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

by J. M. Porup

  Three gunshots in succession smashed against the opposite face of the rock.

  “It’s me!” I shouted again. “Horace! Horse! You know.” I felt like an idiot. “Me!”

  The voice came clear, if faint, from several hundred meters up the mountain. “What do you want?”

  “I don’t want you to die!” I shouted through the bullhorn. “Why don’t you come down here? We’ll talk about this!”

  There was a long pause. I looked at Ambo. He looked at me. The captain put his hands on his hips and looked at both of us.

  The voice floated down the mountain, the voice of heaven taunting those in hell. “Why don’t you come up here?”

  Ambo pursed his lips. Shook his head. The captain raised his eyebrows.

  “Ex-wife,” I said.

  The captain whistled. “Were my ex-wife, I sure as hell wouldn’t go up there.”

  A burning cigarette floated at my ear. Ambo leaned heavily on my shoulder. He smelled like smoke and antiseptic and old man. “Can’t let you go up there, son.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You’re our secret weapon. She kills you, we got nothing on Pitt. No one to talk to him.” He patted my shoulder. “Stakes are too high. You understand?”

  He pointed his chin at the captain and lifted it an inch, and I knew that slight movement was as sure a death sentence for Kate as any judge and jury could provide. The captain spoke in rapid-fire Spanish to the Bolivian sergeant at his side. I couldn’t catch what was being said. But I could guess.

  I vaulted a prostrate Bolivian soldier and ran up the hill.

  “Goddammit!” the captain swore.

  “Horace!” Ambo called out. “Horse, please!”

  I clambered across the rocks. A long string of oaths followed me. “Fuck’s sake, man!” Ambo shouted. “Don’t you realize what you’re doing, what you’re risking?”

  Where was Kate hiding? I headed uphill and toward the right, where it seemed I had last heard her voice.

  “Come back, you asshole!” the captain cursed. “She’s going to kill you, can’t you see that?”

  Another shot rang out. Something tugged at the skin on my left bicep. I reached up, found my hand covered in blood. I flexed the muscle. Just a graze. Another shot splintered a shard from a nearby boulder.

  I stopped running, pulled my shirt out of my pants and lifted my sweater to expose my ribs, then rotated in a full circle, a fashion model exposing his unarmed navel to a freezing, high-altitude runway. I let my sweater drop and held up my hands, fingers spread wide, and walked toward the source of the gunshots.

  “Don’t come any closer!”

  I stopped. Her voice came from nearby. I scanned the rocks, looking for movement. She peeked from behind a boulder, her rifle pointed at me.

  I took another step. “Let me come and talk.”

  Bullets skittered and pinged off the rock I was standing on.

  “I know how you feel!” I shouted.

  “You know nothing how I feel!”

  “I know because I feel the same.” The cry died in my throat, came out more like a moan.

  “You always were a touchy-feeling bastard!”

  There was a silence. I took another step.

  “Please!” she shouted. “Tell me about your feelings!”

  My hands out, arms high in the sky, Moses commanding the waters of her heart to part, I, the jury, delivered the verdict:

  “Guilty!”

  She withdrew behind the boulder. Long seconds passed. The frozen wind whipped through my sweater. I took another step.

  I pounded my fists against my chest. “Guilty!” I shouted again. “I am scum!” My voice screeched high, verging on falsetto. “Scum! And you know what?” I shrieked at the rocks, not caring who heard. “I deserve to die! I do! Me!”

  A sniffle. In the distance. I stepped forward. No response. Her sobbing grew louder. I put one foot in front of the other, climbing toward her.

  Twenty meters.

  Ten.

  Five.

  Her head popped up from behind the rock, her face red and inflamed, tears glinting on her cheeks. She pointed the rifle at my chest. “We all deserve to die.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We do.”

  “I mean all of us. The world. The human race. This infection that’s destroying Gaia.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not their fault.”

  “Isn’t it? You said so yourself.”

  “I did. That’s true.”

  She sniffled again. I doubted my ears at first. In all the time we’d been together I had never seen her cry. Not even at our loss. She had been dry, impossibly dry, unbelievably dry for a woman who’d just lost her child.

