"How about a cigarette first?" Sands asked the two debrief officers before him. He was really starting to miss his habitual hourly cigarette. He hadn’t had one since the day Lake was questioning him about.

"Sands, you know that it’s against policy to smoke in a debrief room." Mike stepped in.

"Screw it. It’s against policy to smoke anywhere anymore, anyway. But I’m here to tell you about some pretty fucked up shit, so I think it’s the least you two could do," Sands smirked. "Besides, I’d kill for a cigarette right about now, and getting between me and my cigarettes makes me very, well, let’s just say… unpleasant."

Mike, knowing Sands wouldn’t let it drop, and probably meant the word kill quite literally, started digging into his pocket and produced a cigarette from his own pack, passing it to Sands despite Lake’s protests. Sands put the cigarette in his mouth and it hung there as Mike handed him a lighter.

"Gracias," Sands said, with the cigarette dangling from his mouth, proceeding to light it carefully. It was a little more difficult to light a cigarette when you couldn’t see the end of it.

Lake, trying to remain professional, repeated his question as he watched Sands struggle to light up, until he finally succeeded. "Please, tell us what you know Officer Sands."

"Well, you see," Sands started, speaking in his unique monotone drone. "There are known knowns… that is to say, things that I know I know. There are also known unknowns, that is to say things I know I don’t know."

Sands paused for a moment and held up a solitary gloved finger as if to accentuate his last point. "But there are also unknown unknowns… things I don’t know that I don’t know."

Lake stared at Sands, trying to disentangle the sentence, as Mike closed his eyes and shook his head. Sands hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d seen him.

Sands took a long drag off his cigarette and relaxed back into his chair. He was the master of saying things that sounded like utter nonsense, but really made perfect sense if you sat and thought about them long enough.

In the awkward silence Sands took the opportunity to tap the first ashes of his cigarette off onto the table, not bothering to ask for an ashtray or find something to catch them. He gave Lake a burdened moan before he spoke, "Look kid, why don’t you ask me one question at a time? That way, you’ll get specific answers to specific questions and the Company will be happy with this here debrief."

Sands smirked as he took another puff. He knew the Company would already be unhappy with everything recorded so far, and that it would be crystal clear who was in charge. Sands.

"Very well," Lake said, clearly aggravated at being called ‘kid’ and being told how to do his job. "Please begin by telling us about the human intelligence you gathered."

"No need. A day before the roll-up I sent a full and detailed report with all the HUMINT that I’d gathered since my last report. No new HUMINT to tell the Company at this time."

"But what about the roll-up?" Lake asked, knowing there had to be more since Sands had been caught so off guard.

"Well you didn’t ask about the roll-up. You asked about the HUMINT."

Sands noticed the growing frustration in Lake’s voice as he continued.

"Please tell us about the roll-up then Officer Sands, and how the operation turned into a wet job."

Sands took another puff off his cigarette. "Shouldn’t you ask me, for the record of course, what my operation objective was to begin with?"

Lake’s face grew a bit red. Of course Sands couldn’t see it, but Mike interjected at the kids change of color. "Just answer the questions as they’re asked Officer Sands."

Sands put on a fake pout, "But… you’re doing it all wrong."

"Just answer the question!" Lake burst out, finally losing his temper.

Sands eyebrows shot up. "No need to shout Officer. My hearing is very good, I assure you."

"What caused the roll-up, Sands?"

"What happened to Officer?"

"Damn it, Officer Sands, I told you to take it easy on the kid," Mike cut in. He’d seen this coming, but had no real way of stopping it.

"Alright, but I think you both should know, I am taking it easy, on both of you." Sands took another drag, letting the words hang in the air for a moment. Cigarette in hand, he was already feeling like his old self. His old self on a bad day, anyway. "What caused the roll up was a bad bona fide on AFN Agent Ajedrez. After she was cleared by OOS for up to Flash Classified intelligence, Ajedrez was hired by yours truly as an Agent. She was working under my control in Culiacan. She was to leak false intelligence to the Barillo Cartel, specifically Armando Barillo himself. However, she leaked the real intelligence instead. As it turned out, she was a mole for Barillo, and as you can imagine, that put a little kink in my spiffy well-planned plan."

"That just sounds like bad HUMINT, Officer Sands. Why do you say a bad bona fide is the reason for the roll up?"

