The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller

by J. M. Porup

“But when is it enough?” she asked. She sat on her knees and faced me. “It’s like you said. We could freeze to death. Weeks from now the native salt traders with their llamas will come across this jeep with three human popsicles inside. Right now could be all we have.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “So what do we do about it?”

  She straddled me, her crotch warm against my thigh. Put her arms around me. Touched her cold nose to mine. “Maybe death is a reminder for us to live.”

  She inhaled my tongue. She was the best kisser I had ever met. My cock throbbed in my pants. Guilt twisted my guts. I pushed her away.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “What about Kate?”

  She ground herself against my leg. “What about her?”

  Victor could hear everything. If we survived, he would tell Kate about it. But did it matter? Kate had made her position clear. Carrying a torch for a woman, much less an American woman, was a fool’s errand. And if we froze to death here in the Salar, it wouldn’t make any difference anyway.

  “Nothing,” I said, and pulled her down on the seat next to me.

  Afterward, neither of us could sleep. Aurora took out her camera and showed me pictures.

  Sven and me in Buenos Aires. Sven and me in Rio de Janeiro. Sven and me in Bogotá. Sven and me in bed. Oops. She grinned and bit a fingernail. Fast-forwarded through a few shots.

  He was a tall, blond Swede. In each successive photo his hair grew longer. Didn’t want to cut his hair, she explained.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  The motorcyclist filled the frame.

  “I’d forgotten,” she said. “Motorcycle dude. Yeah.”

  I took the camera from her hands. Zoomed in. The man sat astride the bike, face hidden beneath the smoked visor. Yellow hair trickled from underneath the helmet. At the throat, partly obscured by the leather jacket, the point of a shark tooth stabbed upward.

  “Crap,” I said.

  “What?” She pressed her breasts against my shoulder.

  “I didn’t know better, I’d say this was Pitt.”

  Dawn crept over the mountains. My fingers and toes tingled with the cold. Victor got out of the car and started doing jumping jacks. Frozen air blasted us through the open door. I shook Aurora awake.

  “Sven honey, not yet, I’m so tired.”

  “Just me, I’m afraid.”

  She sat up, looked around her. Kissed me on the lips. She put her arms around my neck and squeezed me tight. Trembled. Her breath was hot on my neck. She smacked her lips, licking away tears.

  “Pawn to Queen Six,” Victor muttered outside. “Right on schedule.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  His mutter grew into a shout. “Ahoy! Over here!”

  Aurora and I pushed each other away, jumped out of opposite sides of the vehicle. Another jeep moved on the distant horizon, heading north, back to La Paz. We joined Victor in his desperate calisthenics, throwing our hands and feet in the air. Victor climbed on top of our jeep and waved his handkerchief.

  “We’re off the tourist track,” I said. “They’ll never see us.”

  “Victor!” Aurora said. “What about your gun?”

  “Shit,” he said, “you’re right.” He fumbled under his jacket, drew his six-shooter. Pointed it at the heavens. Bang. Nothing. Emptied the cylinder, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. The jeep continued to move across the horizon, not getting any bigger. He took the box of ammunition from his jacket pocket. He slid new bullets into the weapon. His fingers were obviously stiff.

  “What about the flare gun?” I said.

  They both said, “What flare gun?”

  “This flare gun,” I said. I drew the heavy-caliber pistol from my jacket, put my finger in my ear and pulled the trigger.

  A flare hissed skyward and exploded. Flashing bits of metal cascaded down in a haze of red smoke. The jeep slowed, turned in profile. Was it coming toward us, or going away?

  I reloaded the two spares, fired them both, until the sky lit up like a battle zone. Our jumping jacks became hysterical, raw recruits on speed.

  Panting, I rested my hands on my knees to catch my breath, the cold, thin air stabbing my lungs. The jeep was bigger than before. I sat on the fender, rubbed my ungloved hands together.

  “Manuel gave you flares,” Victor said. He climbed down off the roof. “Good one.”

  “Looks like he sabotaged the jeep, but didn’t want us to die,” I said.

  Victor frowned. “Interesting move.”

