The Housewife Assassin's Guide to Gracious Killing (2 page)

Before the CO can let loose with yet another tsunami of swear words, I hand him my cell phone. His nods and mutters, indicating he’s heard Acme’s client—also his boss—loud and clear:

Put whatever we need at our disposal.

We grab Charlie Harcourt-Smythe (he’s the soberest of the RAF pilots) and head to the airstrip. Because of the sensitivity of the mission, we’ll keep it to that: no FBI, no CIA, and certainly no local law enforcement. The prince has had enough photo ops for one visit.

I’ve traded in my bikini for a snug wind-resistant flight suit. He never did sign my bikini. Maybe later. If it’s not too late already.

Charlie has the Lynx AH.7 pacing the Leprechaun’s ride: a sixteen-wheel big rig, barreling down Mexico’s Baja Highway. Our guess is he’s rendezvousing with some submarine along the coast that will take Harry to an undisclosed location, where he will be tortured on camera as he begs for his life.

From what I’ve seen of the prince, he’ll die before he gives in. He may be royal, but he’s no softie.

At that point, he’ll lose his life anyway in some macabre fashion, which will have Great Britain’s stiff upper lip curling into a retaliatory snarl.

We can’t let any of this happen.

Our plan to stop this scenario is simple enough: Jack and I will rappel down from the helicopter onto the truck’s bed. Then we’ll break into the back and grab Harry, at which point the three of us will be hauled back up into the helicopter.

Our audio surveillance bug, which was shot onto the truck’s cab with a mounting magnet, is a real eye-opener in one respect: the Leprechaun has a pretty decent falsetto.

“That little wanker listens to Fiona Apple? Figures.” Charlie shakes his head in disgust.

I shrug. “So she’s an acquired taste. Could have been worse. Frankly, I was expecting Miley Cyrus.”

“More to the point, he’s wearing ear buds, so he can’t hear us.” Jack smiles. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

My rappelling cord, connected to another mounting magnet, hits its target: the roof of the truck’s bed, toward the back. Jack gives me the high sign and I scramble down the rope: not an easy feat, considering the damn thing and the helicopter are moving in tandem, at almost seventy miles per hour. When I land, only my tether saves me from bouncing backward on my ass and toppling off.

Like a crab, I claw and scurry toward the back door. I’m positioned over it when I hear a loud thud behind me. Jack’s landing was just as hard as mine. At the speed the truck is going, he’ll roll off and take me with him.

Instead, I grab hold of him, as if I’ll never let him go.

I won’t. Ever.

He murmurs in my ear, “No, that’s not a bazooka in my pocket. I’m just happy to see you.”

I frown. “Aw, damn. Does this mean you forgot the bazooka?”

Suddenly the truck is zigging and zagging all over the road.

“Bollocks, the tiny bastard knows I’m up here, and that I’m following him.” Charlie’s voice crackles through our earpieces. “But I don’t think he’s onto the fact you’re on board, so make it quick, lovebirds.”

Jack crawls over the side and slams against the doors as he positions the bolt cutter over the lock, and slices through it. He holds onto one door, but lets the other fling open.

We rush inside. Harry is on the floor, trussed up with plastic handcuffs. At least he’s alive.

There’s a hood over his head. When I pull it off, I see he’s bruised badly. Warily, he opens one eye. At the same time, he tries to lift his hands, but can’t. That’s when he notices he’s wearing cuffs. His bleary gaze focuses on me first. “Had I known you liked to play rough, I would have brought along a few of my own toys.”

“You’re a cheeky toff, you are.” I use the bolt cutter to free him, and then toss him a gun. “I’d curtsey, but we’re under attack, so let’s give it a go, shall we?”

As if hearing me, the Leprechaun breaks hard to the right. The three of us are flung forward. The next thing we hear is the deafening rat-tat-tat of a semi-automatic.

“He’s shooting at me,” Charlie says. “And I’m tethered to the truck. I’ve got nowhere to go.”

