Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

There were three Pilatus Porter seaplanes. The SEALs were in the first. Diatri was in the second with the SOLIC commander and the JUNC leader. The third plane, fifty miles behind, would extract the SEALs after they had planted their mines on the yacht.

"You mean we're going all the way down there and we're not bringing him back with us?" Diatri had said at the mission briefing aboard the Air Force C-141 on the way down. It was a crowded flight for some reason, people from State, DOD, CIA, a Coast Guard medic-what was the Coast Guard doing here?-Marine pilots, Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and the Joint Unified Narcotics Command people.

"That's right," the JUNC leader replied. "Our mission is to disable the boat and get out."

"Whose plan was this?" Diatri asked. "Is this a JUNC plan?"

"That's all I can say, Diatri."

"Yeah, but it just doesn't make sense. The guy's an American citizen. We're just going to blow up his boat and leave him?"

"This is a JUNC op, Diatri. You're here as an observer. Observe."

Diatri leaned over and said to the SOLIC commander, "Am I missing something here?"

The commander said quietly, "I understand there's a political dimension."

The JUNC leader was in front with the pilot. He tapped the satellite surveillance photo on his lap and looked down at the river and shouted over the roar of the Pilatus' loud propeller, "We shoulda seen it already."

They followed the river. Diatri let the others do the surveilling. He was intent on the mountains to the west, huge, incredible mountains all blue and white. One towered over the others. He found it on his map. Huascaran, over 20,000 feet up, so high you had to gulp for your air. He had read somewhere that Hitler killed the King of Bulgaria that way. The King was being difficult. He wouldn't kill Jews; what's more, he told Hitler that if Jews were going to have to wear yellow stars, then he was going to start wearing a yellow star.

Hitler summoned him to Berlin to make him change his mind, but he wouldn't. Hitler knew the King had a weak heart, so Hitler flew him back to Bulgaria in an unpressurized plane at high altitudes, and the King died a few days later. Diatri told this story to the SOLIC commander. He thought about it and nodded in a professional sort of way as if to say: Yeah, that would do it. He didn't say much, this commander.

The JUNC leader said, "Hey, Diatri, I hear you're going to Congressional Relations after this."

"What?"

"Congratulations."

"Who told you that?"

"You know, on the topo map this valley looks just like a pussy."

"Who told you that?"

"I don't know. Something I heard. We shoulda passed it by now-there it is, up ahead. This is Cowpuncher One Actual, we got it."

Diatri looked down. He wouldn't have recognized it from the photographs. It looked like something abandoned on the Brooklyn waterfront. As they circled, he saw that some of her yacht whiteness remained along the hull. She was half up on a mudbank. There were people aboard her, a dozen or more dugout canoes tied to her. The JUNC leader took pictures with a video camcorder. The natives, seeing the military markings on the planes, began to scatter into their canoes. The JUNC leader laughed and shouted, " Didi mau len! Didi man len! " The Marine pilot asked what it meant. "Vietnamese," said the JUNC leader, "for 'Get the fuck out of here.'"

Zacari and Kipu followed the path of cashew trees through the booby-trapped perimeter and stepped out of the forest into the compound.

They stood for a moment surveying the damage. Smoke rose lazily from many places. The fire had been a great one. Kipu pointed to the burned-out Range Rover and the blackened human legs sticking out from underneath.

They crossed the large field toward the white house and came upon a dead guariba . Its flesh had been disturbed, Zacari saw, leaning over to inspect it. Kipu licked his lips and said they should take it back with them.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs leading to the veranda, Zacari heard the sound of his sister crying.

A moment later, El Niño appeared on the porch. He looked very bad. Some of his hair was burned away and there was dried blood from his ears and nose. He stared at them with a fierce look. He held a pistol.

Zacari held up a hand in greeting and said, "My father sends you his respect."

El Niño did not answer.

Zacari said, "He says to tell you that the kurinku in the great canoe was not pistaco ."

El Niño stared as though the fire was still burning within him.

Zacari held out his upturned palm, revealing one of the gold-and-black things. "He sends me to ask you for more of these. They are good for the tsugki who lives in the stone the kurinku gave to us."

El Niño stared at the battery in Zacari's palm. He raised his pistol and shot Zacari in the face.

Kipu threw his spear, but suddenly many shots were being fired and the ground next to him was bursting with dust. He ran toward the edge of the forest. The bullet hit him in the leg before he reached it, but he dove into the bushes before the men running after him could catch him.

The natives had all fled into their canoes. Diatri and the others stood on the half-burned hulk of the Esmeralda . One of the SEALs held up a line with some pennants on it. "Commander?"

Diatri and the commander inspected it. "What is it?" Diatri asked.

"This is a code pennant, this is 'S,' this is 'Q,' this is 'I.'"

"So?"

"It's the international signal code. It means: 'You should stop or heave to or I will open fire on you.'"

Diatri sighed. "Looks like they didn't listen."

He made his way into the ship. She was partially heeled over on her side, making it like a walk through the fun house at the carnival. The top deck was gone. The main salon had the sour stink of burned leather. They'd stripped almost everything off her; it looked like they'd been working on pulling up the carpet when they ran off. He continued down another flight of stairs to the cabins. The passageway was dark. He turned on his flashlight, holding it away from his body as he'd been trained. On either side of the passageway were framed front pages of newspapers from the day after the Titanic sank. Diatri thought that was a strange thing to have on your boat. He made his way aft, to the master cabin.

It was stripped of everything, sheets, blankets, wall sconces, mattress, clothes. Somewhere in the jungle they were wearing cashmere blazers and ascots and whatever else rich people wear. Bermuda shorts? That would be a sight, Diatri thought, natives sitting around the fire arguing over how to make a really dry martini.

They'd torn the radio and intercom system out of the bedside table. Diatri peered into the gaping hole and saw a dead cricket on its back. Diatri reached in and removed him. Big little guy. How had he gotten in there?

He opened the drawer. There was a book inside: History of the Conquest of Peru , by William H. Prescott. He flipped through the pages. Mr. Becker-it was funny, but that's how he thought of him, as "Mr. Becker," maybe because he was rich-had underlined a lot. He came to a page that was almost all underlined and read:

" When the sentence was communicated to the Inca, he was greatly overcome by it. 'What have I done, or my children, that I should meet such a fate? And from your hands, too,' said he, addressing Pizarro; 'you, who have shared my treasures, who have received nothing but benefits from my hands!' "

" An eyewitness assures us that Pizarro was visibly affected, as he turned away from the Inca. "

" When Atahuallpa was bound to the stake, with the fagots that were to kindle his funeral pile lying around him, Father Valverde, holding up the cross, besought him to embrace it and be baptized, promising that, by so doing, the painful death to which he had been sentenced should be commuted for the milder form of the garrote -a mode of punishment by strangulation, used for criminals in Spain. "