Gordita Conspiracy

by Lyle Christie

  Off-road vehicles traditionally carried some tools, and, after stopping in front of the fence, I stepped out and rustled around through the Cheetah’s various compartments. My final stop was the trunk, and there I finally found a tool box, which I imagine was probably an essential asset to carry in an older Italian car. Luckily, there were wire cutters, and I headed over to the fence and started at the bottom of the mend then worked my way up, cutting and yanking out the sections of wire a couple feet at a time until I had the beginnings of a decently sized opening that looked a little like a massive metal vagina. All of a sudden, Farid looked at me nervously.

  “Do you hear that?” he asked.

  I cupped my hands behind my ears to make miniature parabolic reflectors and listened carefully.

  “Yeah, shit. It must be the border patrol. Help me put this back.”

  The noise of the engine was growing louder, and Farid looked at me nervously as we did our best to close up the opening and make the fence a veritable virgin yet again.

  “What do we say to them?” he asked.

  “Nothing, just act like we’re a couple of assholes out here enjoying some off-roading.”

  A vehicle came over the rise, and its headlights and four roof-mounted high powered off-road lights illuminated us like a movie set. It continued closer then idled for a moment before the engine turned off, and we were left in complete silence with the only sound being my breathing and the loud thumping of my racing heart. The lights were still on, and we looked at each other nervously before returning our attention back to the vehicle. The driver side door opened, and a man stepped out, but the details of his features were indiscernible under the direct assault of their bevy of lights. I tried to shield my eyes, but nothing could cut through the extreme glare, so the only sense I had left functioning was my hearing, which wasn’t exactly comforting at the moment. I heard a familiar metallic sound that was reminiscent of the unique acoustic signature of someone chambering a round in an assault rifle. Shit, we were toast.

  Suddenly, there was a large belch followed by the sound of a zipper then what I was pretty sure was urine trickling onto the sand. What the hell? The peeing sound soon stopped, then I heard the zipper again. The figure walked slightly closer then paused just beyond the front of his vehicle. Jesus, this guy was one cool customer if he could whip it out and take a piss so easily in front of a couple of strangers.

  “How’s it going, motherfuckers!” he said, sounding more like a San Francisco hipster.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “I said. How’s it going, motherfuckers!” he said, with even more gusto.

  I was suddenly experiencing a great deal of confusion and was wondering if we had just run into the coolest border guard of all time. Farid and I stood silently staring at the stranger, still unsure how to respond when he spoke again.

  “Oh fuck! Sorry, man, I forgot about the lights. Muti, kill the fucking lights! They can’t see shit,” he yelled.

  The lights turned off, and my vision slowly adjusted, so that I could at last see that the man before me was probably close to thirty, clean shaven, and wearing jeans and a button down shirt. The vehicle behind him, instead of being the border patrol, was a tricked out dune buggy, and the rifle sound I heard, had in fact been the guy opening up his beer can.

  “Dude! I’m Jawad, and my friend is Muti,” he said, merrily.

  “I’m John, and my sidekick over there is Yoko.”

  He was looking at me curiously, and it made me wonder if he had caught on to my silly fake names.

  “What’s up with the tuxedos?” he asked, apparently more interested in our unusual state of dress.

  “We just came from a party. Nice dune buggy, by the way.”

  “Fuck me—nice Cheetah. How is the power on that son of a bitch?”

  “Fucking awesome.”

  “Oh man, she is beautiful.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Beer?” Jawad asked, looking at us.

  I looked at Farid, and he gave me a nod of approval.

  “Why not.”

  Jawad went to his car and returned a moment later with his friend Muti and two beers. He handed over cans of Heineken then introduced his friend, who was about the same age as Jawad but shorter, heavier, and sporting a well trimmed beard.

  “What brings you two out here?” Jawad asked.

  “Just doing a little off-roading,” I said.

  “Same here.”

  We all stood there and quietly sipped our beers, until Jawad glanced towards the fence.

  “I see you’re planning on going across the border.”

  Farid and I looked at each other, both unsure what to say.

  “Oh, that? We were only thinking about it—but it’s obviously illegal, considering they have a fence.”

  “Hello, it’s just a bunch of fucking wire. Who do you think cut it open in the first place.” Jawad said, before finishing his beer and tossing the empty can into the sand.

  “I take it that it was you and Muti.”

  “Hell yeah! All the best off-roading is on that side of the fence. Now, the border patrol will be coming along here any minute, so if you two really want to go, then we have to go now.”

  “Well, if you insist,” I said, nodding my head.

  Jawad motioned to Muti, and the two of them walked over to the fence and finished what Farid and I had started. After a brief moment, they had expanded the opening, and we were ready to roll.

  “Follow us,” Jawad said, as he and Muti walked back to their dune buggy.

  I grabbed Jawad’s can off the sand and threw it in the back seat of the Cheetah. There was no reason to be a litter bug, even in the middle of nowhere. Having done my little bit for the environment, I started the Cheetah and followed them through the fence into Saudi Arabia. We stopped and everyone got out and worked together to replace the fence before mounting up and heading off into the desert night. Our new friends had obviously been this way before, as their speed was never less than fifty miles per hour and at times reached well over seventy. It wasn’t anywhere near the Cheetah’s top end, but driving in this kind of terrain required a really good map or personal experience, and currently we had neither. We did, however, fortunately have a dune buggy version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer driving like a maniac just ahead.

