The Exterminators

by Bill Fitzhugh

  BeeBo knew it was time to go. Something about those colors warned him. With Lloyd providing cover, BeeBo grabbed the gaffing hook and latched it onto the bucket of the cherry picker. He pulled himself up effortlessly and climbed in.

  Lloyd, seeing himself encircled, tried to follow, but he didn’t have that sort of strength. His grip weak, he slipped slowly toward his fate, pleading and whimpering all the way down.

  With his work boot dangling a foot above the cage, the first assassins leapt up and quickly scurried under his pants leg, everyone in the room stared fixed in fear and fascination. Unable to look away, some held a hand to the mouth, others were slack-jawed and horrified, yet all of them moved closer for a better look.

  Up in the cherry picker, BeeBo pulled his six guns and fired them in the air, a demented Old West sheriff from the Planet of the Apes.

  Treadwell watched impassively—a middle manager considering a presentation before taking it to the boys upstairs. He folded his arms across his chest and watched as the bugs went about their work.

  The numbness started around Lloyd’s mouth within seconds of the first bite on his leg. His tongue spasmed, and he started to drool and sweat profusely. With more bites came severe abdominal pain and acute gastric dilation as his stomach filled with a frothy gas. The vomiting and severe lacrimation were beyond his control. After a dozen bites, tears streamed from their ducts as if from a turned faucet. Lloyd collapsed onto the cage, paralyzed muscles unable to twitch left him more-or-less vibrating. The bugs wasted no time finding their way to Lloyd’s head and into his open mouth and sinuses, injecting their predigestive enzymes. His withering face began to resemble a generous piece of dried fruit. Lloyd was silent now, his pupils dilated, his lungs struggling, then his heart finally stopped.

  The assassins grew still, their razory mouthparts sinking into skin, sucking the remaining life out of the man.

  Once it was done, Treadwell walked over to Bob who was standing a few yards away, stunned by what he’d seen. “Congratulations,” Treadwell said. “I’d say they work.” He pointed at the serious men in the dark suits and lowered his voice. “They’re going to want to talk to you now.”

  Suddenly BeeBo came swinging down from the cherry picker. He hit the floor of the warehouse and charged out the door. Treadwell shook his head and pointed after him. He said, “Somebody wanna go get that monkey?”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  After ushering Bob and Klaus into a small conference room at the edge of the hangar, the head man from the DoD said, “This won’t take long.” He tossed a document onto the table. It slid to a stop between Bob and Klaus. “That’s the contract you signed for the DARPA funding.” He gestured at it and said, “Page fourteen, section twenty-four, paragraph three.”

  Bob flipped to the page even though he had a good idea of what was there.

  “Those are some of the penalties provided by statute for anyone who in any way breaks any law pertaining to national security.”

  Bob looked at the paragraph about prison time and fines. “Some of the penalties?”

  “Not everything is put in writing.” He looked at Klaus. “I’m sure you understand.”

  Klaus shrugged. “Actually, I do.”

  Bob pointed to the interior of the hangar. “We just saw a man killed in there.”

  “Yes,” the DoD guy said. “And a tragedy it was. But let’s not compound the matter and see anyone else die as a result of misinformation, for example, leaking to the press.”

  “How about real information?”

  “It’s all the same,” DoD said. “Equally dangerous, especially to you.”

  Bob looked at Klaus, then at the DoD guy. “You’re threatening us?”

  “What you saw and, more to the point, what you participated in, was a classified military experiment. That it didn’t play out as planned is immaterial. The Department of Defense takes these matters very seriously and will conduct a thorough investigation. On that you can rest assured. You will be called to testify at a hearing at some point. In the meanwhile, anyone who says anything about it publicly will face the full wrath of the federal government.” He leaned across the table onto his knuckles. “And that, my friend, is shit so deep you’ll need Jules Verne to help you navigate.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Leon walked into the coffee shop on West Sunset Boulevard. He was meeting a friend of a friend. Ex-army, rifle platoon, became an expert sniper, then retired. Moved to Southern California, worked on his tan and became a weapons consultant for the studios as well as several local law enforcement agencies. On the phone he told Leon that he’d be in uniform, waiting in the booth farthest from the door.

  At first Leon wasn’t sure it was the guy. He was dressed in khakis, deck shoes, and a blue guayabera. Leon said, “That’s your uniform?”

  The guy smiled. “Hollywood armed forces,” he said with a wink. “Only uniform I wear these days.”

  Leon sat down, made small talk, ordered a club sandwich. After the coffee came, the guy said, “I’d go with the Tango 51, same as I recommended to L.A. County Sheriff’s S.E.B.”

  “Special Enforcement Bureau?”

  He nodded, showing Leon a picture of the thing. “It’s based on the Remington M700, blueprinted to Tac-Ops specs. Custom precision-ground recoil lug. Most accurate thing I’ve ever fired. Even in heat with opticals and mirage. You won’t believe it.”

  “Threading for a suppressor?”

  “Optional.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “You got it.”

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand dollars, and worth it.”

  They did the deal. The Tango 51 would arrive in a few days.

