Kill Code (10 page)

By the time she had shot up most of the ammunition,
she was feeling much more confident and comfortable.

But she was starting to get tired. Leo seemed to
sense this and said, “Why don't you step back and let me have a go
at it?”

She was more than happy to do so. It was interesting
to see the way he loaded the Beretta without even looking at it,
settled down into a stable stance, picked up the pistol and
carefully squeezed the trigger. There was a hole in the center of
the head on the target. He looked at the target and then said,
“Watch this.”

He started shooting so fast that it sounded like a
machine gun. The head part of the silhouette was completely
shredded. Glancing over her shoulder out the window, she saw the
clerk had been watching them. His face was expressionless and she
wondered what he was thinking.

Dropping the clip free from the Beretta, he said,
“You feel comfortable?”

“Yes. But I'm really starting to get hungry.”

Leo gave her a satisfied look and said, “Me, also.
But we need to get you a holster, some more ammo and
magazines.”

“You said you'd teach me how to shoot; I didn't hear
anything about you making me carry it. Besides, I don't have a
license.”

He shrugged. “You are going to have to carry it in
order to be able to use it, the laws be damned.” He flipped up the
front of his untucked shirt and she saw the butt of a pistol tucked
into the front of his waistband.

Her shocked expression must have surprised him
because he added, “Someone who isn't armed is merely a victim
waiting to happen. While I'm only carrying a .22 pistol, I can
probably pick someone's eyes out with it across the room.”

His voice softened. “I like you too much to have you
become a victim. These people after us will continue until we or
they are dead.”

She nodded.

Packing up their things numbly, she followed Leo out
to the front of the store. They turned in the pistol he had
rented—there was no ammunition left. Leo had made sure to pick up
the empty ejected shells from the Beretta and she wondered about
why he had done that. He put them in a bag he took from his gun
case.

The same sneering clerk helped them. Leo built a
stack of supplies by the cash register including two boxes of 9mm
hollow points, more .22 ammo, target loads, the box said, and four
magazines for her Beretta. Leo spent quite a while searching
through a box of mixed magazines before finding the one that he
wanted. It was for a small pistol and she wondered if it was for
the one that he was carrying.

Then it was time to pick out a holster setup. First
was a thick belt. She picked out a black one as black can always go
with anything. The store, surprisingly, had quite a selection of
feminine oriented firearm supplies including purse holsters.

Then there was quite a discussion about a holster
for her between Leo and the clerk. Finally, they both settled on a
holster that rode high over her hip. It fit comfortably. A couple
of extra magazine pouches on the other side helped balance out the
unaccustomed weight.

With permission from the clerk, who patted his
pistol as a reply, Leo loaded up her Beretta and the extra
magazines. It was a strange feeling, being armed, and way the hell
beyond what she felt was comfortable. Everything was easily
concealed by pulling her shirt out. When she realized that it was
one of Nathan's old shirts, there was a pang of pain that ran
through her.

Leo paid for everything in cash. The clerk looked at
her again, but it wasn't as a piece of meat any more, but more with
respect.

After collecting his change, Leo said, “Ready to get
something to eat?”

She caressed the pistol on her hip and nodded.

###

It took a great deal to impress Leo, but Jackie had
managed to pull it off. She was a natural shot to the point that
made him happy that she wasn't a rifle shooter as she'd probably
out shoot him every damn day of the week.

And when he touched her, guiding her actions while
shooting, he felt his pulse start to pound in his head and other
places that hadn't seen blood in a while.

When they had gotten out to the truck, Leo said,
“You have any questions about what you saw or did?”

“No.” She had probably been quite overwhelmed with
all that happened today. From having her car blown up, barely
missing her, to spending three-plus hours at a gun range watching
him shoot and then learning how to shoot a handgun along with
learning the need for carrying a concealed weapon. The hard part
would be if she could really use the pistol, and the training he
had given her when the time came.

“So, what would you like to eat?”

“Almost anything.”

Leo drove around for a while until they found an
Italian restaurant. The place was overdone and included a fresco
showing a country scene as they walked in and candles in straw
wrapped Chianti bottles. But the smells emanating from the kitchen
were enough to make his mouth water.

They settled down in the directed booth—Leo had made
sure that they were seated where he could see the exits and the
rest of the room. He was almost comfortable, sitting with his back
to a wall.

He ordered the same thing that Jackie did, minus the
wine. He had never developed a taste for alcohol, never drank
anything with caffeine in it and had never touched tobacco
products. The alcohol would degrade his health and shooting
abilities over time. Caffeine and nicotine would raise his heart
rate artificially—something that wouldn't work shooting at the
distances that he did because the trigger squeeze needed to be done
between heartbeats. He didn't run five hard miles six days a week
to stay in shape just to have it blown by drinking a Coke. As a
result, his resting pulse was in the high forties.

In the candle light, Jackie looked even better,
though she kept reaching down and touching her holstered
pistol.

“Don't do that. Cops call it a tell.”

“What do you mean?”

“By the someone acts and walks, you can tell if they
are carrying a concealed weapon. Constantly touching it is one of
the obvious ones. In a while, you'll get used to the weight and
then it'll seem strange when you aren't carrying it.”

They quickly polished off their meal without talking
much. When they were done, Jackie settled back with a satisfied
sigh and said, “What's next?”

He thought about it for a little while. Up until
this morning, he had been reacting, not being ahead of the game.
Now it was time to make the bad guys start to react to his
actions.

“We find some place to hang out tonight. Tomorrow,
we see if we can get that information that your accountant has
stashed away so we can start rolling up the organization that is
doing this.”

“You think it's an organization?”

“Yes. There has to be some sort of support
structure. The assassins may be working solo, but someone is
sending them their assignments and paying them.”

Jackie didn't speak for several minutes. Then she
said, “Is that something—the contacting and payment—isn't that
something that could be done by computer?”

“How do you mean?”

“At the company I own, some of my contractors I've
never met nor talked to on the phone. Everything is done via
e-mail. And payment is also done online; most people don't want the
hassle of waiting for a check to show up in the mail, depositing it
and waiting for it to clear. Usually, it's done via PayPal or
deposited in an online gold account. We don't care one way or the
other, but it does simplify the paperwork.”

“What about taxes and such?”

“They are independent contractors, so we don't have
to pay Social Security, unemployment insurance, etc. At the end of
the year, if they've earned a certain amount, we issue a 1099.”

“Is this how you think that the company bank
accounts were plundered?”

Taking a sip of wine, she swallowed and said, “It's
a possibility. There were supposed to be tight controls on how the
money was dispersed. In theory, two people had to sign off on any
transaction. Patrick, Nathan and I were the only people authorized.
Usually, it was Patrick and Nathan that did it. I'm a hell of a
programmer, but didn't really have much sense as to how the
business was run. As long as there was money to pay the bills, buy
new equipment as needed and pay the contractors, I really didn't
care much about the money. Heck, I haven't even looked at my own
checking account in a couple of months—the money is deposited, and
all my bills are paid automatically, rent, utilities, credit
cards.”

Leo considered what she had to say. Personally, he
only had a checking account that held a little money, no credit
cards and preferred to do all of his transactions in cash money.
The less of a trail he left, the better.

The IRS was always interested in anything involving
large amounts of cash and he thought he was pretty skilled at
moving things around in the coin store to at least present a facade
of normalcy. He took most of his profit percentage from the store
in cash and gold and silver bullion. Sure, he got a proper salary
that was properly taxed and dutifully scrutinized by the IRS, but
the vast majority of his assets were liquid and not easily tracked
down.

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.