Mike Stempien was in his office at the Hall, remotely hacking into Randi Barkley’s computer.
Randi wasn’t online, but Leonard Barkley had just signed on from a new location near his house. Piggybacking onto Barkley’s screen name, Stempien followed Barkley from his IP address at his new location on Thornton Avenue to an internet café in Gotland to a private home in Budapest to a travel agency in Medellín, working his way layer by layer, ever deeper into the onion layers of the dark web.
He had a pretty good idea that the final location would be Moving Targets. This time Barkley would be his unknowing tour guide.
Stempien wasn’t wrong.
After virtually hopscotching around the globe, he watched as Moving Targets’ front page slowly came up on his screen, like an image taking form on old-fashioned photo paper inside a tray of fixer.
In the center of the screen was the wheel of fortune. To the left side was a map of the USA with blinking pin lights marking Detroit and Miami and San Francisco.
Stempien thought those cities were the locations of upcoming hits. “It’s part of the Moving Targets program,” he said. “Go time, Zero-eight-thirty.”
He homed in on the winking city lights and took a series of screen shots, planning to enlarge them later. He might be able to decode names or addresses. He made a mental note that Barkley hadn’t spun the wheel.
What Barkley did instead was jump into the chat room, where, using the screen name Kill Shot, he typed, I’m here.
Screen names joined Kill Shot in the chat room, and rolling lines of applauding emoticons, yahoos, and fireworks burst onto the screen.
Fellow players urged him to talk, virtually chanting, Kill Shot. Kill Shot. Kill Shot.
Tell us about it, Kill Shot. Everything.
Stempien picked up his cell phone and called Brady.
“Lieutenant, this is Mike Stempien with a red alert. I have a physical location on Barkley.…Yeah. San Francisco, 430 Thornton. Right now.”