  “How’s our direction? Are we still heading towards the coordinates?” I asked Farid.

  “Yeah, perfect. Right on course.”

  For the moment, we followed our new friends, continuing on into the desert for another half an hour until reaching a wide open, moonlit sandy bowl where they turned around and pulled up beside us.

  “This is it! The sweet spot. There are awesome jumps in every direction with this bowl making for a perfect landing spot.”

  Farid looked down at the GPS then smiled as he looked over at me.

  “Guess what?” he asked excitedly.

  “What?”

  “This is our rendezvous spot.”

  “No fucking way.”

  Our revelry was suddenly interrupted when Jawad hit the gas and sent a fifty foot rooster tail of sand behind their dune buggy before disappearing over the edge of the bowl. A moment later they came flying off the edge and easily traveled a good thirty feet through the air before coming down into the sand. We watched as they did it two more times before Farid looked over at me.

  “Well?”

  “Fuck it. When will I ever get to drive one of these again?”

  I hit the gas and followed Jawad and Muti over the berm then returned a moment later and caught massive air. It was more fucking fun than I’d had in a car in a long time, and we did it again and again, following our new friends throughout this adult version of a skate park. Eventually we stopped, had another beer and switched vehicles. The next stop, we had yet another beer and switched drivers. The following stop was just for beer, and I was starting to wonder how our new friends managed to carry, let alone drink so much fucking beer. An hour
later, Jawad and Muti were thankfully ready to head home, as it was clear that none of us should be operating any kind of motorized vehicle. They gave us their remaining four beers then said goodbye and headed off back towards the border. The sound of their engine faded until the serenity of the desert night returned, and Farid and I grabbed a beer then climbed up and sat on the hood of the Cheetah.

  “This wasn’t exactly how I saw this night turning out,” I said.

  “No shit. This has been awesome.”

  “Indeed.”

  “So, tell me about your exciting life as a private investigator. Do you meet lots of beautiful women?”

  “Lately I’d have to say yes, but before that there were hardly any women, and my cases were all shitty divorces and lost pets, with the most recent one entailing me finding the fat cat I mentioned back at the palace.”

  “Surely you must be joking!”

  “Afraid not, but, as I said, everything has taken a dramatic turn for the better since I came into the fold of the Topless Agenda.”

  “So, has there been anyone special among these recent beautiful women?”

  “They were all special in their own way, but two stand out.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  I had to laugh as I thought about how tragic it turned out with both.

  “Well, the first one was the original love of my life, and, when we reconnected recently, I unfortunately learned that she had married my close friend from the Air Force. The second one I had met while reconnecting with the first one, and she’s very likely getting married to another man as we speak.”

  “One puts the knife in your heart and the other twists the blade. Bitches man,” he said, clinking cans with me.

  We finished our beers, then I went back into the Cheetah and grabbed the last two and handed one to Farid.

  “How about you, player? I read in your file that you’ve become quite the ladies man.”

  “That’s probably an exaggeration, though I have been dating. Unfortunately, no one special yet, but I hope that will change in America.”

  “I don’t mean to question your dream, but there are incredible women everywhere.”

  “True, but America is special for me. You know—back at Stanford, I fell in love with the most beautiful girl.”

  “Blonde?”

  “Of course, where do you think it all started?”

  I nodded, and he continued with his story.

  “And she was brilliant—also working on her PhD in nuclear physics. We ended up moving in together, and, honestly, it was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. She was the one,” he said, holding up his index finger.

  “So what the hell happened?”

  “We graduated, and I went back to Iran.”

  “That was it? You didn’t keep in touch?”

  “I tried. A few phone calls, some emails, but then we just lost track of each other. It was inevitable while we were a world apart.”

  I knew how he felt, as it had been basically the same story with Lux, and I too had dropped the ball and let my one get away.

  “I did get in touch with her briefly—five years ago,” he said.

  “Let me guess—you called her because I was coming to take you to America.”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh man am I sorry.”

  “It was your government not you.”

  “Still sucks. Have you looked for her online?”

  “Of course, and I found her on facebook and Instagram—but because I have been living under a false identity, I couldn’t friend her or make contact.”

  “Shit. I never thought about that. It must suck giving up your identity.”

  “It does, but I wonder if I will be able to be me again?”

  “That’s a good question, and I can’t imagine why not.”

  “It would be nice. They say there is power in your own name. You know I took a Tai Chi class back at Stanford, and we did an exercise where you would hold up your arm and say your name while the instructor would try and push it down. If you said a false name, he could easily push it down, but if you said your own name, he couldn’t. It was an interesting exercise and one I’ve never forgotten.”

  “There is some amazing shit out there in the universe.”

  “As a scientist, I’m on the cutting edge of all the latest shit, but I’ll tell you what—we don’t know shit about shit.”

  “No shit and that includes women. We don’t know shit about them either, but I think that makes me love them all the more.”