  When he left the coffee shop, Leon drifted down Sunset Boulevard until he came to the Samuel French Bookstore. The window display featured several books on script writing. Why the hell not, he thought. He went in and browsed the titles, finally settling on a copy of How To Write A Screenplay in 30 Days.

  He stepped outside and sat on the bench in front of the store and began to thumb through the book. Looked simple enough. Three acts, plot twists, reversals, conflict. Maybe the producer was right. Maybe he should put his story on the page, do it right for a change, pick up some easy money. Turning to another chapter, he read what he considered a dubious assertion about character development, so he pulled his cell phone and punched a number from the business card in his pocket.

  A young man answered, “Lauren Carneghi’s office.”

  “Is she in?”

  “She’s in a meeting,” he said. “Can I take a message?”

  Leon realized he had never given her a name, real or otherwise. He said, “Tell her the security consultant called.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “She’ll know.”

  “Can you hold a moment?” The kid didn’t wait for a reply, just put Leon on hold, so he held.

  A moment later Lauren came on the line. “I was wondering if you were ever going to call.”

  “I thought you were in a meeting.”

  “It’s just something we say.”

  “Okay.” He paused before saying, “Let me ask you a question.”

  She laughed quietly. “Why don’t you?”

  “Do you think a character has to change in the course of a story?”

  She laughed again, more throaty this time. “You mean have an arc?”

  “Yeah, if that’s the word. All these books say the main character has to change.”

  “Yeah, well it’s —”

  “It’s stupid,” Leon said. “I mean, take The Maltese Falcon. Bogart doesn’t change.”

  “You mean Sam Spade.”

  “Yeah, his character. He’s cool, hard, strictly business when the story opens and that�
��s how he is at the end when he sends what’s-her-name to jail.”

  “Brigid O’Shaughnessy.”

  “Right. He doesn’t go all soft on us. He doesn’t start weeping and try to save her. That’s why we like him. He’s the same guy at the end as he was at the start. He’s consistent.” Lauren didn’t respond at first and her silence derailed him. He thought she would argue the point or agree wholeheartedly or something. So he said, “I’m not saying a character can’t change but—”

  “I think I see where you’re going,” she said.

  “Do you?” He didn’t know what she was talking about. “Good.”

  “Assassin noir.” The words came out slow and sexual. “I like it,” she said. “You’re thinking, what? Uh, Day of the Jackal meets what, This Gun for Hire. That’s good. Your killer is tough, man of few words. But he likes cats.”

  “What?”

  “It doesn’t have to be a cat. I’m just thinking out loud. Anyway, I’m glad you called. I talked to Brad Pitt’s people last night, told them about the idea.”

  “What idea?”

  “Your script idea.”

  “I don’t have a script idea,” Leon said. “I was just reading this book and wanted to ask you about the character thing.”

  “They say he’ll be intrigued. They want to meet you. They think he’ll love the noir angle.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Lunch. Thursday at the Ivy. I’ll pick you up.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “Hit me!” Bob held out his glass.

  Klaus filled it with scotch, then topped his own. Following the experiment, Bob had needed a little something to settle his nerves. Halfway through the bottle he and Klaus were sharing a feeling of well being, a sensation of warmth, and a minor impairment of reasoning and memory.

  Gruesome as Lloyd’s death had been, it hadn’t bothered Klaus so much. He’d seen a lot of men die, most by his own hand, and all deserving it, at least by his measure. In Klaus’ view, Lloyd hadn’t deserved to die despite his cruelty toward the defenseless chimp. He may have deserved a few jolts from the cattle prod, maybe a good thrashing, but not death. Besides, as Treadwell had pointed out, accidents do happen, and what they had seen was purely accidental. So Klaus was simply enjoying the scotch and the camaraderie that such lubrication tended to encourage.

  They were back at the Avondale Oaks, sitting by the pool in their lounge chairs, debriefing one another on their debriefing. “I’d say that last thing was definitely a threat,” Bob said, making the point that the phrase ‘twenty thousand leagues under the shit’ didn’t sound like an invitation to a tea party.

  Klaus held out a fist, then opened it, palm up, and blew across it. He said, “We would disappear.” He took a sip of his drink and added, “Listen, my friend, when the milky-eyed goons in the dark suits begin to invoke national security, the best recourse is to listen and nod.”

  “I s’pect you’re right.” Bob pulled his cell phone and hit a preset.

  Klaus looked over the top of his glasses and said, “Thank you.”

  Bob kept the phone to his ear for a while before disconnecting and trying another preset. A minute later he flipped the phone shut.

  There was something funny going on. Klaus could feel it in the air. He said, “Still no answer?”

  Bob shook his head but showed no concern. “They probably went out to a movie or something, forgot to turn the cell back on afterwards. She’ll call when they get home, hear the messages.” He held out his glass. “Hit me!”

  Klaus stared at him. After all these years, he still couldn’t believe Bob’s ability to look at the burning fuse of a bomb and comment only on how pretty the sparks were. As he poured, he said, “Bob, you know I have always found your optimism to be one of your more endearing qualities but it sometimes clouds your judgment.”

