The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller (25 page)

I opened my mouth, but the cold, thin air rasped in my throat. No words could do her sorrow justice. I pried my hand from hers. Put my arm around her and drew her down to my shoulder. Unable to cry. Unable to sob. Unable to grieve. She pressed herself into my chest. We two impotent monsters clung together in the cold and the dark, and waited for the light.

Seventeen

Across the lake on the island, a flame appeared, bulged bright in the midnight blackness. It paused, as though catching its breath in the thin mountain air, belched skyward at the stars.

Kate’s cold nose dented my neck. She gasped, pulled away. The rumbling bass of the explosion reached us, a growling thumping of deep white noise. Another explosion ripped free of its earthly moorings, then a third. We tensed, waiting for the rest of the symphony to bounce across the waveless waters.

They’ve killed him.

“I hope not,” Kate said, and I realized I’d spoken out loud.

I pushed myself up from the cold beach, my feet wallowing in the soft dry granules. I brushed my butt clean. “Better get over there.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said. And pulled me close.

“If they’ve killed Pitt—”

“Then he’s dead. There’s nothing you can do.”

“But if we can catch the DSU, whoever did it—”

“They will likely kill you too.”

I unhooked her fingers from my pants. “That’s the point,” I said.

“I’m sorry, what?” Her voice, wounded.

I sighed. “Look. I can’t go back to Lima. The Americans want to deport me. This stupid wild-goose chase trying to find Pitt, and all I get is a bunch of ashram do-gooder mumbo-jumbo. ‘End the guilt,’ my ass. And you.” I turned away. “It was stupid,” I said. “I know. You moved on. Of course you did.”

“Horse,” she said. “I—”

“Now let me have one of those AK-47s. Couple extra clips of ammunition, and I’ll go over there, see how many of the fuckers I can take with me.” I forced a grin. “Least I can do.”

The sand spurted under my heels. I clumped in hulking strides to the safety of the driftwood and the high water line. Her light feet danced behind me.

She said, “Horse.” She said, “Please.”

I called over my shoulder, “If I died right now, who would miss me?”

She staggered in the sand, a ship in a squall. I held out my arm and she grabbed it. “I would miss you, Horse.”

I avoided her gaze. “Nice of you to say,” I said as roughly as I could. “Now why don’t you go chant a mantra or something.”

“I’m not just saying it, Horse.” She hugged her arms to her chest.

I held her close to me. “Come with me if you want.”

“Horse…”

“We deserve to die. Your words.” I stood back, held out my hand to her. “Now’s your chance.”

She tucked her chin into her chest. The tears poured freely now. “I just don’t want them to hurt you.”

I kissed her cheek. I whispered, “Goodbye, my love.”

Down along the curve of the cove sat half a dozen fishing boats, outboard motors in the air. I had no idea how to use one, but a couple quick tugs on the engine cord ought to be enough. A pyramid of stacked AK-47s stood conveniently close to the boats. There was even an open crate full of ammunition. A monk with a rifle patrolled the far end of the beach.

A hand trickled across my vision. Cold fingers brushed my broken nose, my cheeks. My lips.
Sausages,
I thought. The fleshy butt of her palm pressed against my stubble. I bit it. Tasted blood.

“That’s new,” she said, nursing her wounded hand. “You learned that from someone else.” Her eyes like dinner plates, a feast for the hungry soul.

“Don’t toy with me,” I said. I aimed for softness but it came out a sneering curse.

Her eyes flickered across my face. Then her lips were on mine, her bleeding palm behind my neck, her tongue like liquid fire past my teeth, past my defenses, into my holy of holies, and I cried out my sorrow, pouring it down her throat, pumping a year’s worth of agony and soul-blackening disease into this old receptacle, newly provided for my salvation. We clung to each other, two heavily dressed lovers fumbling for maximum access and minimum exposure on a cold dark beach.

Purple streaks of light on my eyelids. Then orange and pink. A sudden whiteness. Fluttering fingers caressed my face. One word:

“Goodbye.”

I opened my eyes, squinted at the fierce sun on the horizon. A dozen of the worst hangovers of my life partied simultaneously between my ears. Going cold turkey on a diet like mine was no fun. Then I remembered.

