Car alarms blared and he figured that window repair companies would be making good money tomorrow fixing shattered panes of glass.
Smiling, he put his rented van into gear and pulled onto the street. He needed a break and was going to drive for a couple of hours, find a hotel and pass out — blowing up buildings was very hard work.
Jackie found a cheap laptop at a pawn shop. A two-year-old IBM Thinkpad. It had a CD burner and a decent amount of memory along with a built-in wireless card. Not bad for fifty bucks. She saw the amount of cash she was carrying was rapidly diminishing. It was sort of like the old days when she had been a college student, Ramen noodles or more computer equipment. Rather than be worried, she felt liberated. It seemed as though the last couple of years with Nathan she had been just marking time. Now, there was a different taste to the air, and everything looked brighter.
The next stop was a book store where she found a cheap magazine that had a Linux disk in it. It wasn't the variation that she wanted, but it would do in a pinch. She hated all Microsoft products with a passion — slow, inefficient, expensive, buggy and vulnerable. She felt, like a lot of hackers, that the NSA had hooks of various sorts into Microsoft products — and while unable to find the code for herself, it was another reason to dump their products and replace them with something else.
Since it was dark, she figured the library would be closed, and she was sick of triple espressos, so she hopped on a bus heading towards the University of Denver along with a trio of drunken college students. She got off the bus with them and followed them back to their dorm.
One of them was nice enough to hold the door open for her, so she smiled and said, “Thanks.”
The girls staggered off towards an elevator. She watched them go and then went and found the lounge. It was empty. Soda and snack machines glowed softly.
Settling down in a corner, she booted up the Linux disk and started setting up the computer so she could do some serious work.
Jill had just finished offing her latest target and was looking forward to getting out of Dodge. But her Blackberry buzzed again.
“Shit!”
She pulled the rented BMW to the side of the road and checked the message.
It was a very high priority target, and it paid quite a bonus if she pulled it off. There was a strange request added onto the file — not something that she normally did, but the bonus if she pulled it off would make the few minutes it would take to do worth it.
She could just make it, but she needed to stop by a pharmacy to stock up on a few things before doing the job.
Turning the car around, she headed back into Denver.
Leo had no idea as to why he had been released, and whatever strings had been pulled in the background were of some interest, but probably not anything that would make a difference in his short-term future.
He calculated that he had been in custody for four hours, enough time to wire everything in his possession for sound and video. What he was most worried about was that his rifle had been fucked with. No telling what the ham-handed FBI agents had been doing with what he considered an essential tool for his survival.
With nothing else to do, he drove back to the hotel room that he had rented with Jackie. It was like it was a lifetime ago that they had been together and he missed her, but that couldn't get in the way of the mission.
He also missed the coin store. The heart pounding sensation of having bullets zip past your head was, again, old and he wouldn't have any problem in not experiencing that again.
Even before approaching the hotel, he pulled off and examined the surrounding area with his binoculars. There were a dozen places a sniper could be placed to hit him. He wouldn't even hear the sound of the bullet before it smashed into him from some unseen distance.
For almost an hour, he sat and watched. Nothing moved at any of the sites he had picked out.
He parked the truck in the lot across the street from the hotel. If there was someone hiding in wait, he could minimize his exposure.
Picking up Jackie's laptop case, he tossed it over his shoulder. At the back of the truck, he unloaded his rife and all of his gunsmithing equipment. He had a long night ahead of him and was going to tear the rifle down to the smallest screw and spring to see if it had been messed with.
He pulled his hat down to conceal his features and made sure that he walked with a pronounced limp. It was cheap, easy and might save his life. No matter, the area between his shoulder blades itched as though there was someone sighting in on him.
Holding the key in his hand, he walked one door past where his room was. He made like he was fumbling with the key, then quickly moved back to the correct room, unlocked the door and pushed the door open.
There was a beautiful woman sitting on the bed and it wasn't Jackie.
Allan Wells wasn't finding his rhythm. He'd missed both his targets. He didn't want to even check his Blackberry as he knew the news wouldn't be good. Years ago when he'd been recruited, he had heard stories about company employees that had outlived their usefulness and were either sent on a very well disguised suicide mission or used as training targets for the next generation of assassins. In this business, there were always youngsters wanting to move into the major leagues by taking out a dinosaur. The pay was awesome, you generally only had to do one or two jobs a year to stay quite well off, but the retirement package left a great deal to be desired.
What was going to be his next step?
The only way that he could see a positive outcome for him was to complete his assignment — take out the FBI agent and Leo Marston. But how to do that?
He mentally paged through the file. The FBI had picked up Leo at a hotel and he had seen with his own eyes that Leo for some reason had been released.
Leo wasn't from this area, so he had been staying at a local hotel. That might be a great place to get a shot at him — if he hurried.
Jim Fox, the Second Finger of the Black Hand, was ready to get out of town. Lots of jobs in the same geographic area made him nervous. He was used to only doing a couple of car bombings a year and they were outside the country. Not that Denver wasn't pleasant enough, and he'd made one hell of a lot of money in the last week, but paranoia was an important trait in a professional killer — it had saved his life on more than one occasion.
He'd complete this final job and then turn off his Blackberry until he was ready to work again.
There was something familiar about the picture, even with the two-inch screen of the Blackberry. Not that it mattered. He checked the vehicle information and probable locations for where it could be located and made a plan. His supplies had been reduced down to one Explosively Formed Penetrator and the type of vehicle would be perfect for using it.
As always, he looked at the name last. Still no recognition, not that it mattered. The target's name was Leo Marston.
Putting the Blackberry away, he started assembling the parts of the EFP.
Chapter 27
Leo's hand moved without conscious thought. His hand was empty and then it held his gun.
Good thing he had checked to see if it was loaded.
The woman he pointed it at was sitting in the one chair in the room.
She was dressed in a short skirt which showed off her shapely crossed legs. A blouse with the first three buttons undone revealed that the top was probably at least as good as the bottom half. Startlingly green eyes and smooth features made her pretty, but not stunning. Leo figured that walking past her on the street would warrant a second look, but she wasn't pretty enough to justify following her to make an excuse to talk to her. Not that she was Leo's type anyway.