Leo had told her about how it felt to almost die—to feel death brush its hands through your hair, and yet survive; that the air smelled better, food tasted wonderful and the sky was brighter. She hadn't had that feeling much before, even after her car had been blown up, her friend Patrick Lackey killed and being shot at, but this ratty hotel room, twenty feet from a busy road with threadbare carpet, wash worn sheets, 1970s era pine paneling and cheesy art screwed to the walls in cheaply painted frames, was now a castle in the clouds.
She'd read somewhere, a long time ago, that addicts often don't ask for help until they've hit bottom, and then were ready for help. She felt that same way now, that she was on her way out of the bottom, with Leo at her side.
That he had killed people for money and was matter of fact about it, without justification or excuses, was something that she'd have to deal with. But, where she was at right now, she knew that he'd kill or die for her without question or qualm.
Leo stirred in his sleep and then his eyes popped open. He leaned over her and said, “Hi.”
She kissed him, and then said, “Hi back to you.”
Crawling out of bed, he said, “You want the bathroom first? I need to exercise. Then we'll figure out what we have to get done today. Like track down your hacker buddy.”
She quickly cleaned up. Living in hotel rooms was starting to be a grind. Hopefully, they could figure out how to extricate themselves from this mess and she'd never have to spend another night in a nameless hot sheet hotel.
While Leo was showering, she considered joining him, but decided that she really needed to get some things done.
She fired up her laptop and ran the software that hid that she was accessing a wireless network. This secret squirrel stuff was tiring, yet exhilarating, and she knew that she was in the top of her game where the stakes might cost them their lives.
There was no e-mail from her hacker acquaintance. Damn. She should have heard from him by now—he usually replied in minutes, rarely over an hour. The man was connected in ways that she couldn't even understand and had sources for information on systems security that bordered almost on magical.
She sent him another e-mail, marking it high priority and that she really needed his help.
An instant message window popped up her screen. Funny, she'd deliberately deleted that software since she never had any use for it.
It was her hacker friend. She quickly explained that she needed to find out where money was coming from and going to and who was manipulating it.
He asked for the account and routing information and told her that it would be a while, she should check her e-mail later that evening.
Would they even be alive by then?
Leo came out of the shower, drying off with a threadbare towel.
“What'd you find?
“I got in touch with my hacker friend. He's going to check for us on the banking stuff and get back to me. Which is strange.”
“How so?”
“He must have someone on the inside as the cryptographic algorithms used in some banking software are hard to crack. We used to tell people that it would take five months with a CRAY XMT, a super computer with multi-threading processors, to crack.”
“What's a super computer?”
She motioned at her laptop. “In computer terms, this is like walking and the Cray XMT is a scramjet.”
He nodded and flipped on the TV, “Let's see what's happening in the world.”
The breaking story concerned a group claiming responsibility for the recent killings. They called themselves the 'Children of the Constitution,' whatever that meant.
Other groups had chimed in taking credit for the havoc caused in Denver, but they were apparently being given short shrift by the media and only earned themselves unnamed mentioning.
No one had heard or seen Denver's mayor in two days, but his office kept issuing press releases that he hadn't been a victim, but was in seclusion, and in full control of the situation. The surviving US Senator from Colorado had asked for Secret Service protection, as did the other six surviving Colorado members of the US House of Representatives. That was the local angle on things and other important politicians of all stripes were also asking for Secret Service protection. The president was on his way to Camp David along with much of his staff, the vice president was at his ranch in Utah and other government power brokers had suddenly made themselves scarce.
Wall Street was already tanking and there was a rush in the local grocery stores for staples. Some were calling for the National Guard to be activated to assist in peacekeeping, never mind that most of them were in Iraq and Afghanistan. 911 centers were being deluged with panicked calls causing their computer systems to crash. Conspiracy-oriented bloggers were going nuts, spinning out theories that spread through the Internet like wildfire. The least tame seemed to be one that our planet was being 'softened up' for an alien invasion, with the WTC tower collapses being the first test of our defenses. The tone was of barely controlled panic.
They watched until the news started repeating itself. Jackie turned off the TV and said, “What the hell is going on?”
He shrugged. “Not a clue, but it doesn't sound good. Let's get some breakfast and try and figure out what the hell we’re going to do today.”
Chapter 20
Since the range was so short, less than three hundred yards, Allan Wells planned on trying for a head shot at his target. The target was short, bald and quite fat—probably too many years of good living working at the DEA. Allan didn't have any particular love loss for any federal agent, having had his share of run-ins with them over the years. The DEA particularly pissed him off as he was hassled by them every time he came back from one of his foreign jobs.
Apparently, he was on some list as a druggie, and had to endure the whole body cavity thing when he came back into the USA. They never found anything, but, like mindless drones, they continued to harass him because he was coming back from Central American countries like Colombia and Belize several times a year. Yes, there were people in those countries that grew, processed and shipped massive quantities of cocaine each year, but he was more interested in the wealth of targets that he could take out for decent money.