I groped the sand next to me. A cold indentation stretched out parallel, a snow angel of the beach, a sand angel, the footprint of heaven.

An angel gone missing.

So. I had my answer. But not the one I had expected. And not the one I had hoped for.

“Hold on to me till morning and I’m yours,” she breathed in my ear.

“And if I fall asleep?”

“Then this will be goodbye. Forever.”

Another piece in the puzzle of the Incompetent Asshole Horace. I pulled my woolen hat lower over my ears. Each breath drained vital vapor from my lungs. I was thirsty. A thin denouement of smoke rose from Isla del Sol. I got to my feet, joints aching from the cold. In the sand, she had written,
Liliana.
Like I needed a reminder. I scrubbed it out with my boot, and ambled back toward the cave.

I had no hope left. But that was OK. I felt an amazing sense of freedom. I had nothing left to lose but my life—and what was that worth? Cockroach shit. I would go out in a blaze of glory. Give me something to gossip about with the other inmates of hell, anyway.

Monks jogged to and fro between the cave and the boats, racing through the tiny village pushing wheelbarrows. Others patrolled the shore, automatic rifles over their shoulders, hands shading their eyes, as though expecting unwanted visitors.

The volunteers in street clothes sat on the ground, backpacks and suitcases at their sides, singing “Kumbaya,” praising Gaia. Each fondled an orange-and-scarlet robe. A monk with a sledgehammer stood at the mouth of the cave, smashing the generator. Another chopped electrical cable into pieces with an axe. A third stood by with a pitchfork, filling a nearby wheelbarrow with rubbish before racing off through the village. In the distance an outboard motor roared. The boat darted a few hundred meters into the lake, dumped its load, then buzzed back to shore.

I barged my way past the monks into the mouth of the cave. I bent double, stumbling ahead in the dark, before crashing my skull into something hard.

The something hard swore.

“Seen Victor?” I asked.

“Inside. Take this.”

He pressed a flashlight against my chest. I switched it on, continued into the cave.

Headlamps on foreheads flickered around the cavern. Victor sat at his laptop in the center of the overarching dome. I strode across the smooth floor.

“Victor,” I shouted. My voice echoed in the chamber. The taste of his wife resounded in my nose.

“No need to shout,” he murmured, finger to his lips, studying the laptop display.

I dropped my palms on the desk, the flashlight skewing upward at my face, illuminating me in goblin shadow. “The fuck is going on? And where is Kate?”

He looked up. “We’re evacuating. What does it look like?”

“And Kate?” I insisted.

He looked back at the display. “Kate has gone to a safe place.”

Did he know about her and me, last night? She had said she suffered from insomnia. That they rarely slept together. Could he guess? I didn’t think so.

I snorted. “There are no safe places if the Americans want you dead.”

“Safer than here, anyway, Horace. Come with us if you like.”

“And then what?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re here to stop a war, right? What’s your next play?”

He shrugged. “Pitt was our last ‘play,’ as you put it. He was our secret weapon. We tried to negotiate. To keep what we have built here. We lost. Now there is only to retreat.”

“That’s it?” I said. “Are you serious? Fuck that. Give me a gun and a boat. I’ll be your one-man fucking army.”

He laughed. “A big change from last night, Horace. Are you sure you don’t prefer to just ‘let them kill each other,’ as you so eloquently put it?”

“There are worse ways to die than going out guns blazing. Any CIA left on that island, I’ll find them.”

He laughed again. “Which will be none. I know little about assassins, but I imagine they do not stick around for a long time after killing people.”

“So what, I should go hide in a hole somewhere with you?” I said. “So they can hunt me down and kill me?” A new thought occurred to me. A glimmer of—

“Besides,” I said, “how can you be sure Pitt’s dead?”

“Pitt has gone to Gaia. We shall mourn him later. Right now we have to get out of here, or they will kill us all.” He slapped the laptop shut, stowed it in a black vinyl case at his side.

“But how can you be sure? Maybe he was in the bathroom or something when the bomb went off. Maybe he’s wounded, and needs medical attention.”

“That’s noble of you, Horace. But Pitt has resources, as you know. If he’s still alive, and they haven’t captured him, he will make his presence known.”

The truth bubbled up, unbidden. “To see the body, then. Make sure he’s really dead.”

