Blackbird

by Michael Fiegel

  And so here we are, four killers and … a cannon, basically.

  “What the fuck, Joe? Where did you get a Payload Rifle?” Anti-Material Payload Rifle, AMPR for short. An XM109, to be precise. Nothing Joe should have. Nor anyone else.

  “Let’s call it ‘military surplus’ and leave it at that.”

  All of us are in theoretical camouflage, a balance between “matches terrain on a hillside overlooking a major highway” and “blends into a crowd once we are no longer on said hill.” Of us all, Xtian is unintentionally the best camouflaged, in dirty white sneakers, blue jeans, a dark green sweatshirt with a faded unicorn on the front. Not only will she be totally inconspicuous afterward, but she blends in with the landscape fairly well, so much so that I almost lose her in the mist still clinging to the hills when I look away for a moment.

  “Is this a fifty?” asks Xtian admiringly. Caliber, she means.

  “No,” says Joe. “It’s a twenty-five.” Millimeter, he means.

  “Is that like half as powerful?”

  “No,” says Joe. “This is Common Core math.”

  This is a good trial run for her, all things considered; at this distance, there is very little movement of an oncoming target for about a hundred meters, with a clean, straight-on, please-shoot-me presentation. Everything is accounted for: weather, the make and model of the car, the deflection expected from shooting through glass. Everything should go fine. Especially since Joe’s AMPR has a fancy targeting system and everything. She could miss and still hit.

  I do not know what I will do if she fails again like she did in Buffalo. Like Joe knows she did. I wonder maybe if that is why he has her shooting. Maybe he expects to get some perverse thrill out of her screwing up a second time.

  “So you guys work together a lot?” she asks.

  “No,” says Joe. I say it at almost the same time, somewhat louder than him.

  “Normally people stay in their own regional cell,” I add. “This is highly unusual.” I give Joe a dirty look at the back of his head, wondering if he can feel my glare.

  “Well, I guess we’re all rule breakers here, aren’t we?” he says without looking at me.

  “I never followed them in the first place,” I spit back. He should not be here, I keep thinking. And then I think, well, neither should I. Or Xtian. My gut says something is brewing. My brain says I am being a hypocrite. By my own argument I should still be in DC.

  Perhaps we all have our own reasons for running away from places.

  “Hey, Josh,” says Joe, filling time with nonsense, “I tell you my wife and I got turned down for adopting that Siamese cat? I told them ‘Fuck you and your cross-eyed retarded cat.’”

  “Why’d they turn you down?” asks Josh. He can banter far better than I can.

  “They wanted a home with other pets,” says Joe. “I tried to argue that my children were close enough.”

  “You really have kids?” asks Xtian, turning her head to peer over at him through a veil of shoulder-length blonde hair. Today, it is streaked with blue, like moldy cheese. I cannot tell if she remembers Joe mentioning his kids before or not. She could be making idle chatter or possibly pushing back at Joe since he messed with her at our meet-and-greet a few months ago.

  “Two,” he says, rolling off the blanket and into a crouch with one smooth movement. “But they didn’t want to come out and play. Too busy watching cartoons like normal children.”

  Ah, there we go. Joe playing the long game with his insult. He tries too hard sometimes.

  “You do not raise a capable, confident adult by letting the television babysit,” I say.

  “No,” says Josh. “I guess you teach them how to kill.”

  Touché.

  • • •

  We’d been awake since before dawn and lying prone for the past two hours, yet no one had bothered to tell me exactly what we were going to be shooting at. I didn’t care if I had to kill everyone on the freeway at this point, if it meant we could go home. I wanted a shower.

  “Punch and pie?” asked Joe. He looked at Josh, who was suddenly on a brand new cell. There was a mumbled, very brief conversation, presumably with the rest of the team. Then Josh pulled the battery out of the phone, held up five fingers, and said, “Yellow.”

  “What’s that mean?” I asked. Edison still hadn’t gone through the whole code with me.

  “Yellow means five,” said Joe, showing me his own palm, calloused and filthy.

