo's plan was that there was no way of knowing when someone would come into his room for something. If Lorenzo had not already ambushed some messengers, this would finally send some in to get him. Good luck, my friend.

El readied more guns.

"Mariachi!" Vasquez called again, and El's heart sank. He could hear the smirk in the man's voice. The ancient masonry, though in disrepair, focused sound down the hollows of the tunnels. A cell phone on high volume tinkled.

"It didn't work, Amigo," he plainly heard Lorenzo's voice. "The asshole with the whip is right here, ready to kill me."

"Lorrie," El called, in despair.

"You got that, Mariachi?" Vasquez called. "Get your ass out here!"

"Amigo," called Lorenzo's tinny voice. "They knew. Somebody told them . . ."

He was cut off by the click of the cell phone snapping shut.

Still numb with disappointment, El watched the ruins drop away beneath him as the helicopter lifted and banked, the chopper more heavily laden than before. As they crested the rise, heading toward the city, someone from the ground shot at them, the flash of the weapon sparking beneath the trees. The Orozcos, El guessed, were approaching over land. Too late.

He dreaded what was to come, back at the estate. Delgado could even afford to kill Lorenzo, since he had a second hostage to hold over El. Surely Lorenzo's own value as a gunman would prevent that!

They had searched him and found the two weapons he had hidden about his person. His boots they had only squeezed, feeling for irregularities. Cocaine powder must have felt regular around his ankles, for they hadn't removed his boots. So he had a kilo of cocaine and no guns.

His hands and fingertips throbbed, and his bleeding shoulder was now on fire. He hardly cared. Depression, like a familiar blanket, had settled over him. For a fleeting moment, he considered trying some of the powder in his boots, as a pick-me-up. What was he thinking? He knew cocaine could cause cravings for more almost from its first use. Had he inhaled some in the tunnel after all? No, no, no.

He set aside thoughts of cocaine, but he couldn't avoid thinking very dark thoughts about Sands. The agent had blown yet another escape plan.

It wasn't until they were circling above the estate, preparing to settle onto the helopad that El remembered. Sands hadn't heard about Lorenzo's plan. He hadn't been in the room.

Delgado was in very good spirits over the recovery of his shipment. He was all smiles as he received Vasquez's report, even when he heard of Dominguez's death. El and the other men stood before him in a beautiful interior courtyard where Delgado was seated in comfortable lawn furniture. On the table before him was a bottle of port and many crystal glasses.

"We must celebrate, Gentlemen!" he declared, pouring the port. "And we will drink to Dominguez, who gave his life so that we may all be rich."

Vasquez and the other men, still tired and hot from the day's labors, relaxed and accepted their glasses. Delgado held out the last glass to El, still smiling. "You must drink too, Mariachi. Vasquez gives other men only one word of praise for every three they deserve. So I know how much I owe to you today."

El was parched, weary, and depressed. He wanted the glass. "I only drink with friends," he said.

"Ah," replied Delgado, with a glint of the dangerous in his eye. He poured El's glass of what was surely expensive liquor onto the ground, ritually, then raised his toast. The others all toasted and drank.

El waited.

"You may all go," Delgado said, staring at El. "You did well and will all receive bonuses."

El did not move; he knew it wasn't meant for him.

Some smirking, the other men put down their glasses and left for wherever they were housed. Vasquez stayed.

"You disobeyed," Delgado said, less pleasantly, "and you tried to betray me."

"Are you surprised?" El asked.

Delgado smiled at that, and El thought it was a genuine smile.

"No. But, as Agent Sands tells me, punishment and reward requires consistency. Follow me."

His heart sinking, accompanied by Vasquez and the ever-present guards, El followed Delgado into the hidden courtyard. Lorenzo was already strung up, and the punishment had already been administered. Lorenzo was conscious, gasping. His back was torn and bleeding.

"You fucking bastard," El said, rushing to Lorenzo's side.

"What? You mention my mother?" Delgado asked genially. "Have a care, 'El.'"

El climbed the scaffolding and began working feverishly to loosen the ropes holding his friend's wrists. Lorenzo's hands were blue, and sweat covered his face. How long had he been here?

"He received one stripe for your refusal to wait for my men," Delgado continued calmly, "and six for your attempt to betray me. Vasquez wants you punished for Dominguez's death, but I don't agree with him that you are responsible for another man's misstep. You see, I can be quite reasonable."

