32
BANANA SPLIT
Stuck in traffic behind an all too common smoke belching behemoth of second hand school bus painted and named after a saint or some part of a sacred anatomy; Nugby Nevera reflected. Something she seldom did, but her make-up like a come to me tattoo was in place and there was nothing else to do.
Nugby Nevera had it all--the President and job security that Monica Lewinsky would've died for. Not that anyone cared about what the president of this solidly Catholic country did for extracurricular activity; just so long as it didn't involve a live man or a dead woman nor worst of all, a divorce. Still she felt a twinge of insecurity. Tito's eye had been roving lately. That's what she had named the presidential organ and its owner for that matter. Since he seemed to do all his thinking with "Tito;" at least when Nugby Nevera was around.
Also the first lady could be a more serious threat than any Juanita come lately of a rival. Nugby Nevera had had a run in once before with a jealous wife while working her way to the top by being on the bottom. That had resulted in a minor career setback. She knew which sex was the most dangerous. However the rumor she had heard from the president's cousin about just how the first lady helped her son's classmate with his homework might offer an impregnable bulwark against an attack. Nugby Nevera was positive the lucky boy had to be the sixteen year old hunk that lurked about the casa presidencial at odd hours in a soccer shirt and shorts.
Maybe the whole thing was a misunderstanding and the hunk was the first son's lover. The president's son was a bookish sort who seemed more interested in his gerbils than girls. One could never be sure about these things. Though if pressed perhaps with the tools of the Spanish Inquisition Nugby Nevera would have been the first to admit that rodents do have more to offer than most women like herself starting with loyalty, moving on to honesty and finally price.
Then the solution struck her. Though at first she thought it was the Toyota taxi behind her trying to mate with her new second hand BMW. Distracted by the possibility of rear end collision she asked herself, "And what would that union produce, little Boyotas?" But focus she must and knew the solution to any effort by the first lady to displace her.
Though solidly heterosexual unlike so many of his compatriots and not in the least prone to necrophilia. The president was a little kinky and undoubtedly insisted upon certain things that he couldn't get at home besides her dark skin. If the country ever learned of what they did in the dark... That was the problem. He didn't like doing it with the lights on.
Despite the traffic Nugby Nevera finally arrived promptly at her office at her office at the usual hour--11 AM. She felt the usual frisson of pride at seeing her name on the door as Vice Minister of Indigenous Affairs. Though some wags in the know had thought of her job as an insider's joke par excellance she didn't know enough French to care what that meant or that she felt anything but a little tingling sensation at her seeing her title.
She did know English though. Her parents had scrimped as hard as they possibly could while living beyond their means as the whole country did. They had borrowed extensively from every living relative and casual acquaintance to send her to a bilingual high school. Now some of the nastier acquaintances wanted the loans paid back or else their house would be repossessed. As if poor Nugby Nevera didn't have enough problems already such as figuring out how to get Tito to do what he so loved to do with her anyway but in the dark. She wasn't even sure what it was he did, but it sure felt a hell of a lot weirder than french tingle down the spine.
As soon as she sat down at her desk, her secretary buzzed her. The Minister of Indigenous Affairs wanted to see her--immediately. A disturbing term that hadn't been heard in local government circles nor most of the private sector since the last revolution over a half century ago. It must have something to do with the new tribe she had found in the jungle. It had been a stroke of luck that she had been able to expand her bureaucratic fiefdom while cavorting with a rich gringo who liked the outdoors and Indians. She hated both and had discovered that the gringo wasn't that rich after all.
Her lucky discovery had resulted in international press coverage; a lead article in National Geographic; and a horde of anthropologists descending upon the remote province where her find of a tribe of Hippies had been living undisturbed since 1967. The earnest researchers with their wire frame glasses and polysyllabic vocabularies had drunk all the beer in the entire province. Apparently they had been engaged in a serious attempt to speak monosyllabically in order to be understood by their research subjects. The other natives of the province, besides the Stoned Age sort who preferred to smoke an assortment of jungle plants, had rioted when they couldn't get anything to drink. A couple had to be hospitalized after consuming large amounts of their traditional brew of chibcha out of desperation. This hasty meeting meant trouble. Her boss never got into the office before noon.