  “No, that’s not wh—”

  “Last year six thousand people checked into emergency rooms with pillow-related injuries,” said Edison. “That’s how safe people are in their homes. Watching their cartoons.” Evidently he was not done talking about the earlier issue, still trying to one-up Joe somehow.

  “Clearly a lack of funds for pillow safety education,” said Joe. “I was reading—”

  “You can read?” asked Josh.

  “Hooked On Phonics worked for me. I read a study that said those most likely to become teachers are those with the lowest averages in their classes. All the smart ones take other jobs. So each generation is taught by dumber teachers, creating dumber students.”

  “That is not an education problem,” said Edison. “It is a cultural problem. If you blame one thing, blame the Internet. The average person has an attention span of about eight—”

  Josh’s second cell rang, once. He looked at the display and nodded to Joe and me. The first call, from our first spotter a few miles up the road. Nick, maybe? I had no idea.

  “—seconds,” finished Edison.

  “What was that?” asked Joe. “I wasn’t paying attention.” He lay down beside me, reached around to correct my positioning, hand on my waist.

  “Remember what I told you,” he said. “Try not to miss the first shot, but if you do miss, just aim downstream and hit whatever you can. With how fast traffic’s going, close might be enough to take him out if you cause a pileup.”

  “’Kay,” I said. My hands shook. What if I failed again? What if—

  “Should we get her a laser sight?” asked Josh, sarcastically. As if it could help at that distance.

  “You know,” said Joe, “I once bought a handgun with a laser sight on it. There was a warning on it about not pointing it at people’s eyes.”

  Josh’s third and final cell rang. Probably the second spotter. Abe? Josh made a noise like “Mmhmm” and nodded at Joe.

  “Silver Beamer, Oregon plates, center lane, thirty seconds,” said Josh out loud. Then he nodded at Edison, and the two of them jogged down the hill behind us to get the car ready. No discussion of who the target was or why he needed to die.

  A girl had a gun. And that was that.

  “Well,” said Joe, “Let’s see how much you’ve grown.”

  • • •

  Three minutes later, Joe tosses his blanket-wrapped cannon in the trunk and he and Xtian climb in the car. Josh loops around the hill and back to 280, the long way around just to be sure, and we head south. There is no traffic for a long few minutes, and it makes me a bit nervous when we first hear sirens, but nothing comes of it. We get away cleanly.

  “What now?” asks Josh.

  I catch Xtian’s eye in the side mirror. She looks numb. Whatever happened up there has affected her, somehow. Made her feel, when she did not want to. I used to get that way. Used to. No way out but through.

  “South,” I say. “Punch and pie.” It is as good as anything, right now.

  • • •

  They had made breakfast reservations while we were on the hill in the middle of a job. It left me speechless, although I did wonder exactly what I had expected from a bunch of ruthless killers. Of which I was evidently one, now. Gooble-gobble. One of us. We accept her.

  When we were seated, which was quickly, they got their pie. Joe got cherry. Josh got apple. Edison got something called olallieberry. Everyone got coffee; there was no punch. I wasn’t hungry, and the reek of cooked eggs in the air turned my stomach over and
over. It was a wonder Edison didn’t drop dead. Evidently the pie was safe enough, or else he was feeling suicidal.

  Joe and Josh took their time, but Edison’s pie was gone in five bites. He lingered over the coffee, though, stirring.

  “Reminds me of Waffle House,” said Joe. “Haven’t been since I got back from Saudi Arabia.”

  “What were you doing there?” asked Josh.

  “Eating waffles?”

  “You went to Saudi Arabia for waffles?”

  “No,” said Joe. “Texas. Saudi Arabia only has MeccaDonald’s.”

  I squirmed. Josh and Joe were oblivious, but Edison noticed. He finished stirring and tapped coffee off his spoon. He narrowed his eyes at me. I looked away.

  “Was that racist?” asked Joe. “I can’t tell any more. Edward, enlighten us with some of your wisdom. Please. Expound upon the evils of religion, race, and fast food.”

