Kill Code (8 page)

Her allergies were starting to kick in with all the
grass and trees around here and she could feel the pangs of hunger
starting to gnaw at her stomach.

Maybe Leo was almost done.

She watched him fire again, the rifle slamming into
his shoulder. That had to hurt. He was a spooky character and she
wondered why the heck he was helping her, if that's what he was
doing.

When he looked up at her, she felt his sky-blue eyes
pierce right into her soul, taking her measure—for what, she wasn't
sure, but it still was unsettling.

With her rather inexpert help, she helped Leo repack
and load all of his equipment back into the truck. Everything had a
specific place it needed to be put in and in a certain order. She
figured that she was slowing Leo down more than she was
helping.

When the loading was almost done, he asked, “Can I
see your pistol?”

Wondering what he was doing, she retrieved it from
her case. Carefully pointing it away from her, he dropped the metal
thing out that held the bullets and pulled back the slide, kicking
out a bullet. Using his thumb, he flipped the other bullets out of
the clip and put them into a plastic bag. Then he put the pistol in
a case.

“I'm going to teach you how to shoot. We need to get
some more ammunition first. I think there is an indoor range in
Denver we can go to for you to learn.”

“Why? I hate guns.”

“That may be the case, but I can't do this alone.
And you need to be able to defend yourself.”

“What about you and your rifle?”

“That won't do us much good as it's a single shot
target rifle. It's very specialized, heavy and difficult to
conceal. Besides, point blank range on it is like three hundred
yards—any closer and I won't be able to use the scope as the
magnification is too great.”

“I'm hungry.” It came out like she was a pouting
school girl, but it was true.

Leo nodded.

“Okay. But on the way back into town, you need to
tell me what you found out about who is trying to kill you and
why.”

###

Brian Case walked to out to his pride and joy, a
2004 Cadillac CTS-V. It's highly polished sheen reflected not only
the vehicle, but the owner. In a complex world, all things can be
simplified. This was also reflected in Case's job, a building
inspector for the City of Denver. Despite the morass of rules and
regulations, it was the gray areas that he did his best work in;
the opaque, tangled and confusing building regulations and rules.
Brian brought order to those rules, and he knew that his reputation
was one of being a hard-ass. He didn't care. The citizens of Denver
were much safer due to his efforts. He was senior enough in the
Inspection's Division that he was untouchable. He felt it no matter
the heartache he brought to his bosses and co-workers, including
threats and lawsuits.

The car was as immaculate on the inside as it was
out. The dash gleamed and the leather seats had been treated with
softener to the point where they were more warm and comforting like
that of a mother's embrace.

Looking down, he saw a spot of dirt on the mat. How
did that get there? He never wore his work boots in the car and
kept a change of clothing and shoes in his work locker so as to not
to take a chance at messing up his car.

It wasn't a big problem—it had been three weeks
since he had shampooed the carpets in the car anyway, so it was
probably due for it again. He didn't have any plans for this
evening, so that would work nicely.

He noted the click of the car locks as he put the
key in the ignition. That was something different—it was only
supposed to lock when he got the car up to twenty miles per hour.
Something he'd have to call the dealership about tomorrow. Yes, he
had his oil changed at the exact intervals, paid extra for
synthetic and the tire pressure was always within two PSI of what
the manufacturer recommended. The dealer hated to see him coming,
but his money was good. And, after a particularly vehement argument
about his last vehicle and some of its problems, threatening to
have their facility shut down due to building code and fire
violations, helped them see things his way. He had power and knew
how to wield it with scalpel-like precision, or ax-like—whatever
the situation called for.

He turned the key. There was a loud click and then
the smell of something burning. What the hell? It seemed like it
was coming from under the dash, on the passenger side.

Then he realized that the car was on fire. He yanked
at the door handle. It didn't open. He pulled and pulled on it
until it came free in his hand. The car filled with smoke and fire
licked at his legs.

Pounding on the unyielding windows, they didn't give
either. The smell of cooking meat and horrific pain threatened to
overwhelm his senses. He screamed, his lungs searing from the
choking smoke in the burning interior. Great pain. Then nothing but
blackness.

FBI Special Agent Jeff Silver looked into the open
trunk. Whoever had cooked this victim had done a very good job. He
could see there wasn't much left except for burnt meat with some
white bones showing through. He'd been called in on his day off to
deal with this crispy critter that the fire department had
found.

The Albuquerque Police had pitched the case towards
the FBI when they determined that the cause of the fire had
probably been an incendiary device. In the days after 9/11,
anything like someone cooked in their trunk with explosives or
other restricted materials could be part of a larger terrorist
plot.

Jeff figured that it was just an excuse to write the
case off the police department books—it was going to be difficult
to even determine an ID on the victim, much less track down who had
done it and why.

In one sense, he could understand where they were
coming from, Albuquerque was crime ridden enough to keep the police
department more than busy, why add a who-done-it to the mix? The
FBI had more resources and didn't have to answer to the taxpayers
for unsolved cases.

On the other side, it was more crap duty for a
junior agent. There were terrorists, home-grown and otherwise,
everywhere if you read the daily briefs. Two years out of college
with an accounting degree and a minor in Spanish—not that he had
any interest in accounting. It was just something to do to get a
degree since his old man—God rot his twisted soul—had paid for
college, with the idea that he would take over the Mickey Mouse tax
firm that had been in the family for years. Jeff hadn't minded
being recruited by the FBI in his senior year. The recruiter had
promised more excitement than doing tax returns for the rest of his
life in Detroit. When the posting for New Mexico had been offered,
he had jumped at it, looking to get away from the horrid
winters.