  I took another step. She stopped me with a movement of the gun. “What changed your mind?” she asked.

  I hesitated, but told the truth. “I didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I let my shoulders droop and hung my head. “I am tired, Kate. I am so fucking tired.”

  “Tired? Of what?” The outrage mounted in her throat. “Of grieving for our child?”

  “Of everything,” I said.

  She stood, exposing herself from waist up to the snipers below.

  “Are you crazy?” I said. “Get down!”

  “Fuck them,” she said. “And fuck you!” The rifle shook in her hands. “We are poison! Don’t you understand that?”

  “You want to shoot me?” I said. “Go ahead.”

  She sighted down the barrel at my heart. Her finger pulled back on the trigger. I closed my eyes, prepared for impact. I hoped her aim was better than the captain suggested. How long would it take to die? An abrupt thought: was there an afterlife? What if I was wrong? I discarded the notion but it lingered, an unwelcome fungus in the dark corners of my brain.

  It happened so fast, I couldn’t believe there was no pain. A gunshot exploded in front of me. I patted my torso for wounds, but found none. A firecracker went off behind me, and I opened my eyes. Kate stood there with her mouth open. The gun dropped from her hands with a clatter, and she disappeared behind the boulder.

  I ran to her. She lay draped across a rock, her back arched against the smooth stone, her face contemplating the sky. She gasped for breath. Clutched her black robe, now sticky and wet.

  She lifted her eyes. “Horse.”

  “Here, babe.” I squeezed her hand. Memories of the day she gave birth, her hand in mine. She hadn’t cried then either. Now her tears came in rivers, a lifetime’s supply demanding to be shed.

  She said, “They killed me, Horace.”

  “No,” I said, and stroked her hair. “You killed yourself.”

  She looked up at me, her eyes so green, flickering as they studied mine. She touched my face, and I realized that my cheeks were dry. She smiled. Her lips fluttered. She laughed, went rigid with the pain.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  She looked at the sky. “Will we see each other again, do you think? Will we see,” and she coughed up blood, “will we see Lili?”

  I clasped her hand to my chest. “Lili is gone,” I said, “and we have burned in hell for long enough.” I kissed her bare knuckles. “Go and find your peace.”

  Her fingertips were icy rose petals on my cheek. Her hand quivered with the effort. “Peace,” she said. “I—”

  But I will never know what she wanted to tell me. Her hand fell back and her body convulsed and the life went out of her, a rasping breath from deep inside her lungs, and she was still, a smile on her face, perhaps the first real smile she’d had in years.

  And for the first time since our daughter died, I wept.

  A man is not supposed to cry. A man should be hard, should endure, should be a rock, a stoic who soldiers on no matter what the cost.

  But I was none of those things. I had never been. I never would be. I was a failure of a man.

  As I looked down at her automatic rifle and wondered if my toe would reach, I felt a hand on my shoulder, lips on my
cheek. Kate’s ghost brushed past me, a final peck on my wet cheek before beginning her eternal, unhappy wanderings. I jumped to my feet, slammed my shoulder into a headful of blonde hair.

  Aurora stood there, her hand to her nose, blood trickling down her upper lip.

  “Goddammit,” I said. “I can’t fucking do anything right, can I.”

  She put her arms around me and held me tight. She pressed her face to my neck. Her blood dripped into my shirt. My arms stuck out straight like some fucking robot. I bent my elbows at right angles, and felt her spine under my fingertips. Her blonde hair tickled my face.

  “Hush now,” she said. She rocked me from side to side. “Shh.”

  Time took pity on us, and galaxies gave birth and died in the time we stood there. At last, in a distant, faraway land I heard footsteps approaching. They stopped. A gun clacked against the rocks. Knees creaked. Coins jingled. I took a long shuddering breath, and pulled away.

  The captain squatted over Kate’s body. Checked her pulse. Took out two Bolivian coins and laid them over her eyes, crossed her arms over her chest. He kept his eyes on the ground. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

  I think he actually meant it.

  I turned to Aurora. She’d unbraided her hair. Curled it, even. Put on fresh makeup.

