Island of the Sequined Love Nun

could see them shaking.
    The guards were gathered at the edge of the hangar. Mato looked up quickly and made eye contact long enough for Tuck to see that he was nervous. Tuck wished he had asked him if the other guards spoke English.
    "Konichi-wa, motherfuckers," Tuck said, covering his linguistic bases.
    None of the guards responded. Except for Mato, their eyes were trained on Beth Curtis dancing across the airstrip to Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing." One of the guards hit a button by the hangar and the music stopped as Beth Curtis stepped onto a small wooden platform on the far side of the runway. With the speakers silenced, Tuck could hear the drums of the Shark People. Some were marching around in formation holding lengths of bamboo painted red as rifles. Beth Curtis raised her hands, a copy of People in each, and the drums stopped.
    Tuck couldn't hear what she was saying, but she was waving her arms around like a soapbox preacher, and the crowd of natives moved, and flinched, and hung on her every word. She paused at one point and handed the magazines down to Malink, who backed away from the platform with his head bowed.
    Tuck didn't find anything about her performance nauseating, but it was nothing if not strange. Why all the pomp and circumstance? You have six guys with machine guns, you can pretty much go rip a kidney out anytime you want to.
    He needed to think, and he didn't particularly want to see whom she would pick. Whoever it was, their face would be in his head all the way to Japan and back. He went into the hangar, lowered the door on the Lear, climbed into the dark plane, and lay down in the aisle between the seats. He couldn't hear the sound of the Sky Priestess or the natives oohing and ahhhing, and here among the steel and glass and plastic and upholstery, it felt like home. Here he could hear the sound of his own mind; here in his very own Learjet, the weirdness was all outside. But for the lack of a key he would have taken the plane right then.

    The guard kicked Tuck in the thigh much harder than was needed to wake him. Tuck looked up to see the face of the guard who had beaten him on the beach. He had a scar that ran up his forehead tracing a bare streak into his scalp and Tuck had started to think of him as Stripe, the evil little monster from the movie Gremlins. Tuck's anger was immediate and white-hot. Only the Uzi stopped him from getting his ass kicked again.
    The guard dangled the key to the Lear's main power cutoff. It was time to go. Tuck limped to the cockpit and strapped himself into the pilot's seat. Stripe inserted the power key into the instrument console, twisted it, and stepped back to watch as Tuck started the power-up procedure.
    The other ninjas pulled the Lear out of the hangar by a large T-bar attached to the front wheel. When the plane was safely out of the hangar, Tuck started to spool up the jets. Stripe remained with the Uzi at port arms.
    Tuck made a big show of going through the checklist, testing switches and gauges. He frowned and clicked the radar switch a couple of times. He looked back at Stripe. "Go check the nose. Something's not right."
    The guard shook his head. Tuck mimed his instructions again and Stripe nodded, then he motioned through the window for another of the guards to join them on board. Evidently, they weren't going to leave him unguarded in the plane with the power key in. Stripe turned over the guard duty to the other ninja and appeared at the front of the plane. Tuck motioned for him to get closer to the nose. Stripe did. Tuck turned on the radar. "And a lovely brain tumor for you, you son of a bitch." Stripe seemed to actually feel the microwave energy and he jumped back from the plane. Tuck grinned and gave him the okay sign. "I hope your tiny little balls are boiling," he said aloud. The guard behind him didn't seem to understand what Tuck was saying, but he nudged him with the barrel of his Uzi and pointed. Beth Curtis, in her dark Armani, was coming across the compound with briefcase and cooler in hand.
    She stepped into the plane and nodded to the guard. Instead of leaving, he took a seat back in the passenger compartment. Beth strapped herself into the copilot's seat.
    "We taking him in for shore leave?" Tuck said.
    "No. He's just along for the ride tonight."
    "Oh, right." Tuck powered up the jets and eased the Lear out of the compound onto the runway.
    Beth Curtis was silent until they were at altitude, cruising toward Japan. Tuck