“You can’t just—”
Mosely raised the pistol and sent a quick burst into the man’s chest—spattering the computer table and back wall with gore. A couple of the frangible rounds slammed into the wall and dissolved into puffs of powder, barely leaving a dent in the drywall.
Frangible rounds still amazed Mosely. The bullets were made of compressed ceramic powder. They retained their hitting power if they hit soft human tissue, but they disappeared in a cloud of dust if they encountered an unyielding surface—like a wall. They were designed to contain a shoot-out within the room where the shooting was taking place, and they also eliminated the risk of ricochets. This last part was of particular concern when you were spraying seven rounds a second in a room ten feet square.
The bloody fat man slumped and fell onto the floor with a thud that shook the room.
Mosely heard movement in the next office, farther in. The squeaking of a desk chair.
“Mav? What was that?”
Mosely advanced quickly, both hands gripping the pistol. No need to worry about their calling the police. Their phones were out by now, and their cell phones would already be jammed.
He stepped into a larger office area containing two desks and a bank of windows looking out onto the back parking lot. A young man stood behind a desk, hand reaching into the center drawer. A look of disbelief on his face. Mosely ripped out a longer burst this time. With the suppressor it sounded like a muted model airplane engine. The wall, windows, and drop ceiling were now spattered with blood. Smoke wafted away from the gun barrel.
Mosely turned as another man screamed in terror. The man ducked behind his desk, dragging a phone with him.
Shit.
Mosely popped the smoking barrels off and clicked on a new set. He advanced, gun ready, and could hear the man sputtering in terror as he tapped at the dead phone. “No! I’ll give you money! Don’t!”
Mosely came around the side of the desk and aimed his gun down at the man cowering against the wall.
“No! Please!”
Mosely hesitated. Goddamnit. It could not be left undone. There was no question.
“No!”
Mosely emptied the barrel into him. The man slumped sideways behind the desk, in a pool of blood, his body twitching. Mosely loaded the last barrel and retraced his steps—putting another couple of shots into the heads of the other two men. He spoke into his headset. “Task complete.”
There was a pause. Then The Voice said, “Confirmed. Two thousand network credits. Demobilize.”
Mosely tapped a sequence of numbers onto a four-key pad on the bottom of the gun and tossed it onto the top of a nearby desk. The weapon started to sizzle and smoke, then the plastic bulk of it began to melt—along with its circuitry.
Mosely took a small semicircular device off his tool belt. The thing resembled a small traveling alarm clock with a rounded bottom. He tapped the same four-key code into the device, then tossed it into the center of the floor, where it rolled around for several moments while Mosely exited the way he came in.
As the device came to rest on its rounded bottom, a pocket laser beamed bright red light onto the stained drop tiles of the ceiling—creating a marquee-like sign in large glowing red letters. The letters spelled out the message the Daemon wanted to send—the message associated with operation 4-9-1-5:
ALL SPAMMERS WILL DIE
Chapter 39:// Closing a Thread
Reuters.com
Spammers Massacred, Thousands Dead—A daring and well-coordinated attack launched Monday morning may have claimed the lives of as many as 6,000 prolific spammers in 83 countries. Over two hundred died in Boca Raton, Florida, alone. Authorities are still reeling from the magnitude and sophistication of the strikes. The assailants left behind the same message: “All spammers will die.”
Since the attacks, ISPs report up to an 80% reduction in the amount of spam clogging Internet servers.
Sebeck sat in the sterile visitor’s room near Lompoc’s death row. His wife, Laura, sat across the table from him, looking down. To Sebeck’s surprise, there was no bulletproof partition separating them here. His last visitation would be face-to-face. Two prison guards stood watch over them from the nearby door.
Laura looked up. “Are they treating you well?”
Sebeck grimaced. “They’re going to kill me this evening.”
She seemed unsure how to respond.
Sebeck just waved it aside. “It’s okay. Normal conversation doesn’t really work in here. Don’t feel bad.”
She sat thin-lipped and tense for several more moments. “Are you afraid?”
Sebeck nodded.
“I don’t know what to do, Pete.”
“I’m sorry about the pension and the life insurance. I hear they canceled them.”
“I just can’t believe this is happening.”
“Neither can I.”
She looked squarely at him. “Tell me again.”
He looked at her. “I didn’t kill anyone, Laura. I committed adultery, but I didn’t do those other things. I would never have harmed Aaron or those other people.”
“They say terrible things about you on TV. It never stops.”
“So I’m told.”
“It’s been real tough on Chris at school.”
They both contemplated this gravely. Then Sebeck motioned to her. “It’s good to see you, Laura.” He smiled weakly. “Given all that I’ve put you through, I wouldn’t blame you for not speaking to me again.”
“I’ve known you my whole life. I couldn’t let you go without saying goodbye.”
He felt a little choked up as she began to cry. He cleared his tight throat. “I know we don’t really love each other. Not in a romantic way. Our marriage seemed like the right thing to do with the baby and all.”
She was crying silently into her hands.
Sebeck continued. “But I think, if I had just had the chance to fall in love with you before all that, I think I would have. I just never had the chance.”
She just wept.
“I love our son, Laura. I want you to know that. And I want Chris to know. I don’t regret having him. I regret how I handled it. And how I blamed everyone else for the decisions I made.”
She looked up. “You were just a boy, Pete. We were both just kids.”
“Sometimes I feel like I still am. Like I’m frozen in time.”
She tried to rein in her tears. “I don’t know what to do.”
Sebeck sighed. “Sell the house. Make sure Chris gets a college education. And then…go fall in love. You deserve to be happy, Laura.”
She was crying harder now.
One of the guards called from the door. “Sebeck. Time’s up.”
Sebeck reached out a hand toward her. They held hands briefly over the table. “Thank you for being kind to me.”
The guards pulled him away, and the last Sebeck saw of her, she was staring at him through tears as he was pushed through the doorway and into the echoing death row wing beyond.
Sebeck lay bound hand and foot by leather buckles and straps. A rubber tube was wrapped tightly around his right arm, bulging the veins. Another brown rubber tube ran from the intravenous line in his arm to the wall, where it disappeared through a small port. Sebeck knew there were several men behind that wall, each preparing lethal doses of sodium thiopental (to knock him out), pancuronium bromide (to stop his breathing), and potassium chloride (to interrupt the electrical signals to his heart). Only one of the IV drips was connected to Sebeck’s tube—so the three executioners would never know who delivered the fatal injection. It was an odd system. One that ignored the fact that people killed each other every day without trying to conceal it. In fact, if he jumped the prison fence, they would gun him down without hesitation.