"Here, Lorrie," El said, supporting the other man as his arms came down painfully, and he sank to his knees.

"Don't . . . worry . . . about me," Lorenzo said between gritted teeth. He opened his eyes and looked right at El. "Kick their ass."

El tightened his lips together. He was grateful for the sacrifice Lorenzo was willing to make, but he couldn't bear to accept it.

"They say Our Lord took 39 lashes and still lived," Delgado mused. "But after seeing my cousin's handiwork with only nine, I wonder if scripture might have exaggerated."

Indeed, Lorenzo's back looked like ground hamburger. "He needs treatment," El said.

"Then I expect you to be very well behaved from now on."

El clenched his jaw at hearing Delgado speak to him as he did to Sands, but he nodded.

"Fetch the medicos," Delgado ordered a man, regarding El with satisfaction.

"Sands did not do this?" El asked, not sure whether he asked Delgado or Lorenzo.

"He would have if I had asked him to," Delgado replied. "But thank you for reminding me of our little laboratory rat. Come with me."

"I'm staying with Romero," El said.

Delgado shook his head in bemusement. "You see, already you defy me. Do I really have to flog him some more?"

The white-coated men entered just then, carrying medical supplies. Reluctantly El relinquished Lorenzo to them and stood.

"Follow me," Delgado ordered, his eyes glittering.

El followed.

Delgado seemed to be leading him toward the ballroom, but before they reached it, they heard shouting ahead. Delgado veered toward the sound, calling the guards forward. Vasquez stayed close behind Delgado, leaving El alone at the back of the pack. He started calculating his chances of falling behind and escaping in whatever chaos was ahead of them.

Vasquez, however, kept a suspicious eye on him, and a handgun in his hand.

Men were still shouting, and leaping through the gardens. A shot was fired, but El thought it had been fired as a warning, or by accident. Considering how many firearms were around this place, there would have been a firefight going on had the guards felt they needed to shoot someone.

"I have him! Help me!" someone yelled. The running men began to converge in the bushes.

"Let go!" yelled a familiar, cranky voice, in English. "Get off me! Let me go, God damn it!"

Struggles and yells continued as Delgado's group neared. A pile of men, four or five, fought to stay on top of Sands, who was face down in the dirt and fighting as if his life depended on it. Impossibly, the agent could actually throw some of them from him in a Herculean display of strength and scrabble a small distance before his attackers had him again. Even pinned, he fought and screamed such that El wondered that his bones did not break.

Delgado strode into the melee. "Agent Sands!" he commanded. "Stop this immediately!"

It made no difference. Sands' screaming took on a hysterical note.

"Señor!" gasped one of the thugs. "I swear we did nothing to him. He went loco and bolted."

"Did you give him the stuff?" Delgado asked.

"Yes!"

"Get the doctor here, now!" Delgado ordered. There was no one free to obey his order, except Vasquez and El. All the other men were holding any part of Sands they could grasp, pinning him in the dirt, and the agent still struggled so successfully that no one dared let go.

With a glance around, Vasquez left.

"Mariachi! Help them," Delgado said.

With visions of Lorenzo's back still fresh in his memory, El reluctantly obeyed. He found a place holding one of Sands' legs, beside three other men.

Even Sands' English grew incoherent, to El's hearing, and the man's mouth was half in the dirt. But the tone was clear to El. Sands was not merely angry, he was terrified.

The young man who had coolly treated El's own injuries hurried in, accompanied by another man in a white coat, one of the men whom El had just left with Lorenzo. The doctor had a ready hypodermic in his hand and he shouldered into the crowd.

"Hold him," he said, which earned him some exasperated looks from the guards who had been struggling to do just that for the last five minutes. The doctor found his target and injected his patient.

Sands howled, "What are you doing to me?!" and then slowly went limp.

Having no stake in whether Sands was faking or not, El released him immediately. He disliked being used to subdue a fellow prisoner, even Sands. The other guards were more cautious, but slowly they came off of him, wiping dirt and sweat from their clothes and faces. Vasquez returned, bringing a pair of handcuffs. He cuffed Sands' hands behind his back and rolled the agent onto his back. Sands' sunglasses were gone, and his red eye sockets looked up into a leafy bush. Dirt plastered one side of his bruised face, and was probably in one empty socket, too.