  “How—” I said, but my mouth refused to work. “How did you—”

  She smiled, wiped tears and blood from my neck. “How did I get here?”

  She jerked her thumb sideways. Ambo stood there, leaning against a rock, studying the snowcapped crater in the distance. Another SUV was parked below.

  “One more chore before we’re done,” he said, not to us, but to the clouds that encircled the mountaintop.

  “Then we can rest,” Aurora said.

  Ambo lowered his head. “One way or another.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  The shale slipped underfoot. I looked up at the crater. It didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

  Somewhere up there Pitt was waiting for me. Pacing back and forth. Wondering when I’d get there. If I’d get there. Wondering, perhaps, even, if he shouldn’t just push the button and be done with it.

  I struggled for breath. I looked back. Far below, Ambo and Aurora and a group of soldiers huddled, awaiting the fate of the world. No doubt they were watching me this very minute. Satellites from above. Binoculars from below. Pizza-eating Langley analysts in polyester trousers ogling me on a scrambled satlink. Or were they using drones? I had a worldwide audience. I unfurled my middle finger and saluted the men below, the sky above.

  “Mount Testimony,” Ambo had declared with a broad sweep of his hand. “Five thousand, four hundred and sixty meters.”

  “How high are we here?” I’d asked.

  “Four thousand and a bit,” the captain had answered.

  The cold wind slashed through all my layers. I had long since lost sensation in my ears. Pins and needles jabbed my toes. When they went away, I knew, I would be at risk of frostbite. I laughed at the thought. Toeless Boy Wonder, English Teacher Extraordinaire. My laugh grew into a cough and I spat on the rocks.

  I hefted the backpack Aurora had given me. It was time for a rest. No good breaking a sweat. It’d just freeze to the skin. I sat on a nearby rock.

  “Snacks!” she said, held the bag aloft.

  “What for?” I asked stupidly.

  She unzipped the pack and rummaged around. “Long climb up the mountain. You need energy. Got you a couple of tuna-fish sandwiches, fruit, plenty of water. Some cookies. Homemade, too.” She held them out: oatmeal raisin, they looked like.

  I looked at the bag, then at her. The blood streamed down her nose, formed a red goatee around her lips. “You’d make a helluva mother, you know that?”

  She laughed. “What, you think I did this?” Her laughter echoed on the rocks, a foreign sound in this place of death, Kate still warm at my feet. Aurora’s green eyes danced, bittersweet emeralds tempting me, defying me.

  Reminding me of Lynn.

  Reminding me of Kate.

  Of all the women I had ever loved and lost, and would never see again.

  “No, of course not.” Brain not functioning. Query: why not? Altitude? Or those eyes? Damn it. Wipe drool.

  “Ambo and his crew fed us when they picked us up. This one’s for you.” She zipped the backpack shut and held it out. Lowered her voice. “Except this one has a gun in it, just in case.”

  I took the bag. I could think of nothing to say.

  “You coming back?” she asked casually. More words bubbled out of her before I could answer: “You coming back to me?”

  My hand stroked her hair, her ear cold under my fingers. Some primal impulse took hold of me, short-circuited my usual fail attitude, and I pulled her lips down to mine.

  When we broke away, her face was covered in blood. So was mine. I wiped my lips with my sleeve.

  “Better get that looked at,” I said.

  Her smile quivered. “I will.”

  I shuffled my feet, preparing to go.

  “Yes.” The word erupted out of her, aimed at my back.

  “What’s that?”

  “I would make a helluva mother.” She waved at me, an awkward twitch of her hand, then knotted her fingers together.

  I headed for the trail. I didn’t look back.

  Ambo shouted after me. “Horse!”

  I kept walking.

  “Horse!”

  The bullhorn squawked, amplified Ambo’s voice. “What’s more important?” He paused, as though waiting for an answer. “Pitt? Or the world?”

  I didn’t stop. I didn’t turn.

  “My son is dead, Horse! You understand that? He is nothing to me!”

  I walked quickly toward the trail.

  The voice faded in the distance. “He is nothing to you!”

