Veil of Civility: A Black Shuck Thriller (Declan McIver Series)

by Graham, Ian

  In the eyes of Chris Evans, the Britons were old money suburbanites who didn't have to worry about a slow economy or the closing of a factory. In all probability, they were the kind of people who closed factories and sent the jobs overseas to a country with far lower wages and living standards than the United States.

  But it was an easy gig, he reasoned with himself, as he took a drink of coffee. Kafni had his own three man security detail to take care of everything inside the house. The only thing Evans and the other two hired guards had to do was keep a watch over the perimeter of the property and call the police if they noticed anything out of the ordinary. Two weeks on daylight and two weeks on nights was a bit rough, but it was an income and he'd been guaranteed several months of employment while Kafni stayed at the mansion. If Sweat Security's contract was renewed once Kafni moved to a more permanent residence in the area, he'd been assured that he would be a shoo-in for continued employment.

  Closing the paper and fighting a yawn, he removed his feet from the desk and sat up just as the headlights of a vehicle coming up the road attracted his attention. Standing and leaning out of the door, he looked east on Cottontown Road as a dark colored truck rounded a bend from the south. Immediately he was struck by the speed the vehicle was traveling, but was prepared to write it off as another crazy teenager with a lead foot until the vehicle began to slow down. As it got closer, Evans recognized it as one of the two black GMC SUVs that Abaddon Kafni and his security team drove. He stepped out of the guard shack with his hand on the radio clipped to his belt. The SUV made a right turn, the driver's side window descending into the door frame as the vehicle came to a stop.

  "Open the gate!" someone inside the SUV yelled.

  Evans squinted into the darkness and saw the face of Levi Levitt, Kafni's no-nonsense assistant, staring back at him. He ran back to the guard house and hit the button to open the gates.

  "There's a white sports car coming in, too. Lock the place down behind us and don't let anyone else through until the police arrive!" Levitt yelled, as he floored the accelerator and the SUV roared up the long straight driveway towards the house. Evans watched the taillights vanish into the mansion's detached garage, then reached for the radio on his belt to alert the other two guards positioned along the north and west sides of the property. Suddenly another set of headlights washed over the guardhouse from the west and a dark red Chevy Suburban made a left hand turn into the drive and accelerated through the gates.

  "Hey! You can't go in there!" Evans shouted as he ran out onto the paved drive, radio in hand. He turned as he heard another vehicle approaching. A second dark red Suburban screeched to a halt in front of him, the headlights preventing him from seeing who was inside.

  Evans heard the driver's door open, followed by brisk footsteps, then a short man with dark receding hair and a thick beard stood in front of him. He regarded Evans coolly for a moment before raising a suppressed pistol.

  “What? No!” exclaimed Evans, frozen to the spot.

  "Excuse us," the man said, as he fired three times and stepped away towards the guard shack.

  Evans felt the rounds enter his chest as the radio slid from his grasp. He stood still for a moment trying to draw breath, then fell to the wet pavement, still struggling to breathe. The sound of the gate beginning to close and the driver's door of the SUV being shut were the last sounds he heard as he clawed his way towards the guard shack and died, lying in the grass beside the one lane driveway he'd been hired to watch.

  Chapter Eight

  7:04 p.m. Eastern Time – Friday

  Cottonwood Road

  Forest, Virginia

  Declan shifted furiously through the gears as he turned right and accelerated onto Cottonwood Road. They flew past the two shopping centers that occupied the corner of Cottonwood and the highway and over a concrete bridge spanning railroad tracks, then large brick homes came into view. Rounding a leftward bend, Declan finally saw the house he was looking for.

  Sitting on top of a high knoll on the right side of the road, the Briton-Adams mansion was a well-known local landmark.

  "What's that sound?" Declan asked, looking towards the floor.

  "It's my phone," said Constance, hearing the tiny beep. Her mascara had run while she was crying and smudged around her eyes. She dabbed at them with a tissue as she said, "That's the sound it makes when it's passing in and out of service."

  She leaned over and pulled the Samsung smartphone from her purse, tapping on the display to light up the screen. "See?" she said holding it up. "No signal."

  "This close to Lynchburg? That's odd.”

  "The tower changes over in Bedford, remember? There's never a signal here for a few miles."