"You may return to your posts," Delgado said to the guards, without taking his frowning gaze from Sands. To the doctor, he said, "We tested the new powder on him. I must know; did the cocaine cause this? Is the merchandise defective?"

The doctor knelt down beside Sands and examined him with a stethoscope and with his hands.

"We should test the powder in the lab," the doctor finally answered, "but I don't think it is necessarily defective. This was bound to happen. Sands has been a heavy user for some time. He should begin to experience paranoia, possibly extreme paranoia and delusions. This man may burn out on you before long, Señor."

"I was okay," Sands spoke in a slurred voice. Everyone looked at him, startled. "Until someone dropped that house on my sister."

"I gave him enough tranquilizer to knock out a cow," the doctor protested.

El suppressed a grin.

"The flying cow," Sands muttered. "The last time someone stuck me with a needle. I really hate that."

"So," Delgado said, straightening, "we may have given him very pure stuff. He got too much?"

"It's possible. I'd give him smaller doses in the future, to be safe. And watch him. He may grow irrational."

How could you tell? El wondered, but he regarded the American with a sense of apprehension that felt strangely like worry. Delgado wouldn't bother with Sands if he thought the agent was no longer a dependable source of information and scheming. One way or the other, Sands was running out of time.

El lay on his bed in the dark, thinking. He didn't like where his thoughts were taking him. He hadn't removed his boots - if he did, he'd have to dump the cocaine in order to get them back on. Sands had not returned to the room. And, as Delgado had ordered El back to his prison, he'd called him by his real name. His full name, just to show he knew it.

The door opened, and Maria, covered by many machine guns, came in with her first aid kit. When the door closed and locked, the room was in darkness again.

"Why is the light out?" she asked.

"Turn it on, if you like," El said.

Maria moved to the small stand and switched on the light.

El sat up.

Maria sat opposite him, on Sands' bed. "Are you all right?" she asked, her eyes wide and worried. "What happened today?"

"I got their cocaine back." He studied her for a moment before he went on. "And I had time to use one man's cell phone."

"You did? Who did you call?"

El looked away from her excited young face. "The CIA," he said, his mouth dry. "Sands gave me a number for them. They are coming to rescue him."

"That's wonderful! Do you know when?"

"No, but sometime. You must have hope. Now you tell me." He dragged his gaze back to her. "What happened when Lorenzo tried to escape today?"

"He was hurt too badly. He wasn't strong enough to hold himself above the door very long, and they heard him and turned and saw him."

It sounded plausible. Maybe he was mistaken. "Lorenzo said someone told them what he was going to do," he told her.

"I don't understand. How would he know that?"

El shrugged. "By the way they acted when they came in, or by something they said."

"Well, maybe he didn't want to admit how he failed. He made it someone else's fault."

El felt faintly sick. "No, Maria, he wouldn't do that." El stretched a cramp out of his leg. "Maria, why are you here?"

"What do you mean? To help you, like before."

"Lorenzo needs your care, not me. Are you really a nursing student?"

"Yes, of course." She looked bewildered.

"Then why weren't you in school?"

"What?"

"Why were you at Lorenzo's in the middle of the day in the middle of the week?"

Tears came to the girl's eyes. "Why are you asking me these things?"

Indeed, El felt like a colossal heel. But his instincts rarely failed him, and he didn't think they had now. "Maria, this room is not bugged. I searched."

"I don't understand what you're talking about."

"So I don't believe Lorenzo's room is bugged. If Delgado were going to bug only one room, it would be this one."

"What is it you are saying?"

"The Delgados didn't have Lorenzo's house watched for months just to catch me. Someone called them. Someone who was always there. When the gunmen took you hostage, they knew you were his sister. They knew you. Maria, you told them of Lorenzo's escape plan. You've been working with them from the start."

The tears in the girl's eyes spilled over. "How can you say that? How can you even think such a thing?"

El sighed and leaned back against the wall. "They have medicos. But they sent you to our rooms to spy on us. Did the Señora know, or not?"

Still crying, Maria stumbled to the door, and pounded against it with the heel of her palm. "Let me out! Take me back. He doesn't want my help." The door opened, all too readily.

"And you told them my name!" he called after her, though they could have tortured that information from Lorenzo. But he didn't think they had. The door slammed shut and he was alone again.

Not nursing school, he thought, acting school. She was good. He wondered if she had betrayed her brother for money or for love. Her plain face would not win her many suitors.

El did not feel bad about the confrontation. He preferred accusations to secrets. It had been a trying day, and he slept well.

