Chapter 15
Jim Fox, the Second Finger of the Black Hand, walked quickly away from where he had placed the car bomb in the trunk of the government-issued Buick assigned to the IRS Criminal Investigation Division. His favorite device, the Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP), would immolate everyone in the car, no matter where they sat, with a five thousand degree jet of superheated plasma. Identification of the bodies would be difficult as there shouldn't be anything left from the waist up, including tooth enamel.
This job was most unusual, not to be placed to take out a more specific target, but that's what the targeting package had specified. He had modified his unusual device, spreading the propagation of the plasma jet at the sacrifice of a bit of the range, and hadn't had a chance to properly test it. Explosives can be finicky and when you are trying for a specific effect, testing was almost mandatory. He had worked with these devices enough to have a knowledge of them and their properties that bordered on pathological. The device would work as he designed it, but deep down there was an overwhelming desire to test and test again before using the device for real.
Too bad he couldn't stick around and watch to see how well his newest variation worked, but he had an appointment at the parking lot of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, also known as the ATF. This time, it was to wire up two cars. This one he would have done for free as he had no love of the ATF and their overzealous enforcement of a myriad of confusing and stupid laws. He had been able to stay out of their clutches since an unfortunate brush with them after getting out of Army, where he had excelled in Explosive Ordinance Disposal. Someone had made a crude pipe bomb to blow up a mail box and they had broke down his door thinking he was the bomber. He had laughed at the accusations. He had been trained on disarming devices ranging from pipe bombs all the way to nuclear bombs. Knowing how to disarm them meant that he knew how to build them. And, he had assured the bewildered ATF agents, if he had set out to blow up a mail box, it would have ended up in low orbit rather than not going off at all like the device they were accusing him of having made.
After fending off the ATF, and having lost his job at a demolition company due to having the ATF hanging around, questioning everyone in sight and crawling through the company records with a microscope, he got a call from someone who needed his unique talents.
These most recent jobs, while profitable, were in the US. Up until this point, he had always worked outside the country. Besides, he had a lot of credibility to make up with his recent miss of a target. Maybe he would have a chance to get another shot at Jackie Winn. This time, he would make it count for real.
As he was driving away, he heard an explosion and his rental car shook a bit. He smiled.
###
Allen Wells drove until he almost ran out of gas. What the hell had happened back there? There was another sniper in the picture, something that he had never come up against. All he knew was that if he had been behind that rifle, he would be dead. He had lasered the closest buildings, just to be complete, and no one was within five hundred yards. The sniper was damn good to find the location from where the robot sniper had shot from and be able to shoot back. Even more distressing was that the integral sound suppressor should have really concealed the location that the shot came from. There was no disguising the sonic crack of the bullet, but any muzzle flash or other noise should have been non-existent.
This led to the obvious question—had someone figured that his usefulness was over and had set him up to be killed? He had heard rumors that they used to do that—you were sent on a suicide mission or were the target of a younger, smarter and faster killer.
The company that paid him didn't know about his remote sniper system; all they cared about was results. And that he never needed a spotter or support staff helped limit their exposure and increased his profit margin as he had told them that he supplied his own.
So, was he now the target? He was currently disarmed and would have to find someplace to build, calibrate and test another remote sniper system. In his van, he had almost all of the needed parts to build one, if not two. All he would need was some small electronics and servos that he could buy over the counter at any hobby store.
He pulled into a gas station and filled up his truck, paying cash so he wouldn't leave a trace. It was almost pointless as he knew if someone really wanted to find him, they could, without much effort. The number of times that citizens showed up in one way or another each day, even on gas station cameras, was mind boggling. He had often used this to his advantage, but now that he might be the one being hunted, he could almost feel the cross hairs centered on the middle of his back.
Using the grungy rest room in the gas station, he washed his face. In the stained mirror he noted the dark circles under his eyes. He had been up for almost twenty hours. He stank of stress and fear.
He needed a plan and to regroup and find out who was hunting him and why. But first, a bit of rest. He was in Grand Junction, Colorado. Not a real big town, but big enough for him to hide away for a little bit while he regrouped.
What worried him was that he was going to have to, at some point soon, reply to the company that he had missed his target and then wait for further instructions. That would be the point that would tell if the company was after him.
On the way out of the door of the gas station, he asked the pimply kid behind the counter to recommend a decent hotel that was close to the highway. The stupid kid didn't know, oh well.
He got in his van and drove along until he found a chain hotel that had a back parking lot where he could park his van without anyone seeing it from the road.
After checking in, paying cash and using his false ID that he had built up without the company's knowledge, he tried to make himself sleep, but it was a long time coming.
###
Leo didn't like the look of the cell phone store. It was brightly lit and was busy. Why did they need to expose themselves in this way?
