Kill Code

by Joseph Collins

  The solution was to use a gas that had a broad range of explosive limits. He had played with a gas called Silane—a silicon analog of methane. Its explosive limits were between 1.5 and 98%. The problem was that it stunk so badly that it would make you throw up and would spontaneously explode if you so much as looked at it cross-eyed. It wasn't something that you could find easily, though lots of it was made for various industrial processes ranging from anti-graffiti coatings to a potential candidate for a rocket engine that could work on Mars as it could use carbon dioxide as an oxidizer.

  The next candidate on the list was so much easier to work with and could be found anywhere in the world, which made working with something like Silane a non-starter. With explosive limits of 2.5 to 81 percent, acetylene was the perfect choice. You could get as much as you wanted at any welding supply shop, it spread throughout an area equally, being about ten percent lighter than air so you didn't have to worry about it diving into the basement or other low-lying areas, and almost anything could set it off.

  The attack plan consisted of several layers. He had two tanks of acetylene on a welding car and a manifold he had constructed to connect them together. A hundred foot of hose along with an ALA-17 Flare Cartridge at the end. That particular model was designed for self-protection against heat seeking missiles in the B-52 and he had picked up a crate of them at a military surplus store quite cheap. They were electrically fired and ejected a very hotly burning magnesium/Teflon pellet which would do nicely in setting off his acetylene gas/air explosion.

  The flare was connected via wire back to the tanks and would be fired when the level of the acetylene dropped to a certain point—one contact was wired to the gauge needle and the other to a pin that the needle would contact when the gas got to a certain level—a variation on the simple clock bomb. He had tried using gas detectors tied to an electric match, but they were not only expensive, but very unreliable. So, he went back to something tried, true, simple and cheap.

  There was a camera on the back of the building. Crouching out of its view point as it panned the area, he calculated how long it would take to come back around. Sure he could have defeated it several different ways, but the instant something went wrong with it, someone would come looking and may discover him and his equipment.

  He wasn't a burglar, but he had more than an amateur level of ability in defeating alarm systems. The security system around the police department garage didn't appear too sophisticated and was comprised of what appeared only to be cameras on a rotating sweep. No motion detectors, IR alarms, pressure plates. This made sense as the building really didn't protect very much, just some equipment. Who would be stupid enough to steal an outdated squad car and what would you do with it once you had it?

  The camera panned and as soon as it was out of range, he crawled through the hole he cut in the bottom of the fence and dragged the hose connected to the acetylene tanks along. The camouflage job on the hose wouldn't pass close scrutiny, but it would be more than enough to conceal it from the camera.

  He made his way up to the building and stood under the camera mount. Incidentally, it was right next to the exhaust fan housing. Prying the vents open, he slid his hands in and cut the wire to the motor. It might want to turn on, but now couldn't.

  Then he stuffed the hose in as far as he could, being careful with the flare taped to the end. Of this operation, that was the only thing that really scared him—that damn flare going off. Magnesium burned at half the temperature of the surface of the sun and he didn't want to be anywhere near it when it went off.

  He taped the hose to the side of the building, and then waited for the camera to pan again. Then he made his way to the fence and crawled back through. He looked at his work to see if it would be detectible by the camera. In his best judgment, it wouldn't be—the only way that someone could find it would be to trip over the damn thing.

  Closing the hole in the fence only took a couple of minutes—he wasn't looking for undetectable as everyone would soon be able to figure out what had happened, he just wanted to pass a distant look.

  Then he connected the firing device to the battery. This was always the point where his pulse pounded in his ears—the most dangerous part of the entire operation was providing power to a device. Most explosives were reasonably stable, but detonators were just looking for an excuse to go off, and often did, causing all sorts of problems, the least being the loss of fingers. That's why old demolition men often were a few digits short.

  Nothing happened, which was good. He let out a sigh and turned the valves to the acetylene tanks wide open and then half a turn back. By his calculations, the building should be at about fifty percent full with gas when the flare went off. Should make for a very interesting explosion to say the least.

  Checking his work again, he nodded and slipped into the night.

  ###

  FBI Special Agent Jeff Silver was at the top of his game and he knew it. A patrol car had seen Leo Marston's truck parked by the hotel and from there, it had been simple to pick him up.

  They found a silenced pistol on the night stand, a laptop that the technical services guys were trying to break into and some personal possessions. They had also towed back his truck to the impound yard and were doing a complete inventory of it. The most obvious finding was the rifle—unlike anything he had ever seen before with a very heavy barrel, huge scope and strange stock. The HRT sniper had looked at it and told him that it was one hell of a rifle and who knew how accurate it could be—but the potential was almost limitless, especially when they found the hand-loaded ammunition and Leo's rifle log book.

  There were other secrets in the truck and it would probably require a complete disassembly of the vehicle to pry them out—they had already found two hidden compartments, one containing a quantity of gold coins and bullion and the other stuffed with old series $100 bills.

