And now he was back in the game, from the other end — as a target. He hoped that he would survive.
Chapter 4
Unlocking Nathan's office door, Jackie's heart formed a lump in her throat. She stared at the government surplus desk expecting to see him perched behind it. She hadn't opened this door since they'd buried him. Nathan had two offices, one for meeting clients that was all oak and spotless. Then there was this working office which was piled high with computer printouts, notes and a high-end computer system with three monitors. Metal shelves, some bent and twisted with the weight of software manuals and obsolete computer hardware, ran along one side of the wall. Behind Nathan's desk was a work bench with his oscilloscope, meters and his well-used soldering station. This was the office where she and Nathan had spent countless hours fighting for their company's survival, coming up with wild-ass ideas — some of which worked, some that didn't.
They'd had some serious shouting sessions in this office — the result of two creative people hashing out ideas and plans. But it had all worked out.
She walked around the end of the desk, but couldn't find it in herself to sit in Nathan's battered rolling chair. Instead, moving his chair out from behind it, Jackie pushed her old chair behind it.
Settling in behind his desk, she realized she didn't know where to start. Nathan obviously didn't believe in a neat and tidy work area, yet the man could have laid his hand on any particular item without searching. But move a computer printout one inch to the left and he would have to spend days searching for it.
“It's my system and I know where everything is. Besides, a neat and tidy workplace is the sure sign of a disorganized mind,” Nathan would say. God she missed him so.
Just for a point to start, she began opening desk drawers. The center one was full of pens and electronic junk. The rightmost drawers contained files on past projects and proposals.
The left bottom drawer was locked. This was strange — Nathan never locked anything. She had locked Nathan's office after his death and the key had barely worked, probably from disuse.
She'd save the locked drawer for later. She spent the next three hours searching the office and found nothing of interest. Piles of stuff that should be thrown out, but nothing much that could answer any of her questions.
It would all have to be dealt with, but Jackie couldn't find it in herself to deal with it right now.
The computer revealed nothing. All of Nathan's working files were stored on the central server and the computer hard drive had been wiped just like the DVD had been.
“Nathan, what are you hiding?” she asked the empty air.
She returned her attention to the locked drawer, which she knew she could open, but the challenge was what she liked — the hacker ethos — if it was locked, unlock it, be it software, an electronic device or even a locked drawer.
She went back to her office and got her lock pick set. She made her first set at the tender age of fourteen, but this one was top of the line with the particular tools she favored, each in several sizes. Most women bought themselves jewelry, a fashionable purse, shoes or a new outfit when they came into money. Jackie had bought herself a customized set of lock picks with pink mother of pearl handles.
Moving Nathan's work table lamp around so she could see, she got down on her knees and started working. It was a lock type that she hadn't seen before and she couldn't crack the damn thing — the pick kept slipping off the pins. Several attempts only lead to more frustration.
Settling back, she said, “What was so important for you to lock up, Nathan?”
Taking a deep breath, letting part of it out, she tried again and finally the last tumbler clicked into place. She pushed on the tension bar and the lock popped open. Pulling the drawer open, she couldn't believe what she saw.
Matthew Tudor specialized in killing with fire. He'd been doing it for twenty-plus years and was very good at making flames do his bidding. Gasoline and other such petroleum-based accelerants were for amateurs. Matthew had developed virtually undetectable methods of starting fires that also made them appear to be caused by something else entirely. It helped that he had a PhD in chemistry. Neither industry nor academia paid what he earned in doing one or two 'jobs' a year, and it gave him time to play with his love and fascination, chemistry. He owned quite a chunk of property in middle Texas and had a lab rivaling that of any university.
Matthew was also a member of The Black Hand, an organization of killers which specialized in a particular method of murder. After his twentieth job, he had been invited to join the group, which included a variety of specialists in poisons, explosives, faking accidents and a sniper. Originally, there had been ten members, now there were five — the nature of the business taking a heavy toll on the members.
He'd been busy at work in his lab on the secrets of a new untraceable, alcohol-based accelerant when his Blackberry buzzed, signaling a new message. The company he worked for had given him the Blackberry, and he had been instructed to only use it for dealings with them and no one else.
Setting down a bubbling beaker, he checked the message and saw he had a burn job in Denver. It even specified how it was to be done — automobile immolation — his specialty.
The happiest Leo felt was with his cheek against a rifle stock, a paper target off in the distance. This was when he transcended the science of rifle shooting and could take it into the realm of art. So many factors were behind each shot: wind, temperature, humidity, range and even the spin of the earth. Even if you used the best equipment and the finest components for building ammunition constructed to inhuman tolerances, and your rifle and scope were as perfect as anything constructed by man, firing the rifle still required luck to hit the target where you aimed.
He always tried for the perfect shot every time, knowing he would never attain it. He didn't know if he could do this sitting around waiting for someone else to kill another person.
His last perfect shot was at well over twelve hundred yards. Peru. He could still taste the gusty breeze, the heaviness of the humidity. He could barely pick out the target in the scope for the mirage, but his spotter, a pudgy former Marine who really needed to learn to shut the fuck up about all the girls he'd had sex with, called the scope settings out in a calm, cool voice.
The cross hairs danced around the target to the beat of his pulse. Leo took a deep breath, let half of it out. He went to that deep inside place where nothing else mattered except the feel of the rifle embraced by his body, the scope, the target and the trigger. The sight settled onto the target.
As he took the slack off the trigger, Leo was surprised when the rifle fired.
His spotter said, “Hit.”
He knew it was the best shot he had ever taken. Since then, he had tried, but never succeeded, in finding that same feeling. Maybe it would come, but he wasn't sure.
A movement by Jackie's car snapped him from his daydreaming. It was a man opening the trunk. He put something inside and quickly closed it. What the hell was going on?
Jim Fox walked quickly away from where he had placed the car bomb. As a specialist in explosives and a member of the Black Hand, he knew that the Explosively Formed Penetrator (EFP) he had placed in the target's car was more than enough of a device to do the job. First developed in World War II, and most recently used in Iraq for particularly devastating IEDs, it had the ability to take out an Abrams main battle tank from thirty yards away. Instead of being close to the subject like a conventional shaped charge, the target could be some distance from the charge itself. He'd read somewhere that an EFP eight inches in diameter threw a seven pound copper slug at two thousand meters a second. Bypassing the Mercedes' security system to place it had been simple. He used a device he had bought from an Israeli company. It sniffed the remote codes when the target had driven up in the morning using the remote to lock the car.