He followed Jackie to the rear counter, noting all the fancy cell phones, PDAs and computers displayed on the store's racks. He had never owned a cell phone, not having any use for one. It was another invitation to have his privacy violated for little personal gain. When he ran the coin store, seemingly a lifetime ago, anyone who wanted to reach him could just call the store and he would get back to them at his convenience. It gave him control of his life rather than being controlled by a piece of machinery, having to carry it everywhere, and answering the device when someone else wanted to contact you. No, that kind of thing wasn't for him. He lived his life as simply as possible, with as few complications as he could get away from.
Jackie waited in line at a counter labeled “Repair/Service.”
Leo stepped back and sat down on an uncomfortable looking chair leading out into the showroom. A round faced woman wearing a badge that said “Barb” approached.”Hi,” she said.
He tried to look as disinterested as he could when he said, “Hello.”
“Can I help you pick out a new phone? We have some wonderful specials this week.”
Leo didn't want to have to explain his lifestyle choices to this cell phone shill.
“Thanks anyway,” he motioned towards Jackie and said, “I'm waiting for my friend over there.”
“Okay. If there is anything I can do to help, be sure to let me know.”
The buzzer announcing the door opening went off and she went over to bother the new customer.
After a twenty minute wait, Jackie motioned him behind the counter.
“He's here, but they're real busy. We may have to wait.”
Shrugging, he said, “I don't have any other plans for today.” Except to find out who is trying to kill me and you and stop them.
He followed Jackie towards the back of the store, noting the boxes probably containing store stock that lined the walls on cheap metal shelves. There were a lot of them. Also, where the front of the store was luxuriously decorated with soft toned walls, muted lighting and thick carpet, everythi
ng behind the counter was Spartan, including harsh overhead lighting and bare concrete—all the trademarks of a cheap corporation.
Jackie seemed to know exactly where to go. He followed her to an area in the back of the building next to the loading dock. Handy information if you need to get out of here quick, Leo thought.
A man was crouched over a work bench with a soldering iron clutched in a meaty fist.
“Ryan,” Jackie said.
She had to repeat herself several times before the man looked up. He had magnifying goggles over his eyes, giving them a buggy appearance. “Jackie!” he said, tossing the soldiering iron down onto the bench.
He stepped away from the bench and Leo saw that he was at least a foot shorter than Jackie. Wrapping his arms around Jackie, he said, “I just heard about Nathan. I'm so sorry that I didn't hear in time to get to the funeral. How you doing?”
“Just fine. I need some help with something, though.”
Then the man noticed Leo.
“Who's your friend?”
“Ryan, this is Leo. He's helping me.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And I need your help with something that Nathan dropped into my lap.”
After appraising Leo, Ryan stepped over to Leo and held out his hand, he shook it, noting that despite being pudgy, the grip was strong and calloused.
“Ryan Rees,” he said.
“Leo Marston,” Leo replied. Jackie better be right about this guy helping them or he was going to have to kill him to protect their identities.
Turning back to Jackie, Ryan said, “So, what can I help you with?”
She pulled out the plastic bag containing the chips she had taken from James Phillips' Blackberry. “I need you to dump these. Contacts and messages are what I'm looking for.”
He sat down at a computer, typed for a minute. Turning to Jackie, he said, “Let me have the SIM card.”
Despite that the card was dwarfed in his hand, Ryan dexterously slid it into a slot on the computer.
“What kind of phone is it from?”
“Blackberry. It looked like the model 9700.”
“Cool. You heard about the processor? It's a 32 bit XScale PXA900, made by Marvel. Cooks along at about 624 MHz, but the specs say that it can run up and over 800. I haven't had a chance to see if I could over clock and make it really fly.”
“Yeah. Lots of extra stuff on the processor to make it handle wireless faster. I played with the ARM instruction that it runs and as a RISC OS, it's a major pain if you have to write to the SVC as it will throw up in your lap if you look at it cross eyed.”
This techno-babble was too much for Leo. “What's the card say?”
“Give me a second.”
The screen filled with information, looking like mostly gibberish to Leo.
“What am I seeing?” Yes, Leo could sit all day waiting for the perfect shot to present itself, but they had spent way too much time screwing around when they should be tracking down who was trying to kill them.
“It's just a dump of a SIM card.”
“Which is what?”
Jackie, seeming to sense Leo's impatience, said, “A SIM card is the Subscriber Identity Module. It contains subscriber information, phone contacts and any SMS text messages.”
“SMS text messages?”
“Yes. What you see teenagers doing all of the time with their cell phones—texting each other.”
Leo hadn't really noticed much of that as he ran in different social circles than most teenagers. Kids who were interested in coins didn't text while in his store, and the kids who were probably into texting didn't hang out in a boring coin store with a bunch of coin dinks.
Ryan continued to page through the information.
“Bad news, only subscriber information, no phone book, nor any messages.”
She handed him the thumbnail sized chip from the phone. “How about on the SD card?”
“Only if he saved his e-mails to it. Blackberrys 'push' e-mails from the mail server, and it's saved to the internal memory. Since that's only like sixty-four meg, that ain't a lot of memory. Though, you do need some secondary software to save it to the SD card.”
“No matter, try it.”
