Lunatics (16 page)

CHAPTER 32

Jeffrey

I'll be honest:
I didn't know Cubans could be Jewish. But it turns out at least some of them are, because while Horkman was giving his asshole speech they started dancing the hora, and then all of a sudden the whole mob of them was running down the road waving their guns.

I thought, Okay, good, they're going off to get killed. Time for me to find Sharisse and the duffel bags and get the hell out of here. But before I took two steps, a truck roared up, and Ramon and Nunez and their men shoved me and Horkman into a middle seat. There were Cubans with guns all around us, so forget about getting away.

I looked around for Sharisse, and spotted her behind us. She was getting into another truck with some Cubans, who happened to be carrying, guess what, the duffel bags. I'm yelling, “Sharisse! Hey!” But she was talking to the Cubans and didn't hear me, or she pretended she didn't hear me. She was definitely sticking her boobs out.

The truck took off, and we were bouncing down the road, Horkman squashing into me every two seconds like a big sack of duck shit. In front of us, Ramon and Nunez were talking to each other in Spanish. After a few minutes, they turned around, and yelled something in Spanish to the guys behind us, who yelled something in Spanish back.

Next thing I knew, they were handing me and Horkman guns.

I don't know anything about guns. The only time I ever used one was in fifth grade, when Brian Krepmer and I stole his brother's BB gun and I shot the UPS man in the ass, and he pounded on the door and told Mrs. Krepmer he was never going to deliver anything to their house again, which meant she had to quit her Amway business, which was actually a relief to the rest of the neighborhood, but Brian and I were both grounded for two weeks anyway.

But this thing the Cubans gave me was a whole different level of gun. It was heavy and had a lot of parts and looked like it was maybe for shooting down airplanes. I looked over at Horkman and whispered, “What do they think we're going to do with these?”

“Lead them into battle,” he whispered back.

“I'm not leading them anywhere,” I said. “I wouldn't lead them into a Chick-fil-A. I don't even know how to
shoot
this fucking thing.”

Now, at this point, if you have been paying attention, you already know that Horkman is the biggest douchebag in the history of vaginal hygiene. But you can't really comprehend the true magnitude of how
big
a douchebag he is until I tell you what happened next. What happened was, instead of helping me solve the problem at hand, namely, we're with a bunch of lunatic Cubans trying to get us all killed, this imbecile moron
showed me how to shoot my
gun
.

“I think all you do is take off the safety,” he said, leaning over and flipping something. “Then it's just a matter of—”

At that exact moment, the truck hit a pothole the size of Long Island Sound, and Horkman went flying sideways onto my lap. I don't know whose finger pulled the trigger. Could have been him; could have been me. Could have been his dick, for that matter. All I know is, while Horkman was on top of me, my gun started shooting. And not just one bullet. A
lot
of bullets.

Then things happened fast:

First of all, Horkman screamed like a girl into my ear. I figured this was him getting shot, but it later turned out he wasn't, unfortunately.

Next, the truck made a sharp left-hand turn into the jungle. This was because the driver had bailed out, along with Nunez, Ramon and the other Cubans, who were interested in not getting shot.

Next, I pushed Horkman off me, and the gun finally stopped shooting, and Horkman fell out of the truck, still screaming.

So I was alone in a driverless truck, smashing through all kinds of trees and branches, and suddenly it burst into a clearing and OH GOD right ahead I saw a canyon. There was no time for me to bail; the truck went right over the edge. I could see down into the canyon. There was a shallow river on the bottom, but mostly big rocks. I knew I was going to die. You know how they say that when you're about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes? Well, they're full of shit. Because I was in that exact situation, and all I thought was,
This is totally Horkman's
fault
.

That's when Spider-Man showed up.

He wasn't the actual Spider-Man, of course. He didn't have the gay spandex costume; he was wearing dark clothes and a dark wool cap, and his face was painted black. But he definitely had Spider-Man skills. He dove off the side of the canyon, grabbed me in mid-fucking-air out of the truck with one hand, and yelled “Hold on!” Then he yanked something on his backpack with his other hand, and suddenly there was a parachute wing over us, and we're swooping down to the river. The truck hit first; it landed on some rocks and exploded, just like in the movies. I could feel the heat from the fire when we went over it. We landed in water that was maybe two feet deep, both of us going under for a second. The guy yanked me to my feet, shoved me and yelled, “MOVE!” I stumbled down the river to a break in the canyon wall. The guy shoved me in there.

