Kill Code (23 page)

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.”

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.