I Shot You Babe by Leslie Langtry Read Free Book Online Page A

do it all over again.

Chapter Seven
    Narrator: You can swallow a pint of blood before you get sick.
    —F IGHT C LUB
    “Wheeeeeeek!” Who needed a rooster when you had a demanding guinea pig? I brought my arm up to move the blankets and my muscles threatened to assassinate me. The pig continued to protest, and I was worried she would wake up the whole camp.
    I managed to toss some fruit mixed with hay into the cage and collapsed back onto my cot. It was dark, and the stove had long since run out of fuel. There was a chill in the air that was not helped by my skimpy clothes. After lighting the kerosene lantern, I filled the stove from a bucket of dried dung and lit a match. It took only a few moments for the space to warm up.
    The ger was basically a round tent covered in felted wool. In the middle of the tent stood a small stove. The pipe disappeared through a hole in the top. To the left of the door I had my cot, two trunks for my things, two stools and a rug. A box of cooking and eating utensils stood next to the bucket of dried manure. This might be the first time in my life I was happy to be the proud owner of a bucket of shit. A simple life, really.
    I stood and started stretching to relieve my aching body. Fortunately, I had some life-giving ibuprofen in my backpack. I took three with the tea I’d warmed up on the cookstove. The heat flowed down my throat, and I started to feel a little like myself again. Wow. Hours of bizarre, sadistic exercises and wrestling one-on-one with a famous athlete. Maybe I wasn’t doing so badly after all. And what time was it anyway, seven or eight at night?
    A quick look at my watch made me do the traditional cartoon double take. Five a.m? How was that possible? I’d been sleeping since one o’clock in the afternoon!
    Sartre paused in her eating to give me a disapproving, “Wheek.” She sure told me.
    I reached into my duffel to grab a fistful of protein bars. I was just reaching for my third when I felt something in there that I did not pack. That was weird. It felt like…like an envelope.
    I pulled it out and dropped it onto my cot with a sigh. There was no mistaking the Bombay family seal. This was a job. But how in the hell did it find me all the way out here? I looked around for hidden cameras. I wouldn’t be surprised to find photos of me in my flattering uniform in the family newsletter. Assassins are mean pranksters.
    After throwing on a sweatshirt and jogging pants, I carefully opened the door and slipped outside. Sansar-Huu’s truck was rusting in the same spot where he’d parked it two days ago. There were no vehicle tracks in the long steppe grass. No hoofprints. Nothing. I circled the camp, then made my way back inside.
    How did a Bombay manage to get this to me out here? And why now? I’d done two jobs in the last nine months. That was more than enough for a year. In fact, we usually had only one job a year. That was why I’d planned this trip. I figured my particular services weren’t required.
    The envelope was plain, the standard eight and a half by eleven inches. The only thing that identified it as a Bombay job was the bloodred wax seal stamped with the family crest. I set the envelope on my lap. Then I picked it back up. My curiosity was too great. And since I had no early morning cartoons or Pee Wee Herman cable reruns out here, I had to get my entertainment somewhere.
    The only sounds coming from the camp were those of nature. No human was awake yet. I still had time. Very slowly, I broke the seal and slid open the envelope. The face of a European stared up at me. This was no Mongolian. How far would I have to go to get this done?
    After reading the file, I put everything back in the envelope and shoved it to the bottom of my duffel to burn later. It was pretty cut-and-dried. My Vic was a Dutch mercenary named Arje Dekker. Usually I didn’t mind mercenaries. In fact, sometimes they maintained the balance of civility in foreign countries rife with