Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

Felix shouted, "Boats moving up, starboard and port."

The radar showed a curve to the left a hundred yards ahead.

Charley said, "Hold your fire on the one coming up on our right. Let him come up. Let me know when's he's abeam."

Felix lay down on the deck and sighted through a hawsehole.

"He's passing the stern… not yet… not yet…" Bullets zippered into Esmeralda 's right side. "Now!"

"Hold on." Charley swung the wheel to the right.

He saw the yacht begin to swing toward Mirko's boat. He shouted over the radio, "Mirko, reverse your engines! Get out of there!"

The yacht squeezed the speedboat against the riverbank. Two of Mirko's men saw what was about to happen and jumped off the transom. But Mirko had already reversed his throttles and the outboard engines had churned up out of the water. Mirko's men were shredded. In the next instant, the yacht drove the boat into the riverbank in a loud crackling of fiberglass.

He slowed and shone his light at the bank. The remains of the boat had fallen away. The men had been pressed into the clay like figures in a bas-relief frieze. There was Gorrati with his gun, Jimo, upside-down. Ay, Mirko. At the moment of death, Mirko had brought his arms up to protect his face. He stared at the tableau. He wished he had a camera, it was so unusual.

The iguana dropped off Charley's shoulder and ran out of the bridge upright on two legs, hopping from one piece of Plexiglas to another like someone escaping across ice floes.

They were firing at the boat on the port side. Charley heard the loud noise above him from Mac's M-60. Rostow ran aft along the deck with his grenade satchel.

Amorphous green splotches appeared on the radar screen. The antennae had been hit. Charley navigated through the hallucinations. There was a Navy base at Juanjui, eighty clicks downriver. At this rate they could make that by morning, if-ifs sprouted along the riverbank all the way to Juanjui. He switched on the radio and was rehearsing what he would say when he heard: " Esmeralda , come in, please"-perfect, mannered English. Please?

"This is Esmeralda ," he said.

"This is Captain Pantoja of the Peruvian Navy. Stop your engines."

"This is Admiral Chester W. Nimitz of the United States Navy. Go to hell."

"Is that you, billonario? "

"Yes."

"Welcome to Peru."

"Thank you."

"The rocket-propelled grenade that went over your bow back there, it was a warning shot. It wasn't nice of you to kill the man who fired it."

"Sorry about that."

"The next is going to go up your culo . Do you speak Spanish?"

"Enough to understand you."

"I give you one minute."

Charley said, "Felix. That's our boy on the radio. I'll keep him talking. Tell Mac to shoot the one talking into his radio." Felix ran aft.

"You there?"

"Of course."

"What do you want from me?"

"What a question, billonario . You blow up my home, kill my men. I want to discuss your surrender. Reparations."

"What kind of reparations you have in mind?"

"Your boat."

"This old thing? I don't know, your river's a little narrow. One of your friends tried to pass me back there and you saw what happened."

"Thirty seconds, billonario ."

His boat hit a small piece of wood. He put down the hand microphone so he could steer with both hands. Virgilio's voice came on the radio.

"Niño, what's happening? What do you want me to-" He saw the muzzle flash on the stern of the yacht. The sound was loud, like an elephant gun.

Felix came running. "Mac got him!"

Charley stared. It was over, finally over. He said, "Tell him, that's good shooting."

The archway of ifs stretching to Juanjui fell away. Charley knew: the sun would come up and they would make it.

He heard a shout from the stern. It sounded like "Incoming!" Then something kicked him in the back, hard, like a horse. It lifted him up and threw him forward, through the window.

He watched with mounting panic as the fire spread. Why should the ship burn so? He had only fired a single RPG.

" Billonario? "

Her stern was getting low in the water. She was sinking. What a disaster.

" Billonario , answer."

The yacht's bow swung around to face him, like a wounded mastodon raising itself defiantly on its front legs. She was going downriver backward.

He and the other boat followed, keeping their distance in case the cabron sniper who had killed Virgilio was still alive. The fire in her stern continued to rage. The RPG must have hit a fuel tank, but how was that possible? The fuel tanks were under the waterline, and he placed the grenade deftly in the transom.

A half kilometer later her bow went up on a mudbank in the middle of the river. Thank God. She wouldn't sink, at least. But the fire…

" Billonario , are you there?"

"Charley!" said Margaret. "You come down out of there this minute. You're too old to be climbing trees."

"I'm coming, sweetheart, you hold on."

Tasha was crying. She had climbed all the way to the top and was now frozen with fear and unable to come down. Huge bats were circling her. The bats were the result of a secret U.S. Air Force experiment using recombinant DNA engineering to splice bat genes and Stealth technology. There were serious cost overruns, and the bats escaped. Charley shot at them with his pistol, but the bats were able to jam bullets. He kept firing.

"Boss!"

"Felix, watch out!"

"Boss, stop shooting!"

"Huh?" He was in a tree. The pistol was in his hand. He was shooting. He was upside-down. Where was Tasha? Felix's face appeared in the branches.

"Bats, Felix!"

"Are you all right, boss?"

"What's happening?"

"She's on fire. Mac and Rostow are dead. It was an RPG. It hit the bar in the fantail. All the liquor caught fire. We have to get off."

Felix pulled Charley out of the tree on the foredeck.

"I had this dream, Felix."

"It's the morphine. Come on."

They crawled aft along the deck and went into the main salon. Charley coughed from the smoke. The emergency sprinkler system was going, everything was wet. The fire had already consumed the fantail and was working its way forward, making the wet carpet and walls hiss and steam. The gold-glass panels from the old ocean liner Normandie had shattered. The pieces glowed in the fire like Art Deco embers. Charley and Felix leaned against a bulkhead to catch their breath.

"We have to abandon ship," said Felix.

"See if they're still out there."

Felix went out on deck. He crawled back in and said, "Two boats."

"Are they together, on one side?"

"Yeah, the starboard."

Charley stared into the fire for several moments. He said, "We'll use the inflatable on the foredeck. Toss it over the port side. There's a Navy base downriver. The current'll take us."

They crawled together up the deck on the port side. Felix wrestled the emergency inflatable life raft off its cradle. It would inflate automatically as soon as it hit the water.

"Tie two lines to it," said Charley. "We'll toss it in together and each hold a line. Once it's inflated, we can get in. But don't let go of the line."

Felix tied the two lines and hefted the raft up onto the railing.

"Felix, listen to me. In case something happens, it's all with the lawyers, the lawyers will take care of everything. You understand?"

"No," said Felix.

"You're, I, you're my only family left, Felix. Who else was I going to leave it to?"

"That's crazy."

"It's all been worked out, Felix. It's all with the lawyers."

"We're going together."

"In case , is all I'm saying. When you get to the Navy base, contact Gallardo. That was a damn fine supper I gave him. Let him start earning his pay. All right, ready? Now, we got to hold on to that rope tight . That's one hell of a current. We'll be in Juanjui by breakfast time. Don't let go, no matter what. On count of three."