  We waited for the jeep to arrive. Victor put the gun away. We were out of breath, but warmed by the exercise. The horizon on the Salar is as far away as it is at sea. It took time for the jeep to reach us. As it got closer, I could tell from the expensive foreign-made backpacks strapped to the roof it was a tourist jeep. It slowed to a stop, tires crunching on the salt.

  The driver lowered the window. “You alright there, mate?” he called in a New Zealand accent.

  Aurora whooped. “We are very glad to see you!”

  “Broke down last night,” I said. “Any idea how to fix an engine?”

  He grunted and swung open his door. “Let’s have us a look-see, now, eh?”

  The eight tourists in the back stared at us. Fear? Or boredom? Maybe they were just cold. They got out and walked around, stretching, beating their arms with their mittened hands. Four young backpackers chattering in Dutch amused themselves by taking humorous photos. A white-haired couple got carefully from the jeep, clucking at each other in French, as though afraid any sudden move might break a hip. Two overweight Japanese men clambered from the back, lit cigarettes.

  The tour guide bent over the engine block. “The bloody hell happened to your face, mate?” he demanded of Victor.

  “Fell down some stairs.”

  “Stairs?” The guide straightened, looked around us at the vast emptiness of the Salar. He winked. “Missus, eh? Say no more.”

  The verdict was soon in coming. “You’ve had some bloody gremlins at work here, mate. Mucked up the works big time.”

  Victor picked up the wrench, looked over the man’s shoulder. He pointed the tool at the engine. “It looks as though someone deliberately damaged the—the thing here. How you say in English?”

  The guide said, “Who rented you this piece of shit, anyway?”

  Those were his last words. Victor smashed the wrench across the back of the man’s head. The guide fell to his knees, slid across the grill of the jeep and landed face down on the salt.

  A bellowing bull sounded her charge. The white-haired Frenchwoman pounded her chest with her fists, expelling a primal growl of surprise and anger.

  I knelt down to where the man lay. Put my fingers to his neck. “He’s dead.” I looked at Victor. “You killed him.”

  “I know. Queen takes pawn.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” I said. “This isn’t a game, man. This is real life.”

  He shrugged. “We need the jeep.”

  “You’re going to tell me he was CIA, too?”

  Aurora beat her fists against Victor’s back. “You couldn’t have just asked him for it?”

  The tourists approached us in a herd, a stampede of Gore-Tex and Lycra. The two Japanese men broke off and headed for their jeep.

  Victor’s face was grim. “You didn’t see the pile of bodies at the ashram?”

  “So this is what, revenge?” she said. “Murdering other innocent people evens the score?”

  The Japanese flicked their half-finished cigarettes onto the salt. The tourists shuffled toward us, eyeing the wrench still in Victor’s hand. They were drawn to him by some savage impulse that overwhelmed their fear.

  “You keel zees man?” The French bull’s mate squeaked.

  The Japanese succeeded in starting the jeep. They slammed the doors, fastened their seatbelts.

  “We need your jeep,” Victor said. “Matter of national security.”

  “Well maybe if you hadn’t killed their fuckin
g guide!” Aurora shouted.

  The emergency handbrake shrieked. The other jeep rolled forward, pointing away from us. It accelerated. I ran after it, shouting the only Japanese I knew: “Konichi wa! Konichi wa!”

  The jeep did not slow. It turned in a wide circle, then aimed itself at us. I stood in its path. It did not swerve. I jumped out of the way. The Japanese driver rammed it into the side of our jeep, smashing the windows, grinding the front wheels over the still-warm corpse of the Kiwi guide. The driver reversed.

  I ran to his window, jogged along beside him. “You have to help us. Please!”

  His companion in the passenger seat leaned across the steering wheel. “You kill friend. Why?”

  Before I could reply, a shot rang out. Aurora held Victor’s six-shooter in her hand. She pointed it at Victor’s chest.

  The Japanese driver braked to a stop. “Ah, so.”