Until some time in the middle of the night when the door opened and light streamed in, blinding him. He expected Sands to enter, but instead, the guards rousted him up and escorted him out.

The estate was dark, except for the bright corridor lights. El saw that, although there might be patrols outside the wall, as Sands had described, few night guards stood duty inside the estate. Even the guards with him had an unkempt look, as if they had been awakened, too.

A light breeze brought the scent of jasmine, and a night bird twittered.

El's instincts awoke. Something was up.

Across the courtyard, another cluster of activity bustled at Lorenzo's door. El saw Lorenzo led out of his door and turned in the same direction as El's group was heading.

They were both taken to the glassed-in ballroom. The chandeliers were dark, and much of what El thought of as "the throne room" was in shadow. At the far end, near the "throne," floor and desk lamps threw eerie shapes, glinting off the glass and reflecting over and over into infinity. At night, the glass walls, rather than allowing lovely vistas of the surrounding gardens, isolated the room from the dark outside.

At the throne end, Delgado, still looking fresh in his flowing silk leisure suit and twinkling rings, his brother David, Pablo, whose family relationship El had not determined, but whom he guessed to be David's son, and Vasquez were gathered. All the men had a tension in their stance that warned El further of danger. They stood around the table that had held the breakfast buffet however many mornings ago. Now it appeared to have papers, possibly maps, on it.

El noted other things about the room. In Señora's absence, no care had been given to making it look elegant. The lovely furniture had been pushed aside, and the place seemed to be being used for temporary storage. In fact, the pallets of cocaine kilos were stacked to one side, and, interestingly, next to them were two piles of weapons. The room appeared to hold everything they had taken from the Orozcos.

El regarded the two piles of weapons. He knew what they were. The larger pile was the Orozcos' weapons cache from the back of the tunnel. The smaller pile was his own collection from that cache, loaded and readied.

As they neared the light, El could see Lorenzo better. Someone had given him a T-shirt, and El could see bandages poking out of the shirt's neck. Lorenzo walked stiffly, but he could walk, which cheered El.

The door behind them opened again, and Sands entered, with one guard and one medico - not the doctor. Maybe the doctor had someone else watch Sands on the midnight shift.

Sands looked clean and neat, and wore a fresh set of black clothes that only enhanced his pallor to where he looked truly spectral. He wore a new pair of sunglasses. He walked steadily enough, but he stopped every three or four paces, and his guard had to urge him forward with a shove or a threat.

At Delgado's signal, Sands' guard pushed him to the high-backed, carved chair that Señora had used. Sands sat in it and slumped as the guard handcuffed his right wrist to the arm of the chair. El thought the image would stay with him for however long he lived, like some tarot card of skeletal Death on a medieval throne, captive.

"The crop is gone," Delgado announced, looking mainly at El. "The lab, the preparation facility, everything. Most of my people are dead, and the new shipment being prepared is destroyed."

El was well and truly startled. He said nothing, trying to think how this changed things. Not for the better, he feared. Not for Delgado's prisoners.

"No shit," said Sands, sounding impressed.

Well, thought El, the man must be lucid again. As lucid as he ever was.

Delgado turned to stand directly in front of Sands' chair, which put his back to El and Lorenzo. "A paramilitary operation. That's all the survivors could tell me." He spoke quietly, deadly threat in his voice. "Agent Sands, if you reported to the CIA, you will die a slow and agonizing death. After suffering through detox hell."

Everyone in the room was silent as if they all held their breaths.

El sneaked a glance at Lorenzo. This was the first time other than the flogging that the two of them had been together in the same room. Delgado no doubt believed their cooperation was ensured by Maria's absence. Lorenzo stared at Delgado.
Sands' expression was impossible to read. His dark glasses, so out of place, indoors, at night, made him look like he was behind a Mardi Gras mask.

Sands finally spoke, clearly and plainly, and to El's surprise, in good Spanish. "I haven't reported anything to the CIA since before you met me. They wouldn't care two balls about your crop."

Delgado glared, processing this. Abruptly he whirled to face El, producing a handgun and aiming it at Lorenzo's stomach. "Mariachi! Who did you call? If you lie to me, I'll make your friend here look like Swiss cheese."

Pablo grinned. The guards who had brought Lorenzo stepped away from him.

