The Shack series

Chapter 35

I gave an equally polite nod and sagged into the easy chair I'd temporarily escaped. My backup consisted of teenage girls.

Tess laughed softly. I got the feeling she knew exactly what I was thinking, and she confirmed it almost instantly. "It's like an after-school special, isn't it?"

She pointed at Mackenzie. "She's the pretty one." That earned a scowl from her target.

"I'm the geeky one." She pointed at Delaney with a huge grin. "And Delaney is the outlaw girl with a heart of gold."

"Oh f*****g shoot me now." Delany threw her hat at Tess.

Tess ducked it easily, and I realized they'd played this scenario out dozens of times. Mackenzie shook her head at the two of them, then looked over at me. "It's not as bad as it looks."

Tess straightened up, suddenly serious. "It isn't. You already know Delaney. Mackenzie is one of the best shooters you've ever met..."

"Tess is our tech geek, and she's a ghost when she's following someone." Mackenzie obviously didn't want to give Tess a chance to understate her own abilities. "And she's an awesome spotter."

I looked at Mackenzie. "So what did you use at the Mall? I didn't even hear the shot."

"A heavy-duty air rifle. A pretty heavily modified Benjamin Bulldog.357 with a custom moderator on it. It isn't my favorite g*n, but it was the right one for the job. I usually use it for hog hunting." She almost seemed to be running numbers in her head. "Limited range compared to a conventional rifle, but we made the most of it. And with the moderator, the sound is different enough to avoid most automatic shot detection systems; still loud, but it doesn't sound like a gunshot. The Capitol Police have to have shot detectors all around the Mall, so it was an issue."

I blinked, thinking back. The hair was different, they must have been wearing wigs, but... "The art students sketching near the Museum of Modern Art."

Tess looked unhappy all of a sudden. "Crap. I thought that was perfect."

"It was; I just figured it out. No vehicles nearby, and I only saw one pair that could be you." I focused for a moment. "You used the sculpture garden as your cover."

She nodded. "Those ugly granite wall sculptures channeled the sound of the shot straight up. It had the field of view we needed, and it was perfect to stage a normal scene. Two girls drawing the sculptures; obviously working on some kind of school art project, eating a picnic lunch on the mall, reading texts on a phone together, and listening to music. Those easels and the carry tubes made it easy."

Mackenzie shrugged. "The bullpup is fairly short. We could shield it long enough to take any shots we needed."

My memory of the two girls looking at the phone together sitting with their easels set up and their long black art carry tubes was suddenly much clearer. They made is sound easy, but the window had to be incredibly narrow.

"You were ranging the bench when we walked past you, weren't you?"

"But you didn't notice it at the time, did you?" Tess asked the question mostly off-hand, but I realized they were both studying me intently; they were using me as an after-action review. Delaney was fixing herself a sandwich, but she was tracking every word as well. These girls didn't just have some individual skills; K2 had trained them in higher-level stuff. That meant they'd invested a lot of time and effort; post-mission analysis and planning aren't exactly beginner level.

I was pretty sure asking detailed questions about their training would be a bad idea. I shook my head. "Not at the time."

Tess shrugged. "We couldn't exactly bring a vehicle-blind in close enough, even if we could guarantee a good parking position. The DC sniper killings made that tactic obvious to the police."

"And anyone else who might pay attention." I paused. "I'm really concerned that they knew about the bench."

"We think he just caught up to you at the bench; it was facial recognition that found you. Or lack of it. K2 thinks they were surfing the feed off the Internet of Things -- all the cameras, sensors, traffic lights and stuff - around the FBI, the Mall, everything in the area. K2 wasn't sure if they could finesse it enough to get the right ones, so they had their associates use a bigger hammer method and take all the cameras near the Mall offline. Took out the ones in the Metro system too. That might have triggered the tangos to look around the Smithsonian. Or maybe they were already there."

Tess glanced up at me. "It looks like an eastern European hacker group called 'GoGoPiggy' was paid to do the facial recognition program and surveillance."

I shook my head. "The damn world is changing too fast."

"The technology for facial recognition has been around a long time. People are fighting it legally, but..." Tess shrugged.

"They tried to ban the crossbow too, but it was effective, so it was almost an inevitability. It stayed in use until guns took over." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mackenzie and Delaney hanging on every word. I didn't get this much focus when I lectured the FBI Academy students at Quantico. "K2 sounds like they have a pretty good cyber capability."

Mackenzie shook her head at Tess in a warning, then looked at me. "Nice try."

Delaney gave a lopsided smile. "Sorry, principals don't get to know everything, just what they need to know."

