Kill Code (6 page)

A crowd was gathering. It wouldn't be good to have
to talk to the cops. He walked back to his truck. If anyone asked
where he was going, he would tell them that he was moving his
vehicle so that the fire trucks could get in and then drive on.

At the edge of the crowd stood a woman who looked
familiar, black hair pulled into a pony tail, round face,
intelligent eyes. Then it hit him—Jackie Winn.

Slamming the truck into gear, Leo rolled up next to
her, popping the passenger side door open sharply, he said,
“Jackie, get in, now.”

While she seemed to debate it, Leo scanned for
potential snipers. The .300 Win Mag sniper round had twice the
energy at five hundred yards than the heaviest loading of a .44
magnum at the muzzle and would punch through his windshield like it
wasn't even there. They would be dead meat if she didn't get into
the truck and both of them get the hell out of there.

Making up her mind, Jackie climbed into the truck.
Not even waiting for her to close the door completely, he stomped
on the gas, leaving a trail of smoking rubber.

He pulled out into traffic, seeing from the corner
of his eye Jackie struggling to put the seat belt on.

“What happened?” her voice wavering. 

“Someone tried to kill you. Car bomb. Why didn't it
get you?”

“I used the remote start. The car has been running
rough but worked better when it was warmed up.”

“The bomber was expecting a car door slam or
something similar to set it off. You're alive because your car was
running rough. If you had gotten into it and shut the door, it
would have blown you through the windshield.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Because someone tried to kill me the exact same
way.”

###

Jackie glanced at her rescuer. Probably in his
thirties, completely nondescript. He was dressed in jeans and a
worn flannel shirt. Soft features, high cheek bones and brush cut
black hair starting to gray at the temples.

“Who are you?” Her pulse pounded in her head and her
voice sounded on the edge of hysteria. “And how do you know my
name? How did you come to be here, just when my car blows up?”

“Leo Marston. Just call me Leo. Someone gave me your
name and address.” His tone was calm, but then again, he hadn't had
his car blown up in front of him. Though irritated, she sensed that
nothing would faze him.

She looked around the cab of the truck. A couple of
maps were stuffed over the visor, a plastic bottle of water was
perched precariously in a dashboard cup holder. The rest of the
truck was immaculate. Her car, no, her ex-car, had the back seat
almost filled with discarded fast-food wrappers, diet soda cans and
bottles and other trash. Every couple of months, she had gotten
disgusted and cleaned it out, but it quickly filled up again. When
you ran a business, you ate when and where you could and for
Jackie, it was often her car.

“You said that someone tried to kill you the same
way, with a car bomb. Is there any connection?”

“I don't know. The person who tried to kill me used
a charge under the front seat. It looked like they used a different
kind of charge, maybe a more up-to-date designed shape charge,
possibly something else, to try and kill you.”

“How did you get away?”

He turned his head, catching her eyes with his
startling blue eyes and said, “Someone tried to steal the car and
set it off.”

“Why is someone trying to kill me, and how do I know
you won't try and kill me?”

Turning his attention back, “I have no idea, and was
hoping you could tell me.”

That's when the rush of memories and feelings hit
her like a bus causing her eyes to water and her body to sag into
the truck's bench seat. Did this have something to do with Nathan's
mysterious software and the strange doings at the company? Or was
it something else completely? She didn't know and, more
importantly, she didn't want to speculate with this complete
stranger.

Then something else occurred to her.

“Have you been watching me?”

“Just got into town today and I was looking for an
excuse to talk with you.”

He pulled off the road into a convenience store
parking lot and looked at one of his maps.

“Where are we going?”

Not answering for a moment, Jackie watched Leo
tracing his finger along the map.

“I'm trying to find a shooting range.”

“What the hell for?” She'd had her car blown up,
almost killing her, and this guy wanted to go shooting? What kind
of nut job was he?

“I need to dirty up a rifle.”

“That still doesn't answer my question.”

“Sorry. Things are going to get much nastier before
it's all over. I know my rifle is clean, which means that I won't
be able to predict exactly where the shot will go. It may be good
enough for what I have to do, but it might not, and I don't want to
take any chances.”

“What do you mean that this is 'going to get
nasty'?”

He gave her a long look and she was chilled by the
way he held her eyes.

“The people who are trying to kill you have enough
money and resources to pay for some of the world's best assassins
to come after you. Statistically, you have already beat the odds
but that won't last. They will send someone else after you and
unless I'm in the top of my game, with my equipment all ready to
go, they are going to get us both.”

The enormity of what he said hit her. Someone was
trying to kill her and had almost succeeded.

“How do you know all of this?”

He reached up above the visor and handed her a
manila envelope.

“Because I was one of the people sent to kill
you.”

###

Tyrannicide, if a piece of software could be
annoyed, was starting to get irritated. According to the news
wires, all pulled off the Internet and analyzed in real time, one
of the targets had not been taken care of. A stranger had rescued
the target and taken off for parts unknown.

Not really a problem as the rest of the schedule
appeared to be on track. It issued several new messages with
instructions to its operatives.

Checking its bank balance as it did every one
hundred thousand cycles, it noted the slowly growing funding. For
certain credit card machines, during a random number of
transactions, a couple of cents were added to the charge and that
was deposited into an account for the Program to use. As more
machines were updated and then executed that part of their
programming, the inflow of money should increase. But, with the
change in the situation, some events, as determined by the Program,
may have to be pushed back.

Tyrannicide was a weighted neural net design with
integrated artificial constructs that could adapt to changing
conditions constrained only by its primary mission—the
assassination of government and political figures based on their
actions as measured by the Constitution.

Was Tyrannicide a tool of terrorism? That was
something only history would be able to tell.