El thought Sands' approach to be wisest under the circumstances. No evasions, no sarcasm or insults, no answering a question with a question. Just answer the man swiftly and truthfully. Except, in his case, without the truth. "I called no one," he said, meeting Delgado's gaze.

Delgado fired the gun.

Everyone jumped and adrenaline surged through El. Just before he did something he would regret, he caught himself. Delgado had shot past Lorenzo, not into him. The bullet hit the tiled floor, spitting up chips.

Lorenzo's face paled beneath his tan, almost matching Sands' pallor. He had flinched, but he recovered quickly, only his fast breathing betraying his fear.

"The truth!" yelled Delgado. "Sands gave you a number for the CIA!"

"No," El's voice rang out. And here he could be absolutely truthful. "It was a test for the girl. She failed." He saw this register on Delgado's face, and risked pushing a little. "You don't believe me, but you know Sands can't lie to you."

Delgado whirled back to the agent. Behind him, David and Pablo spoke together briefly. "You gave the Mariachi a number to call the CIA," Delgado said, pointing the gun at Sands, who couldn't see it.

"No," Sands said, and, in English again, "I didn't."

"Then who destroyed my entire facility?! We are wiped out!!"

"My money's on the Colombians," Sands mused. "Their various security forces are paramilitary, and they know you were cutting them out."

El saw Delgado glance at David and Vasquez, who gave little nods. David pounded his fist on the table. "What do I do?" Delgado asked. Then, as if realizing how that sounded, "What is your advice?"

"My advice?" Sands smiled a demented smile. "Run."

El began assessing the location of the furniture with respect to the pile of guns he knew to be loaded.

"What?"

"Take the fortune in jewels you have in your safe, and pull up stakes, tonight. An operation like they launched? They won't put the brakes on. They'll want to close the whole show."

"Nonsense!" Vasquez cried. "He's paranoid delusional, like the doctor said." He nodded at the white-coated man who still stood near Sands.

Pablo and David started yelling arguments. Around the room men started looking uneasy. El caught Lorenzo's eye and tried to indicate the pile of loaded weapons.

Sands continued speaking, his English penetrating the din. "Your own men will be a problem. If they know you're ditching them, they'll bite you in the keister. I suggest you either shoot the men who are here in the room with you, or else buy them off right now."

"That's enough!" yelled Delgado, outraged.

Outside, lights and sirens came on, alarms sounded, dogs barked, and, from the distance came the sound of gunfire.

"Bingo," said Sands.

El used the alarms and the consternation they caused as his cue. Two guards apiece on himself and Lorenzo. The first three seconds before he could reach the weapons would be extremely hazardous. Oh well.

It was an insane idea, of course, that he could take on the four Delgados and five guards, even with Lorenzo's help, starting from nothing, unarmed.

But he did it anyway.

He crouched, leaped, and spun a flying kick at one man's head, intending to land where he could easily reach a second. Unfortunately, the second man moved, and, though the first man went down, his gun went flying away. Now there were three weapons turning straight at El.

Make that two. Lorenzo also knew their only chance when he heard it, and he sucker-punched one guard into immediate unconsciousness. That man's handgun also flew, and El caught it. Lorenzo grappled with his second guard, trying to get his Uzi, so El shot the fourth man.

Two of his three seconds of surprise were gone and he had only a 9mm handgun and no cover. He and Lorenzo stood too close to each other - a single burst of fire could kill them both. All the Delgados were armed, though only Julio Delgado had his gun in his hand, and Sands' single guard ...

Was about to shoot El.

El sprinted, shooting, for the pile of weapons stacked by the cocaine pallets. He didn't deserve to make it, but luck was on his side. He didn't hit the guard, but, having no cover at all, the man was sufficiently frightened by El's hail of bullets that his aim became worthless. Behind the guard, Sands, still 'cuffed to the arm of the chair, leaped over it to use the high back of the chair as cover. His medical watchdog, apparently unarmed, also cowered back there.

Delgado shot at El, but missed him, his slugs crashing into the large plates of glass that comprised one wall of the large room. Lorenzo and his opponent, still in a tight clinch for possession of the Uzi, fell to the floor.

El reached the weapons, dropped his 9mm, and scooped up the first two weapons that came to his hands, a shotgun and a .44 Magnum. He leaped on top of the stacks of cocaine bricks, landing on his stomach. Delgado. He wanted Delgado, but the drug lord now ran forward, head down, toward the three other men at the map table. He managed to move right into the area of El's view that was blocked by the forward corner of the cocaine pallets he lay on.

