“You think it's an organization?”
“Yes. There has to be some sort of support structure. The assassins may be working solo, but someone is sending them their assignments and paying them.”
Jackie didn't speak for several minutes. Then she said, “Is that something — the contacting and payment — isn't that something that could be done by computer?”
“How do you mean?”
“At the company I own, some of my contractors I've never met nor talked to on the phone. Everything is done via e-mail. And payment is also done online; most people don't want the hassle of waiting for a check to show up in the mail, depositing it and waiting for it to clear. Usually, it's done via PayPal or deposited in an online gold account. We don't care one way or the other, but it does simplify the paperwork.”
“What about taxes and such?”
“They are independent contractors, so we don't have to pay Social Security, unemployment insurance, etc. At the end of the year, if they've earned a certain amount, we issue a 1099.”
“Is this how you think that the company bank accounts were plundered?”
Taking a sip of wine, she swallowed and said, “It's a possibility. There were supposed to be tight controls on how the money was dispersed. In theory, two people had to sign off on any transaction. Patrick, Nathan and I were the only people authorized. Usually, it was Patrick and Nathan that did it. I'm a hell of a programmer, but didn't really have much sense as to how the business was run. As long as there was money to pay the bills, buy new equipment as needed and pay the contractors, I really didn't care much about the money. Heck, I haven't even looked at my own checking account in a couple of months — the money is deposited, and all my bills are paid automatically, rent, utilities, credit cards.”
Leo considered what she had to say. Personally, he only had a checking account that held a little money, no credit cards and preferred to do all of his transactions in cash money. The less of a trail he left, the better.
The IRS was always interested in anything involving large amounts of cash and he thought he was pretty skilled at moving things around in the coin store to at least present a facade of normalcy. He took most of his profit percentage from the store in cash and gold and silver bullion. Sure, he got a proper salary that was properly taxed and dutifully scrutinized by the IRS, but the vast majority of his assets were liquid and not easily tracked down.
He didn't know if this habit was from the mindset required to be an assassin, leaving as few tracks as possible that could lead back to you, or the paranoia that working in the coin business built — many of the transactions were in cash and he knew that some of his customers who looked and dressed like winos were worth millions.
There was one guy he knew who had built a fireplace mantle with hundred-ounce silver bars painted to look like bricks. There must have been a couple of hundred of them.
“So, in theory, you can do all the killing business via e-mail and electronic transfers. But there has to be some sort of an organization to recruit, train, vet and support these people. You just can't find the e-mail addresses of assassins on some web site, drop them a line telling them their targeting information.
“My training probably cost the company a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Even back when I was doing it, the support was a royal pain in the ass. I used a custom built rifle — which wasn't cheap by any means. It had to be smuggled into the country where I was working. The victim needed to be watched for a minimum of two weeks to establish patterns. I had a spotter who also needed to be brought into the country. Then there was always a team to extract me if something bad happened.”
“Did you ever need it?”
“No.”
“Then how sure were you that they were even there?”
He thought about it. “I wasn't. However, it was implied that they were there, ready to go. That may have been a lie, but for the amount of money they spent on training, equipping and moving me into place, it would have been stupid to leave me out there to be captured.”
“Are you so sure?”
He shrugged. “No. But that's getting us off the original question, there does need to be a support organization somewhere. If we can find that, we can find out who is pulling the strings and stop it.”
“Are you sure that we can stop them?”
“We will, or die trying.”
Allan Wells set up the remote rifle system. One of these days, he was going to have to program in some facial recognition software so he wouldn't have to spend so much time looking at a computer screen, searching for the target.
The system had been set up five hundred yards away from the target's work place — White Hat Enterprises, Inc. That it was set in an industrial park made it a lot easier to move around, lugging his equipment, which wasn't light by any stretch of imagination.
He tightened the last connection and powered up the device. It went through a self check. There was a problem, one of the servos was a little out of adjustment. Damn things.
Powering down the system, he jiggled the connection and saw that it was a bit too loose. Probably that was the problem. Using a pair of needle nose pliers, he re-crimped it and plugged it in again. It made it through the self check without a problem. Using his laptop, he tested all of the systems.
They all checked out without problem which was good news. He had enough parts to basically rebuild the whole thing, but really didn't want to have to do that.
It was too bad that he hadn't ever found an accurate enough semi-automatic rifle for this system as it was currently only a single shot rifle. Every time he tried, the problems were insurmountable. Gas operated firearms tended to spit out enough crap to screw up the sensor package. Recoil operated systems pounded the mechanisms to pieces. He'd experimented with a robotically-assisted short throw bolt action, but there were too many bugs to be worked out for it to be reliable. He was more worried about getting increased range and accuracy. Why worry about a second shot if the system is accurate enough to accomplish it with one shot?
The system checks were complete. He extracted a bullet from a case and carefully loaded the rifle. The .300 Winchester Mag, known as the '300 Win Mag' by those who had shot her, was a very accurate caliber in the right hands with the right rifle. It had been superseded by the .338 Lapua in military circles, but it was still very accurate up to ranges of a thousand yards.
He flipped the arming switches, checked to see that the rifle was looking in the right direction and he could see a clear picture of what it was seeing on his laptop. The night vision scope made everything look green. It was a pain to try and identify the target with it, but the hit package had specified that the target may be stopping by the building at any time, day or night.
After dawn broke, he would stop by, switch out the batteries, and remove the night vision scope. It was dangerous to be coming back and forth to where the remote rifle system was set up a couple of times a day, but for the amount of money he was being paid, and, more importantly, how much time and money he had invested in this system, it was well worth the risk.
Besides, he was going to be in the parking lot, not two hundred yards away, in a panel van that he had outfitted with almost all the comforts of home.
He killed the lights in the rented office and locked the door. The remote rifle system hummed as it searched for its target.
Chapter 10
Jackie was pleasantly buzzed by the wine she had drunk at dinner. It was only a couple of glasses, but it helped unwind some of the stresses and tensions of the day, allowing her to relax a bit. Today had been a nightmare, from the time she had crawled out her bed until… well it looked like it would be a long time before she could relax completely.