  I flipped up the hood of my borrowed anorak. It muted the howl of the wind. And Ambo’s voice.

  Hak Po’s plastic baggie rested in my palm. How did that get there? I fumbled with it, couldn’t get it open. I took my gloves off, set them down next to me. A gust of wind seized them, dashed them into the air, two black specks fluttering far in the distance. I unzipped the baggie, took a pinch in my fingers.

  Last time, I thought. Really the last time.

  Last burst of energy. Get to the top. That’s all that matters. What happens after isn’t life. Life as you know it is over.

  I jammed my frozen fingers up my nose and snorted as hard as I could. Numb. Numbness. Come on. Do your job. Another snort, and another, and another, until the bag was half gone. I was as high as I had ever been, but it was not enough. It would never be enough. I could never mourn her as she deserved. I could never make right that wrong. I would go to the grave with that sin on my conscience.

  A photo fluttered in my hand. Liliana. My baby. Frozen in time. Wrapped all in pink. Mouth open in surprise. When she was born she weighed six pounds, seven ounces. Now she felt like a ton.

  The breeze whipped at the picture. I held it out, tight between my thumb and forefinger. All I had to do was let go. That was all. So simple.

  And so impossible.

  The backpack sat open at my feet. I reached under my sweater, put the photo back in my shirt pocket, over my heart. I fished around for a bottle of water. Cracked the seal, drank a mouthful, then poured the rest onto the ground. I didn’t need it. Just more baggage to weigh me down. Where I was going, water would be the least of my worries.

  I unwrapped the sandwiches and threw them out across the rocks. I crushed the cookies, shook the crumbs on the ground. The apple and banana I hurled into the air, as high and as far as I could. I watched as they came down, smashed against the rocks. At the bottom of the backpack I found the gun. Heavy pistol. Automatic. I threw it sideways, like a boomerang. It clattered hundreds of meters below me, disappeared into a deep crevice.

  The cocaine was still in my hand. I hesitated. I turned the open baggie upside down. The cocaine never hit the ground. The wind blew it b
ack in my face, stinging my cheeks with frozen granules. When the storm had passed I opened my eyes. The baggie was empty.

  I left it there on the mountainside.

  The afternoon clouds rolled in, surrounded me in mist. I could see the trail in front of me but that was it. I was free of the watchers, but at what cost? A misstep, one wrong turning, and I would be lost for good. The world would be lost for good. They must be holding their breath down there, I realized, waiting for me to come back down the mountain.

  Damn them, I thought. I didn’t ask for this. I am not ready. Who am I to do this thing? It should be Ambo. It should be Pitt’s wife. Wherever she’d gone. It should be a professional negotiator. Anyone, really. Anyone but me.

  I took long, slow, deep breaths, filling my lungs with the thin air. The cocaine helped, but not much. Each step was a labor: lift foot, move foot forward, put foot down, press upward. Repeat.

  Step by step I crunched my way up the trail, studying the ground before me, following in the footsteps of centuries of murderous Incan priests and their human offerings. Usually children.

  Kate had explained it to me once.

  “The Incas didn’t torture or disembowel their sacrificial victims. Nothing so primitive. They simply left them on top of the volcano. Tied them up. They’d die of exposure. That’s why there are so many mummies there. The bodies freeze solid and stay that way.” Of course, the mummies had long since been put in museums or sold to necrophiliac pimps in Lima.

  The trail got steeper. I stopped, unable to go on. I peeled off my anorak, threw it aside. The wind seized it, flung it into the void. A bitter mountain wind slashed through my sweater, froze my sweaty T-shirt to my chest. The pain woke me. I was alive. I had things to do before I died. I knew that now. Even if I wasn’t sure what that thing was.

  Footsteps had worn a path across a steep pile of rocks. I climbed across them, my gloveless fingers giving me a shock of pain at each touch of the icy stone. My broken pinkie had swollen three times its normal size. I ripped off the tape that bound it to my ring finger. Pity I didn’t have a knife. It would be easier to just cut it off and be done with it.

  A sheer rock wall loomed before me. I craned my neck, trying to see the top.