He dropped all of his stuff on the ground, and kicked the door closed.
“What the fuck you doing here?”
She smiled, revealing white, perfect teeth.
“Waiting for you.”
She moved like she was going to stand up.
Leo stepped back and pointed the pistol at her right eye.
“Don't move. The first two bullets will go into your eye sockets and you'll be dead before you hit the ground.”
“Why all the drama?”
“Because I don't know who the hell you are, what you are doing here, or why.”
She shrugged. “I'm here to meet you.”
“And I'm who?”
“Leo Marston, also known as Max Jennings.”
There was that name from his past. Another person knew too much about his past.
“And what are you supposed to do with him once you meet him?”
“Try and bring him into the fold. His skills and talents are needed in the organization.”
“Alamut Enterprises?”
“That's one of several names that it goes by. There are others, including the one that you worked under. But we need you back now.”
“What's in it for me?”
“A life. Otherwise, you will be killed.”
Leo shrugged.
“The organization has tried before and hasn't succeeded. What's different now?”
She started to stand up.
Leo snapped a shot past her ear. The gun made a soft putting sound as the action cycled with a loud clack. He was impressed. The sound of the slide cycling was louder than the bullet.
“I warned you once before. You won't get another chance.”
She settled down with a huff.
“I'm here to help you. Don't you understand?”
“Yep.”
Keeping the gun trained on her, he opened up his duffel bag. He rummaged around until he found a large roll of duct tape.
It had countless uses and Leo always had at least one roll handy.
He tossed it at her and said, “Start with taping your legs to the chair legs. Then your left arm.”
“Or?”
He pointed the gun to her face again. “Do it. At least you'll be alive.”
She did as he asked.
When she was done, he walked over, keeping the gun trained on her. He took the duct tape and he taped down her right arm. Then he checked the taping job on the rest of her and added a couple of extra wraps as a precaution.
Her purse was sitting next to the chair. He dumped it onto the bed.
There were a couple of packets wrapped in foil. He didn't touch them.
Holstering his pistol, he said, “You're the Fourth Finger? Specializing in poisons, right?”
She glared at him. “How did you figure it out?”
“I have a lot of free time and spend it tracking killers like you. Quite a career you've had. Too bad you're going to retire today.”
“You're going to kill me?”
“I should. I killed the last person Alamut Enterprises sent after me. But I'm just going to call the feds and let them deal with you.”
Digging out her Blackberry, he found the card that Agent Silver had given him. Dialing the number he was surprised when it went to voice mail.
He left a quick message, just cryptic enough that the FBI would have to send someone out to investigate.
Picking up his gear, he turned to her and said, “Nice meeting you. The feds should be by shortly to talk with you.”
Then he shut the door behind him. He'd have to check his rifle and gear when he found a shooting site.
###
Jackie wasn't making much progress. There was simply no way for her to search the Internet for a specific piece of code. Given enough time, she could probably write a web bot to chew through the entire Internet to find the software behind the Children of the Constitution, but with 155 million web sites out there, and an estimated five billion gigabytes of raw data that changed every day, it could take years.
It might be possible to hack together something that already had a database of the Internet, say Google, to search, but that was way beyond her abilities and current hardware.
Taking a break, she fired up a news web site.
A lot was going on. Someone had blown up the Denver Police Department's vehicle garage. It was a complete loss, everything inside had been destroyed and a number of fires had started in nearby buildings as a result of flying, burning debris.
She watched the video. It was quite impressive. Most of the garage roof was gone, as were all of the sides, and firefighters crawled around the building dragging hoses around. From the preliminary investigation, it appeared like some sort of gas enhanced explosion, but that was only a tentative idea. Various federal agencies were fighting to take control of the investigation despite that the Denver PD wanted to keep it to themselves as it was their building that had been blown up.
There had also been a shooting at the FBI building in downtown Denver. At least two FBI agents were dead. No word on civilians. A bystander with a camera phone captured video of the shots landing.
While grainy and partially out of focus, her heart jumped into her throat when she recognized someone who looked like Leo. She backed it up, and went through it frame by frame. Yes, it did appear to be Leo, or someone who could be his twin. He even moved the same way she had seen Leo—smooth and cat like. Almost off camera was what appeared to be his truck.
So, he was alive and had been released? Or was he being transferred someplace?
She didn't know what to do.
Then another story caught her eye. An Internet entrepreneur had been killed when he'd lost control of his vehicle and slammed into a bridge abutment at a very high speed. She paged down to the details and almost threw up when she read Jared Becker’s name. He'd been alive six hours ago and now he was dead. She was probably the only link to Nathan who was still alive.
She was stunned almost into numbness. What should she do?