The Lynx is a sitting duck, and so are we, unless we make a run for it. If we scatter, at least one of us may have a chance to take out the Leprechaun before he kills us all.

My mind is racing. “Charlie, on the count of three, we’ll jump out of the back. The second we do, program the straight up, and fast, on autopilot. Then eject!”

Harry nods slowly. “Brilliant!”

In theory, perhaps.

“Mind the gap!” I yell as we jump onto the asphalt and roll into scrub. Then we scatter over the wide-open plain. A second later, the Lynx jerks the truck skyward. The Leprechaun is flung forward onto the truck’s windshield. He is stunned at first, but still game to take a shot at his target. He fumbles around the floor of the cab for his night goggles and his AP4 LR-308. Finding it, he positions it quickly, so that he has the running prince in his sight.

He is just about to pull the trigger when the helicopter loses the tug of war, and is yanked back to Earth. When the shrieking, twirling dervish slams into the forty-ton truck, the explosion tosses off debris in all directions.

The truck’s back bumper hurtles toward me, but I duck just in time. It scorches a path in the dry desert bed before skidding onto a low bank of scrub. I’m choking on the acrid smell of a burning bush.

Despite my tears from the smoke, there is enough light from the fireball for me to scan the desert for Jack and Harry. Yes, they too made it safely beyond the carnage.

Like an errant cloud of fog, Charlie’s parachute passes over our heads. A moment later, I hear a thud. “Bollocks! Fecking cactus,” Charlie cries. “I won’t be able to sit on my arse for at least a week.”

Charlie’s pain is nothing next to what Jack and I will endure when we break the news to Ryan Clancy, our boss at Acme, that we’ve demolished one of the Navy’s sixty-one million-dollar toys.

In fact, if it weren’t for Harry, my guess is that Jack and I would be walking back to San Diego, as opposed to grabbing a seat on the second RAF-piloted helicopter sent to retrieve the prince.

Back at the base, the prince hands me a pair of trollies. His parting gift to me is signed, "xxx! Harry," with his distinctive scrawl.

I smile at Harry. “Thanks mate! What can I say? It’s bazzin’.”

Okay, now we’re even.

Chapter 2

The Art of Gracious Lying

The ideal hostess has one mission: to make her guests feel as comfortable as possible, at all times. Sometimes this means lying to them. 

Should such a time come, little white lies must flow trippingly off the tongue. For example, telling a zaftig friend “You look marvelous, dahling! That floral muumuu is divine…” will certainly thrill her to no end. 

However, a greater test is your ability to smile sweetly as you slash the jugular of any thug who has the nerve to crash your soirée as you whisper, “This won’t hurt a bit…”

When my children are mad at me, they pout. All it takes is a dozen homemade cupcakes to get back in their good graces.

My hope is that this will also work on my boss, Ryan.

Testing this theory, I place a plate of red velvet cupcakes on his desk, but the scowl stays on his face even as he mutters, “How many of these would we have to sell to recoup the cost of that Apache?”

 “Considering the cupcake craze is still going gangbusters in the fly-over states, maybe not as many as you’d think. In fact, if we decorate the icing with tiny pink hearts—”

He lets loose with the sort of groan you hear when a guy watches his favorite team lose the Super Bowl.

Nope, more like what you’d hear from a man who got called on the carpet by POTUS.  

“Donna, Donna, Donna. What am I going to do with you?” He holds his head, as if the decision is a painful one. 

It could be—for me. Spooklandia urban legend has it that Ryan once ran the CIA’s notorious travel agency. You know the one: it specializes in extraordinary renditions, better known as one-way tickets to hell. 

Not the best way to see the world. 

Its version of Business Class is strapping the passenger, naked, to a hard metal chair and dunking him upside down into a bucket, then threatening to toss him out the door. 

The first forty thousand feet are a doozy.

