A few hard nudges roused Sands from his sleep. At least he thought he was awake. Not being able to open ones eyes was going to take some getting used to.

"Alright already!" Sands snapped at the kid, as he sat up in the taxi’s back seat. A wave of dizziness washed over him as he adjusted his sunglasses, making sure they were still in place. His whole body seemed to be screaming at him to just lie there and not move, but that simply wasn’t an option.

"Are we at the Flying Cow?" Sands asked, not caring which one of the car’s occupants answered. As it turned out, it was the driver who spoke.

"Sí. ¿Acaso está ciego? Está justo en frente de usted."

Officer Sands paused for a brief moment as his jaw worked angrily. His hand found its way to the butt of his gun, and he contemplated how he should kill the driver.

"Estoy seguro de que no quiso decir nada con eso. ¡Él no sabe!" Chicle boy said in a hurried voice as he noticed where the Officer’s hand was. As much as Sands felt that he needed to restore the balance, he restrained himself. No need to make a scene, after all.

Plus he really didn’t want to kill the driver in front of the boy, who’d probably witnessed enough death for one day, or for that matter in front of any CIA agents who might be watching.

"Lead me to the restaurant, kid," Sands said, as he opened his door and, with some effort, began to get out. He heard the kid clamber out and walk around the car.

As the boy offered Sands a supporting shoulder, the taxi driver shouted angrily at the two of them, "¿Dónde está mi dinero?"

Now, Sands could normally find a tiny smidgen of patience within his soul… however, as previously stated, he was having somewhat of a bad day, and he’d had enough. In one quick and graceful motion that surprised even him, he snatched the gun from its holster and pointed it towards the sound of the taxi driver’s voice. Even though Sands couldn’t see him, his aim was perfect; the barrel of the gun zeroed in on the driver’s head. He had killed Ajedrez with this gun and had no qualms about adding more blood to its record. He spoke in a low and threatening tone to the man behind the wheel. " Refrenarme de disparar un hoyo en tu cabeza deberá ser el pago suficiente. Lárgate o jódete."

He’d barely closed the door before he heard the driver peel off. Sands returned his gun to its holster with a smugly satisfied, if somewhat pain-laced, smirk. Chicle boy took hold of his right hand and slowly led him across the street to the Flying Cow, as his body protested every step. Sands’ smirk turned into a grimace as his mind thought in disgust,
‘Vae corpus vile’.

Officer Cameron had watched Sands’ entire taxi display with quiet amusement, seated at one of the outdoor tables at the Flying Cow. It was just so very… Sands. He’d known the officer for years, and he really was a nutcase.

As Sands continued walking, or rather stumbling, towards the Flying Cow, Cameron realized just how badly injured Sands really was. For starters, blood was oozing out from under Sands’ sunglasses and spilling down his cheeks and face. It was a sight worthy of the most gory of horror films. He didn’t even want to think about the injuries that were causing it. Sands was also limping heavily, and blood was dripping from a hole in his black shirt and down the gloved fingertips of his left arm. He looked like death itself, and Officer Cameron had to hand it to the crazy son-of-a-bitch for even making it here.

‘Christ!’ Cameron thought to himself. As much as Cameron disliked Sands’ personality, and the way he carried out his clandestine operations, he never liked to see a fellow officer injured. Especially one he’d trained with.

As soon as Sands was in front of the restaurant, Cameron leapt to his feet and rushed over, putting together a little fantasy that the two of them were American tourist friends.

"Oh my god, Joe! What happened?" he exclaimed, as he grabbed Sands’ free arm, while Chicle Boy held onto the other.

Sands lifted his head a little higher at the sound of a familiar voice, the addition of another much stronger hand on his arm giving much needed support to his failing legs. He knew that voice… it was a fellow CIA officer… one he knew quite well, but he couldn’t quite place it. He was in too much pain. All at once a wave of dizziness assailed him, and it took all the strength he could muster just to keep standing and remain conscious; that was a feat in and of itself given the amount of blood he’d lost.

Sands felt the need to spit out some smart-ass reply to his fellow officer’s question about what had happened, and opened his mouth to do so, but in the end just didn’t have enough strength left. He shut his mouth as a pathetic groan escaped his lips. The other officer got the hint, and quickly led Sands to his car, which was parked at the corner of the street, thankfully fairly close to the restaurant. The little boy helped Cameron drag Sands to the car.

Sands felt himself being laid down upon something in a surprisingly gentle manner. ‘Golly, that’s interesting.’ He sensed a cool surface against his face, and recognized the sound of a car door being closed. He was lying on the backseat of a car, the other officer’s car, he presumed.