  “Amen, brother,” he said clinking cans with me before finishing his beer.

  I finished mine, belched, and felt a very healthy buzz.

  “When we get back to America and you get this whole cold fusion thing rolling, I’m going to fucking find your lost love and bring you two back together,” I said.

  “You’re totally drunk.”

  “I totally am, but I’m also feeling sentimental.”

  “Yeah, and probably horny as well.”

  “Yeah, that too, so I’m really missing my one about now.”

  “Which one? You mentioned two.”

  “At the moment, it’s the one who is about to get married.”

  “And all you have in this lonely empty desert is me.”

  “Do you want to cuddle—for old times sake?”

  We started laughing like drunken idiots then continued to talk well into the night, the years melting away as we caught up with each other’s lives. It was an amazingly bonding moment and the best I’d had in a long time. The desert was truly a magical place, and, after a final epic pee, we retired to the Lambo, tilting back our seats to sleep and await contact with the mysterious man code named the Desert Fox.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Desert Fox

  AT 6:40 a.m. the sun rudely rose above the dunes to the east and cast the interior of the Cheetah aglow in warm morning light. I rolled onto my left side and buried my head in the door to hide from the obnoxious glare in hopes of gaining a few more precious hours of sleep. Thankfully I put aside the feelings of a swollen bladder and decidedly uncomfortable sleeping position and managed to doze off. I awoke sometime later and looked at the dashboard clock to discover that two hours had passed, and it was now eight eighteen. I could hold my pee no longer and pulled the door handle and practically spilled out onto the sand. I straightened up and stood on wobbly feet and turned slightly north to get the sun out of my eyes, then unzipped my fly and brought rain to the desert. It flowed like a great yellow river and soaked the sand and created a tiny little oasis of urine. I finished up with a quick shake and decided to conduct a quick three hundred and sixty degree survey of the horizon in the hope that I might find a trace of our mysterious contact, but the desert was not yet ready to reveal its secrets.

  Behind me, Farid stirred and groaned as he came awake and stepped out of the Cheetah, where he staggered a few feet from the door before proceeding to pee. Like me, he had chosen to look away from the glaring sun and was more or less pointing in my direction apparently oblivious to my presence. Just as I was about to say something to my hungover friend, I looked past him and saw, to my amazement, a line of Bedouins sitting on their camels about fifty feet in front of the car. They had inexplicably appeared out of nowhere and, more alarmingly, were holding HK G36 assault rifles. Worse still, their faces were hidden behind their keffiyehs, so I was unable to discern any kind of expression that might help determine if they were friend or foe. All in all this was a potentially shitty way to start the day.

  “Um, dude,” I said, to Farid, pointing at the strangers.

  He looked up groggily and realized I was in front of him and quickly twisted away, his pee tracing an arc across the sand as he unknowingly ended up facing the only other people within a hundred miles of our present location. Seeing them, he panicked yet again and turned back towards me but stopped about halfway, where he finally found a neutral direction in which to direct his urine.

  “Um—you
might want to put that away,” I said.

  “I can’t stop mid pee,” he said, nervously.

  “Then don’t blame me if someone takes a shot at your dick.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  I walked around Farid and closer to the Bedouins and noticed that they were all dressed in light colored thawbs, a loose fitting robe-like garment common to the people of the desert. It protected them from the sun and allowed air to circulate more freely around their bodies when they were out in the intense heat, and it was a shitload more practical than the Dolce & Gabbana tuxedo I was currently wearing. Still, I wasn’t the only one in black, for the person at the center of their group was wearing a black thawb and keffiyeh, and I suspected that his different color scheme meant that he was most likely their leader. Farid finally finished peeing then came over and joined me.

  “What the hell do we do?” he whispered in my ear.

  “Fuck if I know. Bedouins are generally peaceful nomads.”

  “Then why do they have assault rifles?”

  “Maybe they’re out hunting.”

  “In the desert? What could they possibly find out here?”

  I shrugged.

  “Oh, I don’t know—a couple idiots and a Cheetah, perhaps?”

  “Neither would be very edible,” he said.

  “Well, fuck it—I’m going to talk to them. Wait here.”

  I took a step forward with my arms out and my hands open to show that I was unarmed and meant no harm. My gesture seemed to be misunderstood, however, because, instead of looking reassured, they raised their weapons and pointed them directly at me. The leader, unlike his underlings, abruptly reached up and behind his back for what I feared was going to be a razor sharp scimitar—the curved swords common to this part of the world. Instead, he removed his head scarf to reveal the most unlikely visage I could have ever imagined appearing in the desert. He was in fact a she, and she was very likely one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. Her hair was long and dark as coal, her skin smooth and olive, and her eyes were the most glorious shade of emerald green. The only thing to mar her otherwise perfect visage was a thin scar on her left cheek that ran from just below her eye to the corner of her mouth, but, instead of it taking away from her beauty, I thought it gave her face character in much the same way that a super model might have a unique freckle or birthmark. Sweet flower of the desert! She might have been armed and dangerous and in command of a rather imposing looking unit, but I was still officially smitten and remained all but lost in her eyes until she at last broke the silence and spoke.