“Is that what this is all about?” Victor asked. He put his hand on my arm. “You don’t have to see the body to know he’s dead.”

“But how can you be sure?”

“You saw the size of that bomb, Horace,” he said. “There might not even be anything left of him to identify.”

He strode to the exit. I trotted after him. His headlamp darted from side to side, as though he expected the floor to be booby-trapped.

He was right, of course. But I couldn’t accept it. It drove me crazy. I had come all this way for nothing? Kate had said goodbye for good. What did that leave? I needed to tie off this loose end. What’s that word overeducated up-their-own-asses yuppie American women in SUVs use? Closure. I needed to find “closure.”

I rubbed my face with my fingers. They smelled like pussy juice. “I’ll just have to take that chance,” I said. “I have to know.”

Victor sidestepped around me and stooped to enter the tunnel. “And what are you going to do then? You find his body, assuming there’s anything to find, then what?”

I stooped over and followed him. “Hunt down the ones who did it. Take revenge.”

Victor spun on his heels, and I danced on tiptoe to avoid crashing into him. “Gaia is a jealous goddess, Horace. It is not for you to kill. Revenge is hers alone.”

He strode toward the sunlight at the end of the tunnel. I grabbed his elbow. We glared at each other from under our eyebrows.

“I have to see the body. Know that he is dead. Know that there is really no more hope.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. His face was swollen from yesterday. “There is always hope, Horace. Although what you hope for and what you need are sometimes different things.”

We surged out into the morning sun. I turned off my flashlight and gave it to him.

“I’m going,” I said. “With or without your permission.”

I broke into a run, passing wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of frayed orange electrical cable. A spare fishing boat lay beached at the end of the sand. A green fishing net stretched across it. I yanked the net from the boat, dug my toes into the sand and heaved. The boat slid into the lake, the freezing water soaking my boots for a second time. I helped myself to a spare AK-47, a box of ammunition, and jumped into the boat.

“Hey!” a monk carrying a rifle shouted at me.

I yanked the engine cable. Not as easy as it looked. The motor spluttered, but did not respond to my caresses.

The monk pointed his rifle at me. I yanked again, and a third time. The motor finally roared to life. I gripped the tiller. The boat shot ahead, nearly tumbling me into the lake. A burst of gunfire shredded the stillness. Splashes of water astern. I looked back. Victor stood next to the monk, one hand jamming the offending weapon skyward, the other hand held high, an unmoving salute. The monk shouldered the rifle, watched me for a long while.

Halfway to the island I beat my head against my palm. She had said so many things last night. So many things I had wanted to tell her—everything—but the hinges were rusty, the lock was broken, a crowbar was needed to reopen my heart.

“Ever think that we could try again?” I asked her. The truth was better than burning myself with cigarettes. More painful, and left a deeper scar.

“You can’t undo the past.”

I kissed her, drew her closer to me. “The hostel’s still there. We can have the life we dreamed of. You. Me. A family.”

She pushed me away. “I told you already. No.”

I sat up on my elbow. “Then what is Victor?”

“Victor?”

“Yes.”

She stretched out flat on the sand. “Victor is Victor. That’s all.”

“What does that mean?”

She was suddenly furious, beating her fists against me. “You could have come. You didn’t come. Why didn’t you come?” She beat against my forearms, but then I let them drop and her fists pounded my chest, my face, my shoulders. Her cold nose dripped snot and tears onto my neck. She fell, her face on my chest.

“So it’s my fault then,” I said.

“It’s not that.” She wiped her nose with her robe. “Victor is useful.”

“Well that’s a recommendation.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I think I do.”

She sat up and traced the lines of my face with frozen fingers.

“No,” she said at last. “You don’t. But that’s alright. I don’t want you to.” She bowed her head. “Not yet, anyway.”

I pulled her down to me. She lay her head on my shoulder.

“But you’ve found peace.”

“Yes,” she said, the tears dripping from her chin. “I’ve found peace.”

“You chant
om
and wear funny clothes and that helps, does it?”

She laughed. She never used to have such massive mood swings. “There are few things in this world I’ll miss, Horse. You’re one of them.”

I sat up next to her. “That’s a funny thing to say. You planning to exit stage left?”