“Stay here,” he said. “And keep quiet.” He had a knife strapped to his leg that looked like it could decapitate a mastodon. I kept quiet.

A few seconds later, the end of a rope slapped the ground next to me. The spider-guy grabbed it and quickly tied it around me in some kind of harness.

“Hang on,” he said, and next thing I know, I was being hauled up the canyon wall. When I got to the top, I saw who was hauling me up: more spider-guys. There were five of them, including the guy who rescued me, who climbed the rope after they got me up.

We were now in some bushes on the far side of the canyon from where the truck went off. Peering through the bushes, I could see a bunch of Cubans on the other side, including Ramon and Nunez, looking down at the burning truck. I could also see Horkman with them.

I looked around at the spider-guys and said, “Who are you guys?”

“We'll ask the questions,” answered my rescuer. He definitely had an American accent. Suddenly it hit me who these guys had to be.

“Jesus,” I said. “Are you Navy SEAL Team 6?”

One of them snorted. “We call Navy SEAL Team 6 the Campfire Girls,” he said.

“So who
are
you?” I said.

He took a step closer and said, “Did you ever hear of the U.S. Coast Guard Salamander Unit 9?”

“No,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “Because we don't exist.”

CHAPTER 33

Philip

By now you know
I am not a negative man. And that I have never used the misfortunes of others as a salve for my own shortcomings. No, I was brought up to believe happiness can best be attained when a person makes an honest self-evaluation, sets realistic goals, then works his butt off to make them come to pass. So in the end, a man's contentment is his own responsibility, unaffected by the fates of those around him.

That said, I would be less than honest if I didn't say that when I saw that driverless truck go over that cliff with Peckerman inside and then burst into flames after crashing to the bottom of that ravine, my gut reaction was a profound regret that a driverless truck with Peckerman inside didn't crash and burst into flames on his way to that AYSO championship soccer game so I would never have met him after I called his daughter offside (which she was, by the way) and become a wanted international criminal enmeshed in a foreign war. So I confess I was not altogether heartbroken as I stood at the edge of the ravine, staring down at the burning truck.

Next to me, Ramon and Nunez spoke a few hurried words to each other. With my limited Spanish, I was able to gather that they thought that we'd been attacked by enemy snipers; apparently they weren't aware that it was Peckerman's gun that had done the shooting. Concerned about being targets, they turned and trotted back into the safety of the trees.

Alone now, I lingered a moment longer, looking down at the flaming wreckage, thinking about the horrible fate that had fallen Peckerman.

Then I saw something even more horrifying.

Peckerman was still alive.

Somehow, impossibly, he had escaped the crash and was now standing with some other men on the far side of the ravine. I glanced behind me; no sign of Nunez or Ramon. I climbed down into the ravine and, with some effort, made my way up the other side, where Peckerman and I had a joyful reunion. If you think I am being sarcastic, I am, because what he said to me was, “Thanks a lot, asshole.”

“For what?” I said.

“Shooting my gun, dickwad. I'd be a dead man if Spider-Man here hadn't saved me.” He pointed at one of the half-dozen tough-looking uniformed men standing nearby, observing us.

I was going to point out that it wasn't my finger that had pulled the trigger, but I was more curious about the men. “Who are they?” I asked.

“They're Salamanders,” he said.

“They're what?”

“Salamanders.”

“No offense”—I nodded politely at the tough-looking men—“but I never heard of them.”

“That's because they don't exist,” said Peckerman. “At least that's what they tell me. Seems to me they have to exist, because there they are.”

“Peckerman, you idiot, it's a figure of speech. They must be such a secret unit that no one knows about them.”

“But now we do,” he said.

“And if you tell anyone, we'll have to kill you,” said one of the Salamanders, apparently the leader. I got the distinct impression that he was dead serious, but Peckerman, imbecile that he is, laughed. A hardy, derisive laugh. With his ridiculous head pitching this way and that—as if he'd somehow left his neck muscles back at Ramon, Ramona, and Ramon Jr.'s house.

“You think that's funny?” asked the lead Salamander.

