“You know, I never liked the saying, so close yet so far. It always felt so cliché, so tired and boring. I suppose now, in this moment, you might think it fits. Only yards away from your plane, everyone safe, your escape made easy and painless…so close…but you were never really close. You were never going to get away. Never going to leave this country. You were born here…Arturo…and you will die here.”
The name…Arturo…it sends a shiver down Banks’s spine. He hasn’t heard it in years. He may have a house here, returning each year for a visit to his home country, but he’s never been back as Arturo. He’s never visited family, he has no childhood friends, he has no ties to the country other than the smell of the air, the taste of the food, and the feeling you can only get from digging your toes into the same sand you did as a kid. No one from his time growing up in Costa Rica has seen or heard from him in years, and yet this man working for the Reyes cartel seems to know exactly who he is.
The look on Banks’s face, the mix of fear and confusion, gives Vargas a rush. If he didn’t know any better, he might have thought he just did a bump of coke. Banks still doesn’t recognize him, and he can’t wait for the realization to hit. When it does, when his eyes focus and his mind makes the connection, when the blood drains from his face, that’s when he’ll do it. That’s when he’ll strike.
“You know, I knew I recognized you at the symphony. I knew it, but I couldn’t place your face. It was eating at me, gnawing at me how I knew this man, this assassin, until one moment it just clicked. I might have said it before, but now it’s really true, I know exactly who you are.”
“And who are you?” Banks asks.
“Just a boy on a fence, waiting for his neighbor to come out and play.”
That did it. That worked. The eyes recognize, the mind makes the connection, and the coloring fades from Banks’s face.
“Well Arturo,” Vargas says, as one of his men opens the back door, “are you going to come out and play?”
Amber looks back at Banks, wondering what the hell is going on. Wondering why this man is calling him Arturo? Is that his first name? Everyone only ever calls him Banks. And why, after all they’ve been through, all the danger, all the near death moments, is this the first time she’s seen Banks like this. His face is pale, like he’s seen a ghost. His eyes are sunken, only glazed shells of their previous selves. That sparkle, that glint of cockiness, that half smile that makes you feel like he knows something you don’t, it’s all gone. He looks up from the back seat, at the man standing outside the car. He looks so small, like a child peering up at a monster. He doesn’t move. Maybe he can’t. Fear has frozen him in place.
Amber wants to reach out and grab him. Hold him in her arms, tell him everything is going to be okay. She wants to pull him away from this terror, bring him back to her, back to reality. She reaches forward, extending her arms to Banks, but before she can touch him, before she can embrace him, she feels the tug of her hair.
“I said come out and play!” Vargas yells, yanking Amber from the car and throwing her on the ground.
She turns, looking up at the man, but he doesn’t look at her. His eyes stare at Banks, unflinching and unyielding, but Banks doesn’t move. He’s still frozen in place, the fear only growing, and him only shrinking. Vargas levels his gun at Amber.
“Get. Out,” he says, his voice low and serious enough that Amber is sure he won’t ask again.
Vargas cocks the gun, and the sound seems to snap Banks to action. In a moment he’s out of the car. He may have been snapped out of his frozen moment of terror, but Banks isn’t back. He isn’t himself. His eyes are still dark and far away. His body stands, almost awkwardly, like he’s a completely different person. His shoulders are a little slumped, his hands fidgety, and his eyes dart around, rather than being locked on his target like they usually are.
“Thank you.”
There’s a slight smile on Vargas’s face. That hint of a grin that the man is excited, and it turns Amber’s stomach to think why.
“This hardly seems fair,” he says, gesturing to the small army surrounding them. “How about we change the odds? Play a little game. What do you say? For old time’s sake?”
Two of Vargas’s men walk over. One to Banks and one to Vargas. Each holds out a closed fist, palm up.
“What is this?” Banks asks, looking from the closed hand in front of him, up to Vargas, who’s almost giddy with excitement.
“Guerra de Semillas,” he says, as the two men open their hands, revealing three castor bean pods in each.