  “Religion is a value meal,” Edison said, taking up the challenge and pretending he hadn’t just been mocked. “Judaism is your regular size; Catholicism is the value-sized version, all the basic stuff plus a side of guilt; and Islam is super-sized. Hinduism is tacos instead of burgers. Same ingredients, different delivery mechanism.”

  “Taco places serve beef though,” said Josh, waving for the waitress.

  “That ain’t beef,” said Joe, a sour look on his face. “Ain’t no cow even breathed on it. And did you ever notice they have like a hundred items on the menu and they’re all the same five ingredients? What’s five factorial?”

  “Hundred twenty,” said Josh.

  I hated them. Hated Joe for existing. Hated Josh for trying to be funny. Hated them all for not caring. Hated myself most of all. Not because I had failed again. But because I hadn’t.

  “MeccaDonald’s is the place with the big golden cube, right?” asked Josh.

  “The Kaaba,” said Edison. He looked at me, but I looked right past him, glued to the screen over the bar, showing the fiery traffic pileup on 280. I felt the blood drain from my face.

  “I always wondered what’s inside that thing,” said Josh.

  “It’s filled with candy,” said Joe. Josh spit out his water. Edison shot them both a dirty look.

  And right about then is when the helicopter camera panned over the school bus.

  Eighty-five to zero. Blood and metal and flames. My skin rippled. I suddenly had to leave the booth, had to be empty. I shoved at Joe, somehow made it out, fell on my ass halfway to the ladies room but luckily made it into a stall before I threw up in my hair. They let me stay in there for a half hour, and then they sent a waitress named Cindie in for me.

  She smelled like hash browns.

  • • •

  She sobs all the way back from Pescadero but is better by the time we get home, or at least quieter, the worst of it seemingly muffled by the fog that grows denser as we near and then enter the city limits. Or so I think; we are not two steps inside the apartment when she runs to the bathroom. I think about going in but I hear the shower start, and so I leave her alone and crash in bed to consider the damage. Aside from the primary, who was confirmed dead in the pileup, there are an additional twelve dead and twenty-seven injured.

  Mostly children.

  It was accidental, of course. Secondary. Collateral damage. Random. But it is, in the end, not just part of the job. It is the job. Kill one guy, nobody cares. Kill a million, too many to fathom. Knock down a couple tall buildings, kill a few dozen or a few thousand, right in the sweet spot … That is just real enough to matter. That changes things. And change is the goal. Terror begets change, action begets reaction.

  What did this change? Not for us to know, or at least not for us to care. Perhaps the man was important. Perhaps he mattered. Or perhaps it would matter because he did not, because he was anyone, because anyone is anyone, and it could happen to anyone. Unknown. Only one thing is certain: for a certain group of kids, it was a field trip they will never forget, and for the ones who were in the back few rows of that bus, the ones who saw the car as careened out of control towards them … it was a day they would never remember.

  The shower stops, and a flush of the toilet carries some more bad away. Then Xtian turns off the bathroom light. My brain is just cycling back to thinking about the primary target, and about why it took so long to plan this job out, when Xtian comes into my room unannounced and sits on the floor beside the bed. Feigning sleep, I allow her to take my left hand, which she clutches to her shoulder like a security blanket. After a while, she lets go and curls up in the pile of clothes beside the bed like a cat, shuddering in the cold until she falls asleep, no doubt dreaming awful.

  She is still there in the morning.

  Under Pressure

  04/01/2014

  It has only been a month since the job, but it has felt much longer this time. We were paid well enough that we could go anywhere, but there is no pressing need to burn everything to ash and run this time, so we have not. Perhaps this is why Xtian has not moved on, either. I have left her alone, though—some problems you need to figure out on your own, especially if you are the only one who sees a problem. She considers the bus incident a tragedy. I see it as a good start.

  She is in her bedroom moping when one of the phones rings. Nick. I immediately sense that the “something wrong” I have felt since we got to San Francisco is about to get even more wrong, that the second shoe is about to drop. I usually go about eighteen months between jobs. Nick should not be calling this soon. Nor should anyone. This does not stop me from answering, however. I like working. And I do not have that many more years in me to wait around.