“Not at all,” Peckerman answered. “‘If you tell anyone, we'll have to kill you,'” he said, mimicking. “Jesus, you couldn't come up with anything more original than that? You've been watching too many movies.”

Another derisive laugh or two later, after the laws of physics were kind enough to make his bobbing head eventually slow to a halt, Peckerman swiveled it in my direction.

“What crawled up your ass and ate your vocabulary?” he asked.

With the Salamanders now surrounding us, I chose each of the following words like they were vials of plutonium. As though they had the incendiary power to explode and launch chunks of me and Peckerman skyward, before they ultimately rained back down and hung like ornaments from the nearby foliage once they returned from their missions high above the Earth's surface.

“First of all, Peckerman, they just saved your life, so I'm thinking something that even resembles a ‘thank you' may be in order. Secondly, unless I'm misreading the angles of the guns these gentlemen are pointing at us, the phrase ‘we'll have to kill you' is not a figure of speech the way ‘we don't exist' was a figure of speech.” I then turned to the Salamanders and said, “I'm helping him bone up on his figures of speech.”

Apparently the Salamanders couldn't care less what kind of linguistic lesson I was conducting. They stared at me in unified non-acknowledgment for about ten frightening seconds before retreating deeper into the jungle, where they began having an animated conversation.

Peckerman then leaned toward me, cupped his hand to his mouth and began speaking in hushed tones, which made absolutely no sense to me.

“I don't want them to overhear us,” he explained.

“But they're thirty yards away and they're not whispering and we don't hear them.”

“Point taken,” he said, and then lowered his cupped hand but continued to whisper. “Look, I've already figured out that they're Americans.”

“Me too.”

“From their accents, right?”

“That and the American flag patches on their sleeves,” I said, nodding.

Peckerman looked over at the six Salamanders and, apparently for the first time, noticed the patches.

“Fine,” he said. “So anyway, if they're really a secret operative, it means our country is helping overthrow the Cuban government, the way we do in a lot of countries.”

I agreed with him. It seemed obvious that was the objective. In recent years, democracy had come to so many other suppressed nations around the world and it made sense that it was now Cuba's turn. But I was also affected by Peckerman's referring to the United States as “our country.” Was it still? As far as I was concerned it was. I'd always been a devoted American who voted every November and watched football every Sunday and had a flag proudly waving on my lawn every national holiday. But now that I was considered to be a threat to the way of life of the country I loved, I was a man without a home.

From there my thoughts took me to my kids, and I wondered if they were worried sick about me. Or if they were actually happy about the absence of a reviled father who'd let them down. And branded them forever. Like Osama bin Laden Jr. would've been branded if Osama bin Laden had a son and named him Osama bin Laden Jr. Or if Lee Harvey Oswald had a son and named him Osama bin Laden Jr.

As for Daisy. Well, a part of me wondered if she'd find a new man. We were high school sweethearts. The first and only lovers each of us had. But now? Like all marriages over the course of a long run, ours had a fair amount of peaks and valleys—but I couldn't help feel that this current valley was one we might never emerge from.

Then again, did I even want us to? What about Maria? Where was she? I wondered. The last time I saw her was the night before. After the rally outside Ramon's house. After he and Nunez shoved me and Peckerman into that truck. And after Sharisse and those duffel bags filled with money and those breasts filled with enough rubber to erase the Empire State Building entered the back of that other truck with those Cuban rebels. I saw Maria voluntarily take a seat in a jeep that was driven by what I could've sworn was a priest, and speed away in the opposite direction.

“You know,” said Peckerman, “I wonder if this revolution can help you and me in the long run.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well, everyone thinks we're enemies of democracy, right? But if we help bring freedom here to Cuba, wouldn't it show the world that we're not terrorists? And that what happened was just one huge misunderstanding?”

Peckerman had caught me off guard. So much so, all I could do was stare at him in silence for a few seconds.

“Make sense?” he asked.

“Yes, it makes a lot of sense,” I finally uttered. And it did. What didn't make sense was that this imbecile thought of it.

What occurred next happened rather quickly and without further discussion: Our grabbing clumps of mud and streaking them onto our faces. Our tearing off a sleeve from our shirts and tying them on as headbands. Picking up rifles and raising them aloft. And our running out of the jungle with Peckerman shouting across the ravine to a stunned Ramon and Nunez, “
Venga!
We have a dictator to kick the shit out of!”