In her boss's capacious waiting room Nugby Nevera passed a clutch of bedraggled gringos wearing wire frame glasses and using terms she had never heard like, "cross cultural modalities," "moieties" and "research grants." They seemed to be in the throws of a ghastly hang-over until the last term caused them to brighten up a bit. They were in a hurry, but so were all gringos. The one thing that Nugby Nevera had learned during her romp in the jungle is that though gringos might be as lovable and dumb as puppy dogs in a Chinese household, they always spelt trouble. The minister's secretary nodded to her. Pausing to pull up her panty hose Nugby Nevera tensely opened the burnished wooden door with the ministry's seal.
"Far oot"
"Garoovy"
"Laik dig it mahn."
"Wear's yur hed at?"
"Karma"
The minister was standing behind his modestly sized but expensive wooden desk with a manuscript in one hand. His luxurious mustache seemed to be groping around the words.
Completely flummoxed by what the minister was saying and a little weak at the knees Nugby Nevera could only blurt, "Huh?"
Animated the minister replied, "Those gringo scholars who just left presented me with the world's first dictionary of Hippie. Those gringos! They have no manners and arrived on time. The cameraman at least has some manners, but they had to catch a plane. No importa. I'll be needing him for you" He skipped a beat as his bald pate reflected the sun beaming in the plate glass window behind him. "Senorita."
Visions of being arrested on the job as an accessory to a riot among other crimes and embarrassing misdemeanors caused Nugby Nevera's head to swim.
"Are you OK?" The minister inquired solicitously. Then motioning to one of the chairs in front the desk, "Why don't you sit down?"
Nugby Nevera sat down in a chair trying to not appear as if she was collapsing.
"I know this must come as a shock to you, but the Minister of Tourism has just been sacked." He slipped into a conspiratorial tone and continued slyly, "I heard someone say that the president said she was lousy in bed anyway."
Nugby Nevera's normally cafe au lait complexion blanched to cappuccino froth then began to redden to a distinctly uneuropean shade of cherry soda as she dug her fingernails into the leather armrest of her chair.
"Do want my secretary to get you an aspirin?"
"No I'll be fine, it's just, you know."
At the suggestion of menstruation the minister briefly looked horrified and quickly straitened up and looked well, ministerial. He began to pace back and forth and spoke to the floor in order to keep from tripping over something. "Of course someone will be needed to fill the Tourism slot. You have no idea how badly hurt our economy has been after 9/11. Up until then, we made more money from tourism than either bananas or coffee. This is a very important post. Oh how rude of me. Do want my secretary to get you some coffee? Though you look like you could use a drink."
Nugby Nevera could only shake her head to signify "No." She was lost in thoughts of, "So this is how it ends. That two timing bastard. I'll never vote for him again."
"It seems that the only tourists we've had for the last three months are anthropologists and journalists covering your addition to our ministry's fold." The minister stopped pacing and beamed at her almost as brightly as the blinding glare behind him. "How did you find that tribe anyway after they had been lost for 35 years? Amazing bit of detective work. Compasses don't work in that region because of the magnetite deposits."
Nugby Nevera squinted suspiciously at what she perceived to be his sarcasm. He was being exceptionally cruel. She had never seen him do this before. "I was on a field expedition when I took a wrong turn with..." she quickly caught herself, "medical supplies and books." Not that she had read more than two in entire life. "How to Marry a Billionaire" and "Loving Your Inner Wallet" by Dr. Ingrid Swine a noted lesbian rights activist. Following a revelation that it wasn't her mother that she subconsciously wanted to make love to but the other parent; she had been Dr. Ingo Swine a noted Freudian psychologist.
"Yes with the tie dyed grass skirts and little else they certainly do need clothes, but we have been advised to leave them in their natural state. They don't seem to be breaking any laws, except possibly the ones governing public nudity. Though is hardly anyone within 50 kilometers to see them and none of our botanists have quite figured out yet what they smoke." He chuckled. "It sure isn't tobacco."
