Jackie just tried to stay out his way. Finally, he strolled out onto the range, set up something on a tripod, and then put a target up. She figured it was only at a hundred yards — she could see two other places to put targets up and they both seemed really far out there.
Leo tossed her a set of ear muffs and then put on a set of his own.
“You're gonna want to wear those until I'm done.”
Leo picked up a rifle. It had a heavy-looking barrel, dull finish and had a huge scope on it. Leo carefully placed it on a stand on the bench. Reaching inside a case, he pulled out an electronic device and held it up in the wind. He noted down some numbers.
“What's that?” she asked.
“A Kestrel weather meter. A lot of factors affect the trajectory of a bullet and this takes some of the guess work out it by providing elevation, humidity, temperature and wind speed.” She realized that she was speaking normally and could hear just fine. Probably some sound-blocking mechanism in the ear muffs.
He pulled out a pocket calculator and did some quick figuring. Consulting a table that was taped to the side of the stock, he twisted the knob on the scope. Then he took a bullet and slid it into the rifle.
Settling down behind the rifle, he carefully peered through the scope. She could see him relax, slowly caress the trigger and then the rifle went off. It slammed into Leo's shoulder. Working the handle, he extracted the spent brass.
“Right on the numbers, but a bit high. Probably the elevation difference from where I usually shoot.” Leo wasn't speaking to anyone in particular, just muttering to himself.
He went out and checked the piece of equipment he had put on the tripod. “A little on the warm side.”
“What's that thing?” she asked.
“A chronograph. Measures the speed of the bullet. The round I loaded is moving a bit faster than it should. I'll tone down the powder just a hair and see what that does.”
He made some quick calculations and then went back to the other bench and made up another bullet.
Leo went through the same process again with shooting and noted down some more numbers. She looked over his shoulder and saw the scribbles on the paper. “Why don't you get a computer to handle all that?”
He wagged the calculator at her and said, “A computer can break, be lost, have dead batteries. This calculator runs on solar power and all I need is that, a piece of paper and a pencil to figure out everything else. If needed, I can do it without the calculator, but it gets to be a pain when you have a lot of shooting to do.”
“What exactly are we doing and why do you need my help?”
“I'm a precision rifle shooter. I need to get this rifle dialed in so I can defend against whoever is coming after you and probably me.”
“Who is coming after me? And why?”
“I don't know. That's something we'll have to figure out.”
He grabbed a couple of targets and a stapler, handed them to her and said, “Take the truck out and put out those targets, one at six hundred yards and another at a thousand.”
“Why?”
He gave her a long look and said, “That's your favorite question, isn't it? Just because I might have a general idea as to what this rifle will do at a hundred yards, I still need to make sure that my calculations are right. It won't take long.”
She did as he asked, noting that the targets were out there quite a distance away.
In the back of her head, she wondered if Leo was sighting in on her as she stapled the targets onto the wooden target stand. Dismissing it as illogical; for one thing, he would have to get rid of her body besides fetching his truck. But there was someone out there after her.
Leo had been busy in the meantime making up bullets.
The next several hours were about as boring as could be. Leo would shoot a bullet, peer through what he called a “spotting scope” at the target, fiddle with the scope, shoot another bullet. Then, every five bullets, he would clean his rifle — laboriously scrubbing the barrel with a long metal rod that had what looked like a little piece of rag. The cleaning solvent was acidic smelling.
Jackie wondered why she was here and what she could do to speed up the process. Finally, she asked, “What can I do?”
Leo looked up from his calculations, appearing startled.
“Nothing, right now. It shouldn't be much longer.”
“So, what am I supposed to do for now?”
“Sit down, think of who might want you dead.”
She didn't know how to do this, so she went back to the truck and fired up her laptop. Naturally, she couldn't find any WiFi access points. She had modified the WiFi card to reveal even hidden networks. From there, it wouldn't be much of a problem to gain access to it even if it was encrypted.
Seeing how out in the sticks they probably still used dial-up for Internet access, she dug around in her bag until she found her air-card.
Hopefully there was cellular access out here, and she was surprised when she was able to get a strong signal and on to the Internet. The first thing she did was log into the company intranet. It took some time, because she had made sure it wasn't something easy to access. She was an ex-hacker after all, and had made it as difficult as humanly possible to access. Every once in a while, for fun, she'd post a challenge on one of the hacker web boards offering a reward to anyone able to crack her security. So far, she'd never been beat.
From there, she checked her e-mail. As she scrolled through it, she realized that after all that had happened today, how inconsequential the concerns of running a business were.
She almost missed it, an e-mail from Patrick Lackey, her accountant. Jackie skipped through the accounting speak wondering why he was pestering her. Then she saw he'd found a trail as to where all the money from the company went. She went to the top of the e-mail and forced herself to read every word. Why the man couldn't write a sentence less with than forty words was beyond her.
The e-mail didn't give her many more details than she already knew from her quick scan. The final word was that Patrick had stashed copies of his findings on his computer. Of course, it was the only computer in the entire company that she couldn't access remotely. Sometimes, the best security was isolation. If no one could gain access without violating physical locks, and the computer wasn't connected to the Internet or the Internet connected company network, you could probably assure the computer was reasonably secure. But it did mean that she would have to go back to the office to find the information. Why couldn't Patrick have just attached it to the e-mail?
Of course, she knew that he didn't realize his attempt at security, or lack of technological know-how, might get her killed.
Chapter 7
Tyrannicide completed its daily analysis of obituaries and death notices. So far, none of the expected targets appeared. Unexpected. Though an unidentified body had appeared in the area of a coin store of one of the subjects. Was this the body of the messenger or of the subject? It sent another message to the messenger's Blackberry asking for an immediate response.
Hard coded within itself, there was a list of targets. Tyrannicide was to expend all available resources until those targets had been assassinated, taking out others, meeting its criteria as it could.
Checking its operational funds, it selected the next target and sent a text message. The Black Hand being interconnected via the Internet made everything so much easier — to kill.
Matthew Tudor easily cracked the security on the Cadillac, gaining entry and popping open the driver's side door. The computer systems on modern cars made his job that much easier. He accessed the OBD-II connector underneath the steering wheel, connecting it to his Blackberry. The software hadn't been that difficult to write, but the damn connector had set him back a couple of hundred dollars. He always found it annoying that auto companies couldn't use an industry standard connector that was cheap, easy to find and wired up in a way that anyone could access.