Four Killing Birds Read online

  "He's on his way back now," Cy said calmly.

  Dak took the bright blue drink Cy offered and sat down in his chair. He looked at Gin's stormy expression and my worried one and shrugged.

  "What?" he asked before taking a sip from the silly straw.

  Gin growled. "Made some new friends, did you?"

  Dak rolled his eyes. "You always do that! You think I can't do anything right, don't you?"

  "Well, you were there a ridiculously long time…" Gin narrowed her eyes.

  "Guys!" I said. "Stop. We don't have time for this."

  Cy nodded. "What did you find out?"

  Dak took another sip and Gin grumbled out a sort of apology. Our nerves may have been a little bit on edge here, and in all honesty, we weren't used to working together.

  "Well, for one, there are only four guards here with LEOPOLD. And secondly, they are all former Blackwater—so we shouldn't have any trouble." Dak took a drink. "And these guys are real pigs. Before LEOPOLD they worked for an African despot, the Mexican cartel, and some sex traffickers. They actually bragged about the bad shit they've done. I know we aren't supposed to take out anyone but the target, but I'll sleep better after killing these bastards."

  "How did you get that information?" I asked. He'd done the impossible. Had he compromised our position?

  Dak held up his hands in protest. "I just talked to them about hair gel."

  Gin folded her arms across her chest. "You got all that intel from talking about hair products?"

  Dak grinned and nodded. "Yup." He went back to drinking, and I got the distinct impression that we weren't going to get any more out of him—which was a pity, because I'd bet it was a really good story…

  Cy set his drink down in the sand and rubbed his hands together. "Well that clears a few things up." He acted like he totally trusted Dak's information.

  We lingered on the beach because we wanted to see if there was a changing of the guard and we didn't want it to look suspicious.

  "How's Louis?" I asked Dak. His son was an adorable boy-genius. I thought he might get into inventing someday. Sure, the family business was over, but that didn't mean I couldn't pass the secrets of my death lab down to the next generation. Besides, blowing stuff up is a very useful life skill. Certainly everyone knows that!

  "He's great!" Dak grinned widely. His pride was easy to see. "Way too smart for his own good, but really good." He leaned forward. "Last week he built something he called a 'space and time linear generator.' It blew a four-foot hole in the roof, but he said it traveled sixty-eight seconds into the future. I felt bad grounding him for that."

  I gripped the arms of my chair until my hands hurt. "He created the beginnings of a time machine—and you grounded him?" What was this world coming to? I definitely needed to have Louis come visit for a couple of weeks this summer.

  Dak shrugged. "I didn't want to, but I had to deal with the roof. I got a sunburn on my neck checking it out. I could've ended up with skin cancer."

  We must have been looking at him funny because he added, "I had a weird sunburn on my neck that didn't match my tan. It took a whole week in a tanning booth to even that out."

  Gin added, "Louis is a lot more like Leonie than you," she teased her brother. "Now Sofia—she's all Dak."

  "Poor girl," I said. "You'll end up spending a fortune on hair products and makeup if she's like you."

  Dak laughed and stretched his legs. "Yeah, she looks just like Leonie—with all that red, curly hair, but she's definitely a princess. She won't let any of us brush her hair because we might do it wrong." He gave a little faraway smile, and I realized it was difficult for him to be away from his family for the holidays.

  "Sorry to drag you into this over Christmas," I apologized.

  "I'm not sorry." Dak shook his head. "The way I see it, the four of us are going to make this world a little bit better by taking out LEOPOLD."

  I leaned back in my chair. "Huh. I hadn't thought about that. You're deeper than your carefully coiffed exterior seems."

  Gin turned to Coney. "How's Veronica? Are you two thinking of having kids?"

  I couldn't stifle a laugh. That was Gin—straight on with the tough questions. Coney was the most reserved of us cousins. I wondered how he'd answer.

  "We've talked about it," he said slowly. "I think we're getting close to a decision. We'll see."

  Dak shot Gin a look that told her not to press it, and to my surprise, she didn't.

