He didn't know if this habit was from the mindset required to be an assassin, leaving as few tracks as possible that could lead back to you, or the paranoia that working in the coin business built—many of the transactions were in cash and he knew that some of his customers who looked and dressed like winos were worth millions.
There was one guy he knew who had built a fireplace mantle with hundred-ounce silver bars painted to look like bricks. There must have been a couple of hundred of them.
“So, in theory, you can do all the killing business via e-mail and electronic transfers. But there has to be some sort of an organization to recruit, train, vet and support these people. You just can't find the e-mail addresses of assassins on some web site, drop them a line telling them their targeting information.
“My training probably cost the company a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Even back when I was doing it, the support was a royal pain in the ass. I used a custom built rifle—which wasn't cheap by any means. It had to be smuggled into the country where I was working. The victim needed to be watched for a minimum of two weeks to establish patterns. I had a spotter who also needed to be brought into the country. Then there was always a team to extract me if something bad happened.”
“Did you ever need it?”
“No.”
“Then how sure were you that they were even there?”
He thought about it. “I wasn't. However, it was implied that they were there, ready to go. That may have been a lie, but for the amount of money they spent on training, equipping and moving me into place, it would have been stupid to leave me out there to be captured.”
“Are you so sure?”
He shrugged. “No. But that's getting us off the original question, there does need to be a support organization somewhere. If we can find that, we can find out who is pulling the strings and stop it.”
“Are you sure that we can stop them?”
“We will, or die trying.”
###
Allan Wells set up the remote rifle system. One of these days, he was going to have to program in some facial recognition software so he wouldn't have to spend so much time looking at a computer screen, searching for the target.
The system had been set up five hundred yards away from the target's work place—White Hat Enterprises, Inc. That it was set in an industrial park made it a lot easier to move around, lugging his equipment, which wasn't light by any stretch of imagination.
He tightened the last connection and powered up the device. It went through a self check. There was a problem, one of the servos was a little out of adjustment. Damn things.
Powering down the system, he jiggled the connection and saw that it was a bit too loose. Probably that was the problem. Using a pair of needle nose pliers, he re-crimped it and plugged it in again. It made it through the self check without a problem. Using his laptop, he tested all of the systems.
They all checked out without problem which was good news. He had enough parts to basically rebuild the whole thing, but really didn't want to have to do that.
It was too bad that he hadn't ever found an accurate enough semi-automatic rifle for this system as it was currently only a single shot rifle. Every time he tried, the problems were insurmountable. Gas operated firearms tended to spit out enough crap to screw up the sensor package. Recoil operated systems pounded the mechanisms to pieces. He'd experimented with a robotically-assisted short throw bolt action, but there were too many bugs to be worked out for it to be reliable. He was more worried about getting increased range and accuracy. Why worry about a second shot if the system is accurate enough to accomplish it with one shot?
The system checks were complete. He extracted a bullet from a case and carefully loaded the rifle. The .300 Winchester Mag, known as the '300 Win Mag' by those who had shot her, was a very accurate caliber in the right hands with the right rifle. It had been superseded by the .338 Lapua in military circles, but it was still very accurate up to ranges of a thousand yards.
He flipped the arming switches, checked to see that the rifle was looking in the right direction and he could see a clear picture of what it was seeing on his laptop. The night vision scope made everything look green. It was a pain to try and identify the target with it, but the hit package had specified that the target may be stopping by the building at any time, day or night.
After dawn broke, he would stop by, switch out the batteries, and remove the night vision scope. It was dangerous to be coming back and forth to where the remote rifle system was set up a couple of times a day, but for the amount of money he was being paid, and, more importantly, how much time and money he had invested in this system, it was well worth the risk.
Besides, he was going to be in the parking lot, not two hundred yards away, in a panel van that he had outfitted with almost all the comforts of home.
He killed the lights in the rented office and locked the door. The remote rifle system hummed as it searched for its target.
Chapter 10
Jackie was pleasantly buzzed by the wine she had drunk at dinner. It was only a couple of glasses, but it helped unwind some of the stresses and tensions of the day, allowing her to relax a bit. Today had been a nightmare, from the time she had crawled out her bed until ... well it looked like it would be a long time before she could relax completely.
Leo paid the dinner check, leaving a generous tip. That was one thing that was different between him and Nathan. While co-owner of a multi-million dollar computer company, the guy was still a bit of a cheapskate—tipping at exactly fifteen percent right down to the cent.
Why was she comparing Leo to Nathan? They were completely different people. Damn it. Was she looking at Leo as a replacement for Nathan? The man was an admitted professional killer. He didn't try to hide it from her, but she did sense that he had never revealed this to anyone else. She wasn't sure as to how she felt about that. They were in this together.
Besides, it looked like Nathan might have even more blood on his hands that Leo did. The extent of his duplicity was yet to be fully revealed.
