I KILL RICH PEOPLE 2 (39 page)

“Let me paint a more vivid picture, just in case escaping from confinement straight out of full-length leg casts hasn’t painted a clear picture. The drug cartel firefight yesterday in West Virginia? Spencer. A tactical team closed in on him. Spencer destroyed a helicopter, killed the pilot, and executed six experienced, heavily armed Special Forces-trained ex-soldiers. That is who you are up against. Don’t forget it. On the bright side, it was your tracking cameras that enabled that assault. You succeeded. Failing is on the dead commandos. Price of failure. Bishop put together those commandos. I’ll be vetting professional replacements; my hot teams will be serious killers. There are no rules of engagement. If it means killing everyone in a room, they’ll do it or I’ll get another team. That may be tough for you to digest, but that’s what you’re into, boys.”

Miller’s glare dared them to look at one another for support. Each one of the techs gulped. Owen Cullen’s only tell wasn’t fear; Cullen looked ready to charge forward.

“Spencer is that good,” Miller resumed. “But he is no thinker. He didn’t come up with this. Somebody is telling him what to do. You find that somebody and we find Spencer.”

Miller sat down and swiveled his chair in front of Stephen. “Your team, these young men, have the keys to the Formula One racers of technology. Impress me and you get the chance to be made men. This is your IPO, gentlemen. Get it done! Nussbaum, I’m expecting to see the tightest net in history around this motherfucker.”

He turned to Owen next. “Detective, you found him once. Do it again. Show us what to look for.”

In quick staccato, Miller laid out directives that would have overwhelmed a floor covered with techs working around the clock. “Find the hatred. Sift the entire goddamned internet and boil it down for repeated messaging that shows fervent hate for the rich.”

Dilip looked over to Dale and Kip, who both looked to Stephen Nussbaum, once again at a complete loss. “There will be millions of entries, tens of millions,” Nussbaum protested. “That would take thousands of programming hours to create our own filters and then we’ll be constantly impeded by every search engine.” He pointed around the room. “We’re four guys.”

“You’re four guys with the backdoor key to the NSA’s whole piggy bank,” Miller corrected. “Look through the lens you’ve been given! Dig into it and find out what this system can do. The facial recognition piece is only the beginning. Get behind the wheel and run this through the paces. Push the pedal, gentlemen!”

“Every shooting, he used a long rifle,” Owen offered. “What about screening for objects, long objects, in cases, inside duffle bags? How about that?” He eyed the stack of hundreds. What would Callie like better, going somewhere special for a real vacation, or jewelry? Ten thousand dollars could buy a legitimate engagement ring. He could replace the speck he had bought when he asked her to marry him.

Dilip shook his head. “We can’t write new programming,” he cried. “They will know we are corrupting a federal system. That is espionage.”

“You’re not getting it!” Miller shouted. “They let you in! Nobody wants to prosecute, so nothing is illegal!”

“Ok ok ok,” Owen interrupted. “If we are right that he is returning to resume attacks, then I may be able to shift the odds in our favor.” He thought about explaining about how Callie found the websites. He also thought about the website that went in and published their Citi-Field trap days ahead of time. But explaining all that was too much.

“Stay with me here. If I can give you three or four or five probable targets, can you concentrate filters on just those spots, looking for long objects, and people in scarves, lots of things? This guy is precise. We know that. He plans meticulously down to every detail.

“If we know high-value targets and we screen for many more variables ahead of time just on these targets, can we raise our percentages? Could we screen and watch for males around six feet tall with big feet wearing scarves and hats and hoodies, anything that covered their faces?”

Owen’s red scalp trembled; he suddenly realized that it wasn’t losing Tremaine that broke him. He had broken down because nobody was on his side. He knew he was right! Jonathan Spencer, always Spencer. So why did he need other people to believe him? Why was that so important?

“By limiting the data volume,” Dilip interjected excitedly. “With limited data volume, we can direct pure feeds here and apply our own filtration criteria. It can work.”

Owen snapped back into the moment. “Fix me up with one of those extra laptops,” he told Dale. “Let’s find out who and where and when he might attack.” If Spencer was planning IKRP2, he had to first find the rich before he could kill them.

“Point each for you two,” Miller scored. “Three for our detective. Time is fleeting. Get on it.” He left them in the bullpen, leaving the bundled cash behind.

Owen couldn’t help looking at the stack of bills.

I’m in the lead
, he told himself.
I’m winning this ten grand. I’m getting you a real diamond ring, Callie. This time, I’m doing things right.

*****

Spencer counted out four hundred-dollar bills into Ollie’s thick paw and was onto a fifth when Ollie closed his fist around the bills. “That’ll do. Let’s get under my trailer and find that bolt cutter. I know I’ve got it somewhere down in the belly boxes.”

