Kill Code

  Kill Code

  Joseph Francis Collins

  Kill Code

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2014 by Joseph Francis Collins

  Cover and art copyright © 2014 by Joseph Francis Collins

  Layout: Cheryl Perez, www.yourepublished.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Joseph Francis Collins.

  For my lovely wife Louise—for believing me even when I didn’t.

  It's almost old hat to say that a novel can’t be written alone although writing is mostly a solitary pursuit. I am especially indebted to my wife Louise and Cindy Gerard who both read the really rough version of this book and helped a great deal in getting it into readable English. And, of course, my family also provided much-needed support. Other contributors to this work, some unknowing of why I was asking so many odd questions include Dave Anderson, Gene Boyd, Jordan Dane, Diana Jones, Dan Collins, Rob Groene among others including the cast of characters who hang out on crimescenewriter@yahoogroups.com. Ted Taylor put up with my strange requests in designing the first cover, Diana Cox for line editing, Cheryl Perez for layout and for file conversions. Joe Simmons for the new cover. And a hat tip to Joe Konrath for providing the inspiration to take this particular publishing path.

  An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination--Voltaire

  Chapter 1

  Leo Marston hadn't killed anyone in ten years, but when the man stepped into his coin shop, and the hair on the back of his neck rose, he knew that could change today. He didn’t recognize the man, but he knew the look of a professional killer; he’d been that man not so many years ago.

  He watched as the man took expressionless note of the dust motes dancing on the sunlight filtering through the blinds. Piles of coins on glass counters waited to be sorted. On the counter opposite Leo, a pile of foreign coins that his partner, Rob Gates, had purchased earlier in the week, would have to be sorted when Rob came in later.

  It was a dusty, cluttered coin store, a little frayed at the edges, but Leo liked it just as he liked the location on the Northern edge of Albuquerque, New Mexico. North enough from the more prosperous, touristy part of town but close enough to the seedy edge that the store was able to purchase interesting things from people living on the downside of the economic edge.

  The man appraised Leo, then turned, locked the door and flipped the sign over to “Closed.”

  Leo gulped, trying to still his pounding heart while appearing nonchalant.

  This man was unlike the 'coin dinks' that he was used to seeing. Men, primarily of low social standing and even worse bathing habits, often shuffled through his inventory looking for something that might have been misgraded that they could sell for more money. It paid to entertain them as their money was as good as anyone's. This man, however, was wearing a three piece pin-striped suit—that was the first thing that felt wrong about him. Who wore a suit in the middle of summer in infernally hot Albuquerque?

  His brown, buzz-cut hair and muscular face complemented a build that filled the suit almost to the bursting point—which pretty much made it impossible for him to conceal the gun he was carrying beneath it. That was the second thing that raised the hair on the back of Leo's neck.

  He gripped a yellow envelope in his beefy hand. Clue number three. In his experience, nothing good had ever arrived in a yellow envelope.

  “Can I help you?” Leo asked.

  “Max Jennings?”

  Well fuck. Leo felt an arctic chill numb his body. Max Jennings, assassin, died a long time ago, at the promising age of twenty-one. Old enough to drink, old enough to die.

  At least the organization he had worked for was supposed to think so after he’d barely escaped death from a car bomb in Bogota, Colombia, ten, almost eleven peaceful years ago.

  How had they found him? You didn't retire from this business; you were killed at the end of your usefulness either by being sent on a suicide job or by becoming a training exercise for a future generation of assassins.

  “Max Jennings?” Leo repeated conversationally. “Never heard of him. I'm afraid you have the wrong person.”

  “No. I don't.” The man’s glacial blue eyes watched him with the stone cold look Leo knew was that of a professional killer.

  The man set the envelope on the counter. Leo slipped a letter opener that he had been using to open coin flips into his hand and down below the counter.

  “We have a job for you.”

  “I’ve got a job. You lookin’ for a specific coin? I’m your man. Otherwise, like I said, you got the wrong guy.” The air conditioner kicked on, filling the room with an ominous hum.

  “Let's not play games, Jennings. You know why I'm here. We have someone for you to take out and we need your specialty—the long kill.”

  This man, whoever he was, knew way the hell too much for Leo's comfort.

  “They are still talking about you taking out that Colombian at 1162 yards. Some sort of record or something....”

  Yeah. It had been a record all right. That shot took out a Peruvian Interior Minister at 1272 yards, but Leo didn't correct the man. It had been a very difficult shot, in gusting winds, but he’d put the bullet exactly where he aimed—in the center of the chest. Of his eleven operational kills, all were at over six hundred yards. Yeah, he was an expert at the long kill.

  “Let’s say I know how to find this guy—this Jennings, was it?” Leo said. “Who do I say is looking for him?”

  “You know who’s looking for you,” the man said with a chill edge to his voice.

  Yeah, he knew. At least he knew it was the same shadow organization that had doled out his assignments back in the day. He’d never known much about them—including the name. Travel itinerary and contact details had all been handled via the US mail. Payment was always via electronic bank transfers.