Sands slowly let out his deep inhalation of cigarette smoke. "I’d say someone at OOS should have caught the tiny detail that she was Armando Barillo’s daughter. Needless to say, things got a wee bit dangerous after I found out that little tidbit. Catch my drift?"

"What became of Armando Barillo and Ajedrez?"

"Both terminated."

"By you?"

"I terminated Ajedrez, purely in self defense of course. I did not, however, terminate Armando Barillo. That would be one of those unknown unknowns I was speaking of. I have reason to believe that retired FBI Agent Ramirez was the executioner."

"Why do you think that?"

"Well, I was having a bit of a bad day… being tortured, shot up and having your eyes removed does take its toll on a person. After all that, I wasn’t able to do much of anything in the way of gaining intelligence for the Company. However, they do have my deepest apologies for that." Sands sighed, his cigarette burning down too quickly for his liking.

"My point being that Ramirez ran across me after the coup and informed me of Armando Barillo’s death. Years ago, Barillo had tortured Ramirez’s partner, and then killed him, so it doesn’t take a genius such as myself to put two and two together and make such an assumption."

Lake frowned as he realized that he only had one last question to ask at this time, and it was one that he was not looking forward to.

"Would you mind telling us how you were captured by the Barillo cartel, and the events that happened after your capture?"

"Tuis pugis pignore."

Lake blinked, confused, and asked Sands, "What?" as he looked at Mike. Mike was about to answer, but Sands went ahead and did it for him.

"It’s Latin, kiddo. Don’t they even touch on Latin at the Farm anymore?" Sands shook his head in mock dismay. "Roughly it translates to ‘You bet your bippy’, and to translate that for you it means that I do mind, seeing as I’ll have to live with what happened that day for the rest of my life." Sands paused, and could feel the cigarette starting to burn his fingertips. Hoping they didn’t catch that little blunder, he stubbed out what remained of the cigarette. He immediately regretted his last comment. He’d felt so good before, but admitting to the consequences of his failed operation out loud sobered him pretty fast.

At Sands’ abrupt change in mood, and unnatural silence Mike prodded gently. "Sands?"

Snapping out of his reverie, Sands continued. "I suppose I have no choice but to tell you. Vae. I need another cigarette."

This time neither of them protested at his request, Mike giving Sands another cigarette, already lit for him. Sands inhaled deeply. ‘Ah, I did so miss smoking.’

"I knew things had gone sideways as soon as my hired agents began pulling grand disappearing acts. First it was Cucuy, and after that El Mariachi—"

"El… as in ‘The’?"

"Wow, you are a true master of languages, Lake," Sands snorted. "Yes, as in ‘The’. Don’t know what happened to either of them, if they survived or not. I do know that Cucuy double crossed me at the first chance he got, so I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if he were lying in a ditch somewhere. As for El… there was a hell of a lot of shooting going on during the coup, but he is rather capable of handling himself, so who knows?" Sands was almost positive El was alive; the man was a fighter and simply too damned stubborn to die. "Ramirez was the only one of my hired agents that stuck with me to the roll-up. Ramirez was tailing Barillo, and as I said before, I believe he eventually took him out. It was obvious to me that I was being shadowed by the cartel, so I called my superior, Martin, and told him what was going on. That I was being shadowed, my agents had all turned on me or vanished, and that I needed back up. As a matter of fact, I called him a total of three times that morning voicing my concerns about the operation and asking for at least one other officer to assist me. Martin did nothing, of course.

"On our third conversation he hung up on yours truly and I made my way over to La Vaca Volando to figure out my next move."

"Why did you go there?"

"I was to meet Agent Ajedrez there. At the time, I wasn’t aware that she was a mole." Sands tapped his cigarette, and the ashes fell onto the table. "Plus, they serve good slow roasted pork there and I was hungry."

"I see."

"I half expected her to not show up, with my luck that day. Now, looking back on it, I wish she hadn’t."

