Kill Code Page 4

  ###

  Jim Fox walked quickly away from where he had placed the car bomb. As a specialist in explosives and a member of the Black Hand, he knew that the Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP) he had placed in the target's car was more than enough of a device to do the job. First developed in World War II, and most recently used in Iraq for particularly devastating IEDs, it had the ability to take out an Abrams main battle tank from thirty yards away. Instead of being close to the subject like a conventional shaped charge, the target could be some distance from the charge itself. He'd read somewhere that an EFP eight inches in diameter threw a seven pound copper slug at two thousand meters a second. Bypassing the Mercedes' security system to place it had been simple. He used a device he had bought from an Israeli company. It sniffed the remote codes when the target had driven up in the morning using the remote to lock the car.

  He armed the device remotely with a remote key fob. The next major movement of the vehicle, say, a car door slamming, would set the device off and send a jet of white-hot plasma through the back seat, through the driver’s seat and out the front window.

  It was a relatively easy job and would pay decently. He was on his way out of town as he did not want to be in the area when this much explosive went off. He knew, from twenty years in the murder business, that it would do the job. He'd only missed his target once before, and that was one hell of a long time ago. It had been in Columbia. It was only bad luck and timing that the car had been stolen before the target had gotten in it. Those days, he used explosives tied directly into the starter system. Four pounds of Semtex had practically blown the car thief into low orbit. Once he missed, it wasn't his problem anymore. He had wired the car—that it had taken out the wrong person was beyond his control or caring.

  He walked around the block to where his rental car was parked, got in it and drove off into the early afternoon sun. He still had one more device to set before he left town.

  ###

  Jackie found a gun in Nathan's drawer. It was shiny blue and big. She didn't know a damn thing about guns, having no interest in them one way or the other, but she knew a gun when she saw one. While Nathan had been a strict Constitutionalist, he never talked about the Second Amendment, and had expressed disdain at what he called “NRA nitwits” whenever the subject had come up in casual conversation.

  He never mentioned any interest in guns at all. In fact, he had shown complete aversion to them when the subject had come up at a party several years ago.

  She carefully pulled the gun out and set it on the desk. There was a piece of paper in the bottom of the drawer.

  In Nathan's distinctive scrawl, it simply said, “Jackie, if you find this, I'm dead and you may need it. Love, Nathan.”

  A cold chill coursed through her body. Why the hell would she need it?

  She found a computer printout and wrapped the gun in it, picked up her lock picks and returned to her office, her thoughts and feelings completely chaotic.

  ###

  Leo started his truck and tried to follow the man who had put something into Jackie's car. The man ducked around the corner and was gone before he could see if he got into a vehicle. There was something familiar about the man—as though he had seen him many years ago but he couldn't place him.

  ###

  Allan Wells was having problems with a tracking servo. The thing kept moving just six micrometers out of time as it cycled. To most people who used servos—robotics hobbyists—that distance wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things. For especially precise applications such as remote surgery, it might make a difference, but Allan's need for it transcended even that—as a remotely controlled sniper rifle.

  He'd started out adapting the military remote gun platforms but discovered that they were built to very loose tolerances. Unacceptable for him, which was understandable as they were designed to hold machine guns and grenade launchers. These platforms were also built for battlefield conditions and needed to work while in snow, mud, fog and rain and survive ham-fisted maintenance personnel.

  The device sitting in front of him had multiple targeting lasers, a high-speed data link, GPS and could be tied into remote humidity and wind sensors. All Allen needed to do, if he could get this damn servo working right, was to sit back, miles from his target if necessary, and wait for the victim to walk into the cross hairs and it would all be over.

  Settling back, he recalled the first time that he looked at his creation, brightly polished aircraft-grade aluminum carved by a CNC machine to his exact specifications. It was a meter square, a box frame that would support a single shot precision rifle, the servos for aiming and room for a sophisticated compact computer with a sensor array.

  Allan had been a competitive-level rifle shooter up until a little over nine years ago when he had been recruited by a shadowy company to snipe people who needed it. The job wasn't hard and paid very well, so he had been able to complete his degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering.