  "Well Monty and Jack are upset with the Bombay retirement," I said quickly. I don't really care for uncomfortable silences. "They were excited to get into the family business." I shrugged. "I just chalked it up to being brainless teenagers." I remembered that night at the kitchen table when the two boys were surrounded by college catalogs. They looked so dejected as they realized they'd have to have a real reason for going to college.

  Gin shook her head. "No, I think there's something to that." She nodded toward her brother. "I know Louis has mentioned his disappointment. And Liv told me that Woody feels the same way. Why is that? Is it a guy thing?"

  I pointed my drink at her. "What do Romi and Alta say? Are the girls any different?"

  Gin shrugged. "I don't know. I tiptoe around the subject, really. I guess I haven't asked—kind of hoping they'll forget about it. We only got about eight years into their training before retirement put an end to that. Romi's really talented with a rifle, and she's a surgeon with a shotgun. Alta spends most of her time poisoning her old American Girl dolls. I guess five years is a lot when I think about it. But still, they haven't said a word."

  Dak chimed in, "It's probably a guy thing. Boys like to blow stuff up and all. I did."

  Coney spoke, and we all leaned forward. They guy had a PhD from an Ivy League school after all. "I think we all feel a sense of loss. Our family has been in the business since 2000 BCE. We've been born into it. Indoctrinated into it. We've heard stories from the past four thousand years about Bombays killing people. It's in our blood, so to speak."

  "So," Gin pressed him, "you think this is instinctual in us?"

  Coney nodded. "Sort of. It's like tribal imprinting. It's part of our culture—so much so that those who marry us have to buy into raising their children this way. We've been taught to hunt down members of the family who don't agree or are a threat to the way we do things. That's been ingrained culturally for generations."

  "So you think we all mourn the passing of the Bombay way of life?" Gin asked.

  Coney nodded. "It's impossible not to. When your siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents have all done the same thing since the beginning of civilization—how do you suddenly drop that way of thinking?"

  The four of us sat quietly, staring at our drinks. I'm not sure any of us, well besides Coney, had thought of that before. We may have each missed the business of assassination a bit here and there, but it really was the core of our family's culture and traditions. We'd raised our kids to believe they were part of this millennia-old tradition, whether they liked it or not. We'd ritualized them at the age of five and trained them until age seventeen. Usually, by age twelve a particular interest developed, like me and inventing, Romi and her guns, or Alta and poison. The girls were teenagers now—so they'd have some rather disturbing habits that would be tough to break.

  We warned them about how the person they'd fall in love with might take the idea of marrying into a family of killers. We taught them that if they went against the family, they'd be killed. It was a very black-and-white world we immersed them in—only to pull the rug out from under them and say Never mind! Forget it! Do whatever!

  "Our generation was relieved when the Council dissolved and we could retire," I said slowly.

  "Yes," Coney answered, "and we are wealthy enough to live out the rest of our lives on a beach somewhere doing whatever we want. We participated, and then didn't have to anymore. We had total job security from the time we were five. We knew that there was only one job we could do and that we'd be s
et financially for life. Imagine how it must have looked to the next generation when they went through all that—confident and even comforted by the fact that their future was set forever."

  "Then we took it all away…" Dak responded. "And now they have to come up with how they want to spend their lives, and how they'll support their families…without blowing things up."

  "Just like everybody else," Gin finished, sticking out her chin. "But that's what we wanted, isn't it? We didn't want trust fund babies—we wanted kids that would figure things out for themselves. That's what I wanted for Romi."

  Coney nodded. "Hey, don't get me wrong. I think we all agree with you there. I'm just saying that we never thought about it like your kids do." He pointed at himself. "My kids, if I have any, will grow up more like normal kids, because I don't have to indoctrinate them with the blood ritual at five years old. I won't have to train them how to use a garrote or a flamethrower. I still will train them on those things, but I don't have to anymore."

  I finished my drink and sat back. That was a lot to think about. Were my sons, Monty and Jack, dealing with this kind of head-spinning stuff? I'd never asked. Maybe it was time to, even though I wasn't sure I'd like the answer.