  "Yeah, but that's twenty miles down the road," Declan said, reaching for his own phone before realizing it had been in the jacket he'd left inside the Barton Center.

  The convertible whined as Declan downshifted and swung into the driveway. He stopped at the closed gates. Pushing the automatic down button, he waited as the driver's window descended with a low hum.

  "Where are the guards?" Declan said as he looked around. "Levi said there were three guards at the property."

  Constance looked around. "I don't see anyone. Are you sure there's supposed to be someone here?"

  Declan didn't answer. Outside of the Barton Center he'd been unable to escape the feeling that Kafni was still in danger. While he couldn't be sure that Kafni had been the target, his instincts told him that was the case. Was it an old skill that had been reawakened by seeing his old friends? He'd learned to trust his feelings in his two decades in the field and if something didn't feel right, he'd learned the hard way that it probably wasn't right. Even though there had been several representatives of the United States government inside the building, none of them had carried the notoriety of the event's keynote speaker. Nor had any of them been the target of six previous assassination attempts or the subject of a handful of fatwas calling for their deaths.

  Opening the door, he stepped out onto the wet pavement and looked three hundred and sixty degrees around the car. The first thing that drew his attention was a set of muddy tire tracks ten feet away. On closer examination it was obvious that the tracks had been made recently as a vehicle had turned left into the property at high speed and had cut a corner, tearing up the wet grass. Could the vehicle have been the SUV driven by Levi Levitt? From his knowledge of the area, Declan doubted it. While it was possible Levitt had taken a less direct route through one of the neighborhoods south of the property, Declan thought it was highly unlikely. The routes through the neighborhoods were full of turns and Levitt had only been in town for a few days. The risk of getting lost, especially at night, would have been far too great.

  He walked towards the guard house. Inside an opened newspaper and a cup of coffee sat on a cheap particle board desk, but no guard was present. He turned and walked out. As his eyes swept the area, he saw a black boot lying on the ground in the high grass near one of the brick columns that supported the gate. Rushing over, he knelt beside a heavy set man with brown curly hair, wearing the same type of navy blue uniform as the security at the Barton Center. He reached down and felt for a pulse with his index and middle fingers, although it was obvious from the man's glassy stare and the entry wounds on his chest that he was deceased. The man's skin was warm to the touch, a sign that he had only recently met his end.

  Declan ran back to the driver's side of his car and opened the door. "Do you have a cell signal yet?" he said to his wife, who looked at him wide-eyed from the passenger seat.

  "No," she said thumbing the device's screen, “nothing."

  "I need you to drive down the road until you get a signal and call the police."

  "Declan, what's happened?"

  "Tell them to come to the Briton-Adams mansion immediately," he said, ignoring her question. "Tell them the guard's been killed."

  Her response seemed to catch in her throat as she watched him reach under the driver's s
eat. With the sound of tearing Velcro he removed a leather pouch and opened it to reveal the black grip of a Glock pistol. Withdrawing the gun, he released the magazine and checked it before reinserting it into the grip and chambering a round.

  "What are you doing?" Constance asked, as her eyes darted between her husband and the gun in his hand.

  "I'm going to find Abe. Get going and don't come back until I call you and tell you it's safe."

  He slid the pistol into his pocket and pulled off the neck tie he'd been wearing, before jogging towards the gate. He jumped and gripped the top of the gate. Pulling himself up and swinging his legs over, he heard his wife shift her sports car into reverse and exit the driveway. Landing on the wet pavement beyond the gate, he pulled the pistol from his pocket and ran towards the well-lit house on the hill two hundred yards ahead of him.

  Chapter Nine

  Reaching the top of the knoll, Declan entered a cluster of dogwood trees that occupied a teardrop shaped yard formed as the driveway forked left and right, meeting at the front door of the mansion fifty yards ahead of him. Nickel sized drops of rain fell from the trees above, soaking his light blue dress shirt as he dodged through the yard using the trees for sporadic cover. Arriving at the edge of the yard, he concealed himself behind the broad trunk of a tree and leaned around in search of anyone outside of the house.

