Spyder Web

by Tom Grace

  ‘Just great.’ Disbelief rushed through Kilkenny’s mind as he massaged his forehead. The whole situation had given him several headaches over the past few weeks, and today’s revelation wasn’t helping matters.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Kelsey said with just a touch of annoyance, ‘how is it that a highly classified piece of hardware can just be shipped out of here?’

  ‘Well, Ms Newton, that has become a long and interesting story,’Mosley replied.’One that has occupied much of Dan’s and my attention over the past few months.’

  ‘We’re investigating the murder of a CIA technician that occurred last December. This technician’s involvement in several classified projects, including the Spyder’—Harmon pointed to the brochure—‘left us wondering just what he was up to.We’ve been able to link him to a pair of suspected industrial spies, and your discovery strengthens the likelihood that he helped these people acquire control of a Spyder.’

  ‘This just keeps gettin’ better and better,’ Nolan said in disgust.

  ‘You can say that again,’ Kelsey agreed.

  ‘We understand your frustration, but I think we’ve reached the point where we can go on the offensive.’ Mosley had read Kilkenny’s service record and guessed that he didn’t like being limited only to reacting against an opponent. ‘Bill is already hard at work on a couple of little toys for us.’

  Iverson sat up in his seat, resting his forearms on the conference table. ‘The program dump you ran told us a lot, but it also told our opposition that we’re looking at the Spyder. Before you two head back to Ann Arbor, I’m going to provide you with another little black box that’ll let you bypass the Spyder’s internal security. This will give us a clear picture of what they’re doing without tipping our hand. Once you get it in place, we’ll dump the real operating program to see what’s what.’

  ‘What’s the second little toy?’ Newton asked.

  ‘Before we knew that we were dealing with a Spyder operation, Harmon’s associates in Detroit were trying to trace your hacker the old-fashioned way.’ Iverson took some measure of pride in the success his creation had enjoyed to date, even if the Spyder was being run by criminals. ‘Now that Cal and Dan are tying their investigation to your problem, you can use some of our techniques. I’ve read the Detroit office’s report. The Spyder’s using anonymous E-mail addresses as deadletter drops, which prevents us from making a direct connection to the people controlling the device. That’s standard operating procedure for the Spyder. The FBI has gotten permission to install a Gatekeeper at each of the known Internet servers being used as Spyder drops. With a few modifications, we’ll be able to track these guys right back to where they live.’

  ‘I’d appreciate it if the two of you would clear your calendars for next week, from Wednesday on.’ Mosley’s suggestion was polite but emphatic. ‘The DCI is holding court at Langley with all the key players on this investigation. Due to your unusual involvement, you’ve been invited.’

  ‘We’ll be there,’ Kelsey replied for them both.

  Kilkenny felt good about the direction things were heading and that they would finally start to track down the thieves who’d invaded his computer.

  35

  MAY 2

  ‘That’s Kilkenny’s car, and Newton is with him,’ Kang announced as the deep blue Mustang drove away from the old Hinsdale farmhouse.

  Behind the smoked glass of the van, Vince Falk studied the car as it turned the corner and headed toward the tollway. The car and its passengers matched the information that had come with the retainer for his services.

  When asked, Falk described himself as an independent contractor, a freelance troubleshooter of sorts. The kind of trouble he shot was exclusively human.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Falk said to his driver.

  The van and a battered pickup truck pulled out of the parking lot, where they had waited most of the morning, and began following Kilkenny’s car.

  Falk leaned back in his seat with a map, looking over the route between Chicago and Ann Arbor. Two days earlier, a valued client had contacted him with an urgent assignment. The client, an Asian with strong ties to the Far East drug trade, tripled his usual fee. He didn’t like rush jobs, preferring to set his own schedules, but the man was willing to pay and the assignment didn’t look too difficult. The only unusual aspect of this job was the observer, a man he knew only as Mr Deng,who sat quietly in the front passenger seat, watching the Mustang. Falk hoped that he would stay quiet and out of the way for the remainder of their trip.