Ten minutes later they were standing at the metal container with Ollie holding a flashlight on the padlocks. Spencer opened the pincers and set them first onto the larger yellow padlock when the manager pulled them back. “Hold on. Cut yours and give me minute. I’ll find the key for mine.”

Ollie took out his thick key ring and worked his way until he found the right one to open the padlock. He took the bolt cutter back from Spencer and waddled toward the Winnebago.

The scorched image of Mouse’s lipless mouth came back to him through the darkness. It had scored into his psyche. Spencer needed to get past that, to push it down. In the cool air he worked his controlled breathing techniques. He puffed through tiny breaths for minutes and then exhaled until his lungs were collapsing. He drew air back in so deeply they felt like they would burst.

When he finished, Mouse and Manchester United and all the ghosts were locked away and his bowels were left turning into cement.

He tugged the container handle out a quarter turn, opening up the hooks holding the doors shut tight. Then he pressed his back to the container and shouldered the steel door open just enough to turn sideways to get inside. His electric lamp was still there, right beside the door, just where he left it. He flipped its switch and the LED bulb shined onto two large chests carefully covered by a canvas painter’s tarp. The careful folds were undisturbed. He also found the heavy nylon strap, hooking one end to the outer door then hooking the inside end to a steel eye along the container wall. He locked down the tension lever to shut himself inside securely.

Yanking back the tarp and throwing open the bigger of the two chests, he saw the long broad lines of his most trusted companion beneath the blue blanket in which he had it swathed. He lifted the thirty-one pounds, hugged them to his chest, and appreciated the satisfying heft. He ran his right palm underneath the smooth rail. He reached up inside the magazine and wiped his fingertip against the oily spring. Transferring the weight, he moved his left palm up the barrel, extending his arm to reach over the muzzle brake before stroking back down to the top of the rail then reversing his hand and gently fingering along the bipod’s legs down to its spiked feet.

Spencer pushed his back against the wall and slid down the cool metal until he was seated on the floor with his legs extended in front of him. He held the Barrett upright between his legs.

“A hundred-ten more, Captain Sam,” he whispered softly. Then he smiled for a second, for Mouse.
Probably should use a Dragunov,
he kidded himself.
I am Dimitri Vosilych.

Inside the first chest he unpacked ten fully-loaded ten-round magazines, the Leupold scope, his Armasight PVS-7 Night Vision Goggles, Kevlar vest and body armor, a Sig Sauer P226 semi-automatic pistol along with six ten-round mags, .40 caliber bullets and three full fifty-round boxes.

A variant of the HK inside the 4Runner was inside the second chest, the semi-automatic version of the military rifle plus an M24 custom-equipped with quick-breaking lock pins. He could dissemble the weapon in twelve seconds, rebuild it in twenty. There was his laptop, too.

Spencer stood on the tips of his toes, reaching his fingers deep into the crevice where the container’s wall and ceiling were joined together. His fingertips touched cloth, which he pinched tightly until he was able to withdraw enough to grip the pillowcase inside his fist. Pulling one hand over the other, he reached the whole sack up and out from inside the double wall.

Inside the pillowcase were five carefully folded and rubber-banded wads of cash, one thousand dollars apiece. He touched the U.S. Army Sniper School Merit ID beside them. He had earned it at twenty-one. Ranger ID a year later. U.S. Army Special Forces Patch. Skull and Crossed Arrows—Motivated-Dedicated-Lethal.

Growing weed?
What the hell were you thinking?

Own it. This is who you are.

*****

Thirty-two New York websites listed the upcoming social calendar. Owen drilled down to four; two of these were now members-only sites requiring registration and login. Stephen stepped in to assist; with several keystrokes Nussbaum created a false identity and email trail. Owen was in.

“It’s that easy?” Owen commented.

Nussbaum shrugged. “Standard anonymizer.”

“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph,” Owen muttered. “What chance do the rest of us have?”

Scrolling within the sites, he began creating a list of the most likely targets, a seemingly impossible task given the number of venues. He started by trying to go out for a full month, then backed it down to two weeks and finally just ten days. The charities alone packed in two hundred events.

Dilip said, “We cannot monitor for concealment across twenty to forty events per day.” The social calendar was back in full swing. At Kip’s suggestion, they ran a double filtration based upon the financial rankings of those names tied to past events and current.

“It’s simple enough,” he claimed. “Most of it is public information.”

He had the overlay built and populated inside a half-hour. “AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is drawing the wealthiest and powerful players,” he showed. “At least three billionaires, potentially double that, plus seventy-five with net worths north of one hundred million.”