Nugby Nevera stifled a groan, dug in her fingernails and weakly tried to laugh at her boss's joke whatever it was about except most likely her impending doom. That ugly business about the beer riots and a mysterious love stricken gringo lost in the jungle had to be coming next. Three Red Cross rescue teams had been sent to search for him. All had gotten lost following distant shouts that echoed through the green canyons. "Nugby Nevera." "I love you!" "You dirty whore!" A member of the first rescue team had found his way out to a highway and the second group had been found thinner but alive after surviving on fruits. However another team was still lost in the jungle somewhere along with her disgruntled ex-lover.
"Well congratulations! You are now our noble country's Minister of Tourism and here is the cameraman to record it for posterity!"
A strobe light flashed as Nugby Nevera fainted. Her boss was disconcerted to notice that she had destroyed the armrests on one of his new chairs.
The cameraman apologized. "Sorry uncle I think the lens cap was on. Do you want me to come back after she has had her nap?"
Nugby Nevera's first cabinet meeting passed without incident, except the president was quite obvious about stripping her with his eyes. She didn't mind, but the other ministers had to exercise come unaccustomed diligence in pretending not to notice. A lot of words were used that she couldn't understand. However it was clear to her that despite a few Australian muckrakers plying their trade at casinos and brothels and an anthropologist or two plying their trade in the boondocks; the brief tourist boom she had created had ended like the burst bubble it was. Hippies having exhausted their fifteen minutes of fame ages ago didn't merit more than 30 seconds on CNN now no matter what their present rarity might be outside of Grateful Dead concerts. And that band really was mostly dead nowadays. Sterner stuff was required. Nugby Nevera hadn't a clue what that might be since she never watched CNN preferring telenovelas (soap operas) instead.
The fact that her country depended upon her made her fellow cabinet members more nervous than any hungry presidential leers ever could. Though the president appeared quite satisfied with the job she was doing. There were nasty rumors floating around that no one else was. Her press releases had to be revised so often for all the spelling and grammatical errors that she was provided with additional secretarial staff following her first egregious attempt to communicate with the print media. When it had been apparent that she didn't realize that a 90% decline in tourism was a bad thing. Finally when a ghost writer was provided and her public appearances limited to non speaking photo ops. These were always popular events with men, but women would usually begin to hiss and make other cat like noises when they saw her face on TV speechlessly cutting a ribbon on a tourist project somewhere. Everyone was nervous because the tourist projects inevitably were as vacant as her pretty smile.
Nugby Nevera's raise from her new job had enabled her to pay off the more persistent of her parents creditors. Sometimes she envied gringos. They seemed not to have families. Like some rare species of boisterous iguana they must have been hatched in a large golden incubator in the north. At least they didn't suffer from the most reptilian form of Latin American life--the family; a nurturing boa constrictor that tenderly squeezes its young with lifelong multigenerational bonds of affection and unpaid bills. That is unless one was fortunate enough to be born into the Creole oligarchy of rich people that traded political office every four years in order to get richer. The members of the oligarchy were generally taller and whiter. Better nutrition had something to do the former and Germans probably had a lot more to do with the latter if not both than the Spanish. Coffee hadn't been cultivated in her country until some industrious Germans arrived and started planting in the late 19th century. One wonders if a couple world wars might have been averted if Germany had been a country earlier and able to colonize the more defenseless portions of Africa instead of trying to colonize its neighbors like the French.
In any event Nugby Nevera's country was sometimes referred to as the Switzerland of Latin America. Which beggars the question was Switzerland the same in Europe? It is difficult imagining Switzerland ever doing what Nugby Nevera's country did during the second world war when the local Germans instead of the local Semites were placed in a concentration camp. After the end of the war the Germans didn't get their properties back. So they had financed the last revolution and taken them back with the help of a feisty trouble maker. A stolen election had provided the little fellow with the golden opportunity to fulfill his lifelong ambition of revolution somewhere, anywhere, but most conveniently he finally got one at home.
