He armed the device remotely with a remote key fob. The next major movement of the vehicle, say, a car door slamming, would set the device off and send a jet of white-hot plasma through the back seat, through the driver’s seat and out the front window.
It was a relatively easy job and would pay decently. He was on his way out of town as he did not want to be in the area when this much explosive went off. He knew, from twenty years in the murder business, that it would do the job. He'd only missed his target once before, and that was one hell of a long time ago. It had been in Columbia. It was only bad luck and timing that the car had been stolen before the target had gotten in it. Those days, he used explosives tied directly into the starter system. Four pounds of Semtex had practically blown the car thief into low orbit. Once he missed, it wasn't his problem anymore. He had wired the car — that it had taken out the wrong person was beyond his control or caring.
He walked around the block to where his rental car was parked, got in it and drove off into the early afternoon sun. He still had one more device to set before he left town.
Jackie found a gun in Nathan's drawer. It was shiny blue and big. She didn't know a damn thing about guns, having no interest in them one way or the other, but she knew a gun when she saw one. While Nathan had been a strict Constitutionalist, he never talked about the Second Amendment, and had expressed disdain at what he called “NRA nitwits” whenever the subject had come up in casual conversation.
He never mentioned any interest in guns at all. In fact, he had shown complete aversion to them when the subject had come up at a party several years ago.
She carefully pulled the gun out and set it on the desk. There was a piece of paper in the bottom of the drawer.
In Nathan's distinctive scrawl, it simply said, “Jackie, if you find this, I'm dead and you may need it. Love, Nathan.”
A cold chill coursed through her body. Why the hell would she need it?
She found a computer printout and wrapped the gun in it, picked up her lock picks and returned to her office, her thoughts and feelings completely chaotic.
Leo started his truck and tried to follow the man who had put something into Jackie's car. The man ducked around the corner and was gone before he could see if he got into a vehicle. There was something familiar about the man — as though he had seen him many years ago but he couldn't place him.
Allan Wells was having problems with a tracking servo. The thing kept moving just six micrometers out of time as it cycled. To most people who used servos — robotics hobbyists — that distance wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things. For especially precise applications such as remote surgery, it might make a difference, but Allan's need for it transcended even that — as a remotely controlled sniper rifle.
He'd started out adapting the military remote gun platforms but discovered that they were built to very loose tolerances. Unacceptable for him, which was understandable as they were designed to hold machine guns and grenade launchers. These platforms were also built for battlefield conditions and needed to work while in snow, mud, fog and rain and survive ham-fisted maintenance personnel.
The device sitting in front of him had multiple targeting lasers, a high-speed data link, GPS and could be tied into remote humidity and wind sensors. All Allen needed to do, if he could get this damn servo working right, was to sit back, miles from his target if necessary, and wait for the victim to walk into the cross hairs and it would all be over.
Settling back, he recalled the first time that he looked at his creation, brightly polished aircraft-grade aluminum carved by a CNC machine to his exact specifications. It was a meter square, a box frame that would support a single shot precision rifle, the servos for aiming and room for a sophisticated compact computer with a sensor array.
Allan had been a competitive-level rifle shooter up until a little over nine years ago when he had been recruited by a shadowy company to snipe people who needed it. The job wasn't hard and paid very well, so he had been able to complete his degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering.
Though he wasn't formally a competitive-level shooter any more, he still did bench rest shooting to keep his skills up. At a match, he saw an Unlimited Class rail gun rifle that was simply a heavy metal plate, a rifle action with a scope and a trigger. It almost completely removed human involvement from the equation of shooting as all the shooter had to do was set up the shot on the target and caress the trigger.
It was perfect. Add some servos, electronics, a remote camera and now there was a simple way to kill people from long distance and not even be in the same zip code. Naturally, there were developmental issues, but Allan threw his entire intellect into the project, and with some unconventional uses of various electronics, was able to persevere.
The device had debuted seven years ago to a resounding success hitting a target at two hundred fifty yards right under the eyes of a close protection team. They had been looking for human threats, not a cleverly built robot rifle concealed in a fake air conditioner.
The newest version could hit a target consistently out to six hundred yards. And if he could get the damn servos to track better, he would be able to push that out much further.
The problem with range came from blending sensor readings, like humidity, temperature, wind speed and direction, with ballistic tables. The software program was complex and initially had a lot of bugs — tying analog sensors to a digital computer was a royal pain as they didn't ever want to play nice with each other.
Then there was the remote video setup. The bandwidth required to be able to transmit high enough resolution with a decent refresh rate was enormous. People would notice if they couldn't watch their professional wrestling because of a powerful radio transmitter sitting twenty feet from their house.
The advent of wireless Internet had helped ease this problem somewhat along with high-speed video compression, although it took a more powerful computer system to rewrite large sections of code.
Allan settled back in his chair and wondered how to deal with his servo problem. Maybe he should check into the servos used for robotic surgery but they were expensive as hell.
His Blackberry buzzed. He glanced at it. A job. That was a problem in being a member of the Black Hand, the necessity to work. But the job should pay for the new servos. Having a six-hundred-yard range was going to have to do.
Chapter 5
Jackie went back to her office. Despite all that was going on, she had an appointment to get her car looked at. The Mercedes SLK was a gift from Nathan after a particularly profitable sales quarter. She would have never bought herself such an extravagant vehicle and had been happy with her 1985 VW Rabbit. But recently, the SLK had been running very rough. Research on the Internet turned up that it might be a bad wiring harness. Since obtaining an appointment at the rather exclusive Mercedes dealership was about as difficult as winning the lottery two drawings in a row, there wasn't any point in trying to reschedule.
She packed up her laptop, thinking she might as well get some work done — she'd already hacked the dealership's wireless network but had to be careful about what she accessed as she didn't want their firewall shutting her down.