His rifle was a bone stock Remington Model 700 in .22-250. Normally considered a varmint round, the .22-250 was very fast, flat shooting and shot the same sized bullet as the .223 or 5.56 NATO—the same bullet the M-16 used. It had a Leupold 3.5x10 scope, a bit battered but still damn good glass. It was a great gun for shooting two- or four-legged varmints.
He'd purchased the rifle at a pawn shop, paid cash and used a fake ID. Any pictures that had been taken by the cameras in the pawn store would be next to useless as he'd artificially tanned his skin, wore a John Deere cap, a fake mustache, colored contacts and had stuffed his lower jaw with chewing gum to change the shape. The bored clerk had barely paid any attention anyway while selling the rifle—probably wanting his next fix. And the federal background check was only good if you were in the system as a crook, not if you didn't exist in any system whatsoever, like the ID that he had produced. It had an address that would have had him living at the Federal Building, so it showed up as legit and anybody getting this far, which he doubted would ever happen, wouldn't get any farther.
This was going to be too easy—the target lived in the country, an hour from work. From what he could see where he was sitting, in a thicket down the road with a view of the house, garage and driveway, it looked to be a nice house.
You could set your watch by the target's schedule. No variations, even for traffic. He left at six in the morning and was home by five every week night. No wife to worry about. He settled in on the shooting mat he'd brought with him. It was well worn, dating from when he used to compete and was molded to the contours of his body by use. It felt good to be back in the game more directly.
Yes, his remote robot sniper system was the coming evolution, but from a camera, you couldn't smell the air, feel the breeze or
hear the birds chirping.
He'd already seeded a fake shooting site in the bushes next to the driveway with several cigarette butts he'd found outside a bus station and a shell casing from an M-16 that he picked up at a gun range. He collected shell casings, for just such purposes, to hide his real shooting site and screw with the investigating officers.
He'd set up his shot so he would be perfectly in line with the seeded site. All the distances to relevant landmarks had been drawn out on the notepad in front of him.
The sound of a car coming down the gravel road brought him back to the matter he was here for.
A brown sedan, the same make and model that the target drove. As it passed, he recognized the license plate.
Settling in behind the rifle, he waited. He clicked the safety off, slid his finger down on the trigger. Taking a full breath, he let out half and started to take up the slack on it.
The target's car stopped while he waited for the garage door to go up. His head, bald dome and all, was silhouetted against the back wall. The rifle went off, there was a splash of blood and gore on the windshield and the car slammed into the back of the garage, the engine racing.
He waited a moment, watching for movement or signs of life in the cross hairs. It was done and maybe he'd have enough time and money to do some more work on the next version of his robot sniper rifle.
Standing, he slid his rifle into its case, rolled up his shooting mat and notebook and then moved the leaf mold back to its natural position with the small rake he'd brought with him.
Looking around, he saw that he'd left no trace even down to his boots, which he'd put socks on over to conceal their treads. If anyone found his original shooting site, there was nothing that could be used against him.
He started back through the woods, a two mile walk to his car. The target's engine raced in the background, shattering the still air. With any luck, the engine would overheat and catch the garage and house on fire, further concealing his work.
###
Leo was still in shock about the previous night. It was as though his feet hadn't touched the ground and wouldn't for years. It was all that he had waited for and much more. He hadn't been a virgin by any stretch, but his previous sex had consisted of frantic coupling with one night stands—no love, nothing except the need to get off. As he made love with Jackie, he learned more about himself, and in her reactions to his touches, he discovered a whole new aspect of life.
The concern that still haunted him, sitting on his shoulder like a vulture waiting for an unprepared visitor to die in the desert so that it might have a meal, was that they might be killed in the next instant.
They were against something much more than either of them had anticipated. If he could see it, he could kill it. But a target fit for his rifle wasn't appearing and it didn't look like it was going to do so. He didn't know how to flush out the person pulling the strings, and having put Jackie's life at risk in trying to get a lead, he wasn't going to be doing that anytime soon as the return had been next to useless considering the amount of risk involved.
He figured that they were safe from the other members of the Black Hand. From his research, he knew that the poisoning expert was a woman. Probably accidents, fire and bombing were men, because that was more suited for them and could be done at a distance. Same way with the sniper—the only finger of the Black Hand that concerned him.
Leo was at the top of his game as a rifle shooter. Maybe ten people in the entire world could do what he did with a rifle, and he knew them all by name and reputation—none would even venture into the long distance killing profession. Precision shooting at extreme ranges was a rich man's game, you could spend several thousand dollars on just the action for a rifle, and by the time you added a barrel, stock, scope and forged them together with the black art of gunsmithing inhumanly precise rifles, you could have bought a decent car. Leo saved money by doing some of the work himself, but he lacked the machinery to make his own barrels, didn't have the CNC machine to manufacture his own actions and other similar problems. He had the best damn rifle you could build for the money he spent. But, against a machine that he didn't know the capabilities of, he didn't know how he'd fare.