El had only to wriggle forward to get his shot, but behind him, the entire glass wall split and fell, showering El with shards, some large enough to impale him. El covered his head and prayed.

"Kill them all," roared Delgado.

As if El and Lorenzo were the ones obeying him, Lorenzo finally won free his guard's Uzi, and ended the man's life, while El lifted his head and shot Sands' guard, the only man he could see while glass rained on him. The recoil from the Magnum reminded him painfully of his injured hands.

His .44 round went through Sand's guard and still had enough force to explode one side and arm of the thick wooden chair Sands had been sitting on. Sands was now free, something for El to keep in mind.

For later. Right now, Lorenzo had no cover, and, drawing, the Delgado men were half-seconds from firing their own, personal weapons. El came to a kneeling position amid the twinkling glass and fired both his guns. The range to the men clustered at the table was too short for the shotgun blast to have much spread, but it would delay their own shots. What he aimed at, with the .44, was the anchor of the immense chandelier that hung above the map table.

"Over here, Lorrie!" he yelled. The closest thing to useful cover in the whole damn room was the pile of cocaine bricks. The furniture, with the possible exception of the "throne" was too small and too insubstantial.

The power of the Magnum splintered into the huge wooden beam supporting the chandelier, just like it had splintered the entire arm and side of Sands' chair. The chandelier, tiered to a point like an upside down wedding cake, began to pry loose.

Pablo screamed as the buckshot from the 20 gauge shotgun tore his arm into ribbons. Pablo had not hit the floor as quickly as had David and Vasquez. The shot that didn't grate Pablo's arm barreled past the men, finally spreading out just in time to hit the glass. A second glass wall, already penetrated by El's shots at Sands' guard, shuddered, cracked, and toppled, not far behind Sands' chair. The room which had been inside was now outside, and the sounds of fighting on the grounds were now part of their combat arena.

Someone, possibly Delgado himself, had had the presence of mind to fire at Lorenzo despite the shotgun blast and Pablo's screaming. Lorenzo was forced to use the guard's dead body as a shield and didn't dare join El by the cocaine stack yet.

Plastic and cocaine powder exploded next to El. Without any orders from his conscious mind, he tumbled off the stack, landing next to his stash of weapons. Someone had shot at him from what had been the outside.

Mierda! So much for any kind of cover.

Lorenzo, still on the floor, reached over the dead guard and fired his Uzi on semi-automatic, low, beneath the table at the Delgados. Pablo stopped screaming. Good, that gave El a chance to deal with the men behind him, in the courtyard. He scooped up a fully automatic machine gun and emptied an entire clip into the topiary. He followed that with the second barrel of the shotgun, which did some impressive damage to the landscaping. Someone in the brush screamed.

Back in the ballroom a huge tinkling crash announced the fall of the immense chandelier. Whether it killed anyone or not, it isolated the mariachis from the Delgados for a few moments. Lorenzo scrambled to El's side.

Keeping one eye on the garden and another on the area around the still collapsing chandelier, El stuffed every weapon he could manage onto his person. Lorenzo slung two rifles over his shoulders, which had to hurt. The younger man's face was pinched with pain, but he seemed to be moving all right.

"Delgado," Lorenzo said.

El glanced up as the sound of a helicopter approached. This really was a paramilitary operation.

They were entirely too exposed, surrounded by enemies, and under attack by a force that wouldn't distinguish them from its prey. As much as El also wanted to make sure Delgado was dead, and, if he wasn't, to blast the man's face off, there was a time to run, and this was it.

Before El could answer him, powerful weapons fire from the helicopter peppered their entire area.

"Puta Madre!" El yelled. "Run!"

They charged, directionless, into the courtyard, using the slender trunks of palmettos for cover. Fortunately the airborne gunmen didn't seem interested in pursuing them and the helicopter lumbered on, over another part of the estate.

"The gate is this way!" El yelled, heading for a corridor that would take them outside the immediate building of the estate.

"Maria!" Lorenzo yelled back. He turned around and started for an opposite corridor, leading back toward their rooms.

"No! Wait! Lorrie!"

El cursed, but followed him.

As they ran, they shot anyone they saw. A simple system that only required seeing the other guys first. They picked off men from doors, corners, and rooftops. But El was extremely uneasy to be running in when they should have been running out.