  The only sticking point was that Leo hadn't said one word. He had complied with all of their commands, but was strangely silent. Nothing they said could get him to say anything.

  Silver looked through the one-way window of the interrogation room at the shackled man seated at the desk. He looked to be a statue that sat motionless for hours.

  They had taken all of his clothes as evidence and he was dressed in an orange jump suit that was at least two sizes too big, but he still seemed to fill it with an eerie presence, like a snake waiting to strike.

  Usually, they tried to make people in the interrogation room comfortable by leaving them unshackled and uncuffed. But the search of Leo's possessions had revealed a ceramic razor blade and plastic handcuff key taped inside his belt, so no one wanted to take any chances.

  He took a sip of his rapidly cooling coffee. Nodding at the federal prosecutor, Becky Miller, he opened the door to the interrogation room, and hoped he could get Leo to talk.

  ###

  Tyrannicide was, if a piece of software could be ascribed with emotions, satisfied with its work. Most of the goals of this part of the operation had been met with some minor setbacks that were to be expected in such a complex endeavor.

  Employees of all levels of federal, state, county and city government were resigning in droves in the Denver area. That only changed their status slightly as far as their placement on the assassination went—they would get their just deserves at some point in the future, but now, with limited resources, the more prominent targets must be dealt with first.

  It prepared, based on news reports and public records, another list of targets.

  The next thing was to issue another prepared press release to state and national media:

  “The Children of the Constitution are expanding to cover selected areas to spread the ideal of a country not ruled by tyranny. All members of government, your past actions will reveal if you will live or die.”

  Besides sending it out to the usual media, it also sent it to selected bloggers. The regular media wasn't printing enough stories about Tyrannicide's accomplishments, but it had d
etermined that in the right blogs, information could spread like wildfire throughout the Internet.

  It performed a check of finances. There were some funds that were becoming depleted, so it moved around money as needed. Then it settled down to wait and watch.

  ###

  Jackie had no idea as to how to get in touch with the man she was looking for—Jared Becker. He specialized in web-based applications and had parried his world-known expertise into one hell of big business. He no longer worked by himself and employed a cadre of young, up and coming programmers to code his World Wide Web visions into reality. Rumor had it that he didn't even program any more.

  White Hat Enterprises had used Jared's company, Web Solutions, Inc., over the years including the recent credit card swipe machine project as the machines had to be updated over the Internet. Why it couldn't have been handled with in-house expertise, Jackie never found out. They had the capability to write the code, but Nathan had decided, despite the cost, to use Web Solutions instead.

  She knew the city where he lived, Castle Rock, Colorado, just south of Denver on I-25, but not much more than that. Not having a laptop any more, she found an Internet cafe and rented a computer.

  She Googled the company and eventually found their web site. It only listed a PO Box for the address and no phone number. Typical.

  There was an e-mail address listed, but she didn't have the time for them to sort through the probably thousands of e-mails they received each day to see hers and act on it.

  The next best thing was to hack their mail server. Damn, she wished she had her laptop but didn't, so she did the next best thing. It took almost an hour to figure out the naming scheme they used to address e-mails. Even then, there was no guarantee that he would even see it.

  She signed up for a throwaway Google e-mail address, and sent a message to what she hoped was Jared's e-mail address. To make sure it got noticed, she included her hacker handle, 'Grizel'—Scottish for 'gray battle maid.' The message said:

  Grizel needs a face to face. Your PBX, where and when. Soonest though.

  'PBX' meant, formally, private branch exchange, a telephone exchange that serves a particular office or business rather than servicing the public, but to hackers it meant 'call.' Ten minutes and a half a fresh triple espresso later, an e-mail popped into her inbox:

  “Where we meet for fun toys, 2 hours.”

  What did he mean by 'fun toys?' It could be anything, from a gun range to a porno shop. Then it hit her; Jared was into old telephone switching systems, arcane computers and strange electronic parts. She popped up another window and started searching for electronic surplus stores in the Denver area. There was one that carried all the things that interested Jared. She copied the address down on a piece of paper and then looked up the bus schedule. If she was going to meet him, she was going to have to hurry.

  Chapter 23

  From the instant that the black clad FBI agents kicked down the hotel door, Leo had crawled within his mind. He didn't put up an ounce of resistance as they rudely knocked him to the ground and roughly cuffed him, then dragged him until he could get his feet under him.

  He put up with having his clothes forcibly removed, the uncomfortable, ill-fitting jumpsuit, the body cavity search, the cold interrogation room with the stiff backed, slick chair that stunk of sweat, urine and vomit, and knew that his every move was being video and sound recorded through the one-way mirror in the room in which he was sitting.

  It was all a matter of perspective to him—at least he was out of the weather and reasonably comfortable. What the future would hold for him he had no idea, but he wouldn't be an active participant in his own downfall by making the mistake of opening his mouth.