Strands of Sands’ shoulder length black hair fell across his face as he spoke, and he quickly pushed them back behind his ear. "I called Martin one last time from the restaurant and told him my position had been compromised and again reiterated that I needed back up. He finally agreed to send some, but it was a little late. I remember after my phone call Ajedrez showed up and sat across from me. She had a smug look on her face and said ‘You really didn’t see it coming, did you?’. I didn’t have a chance to reply. Someone came from behind and stuck a needle into my neck. I don’t know exactly what they gave me, but it was powerful. I only remember her smiling as I stumbled out of the restaurant. They didn’t try to stop me; they knew I wouldn’t get far. I remember passing out after getting about a block. The next thing I remember is waking up, strapped to a table… after that my memory is pretty fuzzy. I was hopped up on a hell of a lot drugs apparently. Ajedrez, Barillo and Dr. Guevera were there, as well as some other members of the cartel. Don’t know their names. It was then that Ajedrez informed me that she was Barillo’s daughter. I saw a man all wrapped up in bandages, and asked if it was Barillo. It was. He stated that I’d been spying on his operation for some time now and I remember saying something about ‘killing me would be crossing the line and Marines would be up his keister in no time if they did terminate me’." Sands chuckled, an odd, humorless, tension-releasing noise that broke the room’s silence. "Not the best comeback, I must admit. He didn’t ask me for any information on the operation. I assume he got what he wanted from Ajedrez. He then told me that fortunately I hadn’t done anything worth dying over; that I’d only seen too much. It was then that…" Sands trailed off, his voice a little unsteady despite his best attempts to hide it. The other two officers must have been stone still, as Sands could barely even hear them breathing, much less moving.

He cleared his throat, and moved to finish up his second cigarette, which was dangling from his fingers. "That’s when Dr. Guevera appeared, and he took my eyes. After that, it’s all very hazy. I was in a lot of pain. I could hear them all laughing as they untied me and stood me up. Someone handed me my sunglasses and pushed me through the room’s door. I eventually made it outside and paid off a little boy to take me to a taxi. However, someone was following me, and I took out a small .22 I had hidden. Turned out Ajedrez and another cartel member were following me, I guess they really had no intention of letting me live after all. Since I couldn’t see my attackers, I had to listen for them. Someone shot me in the leg, and Ajedrez taunted me a few times." Sands smiled bitterly, "That was her downfall. I was able to zero in on her voice and shoot her. The man got a couple pieces of lead in me before I could return his favor. After that I talked to Ramirez. Ramirez left and I sent the boy to go get a taxi. It took me to La Vaca Volando where Officer Cameron picked me up. I assume you know the rest."

Sands took a deep breath as he concluded the account, the lies intertwined within the truth coming effortlessly. He certainly wasn’t going to tell them that after he had been tortured he’d gone to get the money, planning to split it with Ajedrez, and offed a couple more cartel members in the process. Nor that he had murdered Belini for valuable information about the cartel. Not even the more humorous information about how he’d bet on bullfights and made sure the bet would go his way, using the earnings to pay off informants.

Really, it was a rather brilliant scheme, he had to admit. Easy dough.

"How did you know Officer Cameron would be at La Vaca Volando?"

Sands took another drag off his cigarette and his eyebrows furrowed together. "I told Martin that I was waiting at La Vaca Volando in our last telephone conversation, when he told me he’d send back up for me, finally. It was too late for it to do me much good, but at least I got out of Culiacan. Come to think of it, it’s rather odd that it was Officer Cameron that pulled me out. He certainly wasn’t assigned under Officer Martin. I hadn’t even been privy to the information that he was in Mexico."

"That’s one of the many problems we’re finding, Officer Sands."

"What, pray tell, do you mean Lake?"

"Officer Cameron was assigned to a totally unrelated assignment in a nearby town. However, according to Officer Martin, he never called Officer Cameron. As a matter of fact, he said that he had never even heard of an Officer Cameron before your exfiltration."

"That’s interesting."

"Officer Martin also said that he never spoke to you that day either. Not once."

Sands frowned. ‘Well Jeff, I guess you know for sure now. He definitely wanted to burn you.’

"Well, that’s truly unbelievable," Sands said at last. Sure, Sands hadn’t told the two Officers anything about his cook killing or his covert attempts to retrieve the 20 million pesos, but he certainly had been telling the truth when it came to his conversations with Officer Martin.

"That may be, but Martin also told us that you went rogue some time ago, and that he hadn’t heard from you in over a week."

"Credo quia absurdum est."

Lake sighed, "Pardon?"

"Never mind." Sands exhaled heavily. Something had to be done about Martin. "I guess I’ll just have to prove that in the current situation, I’m the one to be trusted."

~*~

Credo quia absurdum est. - I believe it because it is unreasonable.

Vae – Damn