The very least was to contact Leo. For most people, it would be simple, find a phone and call them, or even easier, drop them an e-mail. Leo had neither. So, she had to punt.
The last contact with Leo had been at their hotel room.
But she had seen him dragged out in handcuffs by FBI agents dressed in black Nomex, carrying rifles and pistols out of a Star Wars movie.
Where, if she were Leo, would she go? Their night of lovemaking meant something to her, but what was it to Leo?
Probably just a way to get her bent to his will. Maybe. She couldn't take that chance, though. So she was going to have to make her way to the hotel room and maybe he would be there. If he had any thought for her in his heart, there would probably be a sign of something that he left for her.
Before she packed up her newly acquired computer, she researched the quickest route, by foot, to go back. She didn't have money for cab fare, not that any of them would come even if she called with the potential of having a drunken college student or six throwing up in the back of the cab.
Her route planned, she headed out into the night to find Leo.
###
If the day had started out as shit for Jeff Silver, it had gotten much worse. Some fuckwad had figured out a way to blow up the Denver Police Department's Police Vehicle storage garage. Now, he had not only DHS to deal with, but the BATF. And the Denver PD wanted to run the investigation.
Considering that the whole world appeared to be blowing up, Denver PD should have turned everything over to the feds and stepped back, but this was something they apparently felt they should investigate.
It was a longstanding feud between the feds and local LEO's as to who should have control of a particular investigation. Yes, the federal government often had almost infinite resources for dealing with situations, but they rarely knew the local area as well as the people who worked on the streets. With their arrogance, they tended to piss off the locals. But the hammer of time in a federal peni
tentiary was often enough weight to cause cases to break.
Most often, as in the Ronald Reagan bank robberies, the local police were more than happy to step aside and let the feds handle it. But this was apparently a much more delicate issue and attitude didn't help matters at all.
Though Jeff was a fellow fed, he didn't like the BATF. They always walked with a heavy tread when something more subtle was needed or even appreciated.
After getting is ass reamed out by Director Gerald, he checked his messages on his cell phone. He'd been forced to turn it off when entering the electronically secured conference room despite the number of things happening that he had to be kept apprised of. His wife had left three messages, all increasing in concern as she saw stories on the news.
He dropped her a quick text assuring her that he was fine and would call as soon as he could. She'd be angry, but there wasn't much he could do about it.
Then he found a strange message from a number he'd never seen before.
The caller identified himself as Leo Marston and he said that there was something important to breaking the case wide open at his hotel room. For further confirmation, track the cell number that the call came from.
He sprinted to the technology lab and had them drop everything and run the phone number locations for the last several days. Developed for Enhanced 911, the system could pretty much pinpoint a specific cell phone to about a city block based on signal strengths at various cell towers.
Some of his fellow agents were going to be pissed at having their cases stuffed off to one side.
It would take a couple of hours to generate the data and correlate it based on the recent events happening around the Denver area. Assuming the data discovered about the cell phone confirmed what Leo said, his next step was to figure out a plan. Two HRT members had been killed in the exchange of gunfire in front of the FBI building and four others wounded.
It had been a royal goat fuck of a situation. But HRT now wanted blood and would probably go along with anything he suggested up to and maybe including air strikes to get it.
He returned to his office and booted up the web page that would show him where the GPS locator he put in Leo's computer case had been.
It took a few minutes to come up, but it led straight back to the hotel room where they picked up Leo. And it appeared as though he was still there.
One of the things he hadn't had to turn over to Leo on his release was all the photos taken at the scene. He printed them up despite being able to view them quite well on the computer monitor. He was old school in that way.
He posted the relevant ones on his bulletin board including ones showing the front of the building, the surrounding structures and how the room was laid out. It looked and smelled like another killing zone with limited access, lots of buildings overlooking the area, close to a major street that led to a highway and multiple exits from the several parking lots that serviced the hotel. There was also lots of foot traffic to contend with. It was perfect ambush country.
Was it a trap? Maybe. But he couldn't take a chance that the bastard Leo had something for him. He had pushed him out of the way of a bullet, something that even the elite HRT snipers couldn't see.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the pictures, wondering how he was going to pull this off.
###
Leo had never been formally trained as a counter-sniper. But he knew a great deal about hunting the most dangerous game—man, and all a sniper was to him was a man with a rifle. It raised the stakes a bit, but it was something he could handle.
From his reading, the best way to kill a sniper wasn't necessarily with another sniper, but with artillery and air strikes—something he didn't have access to, nor a desire to use. He'd followed as much of the war with regards to snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan as he could, but really couldn't see how he could apply what he'd learned to this environment.
He placed himself on an oblique angle to the front of the hotel room, but behind the building. It did increase the range, and that was an advantage as he knew his rifle would be able to hit a man-sized target at a thousand yards. That is, if his rifle hadn't been monkeyed with.