  Aurora slammed the hood shut, climbed on top of our now smashed-up jeep. She kept the gun aimed at Victor. “I want you all to hear this,” she shouted in Spanish. “Three days ago, my boyfriend was murdered. This guy’s best friend—” a finger pointed at me, “—was murdered too.” She pointed at Victor. “Almost fifty people he lived with at a Buddhist ashram were massacred. On the shores of Lake Titicaca. And you want to know who did it?”

  The tourists shivered in the cold. A few shook their heads.

  “The CIA! And you know why?”

  “No idea,” one of the Dutch backpackers said.

  “They want to start a war. Between Bolivia and Chile and Peru. And if we don’t make it to the Anglo-Dutch lithium mine today, before noon, it will be too late. More innocent people will die.”

  A backpacker in a woolen hat with ear flaps emblazoned with llamas cupped his hands to his mouth. “Why did your friend kill our guide?”

  Aurora’s shoulders sagged. She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s tired. Maybe he’s stressed. Maybe he thought you were following us.”

  “We’ve been here on the Salar freezing our ass off for the last five nights!” objected a Dutch girl with freckles the size of maple leaves.

  “And what an ass it is, too,” her boyfriend cooed in her ear. She elbowed him in the stomach.

  Victor held out his hands, empty. He bowed his head. Tears trickled down his cheeks. “I am so sorry,” he said. He fell to his knees.

  Aurora shouted, “We need to stop the war. But we need your help. Are you with us?” She punched the air with her fist. “Will you let us have your jeep?”

  The herd crossed its arms and lowered its collective head. They huddled, shoulders shifting from side to side. Finally the French bull-woman pranced forward.

  “Only if we come with you,” she announced in halting Spanish.

  The others frowned their approval. Heads nodded. Aurora lowered her voice, asked me, “Can we all fit in one jeep?”

  “Sure,” said the Dutchman in the ear flaps. “It’ll be a squeeze, but we’ve managed OK so far. Another day or two isn’t going to kill us.”

  We felt like circus clowns piling into a Volkswagen bug. Concerns like seatbelts and who was pinching whose ass were quickly forgotten. We strapped the Kiwi guide’s body to the roof. After a few kilometers we realized we were attracting the local bird life, and we covered the corpse with a blue tarp. At one point, Victor asked for his revolver back. Aurora kept it in her lap, her finger on the trigger.

  “Reckon I’ll hold on to it for now,” she said.

  The sun had crept over the mountaintops when we saw them.

  “Hey, cool!” someone cried out, rolling down a window. “Tanks!”

  The others fumbled with their cameras. Everyone turned in their seats, trying to get a clear shot.

  I was driving. I glanced out the window. Resisted the urge to say, “You’re welcome.” The tanks were headed southwest, toward the border with Chile. Same as we were. They stretched in a line on the horizon, spaced at intervals, kilometers of hard green metal squeaking and clanking and grinding their way toward the mine.

  Grinding their way toward us.

  “We’re too late,” Victor said.

  The Dutchman draped his arms over the front seat, woolen hat bouncing against the roof. “You mean the war has already started?”

  “Without us?” cried his girlfriend.

  I hunched over the steering wheel. “Nowhere else to go but forward.”

  The tanks got bigger. A whistling noise overhead. An explosion splattered the windshield with salt. I swerved to avoid the crater.

  “Not funny,” a Japanese guy said. In the rear-view mirror I saw him wave his hand in front of his face, point to his companion’s crotch. The smell of shit filled the enclosed space. The others rolled down their windows.

  I pressed the pedal to the floor. The humming of the tires on the even salt flat filled the jeep with a loud high-pitched whine. The tanks changed course, converging on our position.

  “What’s the top speed on one of those things?” I asked.

  “No idea!” the Dutchman shouted.

  Aurora peered at the bouncing speedometer. “We’re doing one fifty,” she said. “No way they’re going to catch us.”

  One fifty… I translated in my head. Ninety miles an hour or so. Fast enough.

  “You make false assumption!” squeaked the male appendage of the French bull-woman.

  “What is that?”

  “That they want us alive!”