“Israel-lobbying?” Owen asked. “Doubt it. The only time he communicated at all, ‘I Kill Rich People,’ was to distance himself from the Jew-haters. He also prefers longer-range shots in open settings. AIPAC is deep inside the Convention Center.”

“Not at the auction house,” Miller countered. “He was sixty-one feet from the nearest victim.”

“You do your homework,” Owen observed, “so you know he’s not going after Jews.”

“Touché. So what else?”

“Perhaps we should consider targets based on degrees of visual security,” Dilip suggested. “If he is choosing, why would he not opt for the lowest security values? He might avoid anything we have covered.”

“Hello?” Nussbaum interrupted. “And how would he know coverage matrices? Exclude targets based upon that assumption and we might as well exclude the entire city. Manhattan is out for sure.”

Owen zeroed in on Phillip Black’s birthday gala; the description sounded eerily reminiscent of Morris Levy’s party at Sands Point. Black, running the most successful M&A firm in America, was throwing himself a black tie bash at his six-acre Scarsdale estate, which was currently listed for sale at $12,500,000 and included a three-story library and gallery, “Italianate Gardens,” two three-bedroom twin guest houses, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, and a Victorian tea house, an authentic scale version of London’s late Crystal Palace. According to the gossip blogs, insiders were already speculating about the menu; catering was to be under the supervision of Marcel Sert, whom Black was flying in on a private jet from his eponymous Michelin three-star Right Bank restaurant for the event.

Owen cut and pasted the selection to a Word document. Nobody seemed impressed at his computer skills.

Four hours later, Owen’s head was exploding. He had drilled down to nine high-value targets and was only beginning to get into the second week moving forward.

“Fucks sake,” he kept cursing. The ten thousand dollars lying six feet from his grasp seemed to be getting farther and farther away.

He handed the nine high-value targets to Dilip and Kip, who looked over the list together. Kip’s nervous tic reflected Owen’s uncertainty. The last series of attacks averaged six days apart. At that rate, the data avalanche was going to drown him.

Miller, meanwhile, had sourced multiple commando squads and was vetting those available for hire. Two were comprised of retired 1st SFOD Delta Force F members, both contracting through a retired Joint Special Operations Command army colonel. Miller considered submitting his own clearance, then decided against registering any presence in the systems.

“Can you get me inside?” he asked Nussbaum.

“Don’t need to,” Stephen explained. In several keystrokes, he walked Miller straight in through NSA’s back door.

Miller focused his attention on reviewing dossiers of domestic and international operators along with their mission histories: hostage rescues and hostile extractions, limited strike-force fixed-target eliminations, opposition command-structure disruption. Assembly and deployment were guaranteed on-site inside sixteen hours within the contiguous lower 48 states. Six national distribution centers. In-house MH-6 helicopters available at each center.

A half-page list of standard materiel was included in the base pricing; a six-page menu of optional large ordinance and missiles was attached as an addendum along with transportation add-ons and replacement fees due as a front-end deposit, refunded if unused. A retail army.

Israeli squads comprised of Mosad and Sayaret were available in San Diego and Ft. Lauderdale. Their emphasis and productivity clearly slanted toward fixed-facility work. Miller recognized several of their claimed successes; work at refineries, power plants, and server centers that had been accomplished without any hint of their involvement. But Delta, ex-Delta, was the better fit for Americans for Patriotic Action, Miller decided. Fee-clarity and guaranteed deployment turn-around times helped seal the decision.

“Okie-dokie. Let’s get us some firepower.”

*****

Screen colors reflected onto Spencer’s face inside the dark storage container. He scanned through the social calendar websites he kept bookmarked; the laptop still had enough power to turn on and connect, piggybacking onto the web through a half-dozen unprotected Wi-Fi connections in the trailers. He also scanned articles written after each attack. That was how he learned, for the first time, the black detective’s name.
Detective Sergeant Tremaine Bull.
But not a single article mentioned how Bull got there not once, but twice? Nothing explained why he let go.

“I would have pulled you up! Why did you let go? To kill me? To protect billionaires? Would they ever die for you?” Spencer moaned. “I would have pulled you up.”

Spencer looked over the array of potential targets; even more than before Sands Point: charity functions, birthdays and anniversaries; events by the dozens every day, in hotels, country clubs, and private homes.

Did it achieve anything? He hadn’t pushed over any dominoes. The rich didn’t spontaneously start falling. Nothing spread at all, just a few embers that drifted and died out.

Nobody had stepped up to carry the cause. Dimitri Vosilych was dead and gone. As soon as the all-clear sounded, the rich had re-emerged in their tuxedos and designer clothes and went right back to their parties.

“I sparked a bad tattoo on your neck,” he groaned. “And if I never showed up, you would be alive now.”