Chapter 1
“Do you know what it's like to fall in the mud and get kicked... in the head... with an iron boot? Of course you don't, no one does. It never happens. It's a dumb question... skip it.”
-Rex Kramer, Airplane
I stared at the letter in my hand. I was making the same face I made a few moments earlier when checking my phone messages. It’s not a pretty face. You wouldn’t like it.
Dear Ms. Bombay,
Your application has been accepted. We are thrilled to have you as a contestant in the new television programme, Survival! We received thousands of applications for the show, but quite frankly, your video blew everyone away here at CAB network. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone defuse an explosive device so quickly. You are exactly what we are looking for. In a few days, you should receive a complete package in the mail with all of the information you will need. I look forward to meeting you next month.
Sincerely,
Bob Toole
Executive Producer, CAB
Well, that wasn’t right. I never applied to be on Survivor. True, it was one of my favorite shows. But I think I’d remember submitting an application. It’s not like I go around videotaping myself defusing bombs every day. Okay, there was that once but I just wanted to see what it looked like in third person. It was my little egoist guilty pleasure. No one knew I had it. Or at least, I thought no one knew.
So, maybe that’s what Bob is talking about. Hmmmm. If I didn’t send it in, who did?
“Mom!” The unanimous shout came from my two teenaged sons, Montgomery and Jackson Bombay. My name is Mississippi Bombay, but I prefer Missi.
“In here,” I responded suspiciously. Did they do this?
Monty and Jack popped their heads into the doorway simultaneously. Fraternal twins, you’d never look at them and even think they were related. Monty was tall and gangly, with dark hair and green eyes. Jack was short and stocky with a shock of unruly red hair and freckles. In spite of their physical differences, the boys shared one, obnoxious personality.
“Do I need to ask?” I waved the letter at them.
Monty snatched it out of my hands and began to read. “Cool! Mom, this rocks!”
Jack grabbed it from his brother and scanned the page. “Ohmygod!” He shouted it as one word. “How cool are you? Why didn’t you tell us?”
From the looks on their faces, I surmised they didn’t do it.
“So you had nothing to do with this?” I had to ask just to make sure. I haven’t survived this long as a single mother of twin boys without confirming everything. Usually twice.
They shook their heads. “We would’ve if we thought you were interested,” Monty started.
“But we never dreamed you’d want to go on the show!” Jack finished.
I swiped the letter from Jack and put in on the table, “Well, it’s obviously just a joke, so we’ll forget about it.” I now had other ideas. After all, I came from a family of assassins. A prankster or two in the gene pool was to be expected.
You heard me right. Assassins. The Bombay Family had a monopoly on the biz since Ancient Greece. Every blooded member of the family begins training at the age of five and works until, well, forever. My grandma was just forced into an early retirement or she’d still be taking on contracts. Not that she needed to. She was on the Council. That’s the geriatric crew who runs the operations, dishes out assignments, and kills off renegade family members. That’s right. This family business isn’t exactly optional. And if you screw up or screw over the family, the Council will take you out.
I looked around from my mental meanderings to find the boys gone. Oh well. Where could they go? We live on a small, private island off the coast of South America.
Speaking of mental fragmentation - I’ve been experiencing that a lot lately. Maybe it has something to do with being 45. Or it could be that I haven’t had sex in a long, long time. Being widowed will do that to you. Well, that and the isolation of being on an island no one but my immediate family lives on. Or it could be the bizarre nature of my work. Besides killing people for a living, I’m a bit of an inventor. It’s my only creative outlet. And it was one more service I could offer the Bombays.
What do I invent? Oh, this and that really. Hairdryers that can blow your head off, lilies that can suffocate you, explosive jockstraps . . . the usual bric-a-brac I guess. My mind began to meander again and I started thinking about Pop Tarts. I LOVE Pop Tarts. But only the chocolate fudge ones. I could eat those for every meal.
The Pop Tarts made me think of Kleenex, which reminded me that I still had a few finishing touches to make on my latest explosive device. I headed for the lab.
“Mantisnuts,” was the secret word I spoke into my security system. The door popped open and I went in thinking it was time to change my password. Maybe something like bananaface. Did praying mantis have testicles? I wasn’t sure. At least in the figurative sense they did. It takes balls to make love to a woman you know will bite your head off afterward.
On a table in the middle of the room was one of those Wacky Wall Walkers. Remember those? Real big in the ‘80’s. I had several back then. Anyway, for those of you who are big hair and shoulder-pad challenged, they were these sticky little octopuses (octopi? What is the plural anyway?) you threw at a wall or sliding glass door (sliding glass doors were also very big in the ‘80s) and it kind of flopped, ass over, um, tentacles all the way down the wall. You’d think something like that would be a failure, wouldn’t you? But the inventors of that stupid little toy (did I mention that I owned several?) made millions. You never know what will hit it big.
It was with that in mind that I decided to work with the gummy little bastards as some sort of explosive device. Remember Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible? The first one – not the crappy sequels. Anyway, he had that stick of gum he just had to fold in half and stick on the aquarium at that restaurant in Prague and it blew up? Of course, it was ridiculous. Have you ever tried to fold a stick of dry gum in half? It snaps in two, doesn’t stick to itself - doesn’t stick to anything really, so it wouldn’t have worked in real life. But that’s okay cuz I liked the movie.
The trick with the Wacky Wall Walkers was to get just the right compound that would ignite as it struck a solid surface, and wouldn’t affect its inherent gumminess. I didn’t want to overdo it, but I wanted something that would do the job. I wasn’t sure what the job was yet, but it didn’t matter. I loved working in my lab. I could work with whatever I wanted and the family didn’t give a damn. Ha.
An hour later found me behind my blast shield as I blew up my fifth piece of glass-coated dry wall. I was having a pretty good time too. That is, until the alarm went off. I’d set it to high because I wanted to know if anyone came into my lab unannounced.
“Hello, Mississippi.” York Bombay stood in the doorway. I couldn’t stand that man. My mom’s cousin York was a creepy old dude. Of course, his father, Lou, was much worse. Thank God he’s still locked up with Grandma and the other former Council at that maximum-security nursing home in Greenland. I folded my arms across my chest and made up my mind to definitely change my password. How the hell did he get it, anyway?
“What’s up, Uncle York?”
He forced a grin and reached over to fondle Charo from my b-list bobblehead collection. I made a mental note to scrub them with Chlorox later.
“Well, my dear, the Council requests your presence. Tonight at seven.
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STAND BY YOUR HITMAN can be purchased in it's entirety at the following retailers:
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Leslie Langtry is the author the Bombay Family Series of Assassins books. She is not, nor ever has been an assassin. She likes sunsets, walks on the beach, palindromes and cake. Mostly cake. Yup...cake. You can find out more about her and her books at http://www.leslielangtry.com.