Tess glanced at her computer screen. "GoGoPiggy has other priorities now. They were sloppy, and their bitcoin wallets were taken down. They lost a lot of money on this one, and it has been communicated to them that it can get worse."

"I've always been told that bitcoin wallets are absolutely secure."

Tess shrugged. "Nothing is impossible; some things are just really, really expensive."

I looked around at them. After school special or not, it was nice to be working with professionals.

*****

Later that evening, well after Delaney had headed out on one of her "errands," Mooky walked through the door and looked around in confusion.

Tess gave him a warm smile. "Hey, Mooky."

Mackenzie looked up from where she was sitting on the floor in the middle of an equipment layout, examining the seals on her air rifle. "Hey, Mooky."

"Hey..." He stopped, blinking in confusion.. "Who are you?"

Tess pointed at the big carry-out bag Mooky put on the counter. "Dude! Are those the tacos?"

"Yeah, I uh...Delaney called, and..." He stopped as both girls jumped up and surged past him.

Tess dug through the bag and pulled one out. "Chipotle?"

Mackenzie reached over and took the offered taco. "Thanks, Mooky!" She looked back over at Tess. "Can I get a couple Napalm Sauce?"

Mooky watched, completely lost as they sorted out a couple of tacos each. He finally looked at me.

I shrugged. "They're Delaney's... friends."

"Yeah, I kinda figured that out, but what are they..." He ground to a halt as he saw the heavy air rifle. "Is that some kind of ray g*n?"

"It's an air rifle."

He blinked twice. "Like a BB g*n?"

Close enough. "A really powerful BB gun."

He looked over the equipment laid out on the floor. Low profile protective vests, a couple of handguns, night vision scopes and more. "I don't want to know, do I?"

"Not really." I pointed to each of the girls in turn. "That's Tess, and that one is Mackenzie."

Each girl waved cheerfully as I pointed them out.

Mackenzie pointed to the counter. "There's twenty-five bucks there for the tacos. Delaney left it when she had to go check on the salvage yard."

Nodding slowly, Mooky walked toward his bedroom, dragging his steps and mumbling. "I'm gonna go clean up."

Something in Tess's face twitched. "Hey, Mooky? Thanks for letting us crash here for a few days. Really. We'll get out of your hair as soon as we can."

He nodded slowly and trudged into his bedroom.

*****

No matter how professional they acted at times, it was still disturbing as hell to realize the mercenaries watching over me weren't even old enough to be out of high school. Their conversations flashed dizzyingly from the relative merits of custom rifle loads to the price of lip gloss, to the latest pop song, and then to surveillance tactics without missing a beat.

Even to the glimmerings of teen romance. I had to admit they had a slightly different perspective than when I was a teenage girl.

"So... Matthew asked me to the Valentine's Dance at school," Mackenzie announced with a bit of pride, but I could sense that she wanted some approval.

"Really? He's cute." Tess turned away from her laptop.

"He's too stupid to live." Delaney was lying on her back on the countertop finishing the last of yet another candy bar.

"Hey! You don't even know him!" Mackenzie scowled at Delaney.

"Same Matthew you talked about in chat?"

"Yes."

Delaney rolled her eyes at the ceiling. "Too stupid to live."

"Hey!"

"He goes to the same school as you and Tess, right?" Delaney carefully folded her candy wrapper.

"Yes, but..."

"So he has to know you won the Texas State small-bore rifle competition, right?" She eyed her little wrapper and folded it again.

"Yes." Mackenzie pulled herself up to her full height. "And HE thinks it's really cool."

"Too stupid to live."

"Stop saying that."

"He wants a torrid summer romance..."

"It's not summer."

"It's always summer in Texas. You need to install a damned air conditioner for the whole state."

Mackenzie just gave her a sour look.

Delaney shrugged. "He's trying to start a first-love romance with a hormonal..."

"I'm not hormonal!"

Tess snickered. "So, two weeks ago, when the world ended because you couldn't find your pink blouse..."

"It was Dreamsicle orange, not pink..." Mackenzie suddenly caught herself. "Okay, maybe I'm a little hormonal."

Delaney drove on mercilessly. "Starting a torrid first-love romance with a hormonal teenage girl who can drill a dime at 600 meters. Too... Stupid... To... Live."

Mackenzie stared at her open-mouthed, then looked at me.

I held my hands up. "She has a point."

Mackenzie looked like she was going to say something, but Delaney cut her off. "Just let me know when it goes wrong; I'll drive down and help bury the body. It'd be easier if you get him up here so I could use the car crusher, though."