If he felt that he had enough time, he would have torn his rifle down to the last screw and pin and measured each part with a micrometer. He had been reduced to verifying his scope settings and making sure that the firing pin still would be able to hit the primer. Coloring the primer of a spent shell with a small piece of tape, it looked like it would have enough force to fire a shell.
The trigger pull was still clean, short and very light. In the past, he had rifles that would fire if he slammed the bolt home too hard, but he had found it made them too unreliable. So the trigger pull was set light enough that it wouldn't pull the rifle off target when he squeezed it, but heavy enough to function even in a sand storm.
There was one bullet in the chamber, and the rest of the box of his custom built ammunition sat in their padded case next to the rifle.
His rifle was only single shot, but he had practiced rapid reloading to the point where he could shoot almost as fast as someone with a magazine in their rifle.
He recalled the sound of the bullets zipping around in front of the FBI headquarters and figured that his opponent had a smaller caliber rifle, probably no bigger than say .270, maybe even 7mm. It was a valid assumption that he would be going up against a human being rather than a machine, and he was probably shooting a rather small caliber.
He had the advantage of range and height, being in a tenth story hotel room that he'd rented just for this purpose. From his vantage point, he could see his truck parked in the lot in front of the hotel where he and Jackie had stayed.
Leo wondered how she was doing and what she had been working on since the morning of his arrest.
He'd settled in behind the open balcony door in his hotel room and sketched out all the terrain features he could see in his notebook. The laser range finder provided the distances to various features which were also noted. Using his binoculars, he tried to put himself in the mind of the other sniper, wondering where they would set up.
His over-watch position gave him a theoretical field of view of over a thousand yards. But the longest range he marked out was a mere seven hundred yards. The other sniper, given his caliber limitations, would probably be within three hundred yards. And there were plenty of places to shoot from within that range.
He used the last of his cheese cloth to tape to the door frame. It would look, at first glance, like it was closed. The advantage of using cheese cloth is that the shiny wax gave it some of the characteristics of glass, but he'd be able to shoot through it without possibly deflecting the shot.
Laying down on the spread he borrowed from the bed, he picked up his binoculars and started scanning likely spots for a sniper to hide, his rifle tucked under his arm.
Chapter 28
Allan Wells drove by the hotel where Leo was staying. At the very least, he could probably at least take him out. Being able to shoot FBI Agent Jeff Silver would be a big bonus and might be enough to get him out of heat with the organization.
His practiced eye quickly scanned the surrounding buildings for possible places to hide and snipe from.
There were several good possibilities. He'd shot from a roof before, but the FBI or the cops could defeat that by helicopter over-flights. And Denver was now almost a military camp with the governor asking for the National Guard to be activated to help maintain the peace. Never mind that most of the National Guard were currently chasing terrorists through Central Asia. At least it sounded like he was doing something.
Allan recognized the work of his fellow Black Hand members. There was obviously something big going on here, and he wondered what it was, though it only really mattered in his ability to survive.
When he finished this job, he planned on disappearing. For the past several years he'd been moving money out of the account where the company paid him and had hidden the funds in various offshore banks
.
He could live comfortably for years on the interest.
Parking the truck, he decided to get out and walk. An on the ground reconnaissance was the only way that this was going to work as he knew he couldn't get a decent view of potential shooting sites while driving his lumbering former bread truck. It now sported decals from a fictitious heating and cooling company which would justify him lugging odd shaped equipment around. Even better, one of his favorite hides was a box made to look like an air conditioner/furnace unit. Stick it on the top of any building, it was light enough to be carried on a hand truck, and it wouldn't look out of place at all.
While originally designed for his remote sniper system, it was big enough that he could still use it.
Grabbing a clip board, he climbed from the truck. You could walk around almost anyplace if you had the proper uniform and a clip board.
Making sure his truck was locked, he set off to find a place to hunt from.
###
Leo noticed the heating and cooling company van parking down the block from the hotel room. It was the same size and shape as hundreds of others scattered throughout the city. But something about it attracted his attention and he couldn't place it. Except for the logo, it could have been a perfect duplicate of the van that had been sitting in the parking lot of Jackie's business when someone tried to snipe her.
He continued to watch it. His suspicions were confirmed when only one person got out of the van. Since when did any service company only send one person?
Last year, at the coin store, they had to replace the air conditioner. It was a bastard job in the summer heat and it had taken a crew of four people and a crane to install it.
Based on his limited experience, it didn't appear to be legit.
The person who got out of the truck was in his late twenties, reasonably fit looking under the company coveralls. Leo zoomed in with his binoculars. Under the brim of the cap, the face was unremarkable and plain. He scanned the man from head to foot.
Kill Code Page 22