Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

"Can you reconstitute that for me, Dick?"

"Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict?"

"Right. Is SOLIC part of JUNC?"

"I think JUNC is part of SOLIC."

"Oh."

"The Joint Unified Narcotics Command sits on SOLIC, is how I think it works. I'd have to look at the org chart."

"So, well, do we loop in JUNC, or-"

"I'd say, I'd say maybe not at this point. I see this more as a SOLIC thing at this point."

"I'm getting lost here, Dick."

"Right."

Beebeeb beebeeb beebeeb.

Charley awoke with a snort to find Prescott's History of the Conquest of Peru lying heavily on his chest, his.45 stuck inside the pages as a bookmark.

Beebeeb beebeeb beebeeb. Stopped. Charley blinked the sleep fur out of his eyes and opened the book and tried to get the pages into focus. He was only up to Chapter 2, but he already liked what he knew about Pizarro, mostly on account of his being a bastard like himself, the illegitimate son of a colonel of infantry. Charley hoped he would not turn out to be a disappointment.

" According to some, he was deserted by both his parents, and left as a foundling at the door of one of the principal churches of the city. It is even said that he would have perished, had he not been nursed by a sow. "

Suckled by a sow, now there's a man who's starting from scratch. Charley read on.

" This is a more discreditable fountain of supply than that assigned to the infant Romulus. The early history of men who have made their names famous by deeds in after-life, like the early history of nations, affords a fruitful field for invention. "

It annoyed Charley that Prescott would give you a wonderful detail like that and then snatch it away-sarcastically at that-but he understood that Prescott had been blinded by a food fight while he was a student at Harvard and even then had gone on to write the immense stories of Cortez and Pizarro, so he was willing to cut him some slack. Besides, he wrote so fine, could raise bumps on your arm. And he probably had to hedge his bets in case some historian from Yale showed up with a piece of parchment signed by the owner of the sow saying it was all true and without his sow Pizarro would have starved in infancy and the official language of Peru would now be Japanese.

Beebeeb beebeeb beebeeb. The hell was that? It was coming from the bedside console somewhere. It sounded like one of those traveling alarm clocks, the small black-plastic German jobs. But he didn't own one. So what was this noise and where was it coming from? Inside the drawer? Just like Germany to make alarm clocks to wake the world out of a deep, soft sleep. There was nothing in the drawer. It was coming from under the drawer.

Beebeeb beebeeb beebeeb. There it was again.

"Felix," he said into the intercom, "I need you."

Felix couldn't figure it out either. It was definitely coming from inside the console somewhere. Charley wanted to take a crowbar to all that gorgeous bird's-eye maple paneling; then it stopped. Felix said it must be a loose circuit somewhere in the intercom system. Charley went back to Prescott. The thrum of Esmeralda 's twin diesels began to work on him as Pizarro and his exhausted men hacked their way and came upon " an open space, where a small Indian village was planted. The timid inhabitants, on the sudden apparition of the strangers, quitted their huts in dismay; and the famished Spaniards, rushing in, eagerly made themselves masters of their contents… The astonished natives made no attempt at resistance. But, gathering more confidence as no violence was offered to their persons, they drew nearer the white men, and inquired, 'Why did they not stay at home and till their own lands, instead of roaming about to rob others who had never harmed them?' "

Good question, Charley muttered, eyelids getting heavy.

" Whatever may have been their opinion as to the question of right, the Spaniards, no doubt, felt then that it would have been wiser to do so. But the savages wore about their persons gold ornaments of some size, though of clumsy workmanship. This furnished the best reply to their demand. "

A large log banged into the Esmeralda 's steel hull so hard it jerked the book in Charley's hands.

" From the Indians Pizarro gathered a confirmation of the reports he had so often received of a rich country lying farther south; and there dwelt a mighty monarch whose dominions had been invaded by another still more powerful, the Child of the Sun. "

His eyelids couldn't get a grip on his eyes; like trying to walk uphill on ice.

" It may have been the invasion of Quito that was meant, by the valiant Inca Huayna Capac, which took place some years previous to Pizarro's expedition. "

Beebeeb.

Charley slept; and dreamed:

Tasha said to him, "I don't believe this."

"I'm doing it for you."

"Like hell. I will not be your excuse for mass murder, thank you."

"The way you talk."

"I can talk any way I want. I'm dead. I'm beyond you finally, Pops. I have to say it's almost a relief."

"No, you don't mean that. You don't know what you're saying. You're dead."

"How could you kill Timmy? I'm mortified."

"Yeah, well, I don't suppose Timmy is there with you, do I?"

"No one is here. I'm not here."

"Where are you calling from anyway?"

"Nowhere. I have to go now."

"Just tell me where. I'll send Felix to pick you up."

"Oh God, that would be great. I'm in-"

"PLEASE INSERT ANOTHER TWENTY-FIVE DEUTSCHEMARKS OR YOUR CALL WILL BE INTERRUPTED."

"Reverse the charges, operator. This is Charley Becker speaking."

"PLEASE INSERT ANOTHER TWENTY-FIVE MILLION DEUTSCHEMARKS OR YOUR CALL WILL BE TERMINATED."

"I'm telling you, I don't have any damn Deutschemarks. Don't you take dollars, for crying out loud?"

"Pops? Please-"

"THANK YOU FOR USING T‘N’T!"

"Tasha!"

He saw guards in watchtowers singing "Reach Out and Touch Someone" through loudspeakers.

He woke up.

"Felix."

"Jesus!" Felix had been sitting on the bow watching with fascination the confusion of the bats. His Uzi, which had been slung from his shoulder, was now aimed at Charley's chest. "Boss, you shouldn't sneak up like that."

Charley, in his bathrobe, said, "I wasn't sneaking. It's these slippers. What're you doing up?"

"I couldn't sleep. Rostow put real coffee in the urn. I'm watching the bats. Bundy says they're confused by the ship's radar. He says they're getting the radar beams mixed up in their own, that's why they're doing that, flying so close."

"ECM."

"What's ECM?"

"Electronic countermeasures. Jamming. Look at that. I never saw such a thing before. Whoa."

"You better sit down. They're all over."

"I've never seen a bat that size. And I've seen bats."

"I have a theory about that bat," said Felix. "I think he thinks the helicopter is an insect and he's trying to get it to fly so he can swallow it all in one bite. I don't really like it here, boss, you want to know the truth."

"I had a dream."

"I was reading the Cousteau book. You know the catfish in this river get up to seven feet long?"

"Catfish don't bite you."

"But what about the crocodile that eats seven-foot-long catfish?"

"It was about Tasha. She was upset with me."

"Sounds like her."

"She was upset about this."

"That's just your superego speaking."

"I don't think I got all that big an ego."

"Superego is the conscience. Freud started calling it that, so now all the shrinks do. Was she upset about burying them in her clearing on the island?"

"She didn't mention that. What is it with the bodies on the island? I don't see the problem."