Chapter 23: Useless

Sands groaned inwardly but he kept his cool. The man pulled Sands backward slightly as his grip on Sands’ wrists tightened.

"Officer Sands I presume?" the man asked, sounding as if he already knew the answer.

Sands swallowed his fears as his cool façade remained intact, truly his greatest weapon. "You know what they say about presumptions. They can be dangerous. I’m Agent Doe, John Doe. At your service."

The other man laughed lightly. Sands felt one hand leave hold of his wrists, loosening the grip a good deal. However, the tight pressure was quickly replaced by cold metal pricking the flesh on Sands’ neck.

‘Goddamn, how I hate Mexico,’ Sands thought to himself.

"I’ve certainly heard a great deal about you Officer Sands. Or is it just Sands now? You know, when they sent me here to look for you I really hadn’t expected to find you. I thought there was no way a man with your reputation would have been stupid enough to come to such an obvious place. Guess you’re slipping Sands."

Sands felt a rush of anger rising in him but struggled to hold it in check. After all, such anger would be of great use, if used at the proper time. Sands’ face remained neutral, showing no human emotions to his captor… whoever he might be.

‘Where the hell is Jackson?’ Sands thought. He could use some sort of distraction. Such a moment, no matter how brief, would give him the edge he needed.

‘Well, I suppose if I want something done right, I’ll have to do it myself.’

"Well you know, Slick, I guess I underestimated those nitwits at the Company for once. I should have figured they’d get lucky eventually. I mean it’s all in the mathematics." Sands paused a minute and twisted his head towards the man, ignoring the knife blade at his neck as he smiled brazenly before continuing. "Guess I shouldn’t have had that third tequila while calculating my plan. But let that be a lesson to us all… never drink and derive."

"You really are a crazy bastard Sands. Now enough with this crap, I’m to take you back to the States immediately… you have some explaining to do." The man shoved Sands forward suddenly and he stumbled slightly, but quickly regained his balance and pushed all his weight in the opposite direction to the one that the officer wanted them to go, bringing them both to a halt. The man behind him sighed irritably.

"Now I don’t know if I want to do that. It doesn’t sound too groovy," Sands quipped lightly.

The other officer was growing impatient, he could tell, and it was a good way to draw weakness out of an enemy. This Sands knew well.

"You’ve got two choices Sands. They want you back in the States, dead or alive, by tomorrow morning. Either you come with me, or I kill you and take your body. Now which is it going to be?" He spun Sands around to face him and stepped closer, still with one arm holding Sands’ hands and the other holding his throat hostage. Sands pretended to think about the choices for a moment before finally concluding, "Those choices of yours just aren’t jiving with me, Slick. How ‘bout we compromise?"

The man growled and pressed the knife into Sands’ throat, drawing a small trickle of blood from the new wound. Sands didn’t react to the pressure; instead he raised his dark eyebrows and drawled, "Ya know, you should be careful with that. An inexperienced officer like yourself… you could poke someone’s eye out with that thing." Sands baited him, hoping his fat ten-pounder would chomp down on it hard.

The other officer grinned despite the insults. "Well, well… there’s an idea," He said snidely as he raised the knife and pulled off Sands’ sunglasses, intending to move his threats upward. But the officer didn’t expect what he found instead.

It was exactly what Sands had wanted.

He quickly took advantage of the man’s shock as he kneed him in the groin… hard. The officer doubled over in pain and let go of his grip on Sands, completely caught off guard.

"Too late. It’s already been done."

Sands followed his first dirty move with another, kneeing the doubled-over officer in the face. He heard a crunch as his knee met the man’s nose, and his would-be assailant crumpled to the floor unconscious.

Sands bent over and swiftly found the knife the other man had dropped while he was busy worrying about the intense pain in his lower regions. Grasping the knife Sands stood and took a couple steps until the toe of his boot touched the body lying on the floor. Kneeling down he cleared his throat as his hands searched for the sunglasses the officer had taken. He quickly located them. Sliding them back on his face he returned his hands to the body on the floor, letting them do his seeing. The man was stocky, and about his height. He was fairly certain he’d never met him before; he certainly hadn’t recognized the voice. Sands relieved the unconscious man of two more firearms before standing up briskly and calling out in a voice that could freeze water, "Jackson, you fucking squid, get your slimy ass in here or you’ll be my next meal."

Sands was not in a good mood, to say the least. He heard a muffled, "Huh?" from what seemed to be quite a way off and after about a minute Jackson reentered the living room, finding a coldly furious Sands standing in its center. It was an expression Jackson was sure only Sands could manage to wear. Jackson eyed him warily as he took a couple steps into the room.

"What’s your problem now? You asked me to…" Jackson trailed off, ceasing to speak as he caught sight of the unconscious man lying on the floor. "What the hell happened here?"

"What the hell happened to you?" Sands threw back as he approached Jackson, his suspicious nature suddenly returning.

Sands wasn’t sure anymore about the man’s trustworthiness. He thought it highly unlikely he had anything to do with it, but still, he would have to be even more alert after this.

"What do you mean? You asked me to look around the house. That’s what I was doing."

"You mean to tell me that the last five minutes you’ve been scurrying around this house and didn’t hear a goddamn thing?" Sands stopped in front of Jackson, a couple steps away and Jackson took an involuntary step back.

Now Jackson saw what Tom was talking about when he described Sands. Now… now he understood.