At the time of the revolution her country had an army consisting of a hundred or so soldiers. That illustrious institution made the mistake of fighting for the losing side. The trouble maker dissolved it and went down in history as providing his country with catchy marketing as the garden of peace. It certainly was a different place than the neighboring statelets where the people starved to provide enough weaponry to keep themselves and their children and their children's children penurious, but well armed against the inevitable insurrections and the occasional war started over a soccer game.
However all Nugby Nevera knew about these matters was that a man with a big nose had disbanded the army long before she was born and was loved by people whose parents had fought on his side in the revolution. She was also aware the neighboring countries weren't very pleasant places and was mystified why all the gringos came down to her part of the world when all her friends wanted to go live in the big golden incubator in the north where they could afford cars.
Nugby Nevera did begin to gather some facts from listening during cabinet meetings. She seldom spoke since her ghost writer had begun delivering her reports by common agreement following her disastrous performance at the second meeting where it was apparent to all in attendance that she thought Paris was a suburb of New York. The president hadn't minded her gaffe one bit though. One thing she learned was that her country's woes were mostly due to tall guy with a beard who dressed like her grandmother. He was named Ben Laden and that his whereabouts were presently unknown.
What she didn't know was that his bodily remains consisted of a thumb in a baggy at some US Army base. Why would the US not announce this joyous fact to the world? Why did the Russians wait fifty years to reveal that Hitler's skull was sitting on a shelf in a Moscow archive and not attached to its owner’s head in Argentina? Because a live boogie man is always better than a dead one.
Stymied by the president's steadfast refusal despite all her heartfelt pleas to let the light shine on valiant little Tito; she still couldn't get the president to do it with the lights on. Thus she was never able to take a surreptitious photo of whatever it was he doing down there. The squeaky noises that usually resulted tended to unnerve her. Though she ascribed them to some animal-like outburst of presidential passion. Beginning with common everyday grunts in the 8th grade she had made men howl like wolves and scream like banshees long before she graduated from High School, but this guy was weird. The Instamatic camera she always carried in her purse saw little use. No matter how much parts of her did. If she couldn't get job security that way then she had to try something different. The thought of actually doing her official job began to dawn on her.
Nugby Nevera's ghost writer deserved the appellation in every way. He was so discreet that his last assignment had resulted in persistent and widely credited tales of haunted offices everywhere he had worked. Priests had been called in to exorcise the buildings. Positively wraith-like he had the unerring ability to slip in and out of a room when no one was looking while only leaving those present with the sensation that something had moved. But he could speak and speak well when he needed to; albeit giving the impression of a disembodied voice.
"Miss Minister."
"Yes Ghostie. Where are you? I thought you were at my desk a minute ago."
"Here in front of you Miss Minister."
"Oh Okay. I think I see you. Why don't you eat more and get some sun? You are so skinny and pale."
"It might jeopardize my chance of a job when the opposition party gets elected.
"How's that?"
"Because the constitution forbids sharing speech writers. Usually I am the only one sober enough to write in either party."
"Would you please quit flitting about! Now where are you?"
"Miss Minister. I heard on the radio they found the last Red Cross rescue party. They were very voluble about a tall skinny man wearing a sheet and shouting Nugby Nevera along with nasty things in the mountains. His ravings have begun to sound like Arabic as the passage of time has turned his mind to Jell-O."
"He must have been screaming about another Nugby Nevera."
"Miss Minister. That doesn't concern me. I have this job because I am discreet you know."
"That's good. Now where are you? Please sit down at the desk and pick up the pencil so I can see you."
"I was thinking that our country has 10,000 empty hotel rooms and the 82nd Airborne division which hasn't deployed yet to Afghanistan or any other undeveloped country has about 10,000 soldiers or so."
"Now Ghostie, how are 82 gringos going to fill all those rooms?"
"No. That is the number of the division."
"But if you divide 10,000 by 82 don't you get 13 like the apostles?"
"Miss Minister leaving aside the mathematical and metaphysical possibilities of this line of discourse the solution to all our problems is to issue a press release immediately. We will regret to inform the world that Bin Laden may have escaped to our fair country. Tourism won't be hurt because there is none at the moment."