It had been a major mistake. He got all the shit
investigations not wanted by anyone else in the office and was
lambasted by the higher ups when he couldn't produce the desired
results. Hell, most of the cases were unsolvable—and this looked to
be another one. 

The smell was something he knew he'd never
forget—sweet, burnt meat, nauseating and it made the hair on the
back of his sweaty neck stand up on end. In the heat of the summer
sun, it was enough to make a maggot gag, though there were flies
buzzing around the body in the trunk.

It barely looked human. Leg bones looked to be
sticking out of one end and what might be a charred skull at the
other. And animals didn't wear shoes.

He glanced around where the car was parked, in a
semi-abandoned industrial park. It had burnt itself out, without
anyone noticing. A garbage truck driving by had noticed the
burnt-out hulk and called the police. The patrolman who had pried
the trunk open, against all crime scene procedures, would never
make that mistake again. The smell of his vomit behind the car
added a sour taste to the sense slamming odor.

The fire had been so intense that it melted the rear
license plate into unrecognizable metal. But the front plate was
intact and had come back registered to a rental car company. The
company would be faxing over the information that they had on the
renter.

He couldn't imagine what caused this amount of heat
and fire. He could see that part of the frame under the trunk had
melted and the tires were charred and flattened.

Stepping back, he motioned to the flat bed truck
driver to do the best he could to roll the remains of the vehicle
to the crime lab where they would attempt to remove the body and
start trying to identify it.

That was going to be the tough part—what burned hot
enough to destroy tooth enamel? The fingers had also received
similar attention.

Jeff wondered if this was an isolated incident or
was a sign of something much bigger and worse to come.

###

Leo wondered about the repercussions of the
information that Jackie revealed. That they were going to have to
make a trip back to her office was maybe something he could
exploit. Could he use her as bait to lure the people trying to kill
them?

As hard as Leo thought he could be, hell, he used to
kill people for money, it wasn't something he felt that he could
do. He liked her. There was a naivete about her, hardened by
something that he couldn't place. Maybe it was the recent loss of
her boyfriend? Or was it that she had almost been killed today?
More things to think about when he should be figuring the angles on
how to keep from getting killed.

Besides, she was cute. Not stunning, but she could
be that way if she wore something besides her almost shapeless
clothing and no makeup. Though he wasn't much better himself,
pretty much having slept in his clothes last night, not shaving and
spending several hours shooting. He agreed with Jackie about
needing to get something to eat. His shooting session had taken a
great deal out of him, besides the pounding he took from the brutal
recoil. It took one hundred ten percent concentration to pull off
the almost perfect shot and that translated into tiredness deep
down into his soul—much more than physical and mental.

She broke into his thoughts by saying, “I still
don't want to learn how to shoot.”

Leo, trying to maneuver through rush hour traffic,
couldn't answer for a few minutes. Then he said, “You came very
close to being killed today. It was the same for me two days ago.
These people won't stop until they kill us both. But I suspect that
our deaths are part of something a great deal larger.”

“Why?”

“If Nathan emptied out your accounts, that money
went somewhere. And, while I have been out of the killing business
for a while, the price of a hit probably hasn't grown that much in
the intervening years. With the amounts you are talking about, you
could pay to have a bunch of people killed.”

He found it easy to talk to her about what he had
done. It wasn't something that he had ever done—with anyone,
including himself. When he had walked away from assassination, he
thought he had closed that door on his life forever. He would have
been happy to live out his days dealing with coin dinks. His days
spent on the range with a rifle and the targets dancing in the
scope influenced by humidity and wind. Forever on the quest to find
the perfect rifle, bullet and load.

All he wanted was to get back to that life. But now
that he was involved in the hunt, the old, long forgotten thrill
had come back. He knew it was intoxicating and could suck him back
into the evilness. He would do only what was necessary to get his
life back and nothing more. There had been too many bodies over the
years and too many years filled with nightmares to get back into
the killing game.

“Like how many?” she asked.

“They offered me a third of what I had been getting.
Based on that and the money missing, whoever is pulling the strings
could kill at least a hundred people.”

“Are we talking individual hits or like a mass
murder?”

“I'm figuring singles. Multiple killings are another
way of thinking and doing altogether.”

“How many hit men would it take to do this?”

He maneuvered around a car broken down on the side
of the road. It was an early model Ford Escort, also known by
people who had ever owned one as “Metal Roadkill.” The hood was up
and no one was around.

Considering what she had asked, “I don't know. Any
large organization would show up on someone's radar, somewhere.
Heck, even getting into contact with the right people would be
difficult.”

“How'd they get in touch with you?”

“Most recently, one on one. But that isn't practical
for the numbers we are talking about. It might work if you are only
dealing with a few extremely high-value, high-risk targets. But,
with those kinds of targets, the best practice is to have as little
contact with the assassin as possible. If something goes bad, the
cops and feds will then be able to justify the lone-nut-job
scenario.”

She seemed to consider this and then said, “You said
most recently, how about when you did it however many years
ago?”

“The US mail. When the job was completed, you
received a wire transfer of funds to the bank account of your
choice. It was done so anonymously that I'm not even sure of the
name of the place I was working for. It might have been for the
government as far as I know—and given my reading, it probably was.
But, then again, they might have been subcontractors. Or another
organization with a mandate to enact political change. Who the heck
knows.”

Jackie was quiet for several minutes.

This was fine with Leo. He probably already said way
too much. It was something completely outside his realm of
experience to have someone to confide in. Even more unsettling was
that the person he was talking to was female—and attractive.