  “Sorry,” Leo said again. “I can’t help you.”

  “Look. I asked nice. I’m about through with nice.”

  Leo smiled. “I can relate to that.” Then he lunged over the counter, grabbed the guy by his shirt front and stabbed him in the heart with the letter opener, twisting it as the man went down.

  ###

  Jackie Winn stared at the glinting gold of the DVD in her hand in the dim light of the computer room, half listening to Patrick Lackey, the company accountant.

  When Nathan was alive, he had mistreated Patrick, often yelled at him and insulted him. There was a history between them Jackie didn't understand and that neither Nathan nor Patrick would elaborate on.

  As co-owner of the company with Nathan, she had always treated Patrick with respect and found that he was competent in his job, intelligent and always seemed eager to pitch in and help even beyond his areas of expertise. In a small, quickly growing company, everyone had to be prepared to cover every task from meeting customers, answering the phones and even janitorial services.

  “Are you going to run that?” Patrick said, dragging her back to the present.

  “Yes,” she said, swallowing back the lump in her throat.

  Nathan had made her promise to run the DVD after he died. Nathan—blond, brilliant, almost as good a hacker as she was, now gone forever.

  And she was still missing him. No, she was not going to cry any more. There had been a fountain of tears at the service and a numbness that left her feeling permanently out-of-body. All she could think about was the crater left in her heart. I
t wasn't like the love of her life had been perfect, nor his death unexpected, but that still didn't make his absence any easier.

  “Do you have any idea what’s on it?”

  Jackie said nothing.

  Softly, he said, “I know how tough it was watching him die. But because of you, he lived a full life.”

  And a miserable, drawn out death before the pancreatic cancer killed him, Jackie thought grimly, dropping her head to her hand.

  Patrick reminded her, “He knew he wasn’t alone. Even at the end.”

  The end. It didn’t get much more final than that, did it?

  She stared at the DVD. A piece of polished metal and plastic was all she had left of him. They’d had so many hopes. So many dreams. One of those dreams had been this computer security business. They’d built it together from the ground up. And it had been so exciting to see the encryption algorithms they had developed now in use in banks and financial institutions all over the world. Even lowly credit card swipe machines contained their code. It had been Nathan's last project, begun just after he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Jackie had wondered why he had taken on such an ambitious project after his diagnosis—but he had, sometimes by sheer will alone, accomplished the project, on time and under budget.

  “Why don't you take a few days to gather yourself?” Patrick asked.

  Still trying to hold back tears, she said, “I’m sorry. I can’t. At least not right now. There’s so much work here.” That, at least, was true. With Nathan gone, she was running the business herself—which was why she was here late again tonight. “Maybe in a couple of weeks or so, after I get a handle on things, okay?”

  “The place practically runs itself. You should take some time off.”

  “Speaking of which, I need to do this. Alone.”

  He briefly touched her shoulder. “I'm sorry to have intruded.”

  Giving her one last hurt look, he left, closing the door behind him.

  She didn't mean to lash out at Patrick, but she felt like someone had sandpapered her skin off, leaving raw nerves that screamed in agony even with a loving caress. Not that she could ever love again with this hole in her chest.

  Staring at the closed door for a moment, she knew she couldn’t handle both Patrick's well-intended hovering and her own grief over losing Nate.

  She looked back at the DVD. He’d spent hundreds of hours on it. Whatever it was. At least the project had taken Nathan's focus away from his anti-government rantings.

  No, he hadn’t been perfect, but when you loved someone, sometimes you overlooked things. Jackie had learned early on not to discuss politics with Nathan. It invariably ended up being a shouting match he always managed to dominate. She didn't really want to deal with the distractions that resulted in fighting the system. Nathan seemed to thrive on it. He was a strict Constitutionalist and hated all forms of the current government ranging from the local building inspector, who had once denied the company's expansion plans, to the IRS and almost every member of Congress.

  She remembered his words as he had given her the DVD. “This will fix the bastards.”

  Those were the last words that he ever said to her, and she’d been so numb with the impending loss that she could only wonder fleetingly what the hell that meant.

  “Guess it’s time to find out,” she said aloud to the empty room and, with equal measures of trepidation and excitement, loaded the DVD into the computer.

  Whatever was on it, the program had been important to Nathan. So important, he’d been secretive to the point of being spooky. She wanted to work with him during his final months, to help him, but he wouldn't have it. Instead, he’d shut her out and she’d had to watch independent contractors come and go, leaving the computer lab at all hours of the day and night.

  She hadn’t liked being out of the loop but she hadn’t fought him on it. He’d been so sick. And so determined to surprise her.

  Her stomach felt a little jumpy as she waited until the auto-run icon popped up. On a deep breath, she clicked on it and watched the green light on the DVD drive start flashing.

