The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller (39 page)

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 back 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.

The final assault, bucko,
Ambo had said.
Better hope that rope’s still there.

I bent my frozen fingers, felt in the cliff face for a handhold. There were none. No chalk, no rope. Nothing. A red dot of light danced across my hands.

“There you are,” called out a voice from above. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

It was Pitt.

Twenty-Seven

A rope pooled in circles at my feet. I picked it up. Tried to tie it around my waist, but my fingers were too stiff. My left hand was useless, my pinkie kinked to hell and back. The cliff was twenty meters high. At least. What was I supposed to do, pull myself up, hand over broken hand?

Pitt answered the question with a sharp tug. I curled the rope around my left wrist, hooked it under my elbow, and behind my back, where I held it with my good right hand. I flexed my arms, felt my weight on the rope. I scrabbled at the rock face with the toes of my boots. Inch by inch I rose into the air. Twice my footing slipped and I hung in midair, the mist thick on all sides, unable to see above or below. Each time the rope inched upward once again, my boot found another toehold, and I lunged ahead. A final surge and I lay on my stomach, gasping for breath, my legs dangling over the edge of the cliff, Pitt’s polished leather hiking boots at eye level.

“Wicked view,” he said, his smile all teeth. “Enjoy the climb?”

There he stood, the blond god in all his glory, on top of that mountain of fire. Multiple layers of wool showed at his throat, underneath a motorcyclist’s black leather jacket and pants. He looked warm, comfortable; unconcerned. I crawled farther onto the ledge, pushed myself to my feet. I shoved my naked fingers into my armpits, trying to get some feeling back into my hands. The cold whistled through me now, as though I wasn’t even there.

“Dude, you look frozen.” He rummaged in a green rucksack at his feet. “Put this on.” He held out a puffy anorak and a pair of fluffy knitted mittens. I had barely put them on before he crushed me against his chest, pounded my back so hard my lungs echoed like a drum. His breath stank of booze.

“You’ve been following me,” I managed to chatter.

He held me at arm’s length. “Hey, someone’s got to be your guardian angel.”

“Is that what it was?”

“Wanted to make sure you got here safely, bro.”

Like when you whacked me on the head after killing Lynn?
I wanted to say.
No. I came all this way. Hear him out first. He could be right.

“What for?” I asked.

“What
for?
Today’s our day of victory!” He shook me, raised his clenched fists in the air. “The most important day in human history!” He spun in a circle, whooped a wide receiver’s touchdown triumph.

I stood, expressionless, looking at him.

“What’s the matter, dude? Show some enthusiasm already.”

My teeth chattered in the cold. “Forgive me if I’m not excited by the deaths of billions of people.”

“Who deserve to die.” A finger out in warning. “I am merely the avenging hand of God.”

I walked away from him. The patchy mist came and went, giving glimpses: distant mountains, the
altiplano,
more mist. A trail led down into the volcanic cone. The opposite side of the crater was barely visible. Sulfurous fumes belched from below. Patches of snow clung to the rocks.

“Dude,” he called after me. “What’s wrong?”

“You fucking think?”

“Horse,” he said, grabbed my arm, this time gently. “Don’t tell me you’re on their side.”

“I’m on no one’s side but my own.”

He laughed, threw up his arms again. “That’s the Horse I know and love.”

I realized with a start that he was drunk.

He darted about in tiny circles, his arms held out, a little kid making airplane noises. “Wanna help me make the world go boom?”

“Where
is
the bomb, anyway?” I asked, noticing the small black device he clutched in one hand.

He grinned and pointed into the crater, at a crevice twenty meters down. A bundle of plastic and duct tape stuck out of a gash in the rocks.

Pitt burst out laughing at my expression. “How about a drink?”