  The target was a young couple who were in Chicago at the time of the call and would be returning to Ann Arbor today. The client refrained from giving any reason for wanting the couple eliminated, and Falk knew enough not to pry into the man’s business affairs.

  The drive east had been pleasant, with fair weather and light traffic easing the four-hour journey. Between Jackson and Ann Arbor, Nolan’s Mustang approached a stretch of road under repair on 1-94. A temporary road sign warned that the construction zone would start in four miles and that all vehicles should merge into the left lane.

  Kent Smith and Joe Hooks were making good time today. The pair of short-haul truckers were ferrying another load of premium blended fuel to the gas stations along the Kalamazoo—Ann Arbor corridor. At this rate, they’d be done early today and on their way home while it was still light. A few weeks from now, during the Memorial Day weekend, they both knew they’d be lucky to finish this run by midnight.Hooks was riding in the passenger’s seat as he gazed at the deep blue Mustang.

  ‘Sharp car, huh?’ Hooks asked as their truck pulled ahead of the pony car.

  Smith took another quick glance at the car in the truck’s right-side mirror. ‘I had one from the same year, but mine never looked that good.’

  Hooks leaned out his window to study the car, and the stunning blonde in the passenger seat, as they passed. When he noticed the Mustang’s occupants looking back at him, he pointed at the car and nodded with respect. The Mustang’s driver threw a short, friendly wave. ‘Cute girl in there, too.’

  ‘Hadn’t noticed,’ Smith lied.

  ‘Oh, to be young again.’ Hooks sighed as he settled back into his seat.

  Falk switched on his radio headset and called out to the driver of the pickup. ‘Jack, you awake back there?’

  ‘I’m up,’ the crackling voice answered Falk’s summons.

  ‘Good,we’re approaching the construction zone.Time to isolate the target.’

  ‘I’m in position.’

  Falk watched the Mustang merge left, behind the fuel truck, as they approached the construction zone. His driver punched the accelerator, passing the Mustang on the inside. Falk’s van pulled up just beyond the Mustang’s front end and began jockeying to merge.

  ‘I don’t believe this guy,’Nolan growled.’He comes flying up from behind, trying to beat everyone into the merging lane, and he expects me just to let him in when he cuts it too close.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to let him in?’ Kelsey asked nervously as she watched the van trying to nudge itself into their lane. ‘It looks like he’s trying to squeeze over.’

  ‘he’s a jerk, so he can wait.’

  Nolan gave the accelerator pedal a slight nudge and the gap between the Mustang and the truck closed to three feet. The van’s driver flipped Nolan the finger and roared ahead.

  Kelsey sighed with relief when the van passed. ‘That guy is one serious asshole.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a shame they don’t test for that when you get your license.’

  ‘Sorry, Vince,’ Falk’s driver apologized.

  ‘Not your fault. We’ll just have to improvise. Merge in front of this truck and slow down once the road narrows to one lane.’ The van roared ahead and cut over with only fifty feet remaining in the merging lane.

  ‘Jack, are you still in position?’

  The pickup driver’s voice crackled back in Falk’s headset: ‘I’m right behind him.’

  The two eastbound lanes
of the highway narrowed to one that was then channeled across the median and onto the westbound side of the road. A temporary concrete barrier was all that separated the two single lanes of opposing traffic. With a concrete wall to the left and a construction zone to the right, most drivers on the twelve-foot-wide strip of road felt like they were running a gauntlet. Nolan eased back on his accelerator, widening the gap between the truck and his beloved pony car. A beat-up red pickup truck closed in from behind, its grille filling the Mustang’s rearview mirror.

  Nolan glanced in his mirror at the tailgating pickup truck. ‘I wonder if that guy is related to that jerk who passed us.’

  Kelsey eased her seat back. ‘Why?’

  ‘No reason. he’s just riding my rear close enough to kiss me, and I’d hate to see him mess up my chrome.’

  The freeway wasn’t very busy, which provided Falk with the best possible conditions for the hit.

  The driver in the red pickup responded to Falk’s request by reaching out through his rear window to locate the quick-release fittings that held a set of cables tightly over the load of hay bales in the pickup’s flatbed. He twisted the fittings and the cables sprang loose. Almost immediately, the bales began bouncing and shifting freely. The driver then ran the pickup over a few nasty potholes, and his load of bales tumbled onto the highway.