"I… I was in the basement, there’s no electricity down there… it’s dark. Made it hard to search. I swear, I didn’t hear anything," he said nervously, uncertain how psychotic Sands really was and what he was capable of.

Sands weighed Jackson’s voice carefully, and put it together with the rest of his short experience of the man. Sands tilted his head, looking for all the world as if he was studying Jackson with intense interest.

"Really, I didn’t hear a thing."

Sands heard Jackson shift his weight from one foot to the other, heard him take another step away from him, heard the shake in his voice when he answered.

Jackson was lying.

No, he hadn’t been part of a setup.

But yes, he had heard something.

Jackson had just failed to come up and check things out.

Coward.

It was Sands’ theory, one he decided to test. He raised the gun, and pointed it at Jackson’s head. "What good is it if a blind officer has a deaf partner, eh?" Sands asked, as if it was of no importance at all. He shrugged his shoulders and cocked the gun he’d just taken from the officer lying on the floor.

Jackson eyed the gun in fear and took another step back.

"Please, no! Don’t shoot me, please. I’m just your driver. I’m not used to this stuff…"

Sands held the gun steady as Jackson begged a bit, before smirking mischievously and returning the gun to his side. "That yellow streak down your back is the size of the Grand Canyon, Jackson."

Sands turned around and walked back to the man lying on the floor. He couldn’t understand why Tom had sent him Jackson, unless he thought the man had potential and just felt the needed to send him on the toughest assignment in town. Still, Sands had little faith left in Jackson Hoff. He tossed the unfamiliar gun he still held to the floor, out of the fallen man’s reach.

The man was starting to wake up and Sands knelt down beside him, the man’s own knife in his hand. Sands undid his belt buckle and slipped the belt from his waist in one quick motion. He used it to tie the officer’s hands tightly, giving it one last hard yank for good measure, then leaned back a bit, waiting as the officer came to.

A lit cigarette was soon dangling from Sands mouth, while the other officer realized his hands were bound. The man started to protest, and tried to get up, but was stilled by the cold metal of his own knife against his own throat.

"I don’t know what makes you dumb Officer, but it really seems to work," Sands drawled as he held the knife steady.

The officer’s voice cracked a bit as he replied, making Sands smile at the obviously weakened man. "You’re insane Sands."

Sands heard Jackson edge a little further into the room as he replied.

"If you want to be the best, you must lose your mind," Sands said, stressing the last three words in particular.

The man coughed and started to move, but Sands dug the knife in a little deeper, sure he must be drawing blood by now.

"You think the Company is going to find you useful the way you are now, Sands? Fucking forget it. They don’t care about you. You’re gone. You’re history. You’re nothing to them anymore!"

Sands jaw set firmly at the man’s words, rage coming to the surface fast, as his mind sped around in circles.

But it didn’t matter how much he tried to rein it in. Those words struck a chord in him, deep and hurtful. They were his fears voiced out loud, by someone who didn’t even fucking know him and who was at this very moment at his mercy.

"Ab absurdo."

The knife left the man’s throat. It rose above the wide-eyed officer and was quickly brought down hard, sinking into the man’s thigh. Sands twisted the blade, to ensure a nasty wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding easily, before yanking it back out. Hearing a satisfying scream of pain from the man Sands leaned in close to him and whispered, "I seem to be more useful than you are."

Sands sat up a little and held the bloody blade in front of his face, as if inspecting it. "You know, you really could poke someone’s eye out with this thing." Sands smiled wickedly. "However, out of the two of us, only one of us can be used to test the theory."

"You’re a fucking lunatic. You do know that, right?"

Sands wiped the blood off the knife blade onto the officer’s pants. "Well you know the saying, there’s no brilliance without a hint of madness. Now, tell me who sent you."

"The fuckin’ CIA. Who do you think?" The officer spat, as if Sands was a complete idiot.

Sands shook his head slowly.

"No, no, no, no, no, Mr. Officer, Sir," Sands said mockingly, "Who. As in what person, what individual, what superior, what hell spawn, what man or woman, what demented toad told you to come here and bring me back to the States dead or alive?" Sands ticked off the options in his creepily calm voice, tapping the officer on the chest with the knife blade as he did so.

At the man’s silence, Sands pulled away from him a bit. "Alrighty then, let me take a stab at it… oh, sorry. No pun intended of course. Officer Martin, perhaps?" Sands paused a moment, but the man stayed silent and Sands raised his eyebrows questioningly. "Am I right, or am I right?" At the man’s continued silence Sands smiled, knowing he’d hit home. "Of course I’m right." Sands said as he stood up and threw the knife into the ground, burying its blade deep into the wood floor out of the other officer’s reach.

Sands turned back towards the officer on the floor.

"Now, I’d love to stay here and kill you, but I’ve really got to skedaddle. I’m sure you understand. Absum," Sands said as he stood above the other officer, flicking his cigarette ash on top of him.

"Jackson, shall we?" Sands asked politely as he moved away. "Move from that spot officer and…" Sands positioned his hand as if holding a gun, then pulled the imaginary trigger. His real guns remained tucked away, though still within easy reach. "Bang, bang."

Turning around, Sands followed Jackson’s lead to the door, and sure enough, he heard the officer trying to get up just as he reached the threshold. Sands spun around on his heel, pulled out one of his guns, aimed and pulled the trigger. Not thinking twice about the man as he hit the floor again, Sands turned back around and left the house, making sure to shut the door firmly behind him.

~*~

Ab absurdo. - From the absurd.

Absum -I’m outta here.