Kill Code Page 3

  Eyes on White Hat Enterprises, he settled in to wait and watch for a target.

  Chapter 3

  “Hey, Jackie. Got a minute?”

  “I’ve got hours if you can just get me away from this paperwork,” she said, smiling and glancing over her shoulder to see Patrick Lackey standing in her office doorway. She felt bad about giving Patrick the cold shoulder last night and wanted him to know she was sorry. She’d been working on the company ownership papers for what seemed like forever. She hated paperwork. Just give her a coding problem—then she was happy.

  Though, in the back of her head, she was still wondering and worried about the software Nathan had her run. Stepping away from it a bit always gave her new ideas, but dealing with corporate ownership paperwork didn't seem to help very much. Nathan had left the whole thing a tangled mess and her head hurt from reading convoluted legalese.

  “So are you here to save me?”

  Patrick was dressed in his usual impeccable charcoal gray three-piece suit including a watch fob draped across his age-broadening abdomen. In a company where the normal dress was a semi-clean t-shirt and tattered blue jeans, he stood out. Like Nathan once said, “Like the Pope at a whorehouse.”

  Patrick also insisted on keeping paper accounting records as a backup to his computer records. He explained this by saying, “I like suspenders and a belt, just to be sure.”

  He shuffled into the room clutching a stack of papers in his hands. “We need to talk,” he said without preamble.

  “Uh-oh. This sounds serious. What’s up?” She motioned to a chair in front of her desk.

  Setting the papers down on her cluttered desk, he sat down with a heavy sigh.

  “So … what can I do for you, Patrick?”

  Patrick seemed to gather himself before saying, “The company is out of money.”

  She blinked. Then blinked again. Settling back in her chair, she said, “What? How can that be? We’ve got half a dozen products on the market producing regular streams of income both from royalties and actual software sales.

  “White Hat is as close to a money printing machine as anyone could get,” she went on, near panic now when Patrick’s expression turned even more grave.

  “Oh, come on, Pat. We’ve only got a three full-time employees and you’re one of them. We’ve got the best rates possible for our off-site contractors.”

  “It’s not an issue of overhead costs bleeding you dry. The money has simply disappeared.”

  She sank back in her chair. “Disappeared? How could it just disappear?”

  Patrick shook his head. “I'm not sure. There were only three people authorized to sign on the checking account: Nathan, me and you. There were no checks written that I haven't accounted for, but money has disappeared from our operating accounts.”

  “Some sort of unauthorized transfer then?” God. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony: a master hacker getting hacked.

  “Maybe. I've accessed the accounts via the Internet, and nothing shows. One day the money was there, the next it wasn't. No transactions or anything. But it was software that we wrote for the banks. Someone who worked on the software at this company who knew what they were doing could tap into the funding without a trace.”

  Someone who worked on the software at this company who knew what they were doing could tap into the funding without a trace. Patrick’s words buzzed through her head.

  Oh, God. Was that someone Nathan? Did this have something to do with what the mysterious software he’d had her run?

  She considered the implications of Patrick's statement—banks thrived on being able to show their accounting three different ways and a fourth as a backup. That money could simply float out of an account without any transaction data and put at least one, if not three or four, of their product lines in jeopardy.

  It was she and Nathan who had built the banking software and, while it was reasonably clean code, there was probably a big hole in it somewhere that they both missed—or that Nathan had intentionally corrupted.

  She tried to hold back the waves of nausea; tried to deny the horrible things she was thinking. But the only other person capable of pulling off such a feat was Nathan. It was too horrifying to contemplate—yet she knew that Nathan was more than able to screw with their finances and probably did.

  But why? What was his motive? And what other secrets had Nathan White taken to his grave?

  ###

  Using his Steiner binoculars, the Nighthunter XP model, a brand that he always trusted, Leo looked around the area where his truck was parked.

  Where, as a sniper, would he set up to take a shot? He needed to figure it out because there was a real good chance that whoever had wanted to hire him to kill Jackie Winn would send a back-up assassin when they finally figured out their first choice wasn’t about to deliver on the hit.

  There were several good possibilities, including a couple of buildings across the street with windows. The range was a bit on the long side, maybe seven hundred yards, but it was doable. Watching a flag blowing, he calculated the wind. Without a spotter to ID the target and call corrections, it would be a bitch of a shot. With a decent spotter, it still would be difficult, but Leo had shot hundreds of rounds at much longer distances under worse conditions.

  Climbing out of his truck, he walked around the parking lot. It seemed to service a number of businesses in the same complex, so he wasn't worried about wandering around.

  He spotted a jet black Mercedes SLK and recognized it from the photo he’d found in the manila envelope. It was Jackie Winn’s car.

  It was parked off on an edge of the lot, sheltered from car dings by taking up two spaces. It gleamed in the early afternoon sun. The question that Leo wanted answered was how a computer programmer and recently former student would even know about such a car much less buy one? The college student who helped Leo with the computer network at the coin store drove a Honda Civic that could best be described as a pile of rust generally moving in the same direction.