She found herself relishing the challenge of figuring out what Nathan had done, and why. Just present her with a puzzle, be it a secure computer system, a locked door or anything like that, she was like a terrier fighting a rat—not going to give up no matter what happened.
The unaccustomed weight on her hips of the Beretta and the magazines broke her reverie. She didn't expect to be a gun slinger today, but here she was, packing heat. She still wasn't sure if she could actually shoot someone with it if she had to. Leo seemed unconcerned about that fact when he had insisted that she carry a weapon. They would have to deal with that when it came down to it.
“Where are we going now?” she asked.
Leo was walking out towards the truck.
“I need to buy some things, and then we need to lay down a false trail or two.”
The first stop was a drug store where he picked up some incidentals, like a toothbrush, shaving tackle and shampoo.
The next place he took them to was a hardware store where he purchased a staple gun and bought out the store's entire stock of cheese cloth. What the hell was he up to?
They then went to a bookstore where he picked up half a dozen 'Word Finder' puzzle books. Now she was really confused.
Getting back into the truck, she said, “I don't have a clue as to what those last two purchases were all about. Want to confide in your partner in crime?”
“The cheese cloth is for a sniper hide. At the right angle, you can't see into where I'll be hiding. It works very well and I've used it several times. It looks like there's a curtain in front of the window, yet I can see and shoot out of it. The puzzle books are to help me pick out targets. You look for something out of place—be it a window open that shouldn't be, someone looking around too much, heck, a blade of grass out of place could be an important clue. I like to keep my mind active, stressing the skills I need to snipe.”
He put the car in gear.
She said, “You are like a hundred percent shooter, aren't you?”
He nodded. “Yep. Shooting is what I'm good at, damn good at, and be grateful that you are on my side of the rifle; otherwise, the story would be completely different.”
“Really?” she asked, trying to keep the indignity out of her voice. “You would have killed me?”
“If it had come down to doing it to protect my life and the way I want to live it, in a heartbeat. But I know that there is something bigger going on that I was going to get dragged in on and I hate not being in control of my own destiny.”
The drove to a chain motel. In the parking lot, Leo took out a floppy hat and put it on along with a pair of sunglasses even though it was dark outside.
“Make sure you stay out of the view of any of the cameras. And if you do, look down. We don't want your face on any more TV broadcasts than you need to be.
Clutching a small suitcase in which Leo had loaded all of his purchases except for the cheese cloth, he stalked to the desk and rented a room. Strangely, he used a credit card. The clerk ran it, and as he was handing over the key card, he said, “Have a nice evening, Mr. Phillips.”
There was a hidden innuendo in his voice that irritated her. It wasn't like the place was a hot sheet hotel, but when it looked like two strangers checked in to a hotel, one obviously disguised, the other hiding from any cameras, without much, if any, luggage, there was probably a logical conclusion that almost anyone could make without stretching too far.
Leo had insisted on a ground floor room behind the building, probably adding to the mystery. They unloaded a few other things from the truck. Leo reached up and tapped the camera at the door of the hotel out of the way so that it wasn't pointing at the door any more. The man was careful.
When they got to the room, Leo checked it quickly. Turning to her, he said, “Get cleaned up, take a shower, whatever. We won't be staying here tonight.”
“Why not? And who the hell is Phillips?”
“We are setting a false trail. And James Phillips is the guy I killed with a letter opener and then set the body on fire in the trunk of his rental car with some super thermite that I brewed up. At some point, the cops or the feds will figure out who it was that was cooked in the trunk of his car and wonder why the hell he's renting hotel rooms with pretty girls in Denver. Tomorrow, I'll make some calls using his cell phone to really screw with them. If the guys, good or bad, are looking for him, maybe they won't be looking for us.”
He had said it so matter of factly, like, “I stepped out to the corner and crossed the street.” This man could be cold. She made a note to herself not to ever get in the way of something that he really wanted. Was he much different than Nathan had been—possessing a drive and tenacity that bordered on inhuman?
She stepped towards the bathroom. “What about my gun?”
“It's a pistol. Correct terminology will lead to the right mindset. From there, you can do almost anything.
“Anyway, take it with you. The humidity won't hurt it. When we settle down for good tonight, I'll show you how to clean and oil it. Lock the door. If I knock three times, come out shooting. If you hear a struggle out here, same thing. We should be all right for a couple of hours, but it's best to play it conservative.”
She did as he asked, setting the pistol on the sink where she could grab it without reaching too far out of the shower.
First time that she ever took a shower with a pistol. Once she got the shower going, she luxuriated in the heat and steam, feeling it melt away some of the tensions of the day. She was still uncomfortable, in a hotel room with a strange man, doing things that were completely beyond her comfort zone, but at least she had been fed a decent meal and looked to be safe. For now.
When she got done, dressing in the same clothes she had worn all day, she pried the door open. Leo had taken off his shirt and was doing some sort of strange exercises—it started out like a pushup, but then went in different directions from there.
