The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller by J. M. Porup Page B

to put me on a plane back to the States? I will be dead before it lands.”
    I grinned and slouched in my chair. “So go ahead and make my day, Jack.” I drew my finger across my neck in a slitting motion. “You can only play that card once. It won’t work a second time.”
    Ambo stared at me for a long moment, unmoving. The smoke from his cigarette snaked in circles around his head. He jabbed the leg of the upturned desk with a monstrous digit. The ancient metal bent under the pressure.
    “Pitt is betraying his country. I know you don’t care about that. But he does. And I do. Can you at least tell me why? Why would he do such a thing?”
    “Why would he kill Lynn? Why is the moon a rotting hunk of Flemish blue cheese? Fuck if I know.”
    Ambo ignored this. “He doesn’t need the money. I’m a rich man. When I die, all I have is his. He knows that. He’s my son. He doesn’t need to take money from the goddamn chinks. So what, then? What is going on inside his head?”
    “Maybe he got sick of killing people for a living,” I said.
    Ambo sighed. Smoke leaked from his nose. He said, “Horace. I need your help. No one else knows him like you do.”
    “What makes you think I’d tell you, even if I knew?”
    He ground out his cigarette against the bottom of his shoe, twisting the butt against the heel long after it was extinguished. “Human decency,” he said. “You’re not an evil person. You feel things. I know you do.”
    “You know what? You missed your true calling. You should have been a shrink.”
    He said, “I know your hurt.”
    “Don’t you fucking dare—”
    His hands were out, palms open. “We don’t have to go there. I’m just saying. It’s more than you and me. It’s everyone. The entire human race.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Melodramatic bullshit.”
    “Melodramatic?” He rubbed the inside of his lower lip with a calloused finger. His eyebrows lowered, casting shadow across his eyes. “Why would you say that?” he said softly. “You think I’m exaggerating?”
    He was convinced I knew something. I decided to bluff. Maybe then I’d have some clue what was going on. I said, “Pitt sent me a letter. Told me everything. The whole plan.”
    The whites of his eyes glowed in the darkness, floating across the upturned desk at me, enormous sockets sucking up the light. “Do you really hate the world so much?”
    I shrugged. “Can’t say that I’m a fan.”
    He nodded. His lips puckered in a frown. “No?”
    “The world is a vile place and humanity a stinking infection on the face of the earth,” I said, suddenly furious. “If you gave me a button and said, press it and the world goes boom? I would do so without a second thought.”
    Ambo’s face drained of color. His eyes took on a thousand-yard stare. “Would you really? Is that the world you know? Then I feel sorry for you, Horse.”
    “I don’t need your fake pity,” I said. “I’m not a fan of you, either. You and your bullshit, trying to steal land from the Bolivians. Not a fan of your double-crossing spy tricks for the good of corporate America. Not a fan of lying and deceit—”
    But Ambo was laughing now, a wheezing asthmatic hack, his thin lips pressed tight in a bitter smile. “Here I was, all worried,” he said, clutching his sides.
    “I know all about it,” I said. “Start a war, steal the
altiplano.
Monopolize the lithium. A replay of bat guano. Bat guano two.”
    He raised an eyebrow. His smirk was insufferable.
    “That’s it.” I banged my petite white fist down on a desk leg. “I know your kind. The smug schoolyard bully. It’s about time someone stood up to people like you.”
    Ambo heaved himself from his chair, and with a flick of his fingers straightened his tuxedo. Fished his Stetson from under the desk, popped it onto his wrinkled scalp. “Get comfortable,” he said. “When this is all over we’ll get you out of here.”
    He turned to leave. Randy the marine opened the door.
    I called