Campbell knew the man connected to the barrel nestled into his skin played for keeps. His encounter with the cleaning staff had made him careless. It wasn’t until now that he truly appreciated his decision to rush the housekeeper out of the room. He slowly reached for the bottle of Windex the woman had left on the dresser, and knew he needed to make this count. Otherwise, it would end up being his farewell performance.
“I…I…I’m the manager for hotel housekeeping,” Campbell said, doing his best to sound nervous. “She did a good job in the bathroom…and…and with making up the bed. Five points on both.”
He was impressed with himself. He’d never made his voice crack like that before, and he thought the bullshit he’d come up with was pretty convincing. He paused for effect before adding some icing to the cake.
“It’s our top score,” he added. “I…I just needed to check that the windows were cleaned. We only do that once a week. On Saturdays.”
The Russian stopped applying pressure with his gun, but Campbell could tell he was still being sized up. He knew his physical presence would be tough for the assassin to write off. He could sense the doubt, so he needed to add credibility to his story.
He made his hand shake just enough to disrupt the blue liquid in the bottle he was holding and said, “M-my staff should still be just outside. In the hallway. With their cart.”
“Turn around very slowly. Keep your hands where I can see them,” Petrov said.
He followed the Russian’s direction and slowly turned counterclockwise toward the assassin. Campbell wore a twisted facial expression, like he’d just bitten into a sour grape. His awkward appearance served its purpose. He noticed a change in the Russian’s eyes. Some of the intensity had faded, and he looked somewhat amused. He knew this would be his only chance.
He timed squirting a stream of Windex into the assassin’s face perfectly. As the liquid made contact with Petrov’s eyes, he landed a well-placed blow to dislodge his weapon. Campbell immediately followed it up with a leg sweep and strike to the head that sent the assassin face first to the ground. He looked down at the Russian, who was sprawled out on the ground. He had landed next to his MP-443 Grach pistol. Campbell quickly delivered a brutal stomp to the back of Petrov’s neck that stopped his motion toward the gun.
Campbell looked down with satisfaction as blood began to stain the carpet below the Russian’s face. He drew his weapon from its holster and surveyed the room. It was protocol to deliver an insurance bullet to the back of the head, but before he could squeeze off a round, his attention was drawn to the pair of bloodshot eyes staring back at him from the base of the room’s full-length mirror.
Petrov flipped over like a displaced fish and sprung to life, wildly pumping rounds in the direction of his attacker. The Russian struggled to get to his feet and jumped backwards as Campbell unloaded several rounds into his chest. The assassin slammed violently into the wall behind him, and blood from the back of his head painted a trail as he slid against it clumsily to the floor.
Campbell’s chest was pounding, his ears ringing, when he registered the vacant look in the Russian’s eyes. He stashed his weapon and bolted out of the room. He quickly made his way through the chaos that had ensued in the lobby from the gunfight. The concierge tried to stop him to see if he was okay, and he answered with a sharp elbow, the man unconscious before he hit the tiled floor. He headed to his car and sped out of the parking lot to the rising sound of sirens.
Chapter 23
He was heading back to his hotel when his handler dropped the bomb.
“Okay, Heckler, let’s hear the good news,” Trent Turner said.
“Sure. The kid who was with Soller when he was killed, Francis Millar, he reached out to our s4feT account in one of the hacker forums online.”
Turner’s brow creased. Once The Shop realized organized crime had begun using strong-arm recruiting practices on hackers, it had created the account so they would have a way to contact them for help. Technology had become a lucrative business, and the safety account represented a lifeline for those who found themselves in over their heads. The Shop offered them protection, a way out, and the hackers provided them with a treasure trove of information in return.
“Really? Has the FBI released his name yet?” Turner asked. “Or is he still labeled as the unidentified passenger?”
“No, they haven’t put it out there. As far as I can tell, besides the bureau, we’re the only ones who know his identity at this point.”
“So how did it go down?”
“He’s scared to death,” Heckler said. “They dug up what they could on him. Apparently he’s from a poor family and earned himself a scholarship to the University of Maryland. He met the Soller kid there. The university’s database has them listed in the same class. He’s like you — a computer freakin’ genius.”
Turner laughed. “So based on what the analysts said, the job was beyond Soller’s capabilities. Are you thinking he brought in Millar to help?”
“Exactly. He wanted to learn,” Heckler reasoned. “The analysts were thinking along those lines. It makes sense to me, but I’m operational. I try to stay out of that technology crap.”
Turner laughed, knowing that would be the case, and asked, “Were the two of them friends before the job?” He wasn’t sure whether to be concerned about the fact that the FBI hadn’t released Francis Millar’s name as someone they were looking to question. The bureau had to know they were friends at this point, so the skeptic in him thought it could mean something significant.
“I don’t know when they became friends. I’ll have them check into that.”
“Okay, great.”
“I’m not sure how valuable this is, but the Millar kid’s hacker name is ‘Slash Etc.,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean. It brought a pretty big reaction from the analysts.”
Turner’s raised his brow. “Heckler, did you say Slash Echo Tango Charlie?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” he confirmed.
“You would pronounce it Etzy,” he said. “It’s an inside thing only us computer geeks would understand.” Heckler laughed, and Trent’s tone turned serious. “Wow, this guy is incredibly smart. I know quite a bit about him, at least as far as his online persona goes. I’m not sure if he’s still a part of The Collective after the bullshit operations it’s done as of late.” Turner was referring to several actions that had been carried out in the name of the group where an attack had been leveled on a target based on false information. “He’s been on the scene for five, maybe six years, and he’s always been a white-hat guy. The Collective has stepped into some serious gray areas over the past year, and he wanted no part of that.”
“So he’s one of the good kids then?”
“Yeah, you could say that,” Turner said. He was impressed that Heckler knew the difference between white- and black-hat hackers. “He’s done some impressive work on botnets, zero-day vulnerabilities. Shit, he should have a scholarship to MIT,” he said frankly. This was the sort of break they needed. “So when can I pick him up?”
“He hasn’t gotten back to me with any details on an RV yet. I gave him a number where he can reach me. All he said, aside from wanting to come in, was that there is something big going on. He stressed that it was really big, and it was going down soon. He needed help and stated the obvious: people are trying to kill him.”
“Welcome to the club,” Trent joked. “If he’s saying it’s big, you need to have the guys at The Shop work on this around the clock.”
The development was a welcome distraction from his internal chaos, and he knew it was something that would help him get his head on straight.