“Sir, surely you can imagine our goal wasn’t to crash the copter. And the Cousins have to be satisfied with the mission. We exterminated the Leprechaun while keeping the prince alive.”

“They are. Unfortunately, they aren’t our client, who must now explain to a committee of media-hungry senators why the prince was joyriding in one of the Navy’s precious helicopters before it crash-landed beside a Mexican resort. You’re lucky the prince corroborates your story, and luckier still that he’s taking the fall.”

It’s true. The prince is claiming he crashed the Apache. 

But the powers that be aren’t impressed,” Ryan continues. “It would’ve helped had he not given his testimony via webcam while soaking in a hot tub with five co-eds. Of course, now our client wants assurances you won’t be a liability on any future missions.”

“I can vouch for Donna, sir.” Jack’s flippant tone makes me flinch. 

 “Don’t be a smart-ass, Jack. Both of you would’ve been burned by now, if he hadn’t lied to save you.” He shakes his head as he sighs. “Well, you can redeem yourself on your next assignment. Another dignitary is being threatened with assassination on American soil.”  

Great. I pray this one isn’t another party animal. “Who is it?”

Ryan tosses a dossier across his broad, slick desk. “The newly elected Russian president, Alexei Asimov.”

Jack frowns. “Another one of Putin’s puppets.”

The dead cold eyes in the photo staring up at me send a chill up my spine. “Wait… isn’t he the one they call ‘the Grim Reaper of the Ukraine?’”

Ryan nods. “The one and only. We’re already hearing chatter about a Ukrainian rebel marksman embedded stateside. And another thread Acme ComInt is following places both Chechen and Russian dissident cells here as well. ”

I shake my head in disgust. “Why must we protect the bad guys, too?”

Ryan shrugs. “He’s a statesman now. And as long as our country acknowledges him as such, we do, too.”

“Is this to be a whirlwind tour of the country? Those are always fun.” Ryan knows I’m being sarcastic. I have three kids between the ages of twelve and five. To ensure their lives go on normally, I’ll have to line up my Aunt Phyllis.

 That’s easy. The hard part is putting up with the cattiness that comes with bowing out of carpool. Aunt Phyllis is no help there. Her lead foot on her Volkswagen Beetle is notorious. The Hilldale Police Department is on full alert whenever she’s in town, Chechen and Ukrainian assassins be damned. 

“Nope,” Ryan responds. “In exactly five days, he’ll be flying directly into Orange County, specifically for three days of pomp and circumstance, followed by a two-day nuclear disarmament summit. He, POTUS, and twenty-two other heads of state are being hosted by billionaire Jonah Stanford Breck IV in his retreat in your neck of the woods, Hilldale.”

When Breck was building Lion’s Lair, his posh compound, some of our neighbors had a tizzy fit. What right had he to build an eighty-six-room mansion on the peak of the hill overlooking our quaint little town?

Building his private Getty-worthy museum in the town was the olive branch proffered to, and accepted by, those who were the most upset: the Hilldale Women’s Club.

And lucky me, I carpool with the coven running it: Penelope Bing, Tiffy Swift, and Hayley Coxhead.

“The museum is nice, but as for that monstrosity on the hill—well, someone has to say it. There goes the neighborhood,” Penelope had muttered.

That doesn’t stop her from inviting the Brecks to every social function in town. 

They’ve ignored each invitation, and every one of us, too. 

Jack lets loose with a derisive chuckle. “That’s a hoot! The richest man in the world, who’s made his fortune on military contracts, has turned over a new leaf?”

Ryan shrugs. “Something like that. He’s got a new young wife, and a five-year-old daughter. Since his latest marriage, his corporation has sold its arms manufacturing subsidiary. Breck Global Industries now invests only in green technology start-ups, with a focus on sustainable energy and agriculture. To prove it works, he’s developed several luxury resorts throughout the world, which rely specifically on eco-friendly energy sources. Fortune has nicknamed him ‘the Jolly Green Giant.’”