  Without using his binoculars, Leo looked around trying to appear as casual as he could.

  Another possible sniper site presented itself—a building under construction several blocks away. It most likely offered the best view of the parking lot, but the range was on the extreme side—probably close to eight hundred yards. It would also be at an extreme downward angle—not anything difficult to deal with if you knew what you were doing, but it would be a factor.

  Taking a long look at the building, he knew that would be where he would set up.

  From the outside, he knew what to look for, but there were always things that one could see only from the sniper's hide that could result in a change of plans. One time he had shown up to take a shot at a foreign minister who had the hobby of torturing political dissidents and realized there was no way to get the proper angle to the target. He could have chanced a shot at the head, but it would have been moving. Instead, Leo moved to another room and completed the job without a problem.

  There were no other places that would be good sniper hides, though there were several not very good possibilities. Leo recalled the time when his sniper hide was in the back of a van. That sucked. He had to take into account the bullet going through the window of the van and then making it to the target after traveling six hundred fifty yards. Leo hit the window square on and let the gods of ballistics take it from there. They were smiling down on him as the 190 grain Sierra boat tailed hollow point hit the target between the second and third shirt buttons.

  He had been forced out of college due to the lack of money to pay for tuition, boarding and books after the suspicious death of his father and the scandal that surrounded it. Not that the bastard hadn't deserved it. Despite hours of interrogations by the police, Leo was determined to have no connection with the fucker burning to death in his Cadillac.

  How and why someone had killed his father had never been determined and it still bothered Leo just a bit considering what he knew about the assassination bu
siness. His father's death had been a professional hit. Leo had read about similar assassinations over the years but the killer was as elusive as a puff of smoke.

  He had been looking for work when he had been approached by a corporate headhunter looking to fill a slot in a company that built sniper rifles for the police and military. They needed someone to test fire their new creations under real world situations and write a report on the accuracy and functioning of the rifles. As a now ex-star of a college rifle team, Leo was the perfect candidate.

  Leo had never fired a gun in his entire life before being goaded into trying out for the rifle team by some acquaintances after they had all gone out shooting one Saturday. From the first time Leo picked up a rifle, he couldn't miss. A walk-on to the team, he found that he the knack and mindset required for precision shooting.

  It wasn’t until he was immersed in training that he realized he had been raised into this life by his father—forced into being a loner by constant moves, held to an exacting perfection in all tasks, no matter how small, able to adapt and blend into almost any social circumstance, able to think on his feet and an eye for detail. The punishments for even minor deviations of the expected norm were extreme, but probably not as bad as getting tortured or killed while on a mission.

  That his dad was an assassin was so obvious after he had been in the business a while—the absences, lack of a visible job, able to buy whatever he wanted with pocket cash, the drinking and so much more—but for Leo growing up, it added to his hellish childhood. His mother was no help and merely another tool for manipulation by his father. That she died of a massive stroke shortly after his father's death wasn't unexpected.

  Leo had been specially recruited by an unknown organization into becoming a sniper assassin. Everyone should be good at something and Leo was the best in the world at killing people at long distances.

  The turning point was an assassination that, while it wasn't technically difficult at seven hundred twenty-six yards, it was world changing in his mind. As he brought the rifle scope back down onto the target, he saw the target's children, who had been standing next to him, coated with sprayed blood from the head shot, their faces etched in horror, their screams silent in the magnification of his rifle scope.

  Then it struck him: he hadn't been putting holes in targets for the technical challenge but had been killing people.

  That had been his second to his last job. He knew that the end was coming soon when he started asking about how to get out of the business. It was almost a relief when the car bomb had nearly killed him, but he knew that there was nothing he could do to atone for his sins.

  He regretted the killing and had worked fucking hard to put that behind him, building his life as far away from his past as he could get. Now, he would do whatever he needed to get his life back. Including saving the life of complete stranger.

  And now he was back in the game, from the other end—as a target. He hoped that he would survive.

  Chapter 4

  Unlocking Nathan's office door, Jackie's heart formed a lump in her throat. She stared at the government surplus desk expecting to see him perched behind it. She hadn't opened this door since they'd buried him. Nathan had two offices, one for meeting clients that was all oak and spotless. Then there was this working office which was piled high with computer printouts, notes and a high-end computer system with three monitors. Metal shelves, some bent and twisted with the weight of software manuals and obsolete computer hardware, ran along one side of the wall. Behind Nathan's desk was a work bench with his oscilloscope, meters and his well-used soldering station. This was the office where she and Nathan had spent countless hours fighting for their company's survival, coming up with wild-ass ideas—some of which worked, some that didn't.

  They'd had some serious shouting sessions in this office—the result of two creative people hashing out ideas and plans. But it had all worked out.

  She walked around the end of the desk, but couldn't find it in herself to sit in Nathan's battered rolling chair. Instead, moving his chair out from behind it, Jackie pushed her old chair behind it.