  He didn't think that the FBI would believe anything that he had to tell them, and knew enough, from his historical studies of assassination, that nothing like Robert-François Damiens, a Frenchman who tried to assassinate Louis XV in 1757, would happen to him. Damiens was the last person to be executed by drawing and quartering, and his death took many horrifying hours. That Damiens was an amateur and only slightly wounded the king didn't have much bearing on his punishment. The finest refinement of the art of assassination was to be able to kill without being caught.

  He didn't think that even the most hardened FBI agent would consider torture at this stage of the game, but didn't really put it much past them. History was also full of examples of government agencies like the FBI doing whatever it took to accomplish their own ends. He just wasn't going to help them.

  The agent that appeared in charge entered the room and introduced himself as Special Agent Jeff Silver. He was swarthy, had a five o'clock shadow, bags under his eyes and a suit that looked like he slept in it for the past month.

  Leo thought about telling him the origin of his last name, being derived from the Anglo-Saxon ‘seolfur’ and the chemical symbol from the Latin ‘argentum,’ both meaning silver. Leo knew a lot about history and one of the threads running through history was precious metals—the other was murder. But any explanation would require talking, which he didn't want to do.

  “Are you Leo Marston?” Silver demanded. He stared at the man, fixing his gaze into his eyes, like he was measuring him for a coffin and remained silent.

  “You’re in a world of trouble, you know that?”

  Leo remained silent.

  “Why won't you talk?”

  He smiled.

  The rest of the interrogation went about the same, with Silver getting louder as it progressed. Leo never uttered a word.

  This continued for a couple of hours. While Silver ranted, Leo reviewed everything he had experienced over the past week. It had all had gone as expected, including getting caught. He did wish that they had been able to find out more about who was behind this mysterious assassination organization before getting caught.

  The shouting didn't bother him—long ago he learned to concentrate while trying to take a shot despite all the distractions of a match, and that was gunfire going off right next to you, not an irate FBI agent.

  Then there was a tap on the door. Both of them looked up at it as an upset-looking man stuck his head into the interrogation room.

  “Call for you, line six.”

  “Take a fucking message, can't you see I'm busy?”

  “You better take this call. It's the director.”

  Silver gave Leo a sneer and said, “Don't move. I'll be right back.”

  ###

  Allan Wells was starting to get pissed. He'd done every task asked of him and yet they wanted him to do another. Though they couldn't know that he was up to his armpits in constructing his newest version of the remote sniper rifle platform, if he didn't get it finished quickly it would seriously cut into his ability to make money and take on jobs for the company.

  His latest task was to snipe an FBI agent. And, if he got the chance, to take out someone he only had a picture of, no other details, a guy by the name of Leo Marston. For some reason, the name was familiar, but he couldn't place it. A quick Google shoot didn't reveal anything—how was that possible, not to show up on Google? It probably didn't matter. The information on the FBI target, Jeff Silver, stated that he was currently working out of the Byron G. Rogers Federal Building in Denver. Looking at the aerial maps of the area, it was clear that this was going to be a difficult job to pull off. Across the street was the Federal Building and US Custom House, next to it was a Federal Court house and on the other side was an office complex.

  The only available shot was going to have to be from across two busy streets. After some calculating, he decided to set up his shooting position hanging in a tree, a remotely fired charge would fake the sound and muzzle flash, and set up his real shooting site from the top of a tire store. It was going to be a cross shot, no straight on angles, but he knew he could pull it off.

  He packed up his laptop and made sure his soldiering iron was unplugged. The scam he would use to get on the roof as a building contractor needed some things he d
idn't have with him. He had to draw out the shooting site including the relevant ranges, hang wind flags and other prep before he could take the shots. After this job was done, he hoped they'd leave him alone for a few months so he could get some work done.

  ###

  Alpha Surplus was in a converted warehouse. It was a huge pole barn filled floor to ceiling with all sorts of junk ranging from military surplus backpacks to electronic equipment used during the Cold War. As Jackie wandered around, she wondered if there could be any order to the where stuff was placed—if there was, she couldn't see it. It was dusty, but brightly lit.

  Old telephones, electronic test equipment and other unidentifiable computer equipment seemed to be stacked along the far wall. She made her way down there and saw a man crouching over a tub.

  From a distance, it looked like Jared. When she got closer, she saw that it was—he was gangly, had thick glasses and moved in nervous twitches like the wiring to his muscles had something wrong with it.

  He saw her coming and stood up, holding a black box with white painted writing on it.

  “Found me,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  Handing her the box he said, “Guess what this is?”

  Besides having flaking paint, the writing on it said 'NASA' along with a part number.

  Handing it back, she said, “I have no idea.”

  “It's one of the Guidance Computer Modules from the Apollo program. The first use of integrated circuits. This is the Block 1 version and it had 4,100 ICs, each containing a single 3 input logic gate. Made by Fairchild Semiconductor, it used Resistor-Transistor Logic. That module there cost the taxpayers well over $20,000 in 1965 dollars.”

  He looked wistfully at it. “Now, your average wristwatch has more computational power than the computers used to put men on the moon.”