Van Wyk slid out of the booth, still clutching the documents in his sweaty hands.
She knew that he was going to make some phone calls to see if she was legit. This wouldn't be a problem as she had a fully licensed and respectable corporation set up in friendly Delaware that, while looking more than legit at first glance, had layers upon layers of concealment as to the true purpose and ownership. A phone call or two, no matter to whom, wouldn't knock anything loose that she couldn't deal with.
Under the pretense of pouring more wine into his glass, she emptied the vial of Saxitoxin into his glass. Another tasteless, odorless and generally difficult to diagnose poison.
She added some more wine to her glass and took a sip. Serendipitously, she wiped down the surfaces of the table that she had touched with a small, flesh-colored cloth. She'd clean her glass and the bottle before leaving.
Van Wyk came back, a greedy smile on his face.
Settling down, he took a long swallow of his wine and said, “So, what's it worth to you for this process to all go smoothly?”
She shrugged. Very shortly, he was going to start feeling the effects of the poison and she wanted to get out of here before that happened.
The chirping of a new text message on her Blackberry saved her, breaking the conversation.
“Excuse me a second.”
She had another job. Anyway, it was time to get this resolved.
“I'm sorry, I have to go, it's an emergency.”
The look of disappointment on his face was something she would remember for a long while — maybe fifteen minutes.
“Give me your card, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.”
He dug out a card and wrote another number on it. Handing it to her, he said, “That's my private cell. Don't hesitate to call me day or night.”
Yeah, all I'm gonna need is a Ouija Board to be able to do that.
“Thanks. I'm so sorry about this. I was so looking forward to our discussing this further.”
And he was going to have to pony up for the wine.
Taking another sip of wine, he made a face.
“Something wrong?” She asked. The poison was working as expected.
“No.”
She made a point of taking another sip of her wine, leaning down so that he could see her cleavage, and wiping down her glass. Yes, there were probably traces of something that could be traced, but it wouldn't lead to anywhere.
Shaking his wet, meaty hand, she gathered up her papers, put them back into her briefcase and made her way out of the bar. She had an appointment with a member of the Colorado House of Representatives.
Leo wasn't happy about having to use Jackie as sniper bait, but was impressed with her solution to the problem. She would sneak into the building using a back entrance that wasn't on any of the blueprints — Nathan had it built as part of his paranoia. It looked like a broom closet in a storage room in the business behind White Hat Enterprises, but if you pressed on a panel, it would open a door leading into Nathan's office.
She planned to hook up a web camera, tie it into a monitor or projector and then move that around under Leo's direction in front of the windows. Hopefully, the sniper would take a shot at the monitor, missing her completely. He planned to take out the sniper. It was a difficult project. His training had focused on being a sniper, not the counter-sniper role. But he'd been reading and studying for years on the subject, besides being one hell of a shot with top notch equipment, so he figured on having better than even odds.
They had checked out of the room that Leo had rented under the name of the guy who tried to kill him. They drove for a while and found a hot sheet hotel and rented a room. Both of them got a little rest by sleeping on the floor, not being willing to trust the beds or strange smelling sheets.
After breakfasting at a fast food restaurant, Leo found a secluded parking lot where he could get ready to work.
He dug out ten of his specially loaded rounds of ammunition. He made sure his dope sheet was securely taped to the stock of the rifle, not that he would need it as he knew the trajectory of his ammunition like he knew his right hand. If there was a thirty-five mile an hour gusting wind, in seventy-six percent humidity and with an ambient air temperature of eighty-two degrees, at a range of five hundred yards, he would be able to take the shot without thinking about it.
This is the kind of thing that he relished, him against another person. Yes, there was that sometimes in the coin business while you were trying to buy or sell coins for the right price, but here the stakes were of a magnitude higher.
He cleaned the lenses of his spotting scope, checked the batteries of his laser range finder and his Kestrel wind and humidity gauge. After setting the gear out that he would need, he carefully packed everything else away.
Where he was sitting, on the roof of a building perpendicular to Jackie's business, wasn't the best place to be, but given the choices, it was the only option. He was far enough back that he wouldn't be seen, but he still had a decent field of view of where, if there was one, a sniper could take a shot at Jackie. If it was a more up close and personal hit, he could take out the assassin before they got too close.
It had been hell lugging all of his equipment up to the roof, using a ladder purchased at a hardware store. It was laying next to the roof, hidden from view on the other side of the building he was currently hiding on.
The only problem would be aerial observation. Luckily, where Jackie had her business was within a mile or so of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal — which was now basically a wildlife preserve — so hopefully no one would have much of an excuse to fly over his position. If so, he was prepared to duck into an air conditioner unit on top of the building — he had taken off an access panel and there was more than enough room in the industrial-sized device for him and all of his equipment.
He had considered that someone might have booby trapped the office, with a bomb or fire, but beyond some detailed instructions to Jackie, he couldn't protect her for very long. The idea was that she would sneak in, get the information that the accountant had set aside for her, and then set up as bait for a half an hour or so. If nothing happened, she would sneak back out and meet him behind the building.
They would communicate via portable radios that Leo had purchased at a local Radio Shack. But, because he was afraid of being tracked and of breaking his concentration when he was trying to take a shot, communication would be kept to a bare minimum.
Jackie was silent on the drive to the office.
When he pulled up, he put the truck in park. He grasped her hand and said, “Good luck.”
She looked him in the eye and said, “If you're good enough, you don't need luck. But the same to you.”
He watched her walk towards the building and then put the truck into drive. It was time to go hunting.
Chapter 12
FBI Agent Jeff Silver wasn't having a good day. He had several investigations going, including a bank robbery ring that had hit five banks in the past two weeks. The robbers had a sense of humor, wearing Ronald Reagan masks, and were very well organized. They were polite, appeared to male, but other than that, no one had much of an idea as to who they may be. He suspected that it was a roving band that would hit a city for a couple of weeks and then disappear, only to pop up again in some other part of the country.
Then he had the mystery man found in the trunk of the car. The device used to conceal the crime with fire was a type of super thermite. It appeared to be based on military Thermate-TH3 with a couple of interesting variations. Conventional thermite was hard to reliably ignite; the Thermate-TH3, while easier to light, was still difficult. The arsonist had tweaked the recipe to make it more stable, longer lasting and lowering the ignition temperature.