Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

[Mssing] came a sound like a cannon from the tree line down the beach-made the Uzis and MAC sound like toy guns. A sound with balls . 165 grains of copper-jacketed lead leaving the barrel at 3,100 feet per second. It met up with the man's skull. He went over the side.

Rostow, wheezing from their mile-and-a-half with all the equipment, spotted through the binoculars. "One down," he said. Bundy brought back the bolt on the Winchester.300 magnum, placed another round in the receiver and chambered it slowly, gently, so as not to deform the copper jacket against the throat. He sighted through the scope. The driver, spooked by the fact of his companion's exploded cranium, was crouching beneath the dash, trying to back the boat out into deeper water.

Bundy lowered the rifle. "Let me have the fifty."

Rostow unslung the other rifle, a custom piece of gunsmithing. It was a fifty-caliber sniper rifle designed for SEALs and Special Forces by a firm out in Phoenix. It weighed twenty-one pounds, had a twenty-nine-inch barrel, took two to four ounces of pressure on the trigger and was mounted with a 20-power Leupold scope that created intimacy between shooter and target. Ordinarily a gun this size gives a fierce kick, but its designers had affixed a special muzzle brake to the end of the barrel that trapped the volcano of gas that followed the bullet out and deployed it to pull the gun away from the shooter's shoulder. Still, she kicked.

"You might want to use earplugs," said Bundy.

"Just shoot. He's getting away. Jesus Christ ."

"Told you." Black smoke started to pour from one of the engines. Bundy drew back the fluted bolt, laid another cigar-sized fifty-caliber round and chambered it. He shot out the engines one by one. He took his time. The boat went dead in the water about a thousand yards out.

"More like twelve hundred," said Bundy.

"What now?" said Rostow, looking through the binoculars. The driver still wasn't showing himself.

Bundy took a round out of a different box. "I don't like to use these," he said. "They leave kind of a smear in the barrel. But ol' Jose out there isn't giving me a hell of a lot of choice in the matter." Bundy sighted and squeezed. At this distance it took almost two seconds for the tracer to hit. The back of the boat was covered with gasoline. It made a fireball against the western sky. The boat sank.

"Hope they like their meat well done," said Bundy, removing his earplugs.

Almost dawn. The cigarette ember glowed between his sweat-wet fingers. Her sexual energy was, Christ, miraculous. Smoke rose into the blades of the fan, making their obedient revolutions. Outside it was still, except for the occasional shriek of the howler monkeys.

He looked at her in the faint light. She was lying on her stomach with her hands flat against the mattress, face toward him, like Gauguin's kanaka mistress, Tehura, in the "Manao Tupapau," but without the frightened look. He reached and ran his finger along the cleft between her buttocks. Her eyes opened-they were such light sleepers. She ran her tongue over her lips. He shouldn't have touched her. He was dry inside, pumped out. He had to get some sleep. Morning already, Christ.

"I love you," she said. The only words he'd taught her in Spanish. He should probably teach her some more, but there was a purity to such a simple vocabulary; and it was all, really, that he wanted to hear from her.

She put her mouth to his ear and made a pinhole with her lips and inhaled, producing a most- urrnh -exquisite sensation, as if she were trying to suck out his brain. She was descended from head-hunters. Some of her people still performed the old rituals, trapping the soul inside the head by sewing up the lips, nostrils, and eyes and shrinking it in hot sand and resins. Only a few years ago a French photographer had left Manaus in search of a story and disappeared. Eventually a missionary priest was shown a head with blond hair and Caucasian features. Well, he thought, as Soledad plugged the vacuum she had created inside his ear with the moist tip of her tongue, if this is how they remove the insides, no wonder those puckered leathery faces all have that serene look.

She went back to sleep. He couldn't. He lit another cigarette. He wanted to have her painted. But after the manner of Gauguin’s "Manao"? Or Goya? The later Goya, after he'd gone mad from licking his brushes covered with lead-based paints. A parody of Goya might be just right. As "La Maja Desnuda," the naked countess that so inflamed Madrid society.

Or-he drew on his cigarette-after Manet's "Olympia"? Soledad lying on a divan wearing nothing but a black choker. Ideal! He was seized by a brilliant inspiration-where do these ideas come from? He would have the artist do the servant woman hovering at the foot of the divan in a photographic likeness of, hm… Ursulina de Gomayumbre, dowager duchess of Lima society, descended from practically everyone, one of Mama's oldest friends. He'd have copies made and display them in the window of the gallery on the Paseo. Ha! The old bag would drop dead of embarrassment. Or make her husband confiscate it. Better make copies. Better, make lithographs. If the point is merely to epater les bourgeois , a painting will do, but for revolution, it's lithographs you want.

He fell asleep. When he opened his eyes an hour later the room was warm already, flooding with light. There was a knocking on the door. Virgilio's voice, muted, urgent. "Niño."

"What?"

"It's Miami. The lawyer."

He got out of bed with the sheet wrapped around his waist like a sarong. He combed his thick black hair back with his hands, lit a cigarette and coughed. Ought to switch to filters. He went into the study, picked up the phone and gave the code so the lawyer would know it was he.

The lawyer made it sound as though he hadn't slept since the incident. In fact, all he knew was what he'd gotten from the Miami Herald . "Medellin," he said.

The news filtered through to the left side of his brain, which was not yet entirely open for business today. "I'm listening," he said.

"The police and the DEA are saying it's a turf battle."

"What do you hear?"

"Almost nothing. No one seems to know. Or no one's taking credit for it. But Chin, the one who does transportation, he disappeared a few days before Barazo."

"What do you mean, disappeared?"

"Just like that-disappeared. You want my opinion, I think Chin sold his information to our friends in Medellin and left the country."

"I'm not paying you for your opinion . I want to know what happened."

"I'm working on it, Niño. I haven't been to bed in two days."

He hung up and summoned Virgilio. Virgilio appeared, as if out of air. It was his virtue. "Have you heard from Sanchez?"

"He called from Isola Verde at four this morning."

"From Panama?"

"His pilot had just radioed him. He broke a strut landing on the beach at Andros. The Cubans had to bring him a part from Nassau."

"I don't like that."

"Neither did Sanchez. But what could he do?"

"Ariella should have changed the rendezvous point. As a matter of course, he should have changed the rendezvous."

" Si , Niño. I think he was trying to show continuity."

"He showed stupidity, Virgilio. I knew Barazo, Virgilio. I worked with him. And let me tell you, Ariella is no Barazo."

" Si , Niño."

"He's not strong enough to take over from Barazo. We're going to have to look for someone else. All right, when is the plane due into Panama?"

"This morning."

"What time this morning, Virgilio?"

"Ten."

"Then Sanchez should be here by"-he looked at his watch-"four o'clock."

"He said there's a front off the coast of Ecuador. That's why he was so pissed about the strut."