The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller Read Free

boards.
    In the distance the gray, dead Peruvian coast watched us, a cemetery waiting patiently to be filled. We aimed our boards at the white church on the hill. Reed boats lined the foreshore, tiny handmade kayaks with curved prows like a jester’s slippers. The hour of fishing was over. Now was the hour of surf.
    “Just get me back to shore,” I gulped, spitting salt water. Another wave lifted us in a heavy swell, dropped us again. The sun peeked over the eastern horizon, but in the west dark clouds hovered.
    “Surfing’s better than sex,” he shouted.
    “How’s that?” I asked.
    “Better than drugs! Better than anything!”
    “Oh yeah?” I retorted. “What happens when you’re back on land?”
    He laughed. “That assumes you make it back!”
    He slipped off his board into the water. He grabbed the end of my surfboard and paddled toward shore.
    “The fuck you doing?”
    “When I say go, get up, OK?”
    Another wave swelled. Without warning, a sudden shove launched me into the air
—what happened to “When I say go”? But no time to dispute the point now—
and I leaped onto the board, and for what seemed like eternity the only thing that mattered was staying upright.
    I had gone surfing once or twice on a high school trip to Tijuana. My memory of the lessons was rather hazy, no doubt due to the quantities of liquor, pot and mescaline I had consumed that weekend, but somehow my feet remembered, my body understood, and the wave picked me up into the air, my arms out, body tense, and bore me toward the shore faster than I had ever gone before.
    The sand got closer, the wave got higher, I began to panic.
Now what? How do I make it stop? How do I get off this thing?
    The wave collapsed. My feet left the board and I fell into the surf, crashing sideways into the surfboard, my chest flattened against the hard surface. Pain blossomed in my ribs.
Gather ye rosebuds,
I thought. I stood in waist-high water, but the following wave knocked me over.
    I swallowed sea water. Coughed, spat brine. I grabbed hold of the board again, ignoring the pain in my side, and floated into shore on the next wave. When I felt my knees hit sand, I picked up the board and walked out of the surf.
    Pitt rode the crest of a monster wave. Must have been three meters, easy. He slid down into the curve beneath the wave, darting sideways through the tube as it collapsed behind him. It looked as though he’d make it all the way to shore, cruising along on the final efforts of the wave, when the sea decided it had seen enough insolence for one day, and crashed down around him.
    He tumbled out of the water, staggering with his board under his arm, feet struggling through the outgoing tide. He pumped his fist in the air. “Wipe out!”
    I waited until he got within non-shouting range. “I think I prefer cocaine.”
    “That’s why we brought a kilo, didn’t we?”
    He grinned, the sand and the sea streaming from his hair, the sun peeking through the gathering clouds to bathe us in its flickering warmth. That grin that said all was right with the world, there could be no wrong, happiness was as simple as a dip in the ocean or a trip to the brothel, and misery too complex to understand. I envied him.
    I stuck my fist out. “Bros forever?”
    “Dude,” he said, and punched my fist so hard it hurt. “Bros forever.”
     
    Welcome to Happy Frying Pan Store.
    So proclaimed the sign in Spanish, English and Chinese. Although I don’t know Chinese. Maybe it said Buy Cocaine Cheap Shop in that oriental chicken scratch.
    Pitt had wanted coke for our trip up the coast. Insisted on meeting my dealer in person.
    “Never know what they cut it with,” he complained.
    “The stuff you’re snorting now is finest high-mountain nose candy,” I said. “Besides, I’m one of Hak Po’s best customers.”
    But he insisted, so I let him tag along. He waited for me after class, and we took a bus deep into the warehouse and factory district adjoining