  We were silent after that. I gripped the steering wheel tight. Tank shells blasted salt into the air all around us. For the second time in two days, bullets the size of my wrist were trying to kill me. I thought about Victor’s ploy, random unpredictable speeds. Fuck that. I held the pedal to the floor.

  The line of tanks curved, gun turrets pointed at us, metal treads patiently crunching their salty path toward the border. Salt splashed the windshield again. I swerved violently, throwing my passengers to one side.

  “How we doing?” I shouted.

  Victor tapped me on the knee. “Stop looking so worried,” he said.

  “How’s that?” I said.

  “They’re Bolivian socialists,” he said. “They’re incompetent. They couldn’t hit the side of a barn.”

  “They hit a fucking barn yesterday, dude!”

  Victor shrugged, sat back in his seat.

  His nonchalance proved well-founded. We drew away from our pursuers. The tanks were soon specks again on the horizon, and the explosions ended.

  “How much farther?” I shouted over the noise of the freezing wind blowing in the window.

  “Not far,” Victor said. “Another hundred clicks or so.”

  I struggled to keep the steering wheel straight. “What time is it now?”

  He pushed back his sleeve. “Eleven o’clock.”

  “Shit.”

  We weren’t going to make it.

  The sun was high in the sky when we spotted the mine in the distance. My watch read twelve noon exactly. We were late—but there was no smoke, no sign of bomb damage. My spirits lifted.

  “Get your cell phone out,” I called to Victor. “And…action!”

  He nodded grimly and began recording, then swore.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “They’re jamming the signal. I won’t be able to upload the video from here.”

  “Then we’ll just have to hand-deliver it, won’t we?”

  We stopped the jeep for a herd piss. The Frenchies loaned me their bird-watching binoculars.

  The sign at the gate read: Anglo-Dutch Mining, Ltd., Authorized Personnel Only. Beyond the gate, the mine itself covered several hectares. It was all just as Pitt had once described it. Pumping station, to suck the lithium brine from the aquifers beneath the Salar. Drying pools, the only economical way of concentrating the lithium salt. Refining equipment, to filter the impurities. Storage tanks, to hold the unstable finished product.

  Aurora stood on tiptoe, rested her chin on my shoulder. “We made it.”

&nbs
p; “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Understand what?” She laughed. “How we made it this far?”

  “No,” I said. “How come the mine is still intact.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I held my wrist to my chin so she could read my watch. “We’re late. It’s still here.”

  “But that’s great news,” she said. “Let’s poke around, like Victor said. Maybe we can find some proof of American involvement. Now give to me, please.”

  I unlooped the binoculars from my neck. At that moment, an explosion of light blinded me. I closed my eyes. It was like ten thousand suns going nova right in front of my face.

  “Don’t look,” I shouted. “Turn around! Cover your eyes!”

  The sound of the explosion reached us a moment later, the moan of metal tendons and hydraulic muscles torn free of concrete bones, the flesh of the operation returned to the dust from which it came.

  The fierce light continued to splay itself against my eyelids. Even with my back to the mine, my hands over my eyes, I could still see it. Then I understood.

  Mix lithium with water. Pure boom, Pitt had laughed. The savior of the world is an explosive device.

  There had been no bomb, no booby trap. Someone had sabotaged the pumping station. Pump water into storage tanks—

  Boom.

  After many minutes, the hissing sound dissipated. I opened my eyes. For a moment I thought I was blind. It was still afternoon. How come I could see nothing?

  I blinked. Slowly my eyes adjusted. “Everyone OK?” I asked. “No one lose an eyeball?”

  A blurry figure swayed in my vision. Victor. His arm held out. Finger extended. I squinted. What was he pointing at?

  The black blob grew outlines. An SUV. Four men in camouflage pointed guns at us. Goggles hid their eyes. The dying glow of the lithium explosion flickered off their brown faces. To one side: two more jeeps, eight more men. Behind us, another pair of SUVs. Five glossy black vehicles in total, showroom new. Guns all aimed at us.

  At me.

  “End of the line, folks,” I called out. “Thank you for riding with us. Remember to check under your seat for any personal belongings.” I put my hands in the air. “Not that you’ll need them, where we’re going.”