  “It’s only been three hours,” Bob said. “She’ll call.”

  Klaus wondered if Bob really believed it or if he was simply too terrified to admit that something seemed wrong. That was the problem when dealing with people who clung to a philosophy that demanded blind faith in the existence of silver linings, that sort of belief being impenetrable by the light of disproof, or whatever the phrase was. Klaus said, “Bob, you cannot address a problem by insisting it does not exist.”

  “What problem? I don’t see any problem.”

  Klaus pointed out that Katy, owing to teenage rebellion, wouldn’t be caught dead going to a movie with her mother. “I have heard her say as much,” Klaus said. He also made the point that the only time Mary turned her cell off was at night. “She puts the phone on vibrate if she goes to a movie so she will know if you or Katy is calling.”

  Bob shook his head. “Klaus, I swear, you could find weeds in the Garden of Eden.”

  “Only if they were there,” he said. “Besides, what is the alternative? Pretending they are not?”

  Bob fished an ice cube from his glass using his tongue. He said, “It must be hard living with that perspective. Always finding the negative.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Klaus said. “I do not find something wrong with everything because not everything has something wrong with it.”

  “Oh, please,” Bob said. “You’re Chicken Little. Always insisting that the sky is falling. What you need is a brighter outlook.” He waved his glass at Klaus, spilling some on his pants. “Damn.”

  “I hate to be the one to tell you,” Klaus said. “But you cannot make the world turn out the way you want simply by insisting that things are going to be wonderful. I believe that is what they call magical thinking.”

  Bob pretended to shield himself from above. “Oh, no, the sky’s falling, the sky’s falling!”

  “All right,” Klaus said. “If it will be easier to get your tiny drunken brain around it, we can talk about this in terms of children’s stories.”

  Setting his drink down, Bob put his fingers under his arm pits and flapped his wings while doing his chicken imitation, “Bach, bach, bach.”

  Klaus ignored it. “There is an Aesop’s fable in which I suppose I would be the ant preparing for winter, for the worst, for the cold weather when food would be scarce. That would make you the optimistic grasshopper insisting that there was no need to work and worry about the future because there is nothing unpleasant happening at the moment. Does that help?”

  Bob thought about it for a moment before he said, “I don’t think that’s the point of that story.”

  “No? Well, how about that song from Pinocchio?” He hummed a few bars before the lyrics caught up with him and he began to sing, “‘Like a bolt out of the blue, fate steps in and sees you through.’ That is how you see the world, is it not? You just wish upon a star and whistle while you work and everything comes up roses?” Klaus shook his head and took another slug of the scotch.

  “I think you’ve got your cartoons mixed up,” Bob said.

  “The thing I cannot figure out is whether you subscribe to that Disneyland philosophy because you really believe it or because the song was sung by a cricket.”

  Bob nodded like a sage and held up a couple of fingers. “Two things,” he said. “First, you have a lovely singing voice. Secondly, I’ll say this for you and all your negativism: at least your stories feature insects. That’s a good thing.” Bob held out his glass. “To bugs!”

  Klaus tipped his glass toward Bob’s. “Bugs.”

  “Now, what were we talking about?”

  “Your mania for insisting that all is well when things are going badly.”

  “What about it?”

  “You are telling me that you are not in the least worried about Mary and Katy?”

  Bob looked at Klaus as if he were crazy. He laughed and said, “Remember when Katy broke that guy’s arm?”

 
“It was his wrist,” Klaus said. “And he should have stopped when she told him to stop.”

  “Hey, I agree,” Bob said, holding one hand up. “No means no, especially when my little girl says it. My point is that with all you taught them, I think they can take care of themselves.”

  After narrowly escaping from New York, Klaus had instructed the entire Dillon family on the basics of Krav Maga, the Israeli hand-to-hand combat system that was pure self-defense, not a martial art, designed simply to end a fight as quickly as possible. Katy first got to try it out when a young boyfriend got caught up in a moment of hormones and heavy petting.

  “It’s a good thing you hadn’t given her that P99 before she went on that date,” Bob said, thinking about how Klaus had also taught them to handle weapons.

  Klaus shook his head again. “My friend, there is a difference between lusty teenage boys and professional killers.”

  “She’ll call,” Bob said. “Now, shouldn’t we be celebrating?”

  “Celebrating what?”

  “Our bugs! They work!”

  Klaus waited a moment before saying, “A man died.”

  “I was there,” Bob said. “I know that. What’s your point?”

  “I am simply saying you seem to have recovered from the shock.”

  “The liquor helps,” Bob said, only slightly insulted by the insinuation that he lacked the appropriate sympathy. He drank some more, lowering his judgment to the point that he said, “Tell you the truth, I almost feel bad saying this…” He looked around, drunk enough that he was about to say something he wouldn’t ordinarily, though not so drunk that he didn’t care who heard him say it. “But let’s face it, not only did poor old Lloyd die, he died fast and completely.”

  Klaus nodded. “There is no question the insects are lethal.”

  Bob mocked him, speaking in his exaggerated Klaus accent, “There is no question the insects are lethal.” He laughed and said, “Face it, the bugs rock!”