He explained what he figured might have happened. The plan had been to wait for a while to make sure that the backup team, if there was one, had cleared out before going to where Leo figured the sniper had been hiding, and then looking for clues as to who had sent him. While Leo hadn't expected to find anything — when he had worked, it had been without any ID, personal belongings or anything. His last job, he had been instructed to wear a Tyvek suit and in the urban heat, it had been brutal. But there would have been no traces of hair or fibers for anyone to find even if they had been able to discover the shooting site.
Now, there was more emphasis on getting to the shooting site and seeing if there was anything that could help them find out who was trying to kill Jackie.
He drove around to the front of the building. Surprisingly, there were no police.
“Wonder why the cops aren't here?”
Jackie shrugged, “It's Saturday. Probably no one around to hear any shots.”
He pointed out the window into which he had shot. There were no bullet holes, but it was the only one of three windows on that side of the building that was open.
“How do you want to do this?” he asked.
“There isn't a back door, just a loading dock, which will be too loud to get open and be too obvious. If we go in the front door, and are caught, we might very well be able to make it look like we are supposed to be there.”
“How?
“Human engineering. Do it all the time. You look and act like you are supposed to be someplace, you generally get left alone.”
There was a loud whoosh. Flames shot from the window where the sniper or remote sniper had been hiding.
Chapter 14
Jackie knew that there was going to be no way they would get any information now that what Leo had suspected was the remote sniper was on fire. She would have loved to have gotten a very close look at the computers running such a system. Mostly, it was because she wanted to find out who was trying to kill her, but also because she was curious about all things mechanical and electronic.
“Thermite,” Leo muttered, putting the truck into gear.
“What?”
“The flames look like they are from thermite — a composition of metal powder and a metal oxide that produces an aluminothermic reaction.”
“I know what thermite is. How can you tell that's what caused the fire?” God, he acted like she was so stupid sometimes. She had played with it in college, upping the recipe that she had seen demonstrated in chemistry class up the point where it melted a hole in the concrete deck where she had been living at the time. The landlord had been pissed, but she had talked him out of calling the cops.
Leo said, “From the color of the flame and the sparks. I think it's from an iron oxide based version. Quite effective, but it's a bitch to light. I finally had to switch mixtures to get reliable ignition, duplicating the recipe used in military thermite, with my own ignition system.”
“You played with thermite?”
“Heck yes. A couple of hundred bucks spent on eBay can yield wonderful and interesting experiments. It also has some wonderful properties, like being able to melt tooth enamel, making identification of a body that much more difficult.”
“And you've used it for this?”
Pause. “Yes. The man who was sent to either recruit or kill me had such a treatment done to him.”
She noted that he said this flatly, like he was describing going out the grocery store for a gallon of milk. Leo sounded like a geek, concealed the body of a god under loose clothing and was a stone cold killer. It made her wonder about what really drove him. Though she still wouldn't want to get in the way of anything that he wanted.
A fire engine screamed past them going towards the fire.
Leo said, “I hope they don't try and put water on that fire, otherwise they will be in a world of hurt. It could cause an explosion when the oxygen and hydrogen…”
“Are liberated explosively,” she interrupted. “I've played with it before and am familiar with how it works.”
“Then you might be interested to know that there is about eight pounds of the stuff secreted in various places in this vehicle.”
“What?”
Leo stopped at a red light. Another fire engine roared past them, its sirens screaming in the morning air.
“All I ever wanted was to be left alone. I'd done what I'd been paid to do and hoped that they'd forgotten about me. But I knew that someday they would come looking for me and it would come down to my being able to convince them that it was probably a better idea to leave me alone.”
“Is that why you are helping me?”
“Yes.”
Leo consulted a map, and then pulled onto the highway.
“Where are we going?”
“I need some open space to think. Hell, a city park will do, but the bigger the area, the better.”
“Why?”
“It's just the way that I am. I live twenty minutes from the desert and have grown used to it as a place to figure things out.”
They drove in silence for a while.
“Did you find what you were looking for in Patrick Lackey's desk?” Leo asked.
She had completely forgotten about why they had taken the risk of going back to her business.
Pulling out the sheath of papers, she quickly read them out loud to Leo.
When she was done, he said, “So, it looks like most of the money that had been in the company ended up in one place. What was the name of it?”
She found the notation and said, “A company called, 'Alamut Enterprises.'“
“Excuse me?”
“What?”
“Say that again.”
“Alamut Enterprises.”
Leo chuckled. “No sense in being obvious about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Okay, who is considered the first computer programmer?”
“That's easy, Ada Lovelace. She wrote software for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. Why do you ask?”
“It's like Ada Lovelace being part of who you are; any student of the history of political assassination knows that Alamut means ‘Eagle's Nest.’ It's the name of the fortress from which the original Persian assassins in 1090 originated. A bunch of real hardcore killers led by a guy by the name of al-Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah. They terrified the ancient Muslim world with their assassinations. Marco Polo wrote about them when he came through that area, noting that they used hashish before going on their assignments. From where we probably got the word assassin — ashishin.
“Anyway, lots of mysterious gobbledygook hidden in the mists of time. Probably like naming your hacking company Hackers Incorporated.”
“Well, there are two types of hackers, 'Black Hats' who maliciously destroy computer systems, and 'White Hats' who enjoy learning about computers, taking them apart, fiddling with them, finding holes in security, all for the greater good.”
Leo nodded, “I wondered where the name of your company came from. There wouldn't happen to be an address or something similar in that file?”
She looked through it again, “Nope. Which is what I would expect out of Patrick. He wanted to know where the money went, and was probably satisfied when he found the account numbers.”
“Is there any way you can find out an address from an account number?”
“Not that I am aware of. Remember, I wrote software for banks. They may not be on the cutting edge of computer technology, but they have defense in depth. Secure Socket Layer, or SSL, encrypts everything in their network and outside to the Internet. They have firewalls like you can't believe — set to the standards set by the National Computer Security Association which is run by a bunch of people from the NSA. Yes, it is possible to breach their security, but it's damn hard and you have to be awful lucky.”