  Dak spoke up. "There's been no shift change with the hair band over there. We should get back."

  Gin nodded and rose to her feet. Coney and I stood to join them. The four of us walked back to the house before we noticed we were all still carrying our ridiculously decorated cups. After a few moments of laughter, we washed them, vowing to keep them as souvenirs of this bizarre Christmas.

  The sun was starting to set, and we'd just finished dinner when we started getting ready for the night's activities. I spread the blueprints on the dining room table.

  "Okay, so the call girls are supposed to enter here"—I pointed to the only entrance to the room LEOPOLD would be using—"about midnight."

  "That's us with the cassowaries," Gin said with a smile. "Unless you consider four prehistoric birds to be call girls."

  Coney spoke, "I'm thinking we need a little change of plan on our part, Dak." He indicated the front entrance to the resort. "We can't go in from the front as guests, because three of the four guards can identify us." His hand swept back to the rear entrance. "We'll have to go ninja through here and just lay waste to all four, and quickly."

  "What about the bodies?" Dak asked.

  "You'll just have to drag them into the woods," Gin answered with a shrug. "There won't be time for anything else."

  Coney nodded. "We can leave them there and reassume their posts with Dak at the entrance to the room and me at the back gate to let the ladies in."

  "Make sure you dump the bodies as far from the trail as you can," I said. "The birds will be anxious as it is. A pile of strange bodies could make them take off." Even though if they did, they'd find themselves living in a protected wilderness full of other birds. I felt a little sad, as if I was keeping Beowulf, Bulvai, Hrothgar, and Kevin from living like normal cassowaries. I pushed that thought aside. We had work to do.

  All four of us wore black cargo pants and black T-shirts and lightweight gloves. It was too hot to wear boots or masks, so we settled for hiking sandals and tying our hair up.

  Dak and Coney put the weapons I'd made into their cargo pockets. We synchronized our watches. All four of us put in our earpieces, and Dak stuffed a clear, thin cable into his other pocket.

  Coney and Dak left, and Gin and I waited before heading out with the light bags. It didn't take us long to find the right spots to drop them. I wasn't worried that anyone else would be on the trail this late on Christmas Eve. We'd been able to place them all close to the path and were heading back when a couple of giant cockroaches ran across Gin's foot. My cousin climbed me like a tree.

  "Gin," I said quietly, "you have to get off my shoulders."

  "Are they gone?" Gin asked, a little panic in her voice.

  "Yes. The big bad roaches are gone. You can come down now." Frankly, I'd been impressed at how fast she moved. I'd barely understood what had happened until she swung a leg over my shoulders.

  Gin climbed down carefully and apologized. Such a hardcore assassin. We didn't speak much all the way back to the barn, mostly because I was in danger of bursting out laughing.

  We were just coming out of the barn with the birds when we heard the guys grunting through the in-ear coms that Missi had made. These were just the normal sounds of men overpowering other men, so I wasn't alarmed. Gin raised her eyebrows when Dak whispered that one of the guys had hit him in the forehead with his elbow as he dropped. Apparently, he was worried about a bruise. Coney gave us the all clear—he sounded out of breath. I could only guess he was dragging the now dead security guys to the woods.

  Gin and I quietly herded the four birds out of the barn and onto the path. Poppy started barking from the house, and all four cassowaries turned to look at me expectantly. Apparently they thought their pug should be allowed to travel with them.

  I whistled softly through my teeth, the command we'd set up for walking, and the birds turned and followed Gin. I could swear Bulvai even shrugged, but it was too dark to tell.

  We made slow progress as we moved along the trail. The birds realized that we weren't on Santa Muerta and seemed a bit, well, squiffy about the whole thing.

  "Missi!" Gin hissed from out front, "Bulvai is pecking me in the back. Is that okay?"

  I shook my head, which of course Gin didn't see. In all honesty, I had no idea. "Hang on, we're almost there!" I whispered back.

  "He's pecking harder," Gin said quietly but with some note of alarm in her voice.