"But Ghostie didn't the gringos drop a lot of bombs on that place Afassman? What if they blow up my hair stylist? Or the lost tribe of hippies? Once things are back to normal they could attract a lot of tourists."
"Miss Minister. That's why you must go to the jungle with a news crew and make sure the lost tribe of Haight Ashbury doesn't fall victim to collateral damage."
"The mortgage is paid what collateral does anyone need now?"
"No. I was talking about the jungle."
"What if Ben catches me? He was a little aggravated when I took the 4x4 and left him in the campsite with only a sheet. But the gall of the man! He didn't even tell me his rich parents had disinherited him until after we... Well anyway I did leave him with a compass and a map."
"Miss Minister be that as it may it is very likely that after four months alone in the jungle he won't even remember his name much less what he did with his keys. Anyway you will have 10,000 soldiers eager to shoot him on sight and protect you."
"That sounds good."
"Now what do you want me to write to this group that were unable to hold their convention in Lebanon due to pressure from the US government?"
"I don't know Ghostie. What do they call themselves?"
"Holocaust Deniers, but the rest of the world seems to use four letter names for them."
"Whatever. We have to do something about tourism."
"Miss Minister it might jeopardize relations with Israel."
"Is he back in town? He told me he would look me up as soon as his nose job was done."
"I was speaking of another small country that has been quite generous to us so long as we vote with them at the UN and don't recognize the PLO."
"He has a GTO? Hmm Tito has been a naughty boy with the last woman to work here, maybe..."
"Never mind Miss Minister I'll invite the Deniers."
"With 82 soldiers and a bunch of people who will deny it ever happened it could be a real fun party that Tito will never know about. Now where did you do?"
Pentagon, Army Wing, Office of Lieutenant Colonel Brad Hitchcock:
A scowl crossed his Aryan Iowa features as he almost shouted into the speakerphone, "Sergeant Washington send me Lieutenant Winston Prufrock. Now."
A husky female voice at the other end replied, "Begging the Colonel's pardon. Sir you mean the guy who printed 500,000 posters in the wrong Pashtun dialect saying 'Your Father fucks dead goats and we'll pay 25 cents or two wives for him trussed like a Christmas Turkey'?"
"Yes sergeant that's who I mean."
"Colonel sir, his unit's math is about as bad as their language skills. What you be wantin with that bunch of losers, Sir? Are you sure that's the officer you want?"
"Yes I am and the reason why is classified. Now just get him in here!" The Colonel wrapped his knuckles impatiently against the Formica top of his gray metal desk.
About five minutes later a young officer smartly snapped to attention in front of him and said, "Lieutenant Winston Prufrock commanding officer 113 Psychological Operations Battalion, Company D, reporting sir." His cap was firmly clasped between his left arm and chest. He felt it showed more respect being bareheaded before his commanding officer.
Colonel Hitchcock glared and half saluted and half waved his hand with impatience. "Prufrock, I got a job for your unit. There is a press report that Bin Laden is in Central America. These are your orders." He leaned forward and passed a sheaf of papers to the lieutenant who dropped his cap grasping them and then dropped the papers while retrieving the cap.
After fumbling around for a bit Winston reorganized himself and stood at attention again. "Sir I thought we had his thumb and special ops are surveiling Somalia just in case he went down that rathole."
"Yes we have his thumb, but we couldn't do a DNA match on the gore. So the rest of him may still be out there somewhere. We're also eliminating the possibility of that remainder being in the Philippines. I need your unit to go follow up lead this up. Report to me from in country at 1600 hours prior to insertion. Dismissed."
Winston saluted and turned sharply to leave bumping his head against the door jamb in the process. The colonel heaved a sigh of relief. He had been forced to requisition a new Top Secret stamp after Washington had worn out the old one making sure none of the reports and paperwork from the wanted poster fiasco would ever see the light of day. There was a war to be fought somewhere and a promotion in this Bin Laden business. He didn't want any ROTC shavetail screwing it up for him. His career would be safe with that eight ball unit in the wrong end of the world.
