The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller (34 page)

“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 fucking 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.”

“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.”

Twenty-Four

The SUV in front of me rocked on its suspension. A man slid from the passenger seat onto the ground. Wisps of black hair straggled from his ears. A blue fitted Cubs cap perched on his scalp.

I said, “Hak Po?”

He winked at me. The SUV rocked again, this time a heavy dip and shudder, like a small boat in high seas. Ambo emerged. He adjusted his Stetson, scuffed his boots in the salt. When he saw me, his head jerked back and he grinned.

Kill.

My molars ground the word and spat it out a hiss. He had driven me from Lima. Killed his own wife. Framed me for her murder. Killed Pitt. Tried to kill me. Ordered the deaths of dozens of innocent people. Now was his moment of triumph. To gloat. But not if I could help it. By habit I went for my switchblade, forgetting the cops had taken it. Shit. Now what was I going to do? Just let him walk all over me again? An explosion at my right ear deafened me.

I flinched. The SUV’s windshield cracked, but no bullet hole appeared. To my right and behind me, Aurora jumped on Victor’s back. He must have taken the gun from her. He held the pistol tight in both hands, tried to point it at Ambo.

All around us, safeties clicked off. “Hold your fire!” Ambo roared.

The Frenchwoman bellowed, pounded her fists against her breasts. I grabbed hold of Victor’s wrists, tried to bring the gun down, but he squeezed off another shot.
Damn you,
I thought.
Give me the fucking gun. I want to kill him. Not you. Me. Let me do this one good thing before I die.

Gloved hands pried Aurora off Victor’s shoulder, dumped her on the ground. She let out an outraged squeak in midair. Cute. A soldier in camouflage loomed behind us. He snaked his arm around Victor’s neck. Lifted him off the ground by the throat. Battered the gun with his other hand, but failed to disarm him.

“Drop the weapon,” the man grunted in Spanish.

I fought with Victor, trying to pull the gun free, but he fired again.

“They’ve won,” I said, grappling with him, my lips close to his ear. “We lost.”

“We. Have. Not.” He fired twice more. The bullets ricocheted off the roof of the vehicle.

I put all my strength into my thumbs, tried to break his grip. There was only one bullet left, and I wanted it. But I could not budge his fingers. Between clenched teeth, I said, “Live to fight another day, dude.”

“No,” he said. “Too late. To stop it.” He clutched at the commando’s forearm. “All. Going. To die.” He put the gun barrel in his mouth, said, “Checkmate,” and pulled the trigger.

Brains, blood and bits of skull exploded backward, showering the tourists in a cloud of freshly dead vulcanologist. The commando looked like a watermelon had exploded in his face. He let go of the body, dabbed a gloved fingertip at the blue-gray goo splattered across his goggles.

My hands were covered in gore. I wiped them on my trousers.
I am such an asshole. I can’t do anything right.
Why didn’t I just let him shoot Ambo? Victor would have killed him. Might have, anyway. And now what? Six bullets and the bastard was still standing.
Now what the hell do I do?

I was considering the available options when two commandos tackled me from opposite directions, crushing me between them, knocking the breath from my chest. They slammed me to the ground, cheek first into the hard-packed salt. My broken nose throbbed from the impact. A knee ground into my left kidney. The commandos bound my wrists behind my back with flexible plastic.

“That the best you can do?” I said. “Come on, make it hurt,
marica!”