He said, “Watch the door. I have some other exercises that I need to do that are a bit difficult to get out of quickly if something happens.”
She nodded.
He went over to the other side of the bed and walking with his hands down the wall, he ended up with his head and feet supporting him. Then he did some pushup type exercises just using his neck. When he had done a hundred, which he counted out in a whisper, he slowly climbed to his feet and said, “I needed that. It isn't my usual routine, but it will have to do.”
“What was it that you were doing?”
“Body weight exercises. You should try them. Helps you shoot better if you have strength in the right places.”
“Sure.”
He grabbed a change of clothes from his luggage and said, “I'm going to take a quick shower.”
After he had shut the door, taking the pistol, she flipped on the news, looking for a local station so she could see what was going on in the world, though the events discussed were all local in nature, starting with the attempt on her life. The empty hairpiece reporter cryptically ended that report with the statement, “The police are currently looking for Jackie Winn. She isn't a suspect, but they do want to talk with her.”
Sure. She knew that if she talked to them, she'd probably disappear into the justice system. The cops always said that when they considered, who “they do want to talk with” as a suspect. No matter, she had no intention of gracing any police stations in the near future.
The next segment was on the car fire that had killed Denver Building Inspector Brian Case. The police were still investigating. It may or may not have been an accident. Jackie wondered if it was tied into what was happening all around her.
Then came the shocker; an unidentified man was found dead as the result of a car bomb, very much like the one that had nearly killed her.
Her shock turned to horror when she recognized the car — it looked like Patrick Lackey's. From the zoom lens of the TV camera, it was battered tan Buick, with a faded Colorado Technical University parking sticker on the rear window. CTU was the same place that Nathan had gone and they had been roommates. There was a past history there that neither of them would elaborate on.
There was a yellow sheet covering the front half of the car, and the area was lit by the strobes of emergency vehicles. Crime scene tape flapped around the scene. She wondered what the hell had happened.
She considered putting the battery for her cell phone back in and trying to call him. Deep down, she knew that, unless she had St. Peter on speed dial, Patrick would never answer.
Then she realized that Leo was back in the room with her. She hadn't heard the door open. The man was spooky.
“What's that?” he asked.
“I think someone killed Patrick.”
“Your accountant?”
“Yes.”
Leo studied the picture of the car displayed on the TV set.
“Probably some sort of Explosively Formed Projectile. Does the scene look familiar to you?”
She didn't know what the hell he was talking about, either the projectile thing or the scene.
“No. Neither.”
“It's the same type of device that someone tried to use on you.”
The damage did look like she had seen with her car.
She nodded. “But what's that explosively formed thing that you were talking about?”
“Projectile. It's a type of shaped charge. Conventional shaped charges are very good at penetrating armor. The problem is that they have to be in contact with it. Tank designers, knowing this, have come up with protection that will break apart the charge before it comes in contact with the armor itself — it's called reactive armor. The weapon's designers have come up with an alternative, by designing the charges so they can be at a distance from the target — where reactive armor won't work and what penetrates the armor is a projectile of the base metal used to construct the device — typically copper in cheap devices where size doesn't matter. It throws this plug out towards the target at about one kilometer a second.
“What this means is that a device that costs a couple of hundred bucks can destroy a $20 million dollar M-1 Abrams Main Battle Tank from across the road.”
Her head was swimming — how did all this matter?
“In your case,” gesturing towards the TV which now was displaying a commercial for feminine deodorant, “and that of your unfortunate accountant, the charge can be placed in the trunk of a vehicle and will blow out the front window and anyone unfortunate enough to set off the device.”
He looked into her eyes. “We need to get the information that Patrick had set aside for you. These people are very sophisticated, and very good at what they do. The sooner we find out who is pulling the strings, the quicker we can shut it down.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I'm trying to figure that out. When I was in the assassination business, there was a secret organization called the 'Black Hand.' It was named after a group of assassins founded in Serbia in 1910. While spreading murder and mayhem throughout that part of the world, they were the people responsible for the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand and, by the way, starting World War I.
“I had been approached about joining the new organization and instead picked retirement. There are five of them, each specializing in a certain way of killing.”
He held up his hand with one finger up. “We've probably seen the work of the fire guy in the death of the building inspector.”
Another finger went up. “The explosive guy almost got you and probably killed your accountant.”
Finger number three went up, “There is someone, probably a woman, who kills with poison.”
What the hell had she gotten into?
He must have seen her momentary distraction, because he put up a fourth finger and said, “Pay attention, please. The fourth person kills via accidents of various sorts, including faked muggings.”
“I don't see how this affects me…”
Putting his thumb up in the air, he said, “Because I want you to be bait for the fifth assassination, a sniper.”
Chapter 11
Jill Ringler, the Third Finger of the Black Hand, started reeling in her prey.
A Denver City Councilman, his health circumstances made completing her assignment that much more difficult — she had already poisoned the City Council coffee pot with thallium sulphate, but because of his health, he couldn't drink coffee. Some of his fellow council members may survive, but they would be bald and have the potential of major organ failure for the rest of their lives.
Phil Van Wyk, her target, was an insulin-dependent diabetic who needed to inject himself at least twice a day. His diabetes was probably a result of his obesity.
The poison she had selected was one of her favorites — death was instantaneous and undetectable — Saxitoxin.
Yes, it was a major pain in the ass to create, raising butter clams and culturing them with Alexandrium minutum, a dinoflagellate — a type of marine plankton. Then boiling the poison from the gastric tract of the butter clams and concentrating it to the level that she liked to work with. It had the advantage of being one hell of a great poison — she had read that one gram was enough to kill a million people. The bad news was that she couldn't just poke him in the arm with it in public as he would die within minutes — she wanted to be somewhere else when the body was found.
So she had passed him a note on his way to the current council meeting, held every Monday night at 5:30 p.m., unless it was a major holiday. She had expressed an interest in meeting with him to discuss something of major importance to him and his constituents. Of course, she was appropriately dressed for her flirtatious invitation — in a low cut dress that showed off her assets appropriately. A blonde wig and a smattering of makeup would help confuse any investigation into what would look like a death by natural causes.