Supposing that there were two or three of those robot rifles using software that was developed for military and police applications, they could find his location and counter-snipe him in milliseconds—less than the time it would take him to come off recoil.
He didn't know the range of the robot rifle, nor its full capabilities. If it had thermal imaging abilities, or other technology, it would be difficult to find a way to defeat the man behind the switches.
Dueling with men was something that he understood. When that man's capabilities expanded with high technology, it added another level of complexity to the problem.
He knew that at one point, Jackie had merely been a way for him to get his life back. Now, he really did want her to be part of his life. He didn't know if she felt the same way about him or if their night of lovemaking was a result of losing everything, nearly being killed but surviving, or something else, deeper and stronger than that.
Hell, he'd spent the last three days driving around in his truck with her always close by. They'd shared fear, deprivation, doubts and probably other things that he wasn't perceptive enough to understand.
Right now, he was at a loss as to what to do to continue moving towards resolution of their problem. Every aspect that they explored had ended in a dead end of sorts.
He'd really wanted to search Nathan's office, but someone had anticipated that move and burnt the place to the ground. Being in the place where Nathan had worked would have given him insights into the man and maybe have provided a clue as to what he was capable of doing.
Leo had never been driven to the point where he couldn't find anything to do to further one cause or another. He hated waiting on Jackie's hacker friend to come back with more information that may or may not help them find the puppet master.
Sitting around and waiting was something that he was used to, and he knew that he could pull himself inside and stay still for days if necessary. But all the times he had done that, it was to wait for the opportune time for the target to present itself. Now, he didn't have a target, nor any way to force one to present itself.
This 'Children of the Constitution' was another unknown. Who the hell were they and how did they affect what was happening to him and Jackie?
Somewhere, he felt that there was a thread that linked them, but it seemed that every time he reached for it, someone turned the lights off and moved it.
Jackie appeared happy playing with her laptop, but they had decided at breakfast that there wasn't much that they could do until they heard from her friend. And that might take all day or even longer—and who knew what information he could provide and even if it would help them.
He was sitting in the uncomfortable chair doing the word search puzzles in the book that he had bought. They were a way to keep your observational skills honed to a keen edge, and Leo did them inhumanly fast. The quicker you could pick up on details, the better chance you had for survival. Yes, he hadn't been in a situation in which he would have to identify and shoot a target in years, except for early yesterday, but he still kept in practice as best he could.
He wished that he could be doing something more than just sitting here, waiting for something to pop up.
Jackie said, “Hey, come look at this.”
Leo set down his word search book, that he was almost done with anyway, and leaned over her. Her scent was intoxicating even for someone who didn't drink anything stronger than Sprite.
“What am I looking at?”
“The list of people killed so far. Except for a couple of minor instances, they have all been members of the government.”
He looked at it. She was right.
“About time.”
“What do you mean?”
“It makes each IRS, DEA, BATF agent accountable for their every action
. Adding in politicians effectively shuts down our government—everyone would be so afraid of doing something that could get them killed that they wouldn't do a damn thing. About fucking time.”
She leaned back into his chest. He stroked her hair, reveling in the smoothness.
“You sound like you like that idea.”
“In some ways. I firmly believe in something that I read a number of years ago, that the only function of government should be to provide for the common defense and repair the roads. They can do that without zillions of laws, regulations and taxes. Hell, I earn enough that forty percent of my income goes to taxes that pay for crap that I wouldn't want anyway. Why should I bust my ass to pay for politicians to line their own pockets?”
“So, you agree with this?”
“Not by any stretch of the imagination. Through years of coddling, at least ninety-seven percent of our population wouldn't be able to survive in a world where their lives weren't supported by the government in one form or another. There has to be some sort of middle ground, and stacking bodies of politicians high and deep isn't the way to do it.”
“How does this affect what we are doing?”
He considered what he had learned in the last couple of minutes.
“I don't know. But I think it's another cog in the bigger plan that someone has for this country. Just imagine what would happen if what happened in Denver happened throughout the country. Building inspectors, Congress critters and others in politics being killed or simply disappearing—there would be chaos. We'd all have to be responsible for our actions and lives and most people would rather riot than deal with that.
“I know that there are only five fingers in the Black Hand, so that means, in order to accomplish their apparent goals, they’re going to have recruit a bunch of amateurs.”
“Amateurs?”
“Yes. It costs a lot of money to train, equip, support and pay a professional killer. There are thugs out there that will kill for a couple of thousand dollars or a pat on the head from the right person, but killers on the level of the Black Hand receive at least $50,000 a hit, sometimes have support teams, and those don't come cheap, and that doesn't include training costs—who knows how many they recruit who can't drop the hammer when the time comes. As an example, when I was learning my trade, the rifle that they built me cost at least $10,000. And that was eleven years ago. That robot rifle that cooked itself must have cost a bunch more than that.”
Kill Code Page 17