“Still, it may not even be on there. I'll need the phone if I'm gonna be sure about getting it all.”
She looked at Leo and he shook his head. His paranoia about what that cell phone could do when turned on was something that he didn't have the experience or ability to be able to deal with.
Jackie had described the Blackberry as a small computer. What kinds of software could be installed on it? While he wasn't a computer hacker like her, he had a suspicious mind. How hard would it be to install GPS software on it? While, in his experience, GPS didn't work at all inside buildings, it worked just fine outside where it could see satellites. And hadn't he read something about using the signal strength between various cell towers to triangulate a position? Developed for emergency calls, it sure wouldn't take much to bend it towards evil intent.
Ten minutes of typing and muttered sentences between Jackie and Ryan amounted to nothing useful being found.
“We're going to have to power up the Blackberry,” Jackie said.
Leo shrugged and fingered his pistol. She got the idea that this was insanely dangerous. He would count her judgment as if it was worth it and apparently she thought it was.
Jackie dug out her jammer, which on seeing, Ryan said, “Are you fucking nuts? That thing is like a $10,000 fine and five years in jail if you are caught with it. And this is a cell phone store, what do you think is going to happen if you power that thing up and everyone's cell phone in the store goes dead?”
“It has a rather limited range.”
“Still unacceptable. Listen, we'll be in and out in a moment. I'll power it up, dump the internal memory, load it up into a simulator, power down the Blackberry and it'll be over quick, maybe a couple of minutes.”
“Which version of the simulator are you using?”
“Something I threw together from the Software Developer Kit. Trust me, it works just great. I use it all the times for the cops—the damn technophobes.”
Leo knew that he was one of those technophobes, though he doubted that either Jackie or Ryan could hit the bulls eye at six hundred yards in forty mile an hour gusting winds using an iron sighted rifle.
Ryan pulled out an inhaler and, after shaking it several times, took a deep puff.
“Asthma still bothering you?” Jackie asked.
“Yes,” he coughed. Then he cleared his throat and said, “I've got to get my prescription renewed as I'm almost out. I thought I'd outgrow asthma, but working back in here with all the dust and crap only makes it worse.”
Stuffing the inhaler back into a pocket, he plugged the Blackberry into a cradle, booted up something with the computer, powered up the Blackberry and then turned it back off.
“Got it. Software dump, including the e-mails.”
He paged through the data. “It looks like any e-mails are just a link to a web site. We can access that, if you want.”
Jackie, who was leaning over Ryan, said, “Yes. But be careful. Can you spoof our IP Address?”
“I don't think I need to. Besides, I don't have the software and I don't think that they can lock onto me without a major pain as this is a corporate computer and there are thousands of IP's that it could come from.”
He typed some more and pulled up a web page.
“Wow. I wonder what all this data is—contains everything that you would want to know about someone, address, bank accounts, even places on the Internet that you hang out.”
Leo said, “It's called a targeting package—and contains everything you need to find and kill someone.”
“That stands to reason seeing the type of information it contains. But I wonder who this bad ass, Max Jennings, is. He's killed a bunch of people and looks to be a bad ass dude otherwise.”
He moved behind Ryan and Jackie so he could s
ee the computer screen.
Then a picture came up. Leo remembered it being taken for his college rifle team. He was crouched behind a Winchester Model 52 target rifle. Damn that rifle was sweet and put the rounds exactly where they were supposed to go if the shooter did his part. At that time, there was some talk of him trying out for the Olympic Rifle Team, but that dream was crushed the instant his father was murdered.
A more modern picture came up, of him going into the coin shop—it seemed like a lifetime ago that he was dealing with coin dinks, and he missed the dusty, metallic smell of the place.
Ryan's head swiveled around and he started at Leo. “That guy in the picture looks a lot like you—could be your twin brother in fact.”
“It's me.”
Ryan recoiled in horror and Jackie stepped back. “Really,” he said, “you killed all those people?”
“It wasn't that many people—twelve, no thirteen—the guy who I got this Blackberry from. Are there any other targeting packages on the web site?”
Both Jackie and Ryan stared at him.
“Well, let's get to it,” he said.
Jackie pushed Ryan out of the way and started typing.
“I'll jump back into the parent directory and that might lead to some more links.”
A screen popped up. “I'll be damned.”
“What?” Leo asked.
“Look at the list. There must be a couple of hundred people here.”
“Can you find out who is behind this?”
She popped open another screen, “I'll just access WHOIS and see what pops up.”
“What's WHOIS?”
Ryan said, “Think of it as a reverse directory for the Internet. You can find out who owns a web site by typing in the IP address.”
Leo had no idea what an IP address was, but got the general picture.
She typed for a few minutes and a screen popped up.
“I'll be damned,” she said.
Leo and Ryan both peered down at the screen. The address looked familiar, but he couldn't place it.
“What about it?”
“The web address is owned by Alamut Enterprises ... and the physical address is the same as White Hat, my company.
Kill Code Page 13