Still, the number of guards they encountered dwindled. Perhaps they were all defending the walls.

There were no guards on Lorenzo's room, nor was the door locked. No Maria. Lorenzo gave El a panicked look.

"Lorenzo, she's with them," El said. "They won't hurt her."

"Bullshit," said Lorenzo.

El hadn't had time to explain it to him. And he didn't have time now. Lorenzo might not even care. "We'll never find her. We've got to get out of here."

"Maria!" Lorenzo yelled.

A door across the courtyard opened, but since the man who appeared wasn't Maria, Lorenzo shot him, still with a brooding expression on his face.

The sound of the helicopter neared, and their courtyard was brightly lit. "Lorrie, maybe we'll come across her," El cried.

"All right," Lorenzo gave in. "Which way?"

El decided against the front gate, after all. He imagined a pitched firefight happening there. "The back. We'll go over the wall."

The helicopter moved into view and hovered at barely roof height. A shooter appeared in an open door of the chopper and a red laser sight appeared on El's jacket.

As El tensed to dive away, Lorenzo tackled him with explosive force, throwing them both well away from the shot. El hit concrete, painfully. The rifle shot threw concrete chips high in the air.

"Hey!" yelled Lorenzo, and, with that casual manner he had of shooting, he raised his gun and shot the man in the helicopter in the head. Lorenzo had hardly even looked.

They both scrambled to their feet as the chopper pilot gave the engine more power and lifted higher. "This way," El gasped, hauling Lorenzo with him.

As they ran through the lighted corridors, El noticed that at every running step he took puffy white clouds spilled out of his boots. Good. That should help deal with the dogs. El didn't want to shoot dogs. As for the other security measures Sands had described, motion detectors and trip wires, they would be rigged to sound alarms. No one would notice another alarm in all the din. That left a high wall and razor wire. Shouldn't be too hard.

El thought of Sands, and genuinely wished for a moment that there'd been a way to get him out, too. Not that he would have come.

They found a service corridor that led them into the industrial equipment for the compound. Generators hummed loudly, and a strong smell of septic treated waste permeated this back side of the estate. There were also large propane tanks. Beyond these things was darkness. The wall had to be out there somewhere, but El couldn't see it.

Then he could see the wall. As they crested the slight rise above the utility area, they must have tripped something, for spotlights on the wall burned into life and lit the entire area.

"There they are," called a woman's voice. "That's them!"

Still somewhat blinded by the light, El instinctively dropped to the ground.

"You bastards!" screamed the voice of Julio Delgado. "You killed my brother!"

"Maria?" called Lorenzo.

"Get down!" El said, pulling the younger man down as machine gun fire whistled over their heads.

El pulled his own automatic into position as his eyes adjusted. Below and behind them, back at the area with all the industrial machinery, he saw Delgado, his silk suit crimson with blood, firing into their hillside. With him were Maria, Tomás the torturer, Vasquez, and Sands. They all stood in front of a small utility building, all but Sands blinking up at them. Neither Sands nor Maria appeared to be prisoners, though Tomás stood near to Sands, and, by his body language, El guessed he was the agent's current watchdog.

His clip exhausted, Delgado ranted on, fumbling for a second clip. "And Pablo! You motherfuckers!"

El opened fire with his own automatic, though he didn't accomplish much before Lorenzo landed on him and pushed his gun off-line.

"You'll hit Maria!" Lorenzo hissed.

El fought his friend for control of the gun. "She's with them, Lorrie. You saw!"

"I don't care! You can't shoot her!"

El wrested the gun from Lorenzo's grip, and looked down the hill. Vasquez, he saw with satisfaction, lay dead on the ground. The others, though, had scampered inside the brick utility building, and were now completely under cover. El cursed. He could have had Delgado.

He scrambled to his feet and so did Lorenzo. The bright lights showed Lorenzo's stricken expression as he gazed at where his sister had been. Another day El might feel sorry for him, but right now he was only irritated.

"The wall's not far," El said, wearily.

"Mariachis!" came Delgado's booming voice.

Both men crouched, as much out of view as they could manage, guns ready.

There was movement at the open-corner corridor that served as a door to the building, like the labyrinthine walls leading into public restrooms. El held his fire when he saw it was Maria.

She was held around the chest by Agent Sands, whose one hand held a gun to her head while his other grasped her breast. Both El and Lorenzo tensed.

Go to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

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