Instantly Banks feels a sting in his back. The memory, the feeling, the fear, it’s all there. The quarter-sized balls with spikes sticking out on all sides send him back to his childhood, back to a time he never wanted to remember. The earthy smell, though mild, attacks him with flashbacks. Vargas is no longer a grown man, no longer balding, his face no longer riddled with stress lines. In his place stands a teen, matured past his age, with a smile just at the thought of what he was about to do. Banks looks down, he’s shrunk. He’s no longer the muscular confident adult he’s grown into. Instead, pigeon-toed, shoulders slumped, and arms as scrawny as they come, Arturo stands, head down, eyes diverted.
“You know the rules,” the teen, already growing a small mustache, says.
Vargas reaches forward and grabs his three bean pods. Banks says nothing, only shaking his head no. His whole demeanor is different. He’s not the man Amber met two weeks ago, and he’s certainly not the man she’s fallen for. She may not understand the game, she may not understand his fear of it, but she does understand the implications. He’ll be playing for their lives.
“Three pods,” Vargas says. “Beat me, and you’re free.”
Banks squints at the man, unsure, but quickly understands. He looks down at the three pods, knowing what they represent, but knowing he has no choice but to accept. This way they at least have a shot, even if it is a small one. He knows he’s not the same little kid he was the last time he played, but he can’t help but feel nothing has changed. The man in front of him smiles with confidence. He’s the devil, the monster underneath Banks’s bed, but he’ll honor the game. Everyone honors the game. Guerra de Semillas stands above all else.
Slowly Banks reaches for the small balls in the outstretched hand. The pain in his shoulder where he was speared by El Bandido still aches, but he’s lucky it’s his left and not his throwing arm. He takes the pods, feeling the familiar scratch of the spikes and breaking one under the weight of his thumb. They are exactly as he remembers. Hard, yet not so hard they would do any more damage than a stinging welt. But in this case, like others before, they represent so much more. The pain of being hit by one of these will be unbearable.
“Ready?” Vargas asks, a greedy smile spreading across his face.
Banks gives a small nod, but just as he pulls a single pod from the bunch, he feels the all too familiar sting. The small ball falls from his right hand, never even given a chance to throw. He looks down in disbelief. Slowly he reaches up, pulling his shirt collar down, and revealing a red welt already rising on his chest. He’s been hit.
In a split second, Vargas had hit him. He wants to protest, wants to argue that it wasn’t fair, that he wasn’t ready…but he nodded. He confirmed his readiness. It’s not Vargas’s fault he’s fast, that he took the shot instantly. Banks had assumed there would be a showdown, a long pause of staring, of fake throws. That’s how the game is usually played. You catch someone off balance, catch them as they steady themselves after trying to dodge a throw. Instead, Vargas had simply fired the moment the game began…and it had worked.
Banks can’t believe it. He can’t believe this is how it ends. All these years, all that he’s done, all that he’s risked and survived, only to be taken out by a bean pod thrown by his childhood bully. It seems unbelievable, and yet, as he falls to his knees, head buried in failure, he knows it’s true.
“It’s okay.” The words are spoken soft and close.
Banks feels his head being lifted. He feels the hands of the woman he loves raising his eyes to hers. The green is mesmerizing, somehow both light and dark at the same time. Somehow she expresses both grief and determination at the same time. Somehow she finds the exact look to make Banks feel comforted and driven like he’s never felt before. He has a purpose, he’s reminded. He has something to fight for. He has a need to win that far outshines Vargas’s. He’s not just playing for life, he’s playing for a future. One that means so much more to him than life.
“You can do this,” Amber says, as she picks up Banks’s dropped pod. “You can win, I know you can.”
Banks, nods, determination setting in.
“And know, that no matter what, no matter the outcome, nothing changes. You’ll still have me, forever at your side.”