There was a weird looking pistol right by his hand; small but it had a cylinder at the end of the barrel. A silencer?
She marveled at Leo's physique—the man was ripped. Sure, he looked and sounded like a coin geek or a gun nut, but she knew she wouldn't have been able to put both her hands around his biceps, they were that big. It wasn't the kind of muscle built at a gym, lacking in some of the definition that she had seen in gym rats, but looked to be built the long and hard way. Wow, was the best thing she could say.
“You done looking?” Leo asked from the floor.
“Yes,” was all that she could bring herself to say. Leo grabbed his pistol and hopped to his feet. The view was even better. He had six-pack abs and a well-defined chest. Whereas Nathan had merely used his body as a vessel for his mind and it showed in some of his personal grooming habits, the way he dressed and the crap food he shoveled into his system, Leo's body was a temple and she found herself wistfully wondering what it would be like to worship at it.
On his shoulder was a strange hump. He must have seen where she was looking because he said, “Callus. From shooting.” He rubbed it and said, “No matter, it still is a little sore from all the shooting I did today.”
He said, “Watch the door. I have some other exercises that I need to do that are a bit difficult to get out of quickly if something happens.”
She nodded.
He went over to the other side of the bed and walking with his hands down the wall, he ended up with his head and feet supporting him. Then he did some pushup type exercises just using his neck. When he had done a hundred, which he counted out in a whisper, he slowly climbed to his feet and said, “I needed that. It isn't my usual routine, but it will have to do.”
“What was it that you were doing?”
“Body weight exercises. You should try them. Helps you shoot better if you have strength in the right places.”
“Sure.”
He grabbed a change of clothes from his luggage and said, “I'm going to take a quick shower.”
After he had shut the door, taking the pistol, she flipped on the news, looking for a local station so she could see what was going on in the world, though the events discussed were all local in nature, starting with the attempt on her life. The empty hairpiece reporter cryptically ended that report with the statement, “The police are currently looking for Jackie Winn. She isn't a suspect, but they do want to talk with her.”
Sure. She knew that if she talked to them, she'd probably disappear into the justice system. The cops always said that when they considered, who “they do want to talk with” as a suspect. No matter, she had no intention of gracing any police stations in the near future.
The next segment was on the car fire that had killed Denver Building Inspector Brian Case. The police were still investigating. It may or may not have been an accident. Jackie wondered if it was tied into what was happening all around her.
Then came the shocker; an unidentified man was found dead as the result of a car bomb, very much like the one that had nearly killed her.
Her shock turned to horror when she recognized the car—it looked like Patrick Lackey's. From the zoom lens of the TV camera, it was battered tan Buick, with a faded Colorado Technical University parking sticker on the rear window. CTU was the same place that Nathan had gone and they had been roommates. There was a past history there that neither of them would elaborate on.
There was a yellow sheet covering the front half of the car, and the area was lit by the strobes of emergency vehicles. Crime scene tape flapped around the scene. She wondered what the hell had happened.
She considered putting the battery for her cell phone back in and trying to call him. Deep down, she knew that, unless she had St. Peter on speed dial, Patrick would never answer.
Then she realized that Leo was back in the room with her. She hadn't heard the door open. The man was spooky.
“What's that?” he asked.
“I think someone killed Patrick.”
>
“Your accountant?”
“Yes.”
Leo studied the picture of the car displayed on the TV set.
“Probably some sort of Explosively Formed Projectile. Does the scene look familiar to you?”
She didn't know what the hell he was talking about, either the projectile thing or the scene.
“No. Neither.”
“It's the same type of device that someone tried to use on you.”
The damage did look like she had seen with her car.
She nodded. “But what's that explosively formed thing that you were talking about?”
“Projectile. It's a type of shaped charge. Conventional shaped charges are very good at penetrating armor. The problem is that they have to be in contact with it. Tank designers, knowing this, have come up with protection that will break apart the charge before it comes in contact with the armor itself—it's called reactive armor. The weapon's designers have come up with an alternative, by designing the charges so they can be at a distance from the target—where reactive armor won't work and what penetrates the armor is a projectile of the base metal used to construct the device—typically copper in cheap devices where size doesn't matter. It throws this plug out towards the target at about one kilometer a second.
“What this means is that a device that costs a couple of hundred bucks can destroy a $20 million dollar M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank from across the road.”
Her head was swimming—how did all this matter?
“In your case,” gesturing towards the TV which now was displaying a commercial for feminine deodorant, “and that of your unfortunate accountant, the charge can be placed in the trunk of a vehicle and will blow out the front window and anyone unfortunate enough to set off the device.”
He looked into her eyes. “We need to get the information that Patrick had set aside for you. These people are very sophisticated, and very good at what they do. The sooner we find out who is pulling the strings, the quicker we can shut it down.”
Kill Code Page 8