  ‘We’re all set back here,’ Jack reported once the lane of traffic behind him screeched to a halt.

  ‘Good work,’Falk replied.’Watch for your cue to bump and grind.’

  Falk nodded to his driver, who slowed the van to forty miles per hour. In minutes, a quarter-mile-long gap opened between the van and the next car on the road ahead; the four-vehicle procession was completely isolated on the one-lane stretch of highway.

  Falk fed a clip into his silenced semiautomatic pistol and flipped the safety off. ‘Keep the van steady while I take out this truck.’

  ‘I wonder what that bonehead’s problem is,’ Hooks muttered bitterly. ‘First he races up to cut us off and now he’s slowing to a crawl. See if you can get him back up to the speed limit.’

  Smith narrowed the gap between his rig and the van and flashed the high beams.’Maybe I can encourage him to pick up the pace.’

  As the van drew close to the truck’s front bumper, the rear doors swung open and the truckers saw the gunman.

  ‘Holy shit!’ Hooks yelled. ‘Back off, Kent!’

  The truck’s gears ground in protest as Smith downshifted and braked. ‘You don’t have to tell me twice. I just hope the bastard doesn’t shoot.’

  Falk balanced himself carefully on the van’s rear deck and took aim. His first burst ripped into the front wheel on the driver’s side of the truck. The tire disintegrated into a hundred pieces of rubber. The truck’s cab shuddered and lurched into the concrete barrier, sending a shower of sparks onto a car in the westbound lane. Falk watched as the wide-eyed driver fought furiously to bring his rig under control.He then aimed at the truck’s remaining front wheel, shredding it as easily as the first.

  ‘Nolan, watch out!’ Kelsey screamed as the first pieces of the shredded tires pelted the Mustang like blackened hail.

  ‘I see it,’ Nolan replied with a focused calm. ‘He must have had a blowout. Hang on!’

  Kilkenny’s white-knuckled hands were locked on the wheel as he tried to avoid the flying debris and distance himself from the damaged truck. He braked, only to feel his car suddenly lurch forward. Kelsey jerked in her seat again as the pickup struck from behind a second time.

  As the semI’s trailer bounced off the barrier and ricocheted to the open side of the road, the pickup rammed the Mustang from behind at full speed. The car’s taillights shattered and the deck lid crumpled from the impact with the pickup’s concrete-filled steel-pipe bumper. The rear window of the Mustang exploded in a spray of glass fragments.

  The pickup backed off and then accelerated again, ramming the pony car into the gap between the flailing semI’s trailer and the concrete barrier. The Mustang’s metal skin howled as the trailer’s rear bumper tore into the passenger door, dragging the car against the concrete barricade.

  Back and forth Smith fought, trying to bring his crippled rig under control. He was down to thirty miles per hour, but it felt more like three hundred. He didn’t know what kind of nut would do something like this, but he planned to kill the one directly in front of him. His trailer started to swing again and Smith compensated, struggling to keep his rig upright and on the road. Behind, he felt a strange tugging, as if his trailer had gotten caught in something.

  ‘Nolan!’

  Kelsey’s frantic scream was cut short by a second collision between the semI’s rear wheel carriage and the passenger side of the Mustang. The Mustang’s passenger door caved in, showering her with glass from the windshield and door. The trailer’s rear bumper speared through the Mustang’s left side, just behind the door, and locked the two vehicles together. Nolan and Kelsey were nearly jarred from their seats when the semI’s trailer pounded the car against the construction barriers.

  Kilkenny’s shoulder burned with pain after bouncing off his door. Kelsey was flung forward with the impact, her head connecting with the dashboard before she snapped back into her seat, unconscious.Were it not for her seat belt, she would have been thrown across the hood to her death. Kilkenny held on to the wheel, but he had no control over where his car was going.

  ‘Shit! Shit! Shit!’ Hooks screamed as the entire rig shuddered and nearly jackknifed.