Two floors below Winston had difficulty restraining his men from spraying each other with shaken up sodas and a couple beers. "Come on guys I know you thought we were all headed for Greenland, but we can't get the office all messed up again. Come on calm down we got a job to do."
One of his troopers slapped a wet hand against the Lieutenant's back. "That's right Winnie, let's party."
A swarthy GI whose name tag read “Fallah-Houshmand” sprayed himself in the face. Then shook his head saying, "Woah dude I hear the surf's bitching down there."
"Now come on guys that's the gung ho spirit I like, but we have work to do." Winston implored.
"Yeah dude sir, like party hardy!" Fallah-Houshmand shouted.
What they didn't know was that satellite borne synthetic aperture radar had shown the terrain where they were headed to be impassable to anything but mountain goats and poisonous snakes. The colonel was having Sergeant Washington type up their missing in action reports at that very moment.
Word got around the streets fast about the return of the press corps. New painted faces were seen eagerly selling themselves in the casinos and street corners. The more experienced ladies of the night, who knew exactly what to expect from the fifth estate, however were nowhere to be seen except purchasing weaponry in sporting goods stores.
The three Australian journalists who returned to cover what had been faxed to their home offices as the "story of the century" refused to leave their favorite bordello—the Hotel Del Rey. Though no one could positively say who or what had conducted it. Following the first press conference, the entire cabinet with the exception of the president and Nugby Nevera felt it to be too embarrassing to continue with the press briefings. Following reports of a haunted whore house a priest was called in for an exorcism. The donation for his services was said to be quite generous. Afterwards the officiating priest encountered his favorite altar boy soliciting customers in the park in front of the bordello and took him under his wing so to speak. Though the matter was reported in the press in less than avian terms.
A motel in Latin America is a far different thing than the blots upon the landscape so common alongside roads in North America. South of the Rio Grande they are generally artfully designed temples to love with sliding hatches and maze like driveways so no human face is ever glimpsed other than the one who accompanies the patron. His car is kept well out of site with walls and garage doors. Everything is guaranteed to insure anonymity and the preservation of the family.
"Tito baby, what do we do now?"
"Please I am tired of hearing you ask to turn on the lights."
"That's not what I am talking about."
"Then what do want, sugar?"
"People are beginning to ask how I can be the minister of tourism when there are no tourists."
"Who are these people?" Tito snarled in the dark.
"About half the country." Nugby Nevera despaired. "What can we do?"
"I was thinking about declaring war on the United States." A presidential voice cut through the darkness.
"But dear can you do that without an army? Shouldn't you talk to the attorney general about this first?"
"The idea isn't to fight. Without an army we will just lose the war faster and get money to rebuild."
"My sister was shopping in Panama last year. They hate the gringos there."
"Why my love?" Tito was beginning to lose his authoritative tone. Though this had less to do with doubt than with getting an erection.
"Because the gringos invaded them ten years ago and then didn't give them any money. Anyway it sounds like an old movie I saw called the 'Pussy that Roared.'"
"No that can't have been the title." The president began his usual furtive groping of Nugby Nevera with one hand while getting something from his pants on the floor.
"I thought it was. Peter Sellers starred in it. Ooh yes dear." Nugby Nevera faked pleasure while completely in the dark about what he was doing and considerably apprehensive about what it might be.
"Yech dwarni bloblimbo darsflun!" Amplified by a nuclear powered Rockwell Mark IV Experimental loud hailer Prufrock's voice echoed off through the verdant emerald canyons. He thought to himself, "What wouldn't Tom Clancy give for one these puppies at his next speaking engagement and what wouldn't I give for some hush puppies right now instead of an MRE (meals ready to eat)."
"Yo dude sir, I think you just told old Mr. Bin Liner that his mother gives good goat head in Armenian."
"Oh thank-you Fallah-Houshmand. How's the leg?"
"Yo dude sir, not bad considering that the CRAPPED (Canopy Retrieval And Personnel Penetration Entry Device) failed to deploy."