  I whistled and the four birds stopped. Gin and I switched places. I wasn't sure how that would help, but Gin seemed to feel better about the whole situation.

  "Missi!" Coney's voice on the earpiece sounded a bit shouty, even for him. "We've got the four guys in the woods. They're dead but blue foam is running from their mouths. Is it okay to leave them?"

  "Blue foam? That's new." In hindsight, I realized I should've kept this to myself. If the men were dead, it didn't matter if dancing showgirls came out of their mouths and did a chorus line. "It's okay." I think.

  No one responded, so I took that to mean we could keep going. Bulvai began to peck me lightly on the back, but I ignored it, wondering about the blue foam. I must've added too much potassium cyanide to the mix. The problem with cyanide was that too much made the victim's lips turn blue. I thought I'd only added a smidge to the poison, but I guess I was wrong. Oh well. Back to the old drawing board I guess. Sometimes you couldn't accurately anticipate all the side effects of death. I was pretty sure it wasn't explosive blue foam. That was something else entirely. Come to think of it—that was on the next shelf over. I hope I didn't mix that up.

  "Dak, are you in position?" Gin whispered into the com. Oh right, back to the job. I needed to focus.

  "Yes, and the wire is under the door. Can you hear LEOPOLD?"

  I stopped and looked back at Gin, shaking my head.

  "No," she answered. "Can you hear what's going on through the door?"

  "They're talking and laughing, I think," Dak answered. "I can't guarantee they don't hear me."

  "Coney?" I said into the com, "Can you go check on Dak? We'll wait until we get the all clear before we approach the back door."

  "Right," Coney said, and the coms went silent.

  We stopped at the edge of the trail and waited. The back gate was closed. Bulvai began pecking a little harder. What was that all about?

  I turned to look at him. He looked me right in the eye, sort of resembling Don Knotts. What did he want? He seemed agitated. In fact, all four birds seemed agitated. And while that was great for the job ahead, it wasn't too good for us right now.

  As if on cue, Kevin began to squawk, and Hrothgar did this little hopping up and down thing. Beowulf just stared down Gin. The birds were rebelling. This was not good.

  A blast of noise shook the coms and rattled our ears. Bo
th Gin and I flinched at the volume before we heard four voices.

  "This might be our last year together, boys," an elderly, male voice intoned.

  "You say that every year!" A deeper voice laughed.

  "Well, dammit! We're getting old!" Another one said.

  "Next year," the first man spoke up again, "I think we bring in replacements—train some new blood. I said we should do it this year, but noooooooo. You guys didn't want that."

  "Fine, Cyril"—a voice we hadn't heard yet dripped with sarcasm—"next year, we bring in the young ones."

  "HA!" Cyril snorted. "They're old too! I'd hardly call them young!"

  Someone else spoke up. "I don't like handing over the reins. I don't trust those guys."

  "What are you talking about?" Cyril sneered. "They're our sons!"

  The other one was quiet for a moment before answering. "Well, do you trust your son?"

  Cyril laughed coldly. "Of course not! I don't even like him. Why do you think I spend Christmas here with you sons of bitches every year? Besides, they don't know anything about LEOPOLD. It's too late to train them."

  This was followed by laughter, which was followed by wheezing. Apparently, they'd overdone it a bit.

  The birds were all hopping now. This was bad. I looked at my watch and saw that we were running out of time. If we didn't get those birds inside there soon, they'd eviscerate us.

  "Coney! We can hear them. Get to the back door now!" I ordered.

  "Roger that," my cousin answered.

  "Missi," Gin asked, "what's going on with the birds?"

  I shook my head. Something was up. In addition to the hopping, they were now all squawking. If we didn't take control soon, things would get ugly.

  "We only have this one shot at the target," Gin said firmly. "What do we do if the birds flake out?"

  "Plan B, I guess." I shrugged.

  "There's a Plan B?" Dak asked through the com.

  "Something's going on with the birds?" asked Coney.

  "Plan B is we go in there and start snapping necks," I answered. "And yes, something strange is going on with the birds. I don't know what's happening, but we might have to move on soon."