  Though he wasn't formally a competitive-level shooter any more, he still did bench rest shooting to keep his skills up. At a match, he saw an Unlimited Class rail gun rifle that was simply a heavy metal plate, a rifle action with a scope and a trigger. It almost completely removed human involvement from the equation of shooting as all the shooter had to do was set up the shot on the target and caress the trigger.

  It was perfect. Add some servos, electronics, a remote camera and now there was a simple way to kill people from long distance and not even be in the same zip code. Naturally, there were developmental issues, but Allan threw his entire intellect into the project, and with some unconventional uses of various electronics, was able to persevere.

  The device had debuted seven years ago to a resounding success hitting a target at two hundred fifty yards right under the eyes of a close protection team. They had been looking for human threats, not a cleverly built robot rifle concealed in a fake air conditioner.

  The newest version could hit a target consistently out to six hundred yards. And if he could get the damn servos to track better, he would be able to push that out much further.

  The problem with range came from blending sensor readings, like humidity, temperature, wind speed and direction, with ballistic tables. The software program was complex and initially had a lot of bugs—tying analog sensors to a digital computer was a royal pain as they didn't ever want to play nice with each other.

  Then there was the remote video setup. The bandwidth required to be able to transmit high enough resolution with a decent refresh rate was enormous. People would notice if they couldn't watch their professional wrestling because of a powerful radio transmitter sitting twenty feet from their house.

  The advent of wireless Internet had helped ease this problem somewhat along with high-speed video compression, although it took a more powerful computer system to rewrite large sections of code.

  Allan settled back in his chair and wondered how to deal with his servo problem. Maybe he should check into the servos used for robotic surgery but they were expensive as hell.

  His Blackberry buzzed. He glanced at it. A job. That was a problem in being a member of the Black Hand, the necessity to work. But the job should pay for the new servos. Having a six-hundred-yard range was going to have to do.

  Chapter 5

  Jackie went back to her office. Despite all that was going on, she had an appointment to get her car looked at. The Mercedes SLK was a gift from Nathan after a particularly profitable sales quarter. She would have never bought herself such an extravagant vehicle and had been happy with her 1985 VW Rabbit. But recently, the SLK had been running very rough. Research on the Internet turned up that it might be a bad wiring harness. Since obtaining an appointment at the rather exclusive Mercedes dealership was about as difficult as winning the lottery two drawings in a row, there wasn't any point in trying to reschedule.

  She packed up her laptop, thinking she might as well get some work done—she'd already hacked the dealership's wireless
network but had to be careful about what she accessed as she didn't want their firewall shutting her down.

  Not knowing what to do about the handgun, she stuffed it into her laptop case and zipped closed the compartment. She had no experience with them at all and knew she didn't know enough to use it. She noted down the model number—someone would have posted information on how to use it on the Internet so she could at least unload it.

  One thing that seemed to make the car run better is if it was warmed up. Finding her keys, she pressed the remote start. An explosion rocked the building.

  ###

  Leo had lost his prime parking to a battered Ford LTD. In fact, there were no spaces left in the parking lot where Leo had been hanging out. So he was reduced to checking for an empty slot at the building where Jackie had her business.

  He glanced over at her car and saw a white hot flash as the explosion rocked his truck causing him to bang his head on the b-pillar.

  Shit. Had he missed her getting into her car?

  He pulled up, slammed the transmission into park and jumped out. The car was on fire. The windshield was completely gone, flames greedily licked the interior. Fuck. There was no way anyone could survive such a blast.

  Leo had a déjà vu sensation. The car bombing that had nearly killed him looked almost exactly like this one. The area where the driver sat was destroyed, probably done with a sophisticated directed shaped charge. He'd have been dead except for the dumb punk that had tried to steal his car and ended up having his head blown completely apart and immolating any fingerprints, making identification of the body impossible. Running DNA might have narrowed it down, but it had happened in Bogota, Columbia, and the police had too many car bombings and murders to care about one more. Max Jennings, the name that Leo had worked under, had died that day for all who cared to know. That's when Leo tried to start a new life. It worked for a while, and now that it looked like Jackie was dead, he didn't have much of a chance of getting it back.

  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 instructi
ons 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.

  Chapter 6

  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.”