  The semI’s nose skipped off the concrete roadway and dug itself into the soft sand of the shoulder. As the front bumper burrowed deep into the ground, the trailer snapped outward like a whip into the median. The semI’s sudden stop sent the fuel inside the tanker rushing forward in a violent swirl that shifted the trailer’s weight off its wheels and into a roll.

  As the trailer rolled right, its rear bumper lifted the right side of the Mustang off the road. Nolan leaned inward as the roof of his car scraped along the concrete barrier. Halfway into the roll, the trailer’s bumper pulled loose, leaving the Mustang upended on the driver’s side.

  The fuel trailer, still three-quarters’ full, continued to roll as the liquid inside shifted with the momentum of the turn. Hooks and Smith didn’t have time to recover from the jarring stop when their rig rolled onto the gravel bed created for the highway’s refurbished eastbound lanes. Sand and gravel flew into the air as the semI’s nose was pulled free from the ground by the roll. The cylindrical fuel tank ruptured when it struck the ground, pouring hundreds of gallons of fuel into the median.

  Gasoline flowed like a waterfall from the broken tanker and soaked into the ground surrounding the over-turned rig. A wave of fuel rushed down toward the cab, where it splashed against the semI’s hot, twisted exhaust stacks. Flames flashed instantly across the surface of the growinG pond of gasoline, until they reached the fumes contained inside the ruptured tanker.The explosion sent a billowing yellow-black fireball into the sky. Hooks and Smith died instantly in the blast—their bodies trapped and incinerated inside the overturned rig.

  The Mustang rocked from the blast, shaken enough that it fell back onto its wheels. Kelsey slumped lifelessly in the seat beside Nolan, blood visible from the cuts on her face and arms. Nolan was still groggy from the crash, but he didn’t need to move to feel the bruises that covered his entire body. The pain in his head told him that his skull had bounced off something hard, but at least he was still alive.

  He tried to survey the scene outside his car, but his eyes were watery and his vision blurred by the salty blood that flowed from his forehead. Flames and smoke billowed from the fuel truck and he could feel the intense heat of the blaze. Both doors were jammed, and he hoped that his car was far enough away from the inferno. A van stopped on the road ahead and a person got out and started walking toward them. Help was on the way.

  Falk didn’t bother to check on the two truckers trapped inside the burning rig; they were already dead. All that remained wa
s to verify that the couple was dead and leave before the police arrived. If they were still alive, he’d finish the job. The hay bales they’d dropped had stopped traffic several miles back from the accident scene, and he figured that he had about two minutes to escape unobserved.

  Kilkenny watched the man’s approach—it was cautious, but pointed directly at the battered Mustang. Nolan was ready to call out when he noticed the elongated pistol in the man’s left hand. Even in his battered state, he knew that Good Samaritans didn’t carry silenced weapons. Kilkenny remained motionless, watching through the slits of his eyes as the stranger advanced.

  Falk studied the two forms inside the Mustang carefully as he approached. The passenger was slumped forward, almost on her knees. The driver lay back against his seat, with one arm hanging out the battered door. Both looked dead from where he stood, but he needed to confirm the kill before he could collect the rest of his fee.

  He walked over to the driver’s side, shuffling sideways in the narrow space between the car and the barrier, and placed two fingers on Kilkenny’s neck.

  With a swift motion, Kilkenny’s left arm shot up from the door and hammered a pressure point in Falk’s forearm just below the elbow. The nerves in Falk’s arm flared with pain for a moment before going completely numb from the blow. Before Falk could react, Kilkenny flipped his fist over and drove it upward into the assassin’s jaw. Kilkenny’s fist glanced off Falk’s chin and continued upward, where it connected solidly with his nose. Blood and tears flowed around Falk’s eyes as the fragile bones shattered.

  Falk rocked back, dizzy and partially blinded by the blow to his face. Blood hammered around his skull, which throbbed with pain. Kilkenny reached out with his right arm and grabbed Falk’s weapon hand, pulling the killer against the car with a quick, violent motion. Falk’s chest and abdomen bounced off the door, the air bursting from his lungs on impact. Despite the blow, Falk still held on to his weapon.