Kill Code (27 page)

“Where did the money go?” She sure as hell could use
it. Maybe to get her company up and going again and try and put
together the rest of her life.

He shrugged. “I have no idea at all. That was all
Nathan's doing. My understanding is that the account it was
deposited into varied depending on some strange formula that he
came up with. It probably didn't stay in any place very long.”

She thought about the implications of what he had
said. “I can think of several dozen laws that are being broken.
Why'd you do it?”

Leaning back in his chair, he said, “I didn't do it.
I just suspect that was what was happening. You know the score—from
experience, despite being in the dark, you can infer a great deal
of information. I've been in this business a long time and know a
lot of the tricks.”

She realized that he was getting hostile. Dealing
with him required more diplomacy, otherwise he would clam up and
she wouldn't be that much further ahead with the information she
was seeking than she was now.

“Anybody else in on this?”

“Nope. Nathan didn't trust many people.”

“You mentioned other 'strange' projects. I'm
assuming that they were financed through the company, but weren't
products for sale. Any clues what he was up to?”

He took a moment to reply. “Mostly having to do with
complex decision tree learning. Some really esoteric stuff
here.”

“Decision tree learning?”

“Yeah. Using data mining, say from online newspaper
sources, it maps observations about an item to conclusions about
the item's target value, and then acts on them. It's a foundation
of machine learning. Not real Artificial Intelligence, but damn
close. Ported a bunch of stuff over to a scripting language, can be
run anywhere, on almost any machine.”

He had said 'Target,' hadn't he?

“How about a web-based application?”

Slowly, he nodded. “Yes.”

She didn't know how much he knew or was willing to
tell her, but she decided to lay all her cards out.

“Have you been watching the news?”

“What aspect of it?”

“The Children of the Constitution thing. Recognize
anything from what they've said and done?”

“Yes. That can't be what Nathan was involved in, is
it?”

Somehow, she knew he was lying. He probably had
drawn the same conclusions that she had, but much earlier on. She
wondered how much his silence cost. That he wasn't already dead
like Patrick, and anybody else associated with the company, was the
thing that stuck out for her.

“In theory, if the Children of the Constitution is a
computer program, how would you access it?”

He shrugged. “Honestly, I don't know. For what we
developed, we used a pretty powerful computer to test it. With the
scope of the algorithms we used and the amount of data you have to
churn through, it's not something you can run on a desktop PC.
You'll need some sort of distributed operating system, one heck of
a lot of powerful processors and massive amount of storage—maybe as
much as a petabyte, a thousand terabytes.”

“Where would you find such hardware?”

“You’re going to need a server farm of some sort.
Not as big as say Google, but probably as big as one of their
off-site units. Not cheap, sucks down power like water and needs to
be secured and maintained. There are places that will turn-key one
for you, and some people have built their own, but that's fraught
with its own major problems.”

“Is there anybody else that I should be talking
to?”

“I don't really know. Nathan was great at what he
did, but he had some strange ideas.”

“Where did he get them from?”

Jared chuckled. “Boot up Google and ask it to search
for whatever paranoid fantasy comes to mind and you'll find
hundreds of web pages discussing the subject.”

“Really?”In her own world she was a specialist, but
there was so much information out there in the field of information
technology about so many varying subjects that it was all that she
could do to keep focused on what she did best—coding security
systems for banks.

“Hell yes. Blogging, Twittering, paranoia can come
to you 24/7 and you can find plenty of like-minded individuals to
discuss your cause.”

She had to think about her next question.

“Ever heard of Alamut Enterprises?”

“Nope. What about them?”

“It's the name of a company that has a cadre of
assassins on call. They are the killers doing the Children of the
Constitution's bidding. According to bank records, Nathan ran
it.”

He sat back in his chair. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“That's not possible.”

“The person helping me seems to think so. Also, he
used to work for them.”

“Who?”

She shook her head. “I'm not saying. Anyway, they've
been killing for various political ends for years—not something
that I think Nathan could have pulled off. You just can't find a
professional killer by looking in the phone book. These people
needed to be recruited, vetted, trained, equipped and very well
paid. So anything that you can tell me to help figure out what’s
going on, I'd appreciate it.”

He looked her in the eyes. “I can't think of
anything.”

She knew he was lying again, but didn't know what to
do about it.

Ken Brody was so busy he couldn't keep up. He'd just
finished fiddling with a car owned by his newest target, Jared
Becker. The target had been on his list for a while, but it had
taken him a bit of time to track down the necessary technology and
hardware for his application.

The kill would be executed by computer. Most modern
vehicles were 'fly by wire' anymore. If you pushed on the gas
pedal, or brake, you didn't actually have any physical contact with
the brakes or engine, the input went into a computer and it figured
out what to do based on a number of factors. The government
mandating Electronic Stability Control helped this. Some cars even
had a modified 'Steer by Wire' system in which the steering wheel
was still hooked to the wheels as a backup, but was still mostly
computer controlled. Pretty soon, the driver wouldn't have much
input in the driving experience—it would all be modified and
controlled by computer in the name of safety. While that made his
job much easier, he still didn't have to like it much.

As he pulled the programmer cable from next to the
brake pedal, he reviewed what he had done. At some time in the near
future, the car would greatly modify any inputs from the driver,
making it impossible to control. As an example, when it received
input from the brakes, it would cause the vehicle to accelerate to
a very fast speed instead. Even the parking brake wouldn't work
anymore. There really wasn't any way to stop the vehicle short of
running it into a brick wall, which would be fatal since the air
bags had been disabled. This was particularly clever as the target
was known for not wearing his seat belt.