The words are sweet. In a different moment, in a different setting, the words would mean a lot to him. Now, however, in this moment, in this setting, they mean far more. Forever at his side. It sounds like a good thing. It sounds like everything he could ever want. But the words, though meant to be comforting, sweet, and romantic, serve more as a threat. Her forever at his side, is not what he wants.
He rises, ignoring the pod held out in her open hand, and slipping one of his remaining two pods into his right hand.
“Ready?” Banks asks, his eyes still locked on Amber as she slowly steps away.
Vargas smiles. This will be even easier than he thought. Banks isn’t even looking at him.
“Sí,” he says, wheeling his arm back and firing the second of his pods.
The moment is quick, passing in a blink. Banks bends his body. His abdomen sticking out left as his arm flies out right. Sidearm the pod is released. Just as Vargas’s throw passes by him, his own strikes, hitting Vargas directly in the stomach before he can even react.
Two cheers erupt, echoing through the hangar. Amber continues to yell in triumph, as Vargas’s eyes dart to the car and Tico clasps his hand over his mouth. The impulse, the excitement, it got him, but he can’t let that show. He may have done what they asked, what they forced him to do, but they could still kill him. Or worse, they could follow through on their threat.
Vargas turns back and Banks is staring at him. The look in the man’s eyes is different. His jaw is set and more pronounced. There’s no doubt, no hesitation, no fear, causing the first moment of doubt in himself. As a kid, he never lost at Guerra de Semillas. That could have been because he’s the greatest the game has ever seen. Or it could be because he only targeted the vulnerable. When the game began, he still saw Banks as Arturo. A small, weak kid, with no self-esteem and no reason to have any. Now, staring down at the man across from him, he sees a master assassin. He sees Banks.
“Ready?” Banks asks again, the lone ball tightly gripped in his right hand.
Vargas shakes the thought from his head. Setting his feet and sliding the pod into his fingers, he reminds himself who he is, what he’s done, and what he’s playing for. His life. If he loses, he’ll honor the deal. He’ll let them go, and when El Bandido finds out, she’ll kill him. He’ll run, of course, taking on the Reyes cartel is impossible. He may survive a while, but eventually, they’ll find him. They have eyes and ears everywhere.
As he responds, “yes,” he reminds himself Banks is not the only man playing for his life.
A moment passes, then another, and another. Neither man throws their final pod. Neither man moves. Eyes locked, they wait, neither man wanting to reveal their cards, or make a deadly mistake. The hangar, the men with guns, Tico, Amber, even Vargas, they all fade away. The game may be for so much more, but for the moment, for Banks, it is about himself. It’s about his childhood. It’s about the life he ran away from. He’s spent his life pushing, grinding, and building. Working on himself to become something more, has been his life. He’s only an assassin because when he ran away, he vowed to become the opposite of who he was. Small, weak, looked down upon as nothing of value, he was picked on his whole childhood, and do you know who isn’t picked on, who isn’t small or weak…those who bully, those who stand above others. His life changed from that moment, progressing ever forward, ever higher in stature, until one day he found his calling. Assassin. It was never something he wanted to do. It was only something he had to do.
Now, if he can beat Vargas, if he can win this game, maybe he can shed that feeling of not being enough, maybe he can conquer the demons that have pushed him to kill…maybe he can finally find rest.
The game can’t continue, it can’t run forever, and Banks knows he must make his move. His arm rears back, his leg kicks up, and both lunge forward. His hand opens and Vargas reacts. The dodge is quick, hard, and works. Had Banks thrown the pod, it would have missed. Now, he stands, fully outstretched, committed to the fake and vulnerable. Vargas sees his opportunity and quickly moves to strike. His arm pulls back to fire, but as it comes forward, as he commits to the throw, he sees Banks’s left arm moving toward him. His hand opens and out flies the pod. Already in his throwing motion, he can’t adjust, he can’t spin, duck or jump, he can only watch as the pod strikes him. The tiny spikes break against his body, stinging his skin. His motion finishes and he throws, the pod strikes Banks, but it’s too late. He’s already lost.