  Settling in behind his desk, she realized she didn't know where to start. Nathan obviously didn't believe in a neat and tidy work area, yet the man could have laid his hand on any particular item without searching. But move a computer printout one inch to the left and he would have to spend days searching for it.

  “It's my system and I know where everything is. Besides, a neat and tidy workplace is the sure sign of a disorganized mind,” Nathan would say. God she missed him so.

  Just for a point to start, she began opening desk drawers. The center one was full of pens and electronic junk. The rightmost drawers contained files on past projects and proposals.

  The left bottom drawer was locked. This was strange—Nathan never locked anything. She had locked Nathan's office after his death and the key had barely worked, probably from disuse.

  She'd save the locked drawer for later. She spent the next three hours searching the office and found nothing of interest. Piles of stuff that should be thrown out, but nothing much that could answer any of her questions.

  It would all have to be dealt with, but Jackie couldn't find it in herself to deal with it right now.

  The computer revealed nothing. All of Nathan's working files were stored on the central server and the computer hard drive had been wiped just like the DVD had been.

  “Nathan, what are you hiding?” she asked the empty air.

  She returned her attention to the locked drawer, which she knew she could open, but the challenge was what she liked—the hacker ethos—if it was locked, unlock it, be it software, an electronic device or even a locked drawer.

  She went back to her office and got her lock pick set. She made her first set at the tender age of fourteen, but this one was top of the line with the particular tools she favored, each in several sizes. Most women bought themselves jewelry, a fashionable purse, shoes or a new outfit when they came into money. Jackie had bought herself a customized set of lock picks with pink mother of pearl handles.

  Moving Nathan's work table lamp around so she could see, she got down on her knees and started working. It was a lock type that she hadn't seen before and she couldn't crack the damn thing—the pick kept slipping off the pins. Several attempts only lead to more frustration.

  Settling back, she said, “What was so important for you to lock up, Nathan?”

  Taking a deep breath, letting part of it out, she tried again and finally the last tumbler clicked into place. She pushed on the tension bar and the lock popped open. Pulling the drawer open, she couldn't believe what she saw.

  ###

  Matthew Tudor specialized in killing with fire. He'd been doing it for twenty-plus years and was very good at making flames do his bidding. Gasoline and other such petroleum-based accelerants were for amateurs. Matthew had developed virtually undetectable methods of starting fires that also made them appear to be caused by something else entirely. It helped that he had a PhD in chemistry. Neither industry nor academia paid what he earned in doing one or two 'jobs' a year, and it gave him time to play with his love and fascination, chemistry. He owned quite a chunk of property in middle Texas and had a lab rivaling that of any university.

  Matthew was also a member of The Black Hand, an organization of killers which specialized in a particular method of murder. After his twentieth job, he had been invited to join the group, which included a variety of specialists in poisons, explosives, faking accidents and a sniper. Originally, there had been ten members, now there were five—the nature of the business taking a heavy toll on the members.

  He'd been busy at work in his lab on the secrets of a new untraceable, alcohol-based accelerant when his Blackberry buzzed, signaling a new message. The company he worked for had given him the Blackberry, and he had been instructed to only use it for dealings with them and no one else.

  Setting down a bubbling beaker, he checked the message and saw he had a bu
rn job in Denver. It even specified how it was to be done—automobile immolation—his specialty.

  ###

  The happiest Leo felt was with his cheek against a rifle stock, a paper target off in the distance. This was when he transcended the science of rifle shooting and could take it into the realm of art. So many factors were behind each shot: wind, temperature, humidity, range and even the spin of the earth. Even if you used the best equipment and the finest components for building ammunition constructed to inhuman tolerances, and your rifle and scope were as perfect as anything constructed by man, firing the rifle still required luck to hit the target where you aimed.

  He always tried for the perfect shot every time, knowing he would never attain it. He didn't know if he could do this sitting around waiting for someone else to kill another person.

  His last perfect shot was at well over twelve hundred yards. Peru. He could still taste the gusty breeze, the heaviness of the humidity. He could barely pick out the target in the scope for the mirage, but his spotter, a pudgy former Marine who really needed to learn to shut the fuck up about all the girls he'd had sex with, called the scope settings out in a calm, cool voice.

  The cross hairs danced around the target to the beat of his pulse. Leo took a deep breath, let half of it out. He went to that deep inside place where nothing else mattered except the feel of the rifle embraced by his body, the scope, the target and the trigger. The sight settled onto the target.

  As he took the slack off the trigger, Leo was surprised when the rifle fired.

  His spotter said, “Hit.”

  He knew it was the best shot he had ever taken. Since then, he had tried, but never succeeded, in finding that same feeling. Maybe it would come, but he wasn't sure.

  A movement by Jackie's car snapped him from his daydreaming. It was a man opening the trunk. He put something inside and quickly closed it. What the hell was going on?