"We seem to be have been well equipped with state of the art prototypes for this mission." Winston tried to commiserate, but was gosh darn proud to be an American and in the front lines of testing his nation's finest war toys. "How are the rest of the men?"
"Yo dude sir, after seeing what happened with us they wouldn't leave the SHIT (Sikorsky Hi-altitude Insertion Transport.) I saw a jarhead poking at them with his bayonet, but they just wouldn't budge. Do you think Hitchcock will have them shot, dude sir?"
"I wouldn't worry about it Fallah-Houshmand. His bark is worse than his bite once you get to know him."
"Do you know him?"
"Not exactly, but you get a feeling about people and I have a good one about Colonel Hitchcock. He's a stand up kind of guy."
"I don't know about that dude sir unless you mean 'stand 'em up against a wall and shoot them'. Twinkens was banging Sergeant Washington in the parking lot the day Bin Liner's boys took out the west wing. Told me he never came like that before."
Irritated to hear non commissioned officers addressed in these demeaning terms and the lost lives of fellow soldiers not given the proper respect due them also not to mention being slightly jealous that he hadn't gotten any in a month of Sundays Lieutenant Winston snarled, "So what?"
"Well like dude sir Washington swore to him that Bradford drinks rabies serum milkshakes for breakfast."
"I still wouldn't worry. There hasn't been an execution for desertion since the Second World War."
"Look dude sir!" Fallah-Houshmand pointed towards six bodies and a surfboard falling from black helicopter in the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. "Ah man that was the best board I ever owned."
"I wouldn't worry they are probably FUCKED (Freefall Underdevelopment Cellophane Klipski Emergency Device)." Winston said calmly confident in his nation's technology.
"But dude sir I'm really worried! Those stupid jarheads wouldn't even let me wax my board much less strap a chute on it."
"Well you did give one of them a bad facial contusion when you tried."
"Yo dude sir it was an accident."
As spots began to burn into his retinas Winston lost some of his confidence. His men were fucked no matter how you looked at it with or without a FUCKED they hadn't been issued LALOBUD's (Low Altitude Low Observibility Back Up Device or a reserve chute in plain English). FUCKED had only worked in 3 out of 10 trials when the sun was shining. He didn't see any chutes open much less an experimental lightweight piece of high technology, but then it was supposed to be invisible. However nothing had broken their fall except the Pacific Ocean.
During an investigation conducted after the termination of hostilities it was discovered that Dr. Klipski had not been a high level KGB defector as he had claimed, but rather an embassy janitor with a serious drinking problem. Which is quite serious considering how much Russians drink. The investigation was considered so sensitive that word of it never leaked out beyond Colonel Hitchcock's office and the blonde enlisted men with green eyes that Sergeant Washington had a marked predilection for.
Trying to change the subject to more pleasant topics, Winston asked, "Do you want me to adjust your splint?"
"No dude sir, but the tourniquet could be tightened a bit."
"You are right we mustn't leave a blood trail. It will draw vampire bats."
"And Arabs." Fallah-Houshmand chuckled.
"Obbi obbi dowa diddy Nugby Nevera!"
"Fallah-Houshmand was that an echo or..."
"Like dude sir I would say it was a Northern Yemeni dialect similar to my aunt."
“The one on your father’s side.”
“Yeah. She was so ugly we begged her to never remove her veil.”
"What did the voice say?"
"I am not sure." Fallah-Houshmand sounded dejected. "But I think it was, ‘your board's dead and your momma's next.’"
"Cheer up there are other better boards out there. You'll get over her. Now how do I say give yourself up and you'll be treated with every courtesy due a detainee according to the code of the west as defined in our president's rule book?"
"Yo dude sir, you want to tell Bin Liner that he is completely screwed?"
"Well I suppose you could put it like that."
Fallah-Houshmand pondered for a second. Hmm I think that goes..."
Winston hit the self-destruct button by mistake and the Rockwell Mark IV loud hailer disappeared in a highly radioactive shower of sparks and a tiny mushroom cloud.