  It hadn’t been easy, but per his wishes, she hadn't looked at it before running it. As a hacker, she was intrigued; as his long time lover, she was positively trembling. Taking a close look at the DVD's contents was the closest thing to being with him.

  “That’s odd,” she murmured when she saw the T-3 connection status lights were all red, signifying that the Internet connection was maxed out. It didn’t make any sense since her program was the only one running.

  “Nate,” she said aloud again, her words drifting away into the empty room, “how big is this sucker?”

  Big, she decided. Mega big. Considering that a T-3 line could dump almost forty-five megabits per second directly into the Internet, it was impressive.

  She slumped back in her chair, squinted at the screen. What the hell is on this DVD?

  She crossed her arms, eyes glued to the screen and waited to find out.

  ###

  Leo had read somewhere that if you kill someone by stopping the heart, the bleeding would be minimized. The last thing he needed was a mess to deal with. It worked. The man gasped and dropped like he had been poleaxed. He twitched for a few moments, made a grab at the letter opener shoved in his chest, sighed and went still.

  He fought back nausea. Leo had never seen death up close and personal like this. A splash of blood on a wall after a perfect sniper shot was completely different. But he'd been preparing for this possibility for the past ten years—his past coming to confront him violently.

  Leo took a couple of shallow breaths, and then settled down to do what he needed to do—take care of this problem.

  Rolling the man over on his back, Leo checked for a pulse and didn't find one. It was handy that he was still wearing the plastic gloves that he used to keep his hands clean while handling coins. He'd gotten damn lucky in hitting this guy exactly in the heart. The letter opener could have slipped off a rib only causing a superficial injury or the guy could have had something in his pocket that could have blocked the blow. In this case, luck was better than being good, but he couldn't always count on luck; he had to be a great deal better than anyone else he came up against.

  He left the body and chanced a glance out the front window. There was a full-sized car parked out front, but the rest of the parking lot was empty.

  Leo rolled the body up in the rug and dragged it around to the back where no one could see it from the front windows. He double checked the corpse, relieved when there was still no pulse. Methodical and deliberate movements were necessary for him to be a precision long distance shooter; he practiced both skills now. Searching for an ID, Leo found a new wallet and could practically smell the fresh ink on the man's driver's license. It didn't look fake, but Leo sensed that it was. The name on the driver's license, credit card and other wallet 'fluff' read “James Phillips.”

  He found a cell phone that he wasn't familiar with, having a miniature keyboard and small screen. He took it, removed the battery from the back and slid it into his pocket. He knew that cell phones could be tracked even if you weren't using them and he didn't want to take any chances.

  Another surprise was the suppressed .22 Beretta Model 70S. A favorite of the Mossad—Israel's secret intelligence agency. With the suppressor, the most sound you would hear would be the slide moving and the bullets slapping into their target.

  Leo had kept up his college habits, studying up on assassinations, and was somewhat of an expert on the history, techniques and particular styles favored by various people and organizations. It was an interesting hobby, but he had been forced into it, and with the exception of that brief period of time that he deeply regretted, didn't consider himself a killer—today being the exception.

  The .22 pistol confirmed that Phillips was a professional killer. It also meant that he was a close-in specialist, you had to be two feet away from the person you were killing as you fired bullets into their head. Killing peo
ple was still murder no matter if it was at over six hundred yards or at one foot. And in this particular murder game, he knew that if he had declined the job, he would have been quietly eliminated. As loathe as he was to kill Phillips, he had no doubt he’d be the one dead by now if he hadn’t. Still, self-defense or not, he’d just been forced back into a game he’d never intended to play again.

  Face grim, Leo wrapped the carpet-encased body in some plastic tarps that he kept in the back room. He took care to use only those fresh from the packaging. They were doing amazing things with forensics today and Leo didn’t want to take any chances. He also wanted to be far away when the authorities started investigating what, if taken at face value, screamed homicide. If they ever discovered the body.

  Still wearing his gloves, he went outside, looked around and didn't see anyone. It didn't mean that there wasn't anybody watching, only that Leo couldn't see them. When Leo had worked, there was always a back up team ready to extract him if something went wrong. He also had a spotter helping identify the target, doping the wind, checking the range and more.

  Using Phillips’ keys, he got in the car and checked the glove box which revealed nothing except a car rental agreement. Hopefully, Phillips had sprung for the extra insurance as this car was going to soon be burnt and twisted metal.

  Leo pulled the car around back and opened up the trunk. Empty. Opening the back door of the store, Leo dragged out the body and hefted it into the trunk. He closed it, stepped back inside the store and opened his personal safe tucked by the door. He dug around and found a couple of cardboard boxes. The chemicals inside had been premixed and were ready to go. It was surprising what you can buy on eBay, and for about forty dollars and some research on the Internet, he had one hell of a good recipe for thermite.

  While he’d hoped it would never come to this, Leo had been preparing for this day for the past ten years—when his past would catch up to him. Besides, even paranoid people had enemies.