A contract killing that should leave no trace becomes increasingly unstable in Birds of Prey Don’t Sing by Joe Cary. The story examines what happens when a carefully engineered plan starts slipping apart under pressure from both sides.

Synopsis

Nothing about Michael Harrier’s work is random. His process depends on structure, patience, and control. Every hit is designed around misdirection, ensuring that someone else becomes responsible for the crime while Harrier disappears without notice.

When he takes a job involving the death of a priest, the arrangement initially appears straightforward. Instead, the situation begins to unravel almost immediately. A woman connected to violence from the past disrupts Harrier’s focus, and one mistake threatens to expose the entire system he has relied on for years.

As Harrier struggles to contain the fallout, LAPD homicide sergeant Jordan Becker starts investigating a case that refuses to follow normal rules. The evidence never settles, witnesses offer shifting versions of events, and Becker becomes increasingly convinced he is hunting someone operating on a completely different level.

Both men are drawn deeper into a dangerous game where every decision carries consequences and staying ahead may no longer be enough.

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Excerpt

1. Self-righteousness

(n) a form of justification with a universal adapter

1988

The chaos quelled the urge to squeeze the trigger. A churning wall of fire and smoke consumed the horizon along the open savanna of Manovo-Gounda Saint Floris stretched before him. Thirty minutes earlier, it had looked serene, majestic even, the Africa of travel agency posters. But now Michael watched it burn. Belly down on a low ridge, he centered his eye on the scope and trained the crosshairs on the elephant charging east. Six hundred meters out. Smoke from a second fire streamed westward over her sloped forehead, hinting at the adjustment needed for wind drift. If the cross-wind swept the expanse, his targets might not hear the reports of his armor-piercing rounds. Michael breathed slowly and consciously and set his heartbeat as his metronome, as his father had taught. The distance implied six inches of error on each shot, but he expected less. Much less.

He pivoted his M21 on its bipod, keeping the elephant in the crosshairs. She was graceful in full stride and really trucking—until one of her hind legs gave out. She staggered, and a tusk struck the ground, wrenching her neck as she collapsed beside a lone doka tree. Michael winced, and his breathing went to hell. Under splinters of shade, she raised her head and curled her trunk to trumpet at the sky, then heaved and surged to her feet. Divots of rusty dirt exploded around her as she lumbered forward, trampling a new path through the tall grass.

Michael swung his rifle to the left, moving his sight picture one hundred meters west to the battered personnel carrier giving chase. The open-topped truck was World War II salvage, and it looked like it had served in every regional conflict since. Eleven men bounced and jostled on the benches behind the driver. A steadier man rode shotgun, standing in the footwell, one elbow over the windshield for support, firing AK47 bursts at the massive creature. The brush fire crept behind the truck as the men inside chased the elephant, two leopards, a rhino, and wild dogs into the trap ahead—the second fire. Michael’s gut clenched. He drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly until the rifle felt like a third arm again. The crosshairs drifted across his target, so he dialed in a parallax adjustment on the AO ring. Then he fired his first shot, cold bore. He missed the shooter, but the driver’s head snapped sideways in a red flash. The truck careened and slammed side‐ long into a dry runoff, hurling the rear passengers through the air in a barrage of arms, legs, and rifles. The shooter with the AK-47 had keeled over the windshield frame and smashed into the hood, his broken neck now so torqued that his chin was over his shoulder blade.

His second shot ruptured the front right tire of the idling truck. Six of the survivors scrambled behind the vehicle—the only cover in sight—while the other five ransacked the tall grass for their weapons. He shot calmly at the exposed ones, each time letting the blast and recoil surprise him and each time dropping his target. Michael’s goals were clear: to protect those that couldn’t protect themselves, to turn poaching into a transi‐ tion game—and, although he would never admit it, to prove something to his old man. Never in his practice had rage surfaced like this—an ally at last—directing each round into a skull or ribcage. In ninety seconds, thirteen poachers with bountiful quarries became seven dead and six sheltered human animals. Spades, his father would have called them, but Michael secretly scoffed at such tired labels. Skin color was bark at best, and ignorant justification at worst.

The six survivors behind the truck didn’t offer themselves as targets, and Michael knew better than to guess at their speculations. Clearly they couldn’t place his shots to locate him, because when those with weapons did return fire, they didn’t expose themselves. All Michael saw was the blind fear of barrels peering around the truck, each firing in a different direction. Not that their AKs could reach him at his range. And even if they were ten feet away, he was sure they wouldn’t have seen through his camouflage.

About the Author

Joe Cary’s short stories have appeared in One Story, XRAY Literary Magazine, BULL, and MonkeyBicycle, and have also earned a Special Mention in the 2020 Pushcart Prize Anthology and a Best of the Net nomination. BIRDS OF PREY DON’T SING is his first novel.

A former Angeleno, Joe currently lives with his family in Philadelphia where he fights money laundering, fraud, and other financial crimes. When he isn’t writing, he enjoys coaching his daughter’s flag football team and throwing frisbees to his dog, Pepper.  He has also been a volunteer adult literacy tutor in four cities.

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