Leo found the range he was looking for. Located
about forty miles outside of Denver, it had a six-hundred-yard
range and a thousand-yard range. Since it was the middle of the
week, he didn't expect it to be crowded. And, considering that
there weren't that many thousand-yard shooters in the world,
crowded meant only that there might only be two or three
others.

He pulled up to the gate and looked in his address
book. There weren't many private ranges with a thousand yards and
Leo was a member at all of them in a six state area. He could
afford it and it helped to support the sport by being a member.

Leo found the combination to the gate in his address
book. Climbing out of the truck to open the gate, he said to
Jackie, who had been silent for the drive to the range, “You are
ten miles from nowhere so there isn't any place to run. Stay with
me and we may both get out of this alive.”

She didn't look up from the targeting package.

Finally, she said, “You were hired to kill me?”

Leo was anxious to get to shooting. The center of
his back was itching like someone was sighting in on it.

“Yes. But I didn't take the gig. It was either take
it or be killed. So, I found a third option and here I am.”

“What was the third option?”

“I killed the messenger and burnt his body in his
car trunk. It'll be a couple of days yet for them to sort it out. I
was hoping to be a little further along in figuring out who wanted
you dead.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why do you even care?”

He shrugged. “I don't know you from Adam, but I want
my life back. I was happy. Then one day, someone walked into my
store and pretty much said that if I didn't kill you, I'd be
killed.”

“Store?”

“Yeah. I was co-owner of a coin store. I was forced
to stab the person that gave me that,” gesturing at the papers in
her hands, “with a letter opener over a pile of Wheat Pennies that
I'd just bought.”

When she didn't say anything, he added, “It was the
first person that I ever killed who wasn't over six hundred yards
away. Messy. I don't want to have to do it again.”

She looked up at him and he realized how vulnerable
she looked.

“Why do you want to help me?”

“I'm not helping you, I just want my life back.”

When she didn't say anything, he really didn't know
what he could add. His last date had been in college and that had
been a disaster—despite being a rifle team stud, able to make a
target rifle sit up and beg, he found himself awkward around other
members of the human race. He didn't really miss it that much. It
may have seemed sad to others, but something he'd never had, he
never missed. So, why was he thinking about it when they were being
hunted?

Leo drove past the gate and then carefully relocked
it. He wondered how the difference in elevation and humidity would
affect his rifle and load. He generally knew what would happen, but
was curious as to the specifics. He'd shot at this range before,
but it had been years ago—more than several rifles and hundreds of
loads and bullets ago. His shooting logs should have been able to
point him in the right direction, but he'd left everything except
for his current rifle's log at the house that he rented. He'd
probably never see them again, along with the things he'd built in
the last ten years, half a dozen rifles and the rest of his coin
collection, some of them from his childhood.

He drove to the empty range and started unloading
all of his gear. Damn, he had a lot of things. He'd have to pare
down his gear if he was going to be able to shoot and scoot. Though
a lot of this stuff was for ammunition development—he'd have to
make a list of what he would need when it came time to hunt.

Both the six-hundred- and thousand-yard ranges were
laid out in front of him. To his left was a hundred-yard range. He
would start there. His ballistic table, taped to the stock of his
rifle, would enable him to go from one hundred yards to six
hundred, and finally a thousand by adjusting the settings on his
scope.

Leo puttered around, setting up his gear. His
loading press was situated between the three ranges. He had enough
materials to make a hundred rounds so he would have to make each
shot count. His cased rifle he set on the concrete bench at the
hundred-yard range. He dug out his log book and Kestrel wind,
humidity and temperature gauge. Finally, he uncased his rifle. It
was the best rifle that he had ever owned or shot. Built on a
receiver he built himself, with a Hart barrel in a shortened .338
Lapua chamber. The trick was that it was a .30 caliber barrel. His
favorite load pushed a bullet of that size and a decent velocity
and Leo was sure that he hadn't rung out all the potential accuracy
of the rifle. 

Finally, roughly set up, he tapped on the truck
window. When he did get to shooting, he didn't want to frighten
Jackie.

She looked up.

“You gonna help or are you gonna stay there?”

Jackie rolled down the window and pointed a gun at
him.

###

She didn't know what to think. Why was this man
helping her? Did he mean to kill her here and leave her body?
Jackie needed more answers than Leo had provided. Yet she didn't
know how to get those answers. Was she in fear for her life? Hell
yes. What would she do to find out what she needed to put her life
together? Almost anything. But how? That still didn't leave her
very many options.

Jackie had watched as Leo unloaded all of his crap.
Her mind was in turmoil. How was this tied into Nathan? Or was it?
Did the gun that Nathan left specifically for her have something to
do with it?

She reached into her satchel and felt the cold and
strangely comforting feel of the pistol. “Are you gonna help or are
you gonna stay there?” Startled, Jackie instinctively had pulled it
out and pointed it at him. She was more than shocked when he merely
smiled.

“What are you gonna do with that?” he asked. You
would think that he was used to having guns pointed at him.

“I don't know,” was all that she could say.

He motioned at it and said, “Do you mind?”

“What?”

Deftly, he pulled it from her grip. He pushed a
button on the grip and a piece of metal came from the bottom. She
could see a gleaming bullet in the metal. He slapped it back into
the pistol, pulled the metal piece on the top, then pushed a button
on the side. Handing it back to her, he said, “Beretta 92SF, same
pistol issued to the US military. It comes with a loaded chamber
indicator. Yours wasn't loaded. Now it is.”

Why had he done that?

“So, I could shoot you now, if I wanted?”

His face cracked a smile. “Take the safety off first
if you plan on doing that. In the meantime, I need some help.”

Curious, and stunned at the same time, she stuffed
the pistol back into her computer case and climbed from the
truck.