  “I’ve got a dinner invite open,” says Nick.

  “I’m available,” I reply. “But—”

  “It’s not for you,” he says.

  I walk into the bedroom. Xtian is sitting by the window, staring at anime on her iPad, dressed for bed in the middle of the day in my clothing, shirt and boxers. I throw the phone to her. More at, really. It hits her in the leg and lands on the carpet and for a moment she stares at it like a used tissue. I leave the room without bothering to see if she picks it up. Her problem, now.

  Ten minutes later she comes out, dressed somewhat more appropriately in her own clothing. Torn denim shorts, dark long-sleeved shirt all stretched out past her fingertips, sneakers without socks again. Blonde-and-blue hair now done up in sloppy braids. A shade closer to normalcy.

  “Can you drive me?” she asks.

  “Where?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “He did. What did he say?”

  “Cruise. Pier.” She furrows her brow, trying to remember. “Meadow … something.”

  “Lark.”

  “Meadowlark. Yeah.”

  “Do you know what that means yet?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  “I will tell you on the way,” I say.

  • • •

  And he did. Sort of. Finally.

  “You know what a one-time pad is?” he asked as soon as we were driving.

  “Yeah but I use tampons,” I said, goading him. He hated when I brought that stuff up. Even in the depths of depression I still liked to try and get a rise out of him.

  He was quiet for a few seconds, then continued on as if he hadn’t heard me.

  “Passwords. You ever forget one? What did you do?”

  “Used the recovery question.”

  “Right. What color is our neighbor’s cat?”

  “Orange.”

  “What if I asked you that two years ago? When we had a different neighbor.”

  “Uh … black?”

  “Contextual cipher. Same question, different answers, both true. We can have the exact same conversation in thirty different cars, on thirty different trips, and it will have a completely distinct meaning if we refer to a shared context. So later, if I ever refer to Buffalo, that sets a new context, and then if we talk about cats, we might be discussing something black.”

  “What if t
here’s more? Than two people. Like—”

  “Like at the bar,” he said. “Then we refer to something we all know. A common context.”

  He accelerated and veered right to escape a line of traffic, then dodged left into an open parking space, seemingly at random. The gull that had been occupying the spot gave him the evil eye and flew off, dropping half a cheeseburger on the windshield.

  “It’s bird names isn’t it?” I said, remembering past conversations. “Meadowlark, Blackbird.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But context changes. It can mean directions, or colors, or—“

  “Numbers. Three three. March third.” He nodded. “But what’s the common context?”

  “It’s time,” he said, tapping on the digital clock in the dashboard. “Time to go meet Nick. We’ll finish this later.”

  • • •

  Nick only keeps us waiting at the end of the wharf for a few minutes before he shows, dressed in—as far as I can tell—the exact same outfit as the last time we saw him. Alone, but only apparently. He knows better.

  There are no formalities, no greetings; not even words to begin with. Nick just looks Xtian up and down, as if sizing her up. She looks to me, but I have no idea what this is about.

  “How many people know about you?” he asks at last, nodding at Xtian as if it is not obvious who he means. “Joe, apparently. Abe, Josh. Who else?”

  Xtian and I look at each other. She shrugs as I do some quick mental arithmetic.

  “Eight, possibly,” I answer. It is probably more than that, but eight sounds plausible. I am practically a nobody, and she is less than. Still, Nick frowns. Too many, I can tell.

  “There’s only a couple from before,” says Xtian.

  “From Buffalo?” he asks, and she nods. I wonder what he knows. About Buffalo, about DC, too. But he does not press, just tugs on his lower lip, considering whether or not this is going to be a problem. Perhaps overacting a bit for her benefit.

  “Fine,” he says at last, looking around to confirm that we are more-or-less alone here on the wharf. He ends his sweep with an extra-long look at me and clears his throat.

  “She’s just going to tell me whatever you tell her,” I say, reluctant to leave. He is a pissy little upstart full of machinations, and I do not owe him any favors, nor any amount of trust.