It was that reassurance, little though it was, that allowed him to finally succumb to the dizziness and slip into the unconsciousness that had been beckoning to him.

Closing the car door, Cameron took a deep breath to calm his rattled nerves, then turned to the little boy, who looked distressed. It almost startled Cameron. ‘Sands is not a nice man, so what has Sands done to win the devotion of the boy? Or did the boy just feel sympathy for Sands’ condition?’ He looked back at Sands. ‘That must be it. Who wouldn’t have sympathy for a man so badly mangled?’

"Gracias por ayudar al Oficial Sands." Cameron said awkwardly in Spanish. He’d never been good at speaking foreign languages and just barely knew enough to get by. ‘The complete opposite of Sands,’ Cameron thought suddenly. "A partir de ahora yo cuidaré de él."

The kid’s eyes focused on the unconscious officer. "¿Estará bien, señor?" he asked, more worried about the hurt man than he had been before. At least before, he’d been conscious.

Cameron swallowed hard, and his gaze briefly shifted to Sands before returning to the boy. Even if Sands survived all his injuries, Cameron wasn’t so sure that Sands’ standing would be ‘alright’ with the Company. He wasn’t sure what Sands had been up to this time around, but there had to be some improper protocol involved. There always was with Sands. However Sands’ fate all depended on whether or not the Company knew about it, and if so, just how much they knew. Sands was one of the best, in terms of gathering the intelligence the Company wanted, and it was possible that this skill would save him in the end.

"No lo se… pero prometo hacer todo lo que pueda para que lo esté. Ahora ve y corre, necesito llevarlo al hospital en seguida," Cameron finally said to the boy, after trying to gather his own thoughts.

The boy cast one last worried look at Sands before muttering a worried "Eso espero," and slowly walking away from the car, heading back down the dusty street to retrieve the bicycle he’d left behind.

Cameron moved swiftly to the driver’s side and hopped in, quickly starting the car. He looked in his rear view mirror at Sands’ unmoving form. Cameron had no idea if Sands would survive, but Cameron owed Sands one, much as he hated to admit it and he wouldn’t let a fellow CIA officer down.

Unfortunately Cameron couldn’t just take Sands to the nearest hospital. He would have to take him to the nearby CIA headquarters first, where the white coats could stabilize him before flying him back to the OMS in Virginia. But he couldn’t just take him straight to HQ either, Cameron had to make sure to lose anyone who might be tailing them first. It was a well-known fact that it was unacceptable to risk giving away the location of the Company’s foreign soil HQ, even if it meant risking the lives of several officers.

Cameron reached under the passenger seat and grabbed his sweatshirt, unused in the heat, then tore it into strips with the help of his pocketknife. Turning around in the front seat, he reached back and tightly tied one strip around each of the bullet wounds, which were still bleeding profusely. If the bleeding didn’t slow down soon, Sands’ chances of making it were somewhere between slim and non-existent. He looked up at Sands’ face and debated whether to take off the sunglasses and see just what had happened, but he quickly decided against it. They needed to leave immediately, and he was pretty damn certain that whatever had happened to cause such a mess couldn’t be fixed with a tightly tied piece of cloth.

Turning back around, Cameron put the car in gear and stepped on the gas. He intended to waste approximately half an hour by making several quick turns and maneuvers to lose anyone potentially on their tail, and could only hope that Sands would fight to hang on.

~*~

Sí. ¿Acaso está ciego? Está justo en frente de usted. - Yes. Are you blind? It is right in front of you.

Estoy seguro de que no quiso decir nada con eso. ¡Él no sabe! - I’m sure he meant nothing by it. He doesn’t know!

¿Dónde está mi dinero? - Where is my money?

Refrenarme de disparar un hoyo en tu cabeza deberá ser el pago suficiente. Lárgate o jódete. - Restraining myself from shooting a hole through your head should be payment enough. Fuck off… or fuck you.

Gracias por ayudar al Oficial Sands. - Thank you for helping Officer Sands.

A partir de ahora yo cuidaré de él. - I will take care of him from here.

¿Estará bien, señor? - Will he be alright Sir?

No lo se… pero prometo hacer todo lo que pueda para que lo esté. Ahora ve y corre, necesito llevarlo al hospital en seguida. - I don’t know… but I promise I’ll do everything I can to see that he will be. Run along now, I need to take him to the hospital right away.

Eso espero. - I hope so.

Latin Translations