He put the cover back on the OBD-II access point and
closed the door. Then he hit a button on his copy of the electronic
key, locking it and arming the alarm system.

Looking around, he saw that no one had been
watching. Not that it mattered much anyway. He was dressed in a
business suit and looked like he had lost his keys. There were no
security cameras in this parking lot so he didn't have to worry
about that aspect.

He checked his watch. With any luck, he could get to
the other two targets yet today and give himself enough breathing
room to take a well-deserved break.

###

FBI Agent Jeff Silver was pissed. He hated to be
dragged out of an interrogation. To speak to the director wasn't
worth it in his opinion.

He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself
before he picked up the phone.

“Special Agent Silver here.”

The female voice on the other end said, “Silver,
Director Gerald here. I understand that you have a suspect from the
sniping attacks in your custody.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said. Why the hell was the director
of the FBI personally involved in his investigation?

“His fingerprints just came through the system.”

He wondered why they hadn't got anything back on
that yet.

“Why haven't I gotten that information?”

“Because it’s one hell of a lot higher than your pay
grade, probably even mine. Based on that, I want you to release
your suspect.”

“Ma'am?” Surely this couldn't be right. Leo, while
silent, was probably the key to a great deal more than was at first
apparent.

“You heard me. Release him. Give him back everything
you've confiscated as evidence. Make sure that he leaves the
grounds safely and be sure to apologize for your screw up.”

“I still don't understand.”

There was a pause, and then Gerald said, “Ever heard
of a place called Stebbins, Alaska?”

“No.” How was this relevant to what was going
on?

“According to the latest census, it has a population
of five hundred forty-seven. And an airport, which means that it
could be a terrorist target. It's a thousand miles from nowhere,
and if Leo isn't out of your custody in ten minutes, you will be
the newest, full-time and only member of the Stebbins, Alaska,
branch of the FBI. I hear it gets damn cold up there, so either cut
him loose or start packing your long underwear. Do you understand
me?”

Stebbins, Alaska? What the fuck? Something much
bigger than this investigation was going on and whatever it was
apparently even had the director of the FBI scared witless.

“Yes, ma'am,” was all that he could find himself
saying. His world had been knocked out from beneath his feet. While
he was used to getting jerked around by the bureaucratic
processes—he did work for the FBI, an organization known for
generating reams of useless paper rather than take a chance on
being wrong about something—having the director yank his case out
from under him was something new.

He set the phone back down on the cradle and glanced
at his watch. Before he set Leo loose, he had a couple of things to
do.

###

Jill Ringler, the Third Finger of the Black Hand,
was getting tired and pissed. She had taken out half-a-dozen
targets in as many days and was almost reduced to killing with rat
poison rather than the specialized chemicals she had personally
developed.

Though there were several
interesting rat poisons—her favorite being
Brodifacoum, a
second generation anticoagulant. In the right dose, it caused
massive internal bleeding, including in the brain. If caught, it
was reversible with the appropriate medical treatment, and even
then, recovery could take several months.

She was starting to dread the sound her Blackberry
made when a message came through. It had been weeks since she had a
break and the strain of hitting so many targets in so short of a
time, she felt, was starting to affect her judgment. Poison wasn't
like using a sniper rifle—wait in the distance for the target to
come strolling by and then zap him. Instead, she had to analyze her
target's habits and vulnerabilities, tailor a poison specific to
them and then work her way in close enough that she could employ
it.

Every time she dealt with a target face-to-face, her
chances of getting caught were greatly increased. Somewhere some
computer was probably pulling together all the facts about her
targets and would be able to predict where and what she would be
doing even before she did.

While she did most of her business in anonymous
bars, someone was going to be able to put the pieces together and
catch her.

A saving grace was the chaos in the Denver area. The
police were overwhelmed with the number of killings in their city
and surrounding areas. While the FBI was probably involved, they
would take too long to get up to speed—she hoped to be sitting at
her beach house enjoying a fine wine before they got really
involved in the investigation.

Another point in her favor was the nature of the
deaths she caused—there had been enough deaths by fire bombings,
stabbings, shootings and beatings to allow her activities to fade
into the background chatter.

She checked her Blackberry again for information
on her next target. It was going to be easy,
another man. He liked exotic food, so Botulinum toxin would
be his undoing.

Considered the most toxic substance known to
mankind, a fatal dose was in the order of micrograms. She hated to
use it as it tended to get the attention of the wrong sorts of
people, including the FBI and DHS, as it was a potential war bug.
In fact, prior to the first Gulf War, Iraq had produced enough of
the stuff to kill every living human three times over. Various
attempts had been made over the years to control it to keep it out
of the hands of terrorists, but since the toxin was produced by an
easy to handle soil bacteria, it was a lot more difficult than
originally anticipated.

While rarely fatal any more, the dosage she was
planning on giving would be deadly even if the appropriate
treatment was started immediately. The chaos around Denver would
help delay proper supportive care and treatment.

It was the last poison in her current arsenal—she
had no more materials with her even after several uses of
improvised poisons. After she poisoned the low level DEA informant,
she would shut off her phone, get on her chartered jet and head
back home.

While her bank account was quite fat with all of
this work, she wasn't. She was used to only doing one or two jobs a
year at most and having completed ten assignments in the past week
and a half was way too much work. She missed her laboratory, her
wine cellar and the life that she had built for herself.

She looked at the tiny vial containing the
Botulinum toxin. There was enough to kill the entire city and it
had taken some new and interesting ways of processing the base
materials to create this amount.