  The Briton-Adams mansion was well lit with small spotlights spaced evenly at three feet intervals down the brick walkway that led to the front door, and further apart across the front of the entire house. The brightness of the area surrounding the house made the darkness beyond it seem all the darker. This, Declan thought, seemed to be a contradiction in terms of security. The red and brown brick surface of the house rose to three stories before the steep, architecturally tiled roof disappeared above the reach of the spotlights. The flat front of the house featured six high windows on each level and an expensive looking set of double doors, which served as the entrance to an interior that was surely just as attractive as the exterior.

  Declan surveyed each of the windows, looking for any signs that the house was occupied, but only the faintest hint of a dim light near the front door gave any sign that anyone lived there. Taking a last look at each of the windows, he crossed the driveway to the front door, pressing his back against it when he got there. Leaning to the left, he craned his neck so that he could see through the floor to ceiling windows on either side of the entrance. Inside the home was dark with the exception of a small light ablaze in the luxurious foyer. An LED on an alarm keypad across from the door flashed red every few seconds, indicating the security system was armed. Each of the four rooms off the foyer was dark and all the signs pointed to the conclusion that no one had entered the home recently.

  Even with the house dark, Declan knew there had to be someone about. Whose vehicle had made the tire tracks he'd found near the gate? Who had killed the guard? It was one of the security company's vehicles that had exploded outside of the Barton Center. Had the guards been part of the attack? If so, then it was possible that Levitt had put the guard down himself as he and Kafni entered the property.

  Declan raised the pistol in front of him as he moved to the left towards the side of the house, speeding up as he passed each of the three first floor windows on that side of the front door. Rolling out around the corner of the house, he again found no one and he continued to move cautiously towards a darkened Florida room that jutted off the northeast side of the house. The room beyond the floor to ceiling windows was populated with wicker sunroom furniture, but otherwise empty.

  Seen through the Florida room's windows to the north, a vehicle caught Declan's attention. Sticking out from around the front of what appeared to be a garage was the tail end of a dark red SUV. Declan moved around the room onto a section of pavement that ran off the main driveway and made his way towards the garage, taking momentary cover behind several tall shrubs as he approached.

  Like the house, the garage was made of brick and was large enough for a minimum of three full sized cars. With no windows or doors on the side, Declan placed his back against the outer wall and slid towards the front, where the dark red SUV protruded into the driveway. The SUV Kafni drove was black, so the vehicle wasn't his. As he got closer, Declan could hear a hissing sound as water from the vehicle's undercarriage dripped on the hot exhaust manifold, a sure sign that the SUV hadn't been parked there for long.

  Rounding out into a full view of the garage doors, Declan noticed the driver's side door of the red SUV had been left open, along with the window. Yellow light from the open garage stabbed the darkness and glared off the sleek paint of the vehicle. Making a quarter turn into the garage, he saw the black GMC Suburban that Levitt and Kafni had left the Barton Center in. Suddenly his fears were realized as his eyes rested on a small pool of blood near the base of the Suburban's front door. It was obvious to him now what had happened. Whoever had been driving the red SUV had followed Kafni's vehicle through the gates before the guard could close them and had ambushed Levitt and Kafni as they'd exited the vehicle. Clearing the rest of the garage, Declan rushed over to the driver's side of Kafni's vehicle and looked inside. Small spots of blood flecked the inside of the driver's compartment but it was clear from the small amounts that the gunshot had not been an exit wound. From the location of the blood, it appeared to have been Levitt who'd been shot, but where were he and Kafni now? Declan looked over the smooth concrete floor leading out of the garage. Amid the dirt and dark oil stains that littered the floor were a few more drops of crimson blood leading around the vehicle and to the left, out of the garage. Aiming his gun in front of him, he followed the trail outside.

  "Hey!" a voice shouted from outside as he momentarily cleared the garage; he ducked back inside. Two suppressed gunshots erupted, one tearing into the hood of the dark red SUV and the other glancing off the garage's brick exterior. Declan pressed his back against the inside wall and listened, his pistol at the ready.

  "What did you see?" an obviously foreign voice asked.

  "There's someone in the garage with a gun. A guy in a blue shirt," another voice answered, this one rough and gravelly.

  Declan thought he detected the presence of Slavic accents. He listened as the sound of shoes against the pavement indicated the men were moving, trying to get a view of him. Hidden in a corner between the garage door and the outer wall he waited, knowing the men would have to cross into his line of fire to see him. Having caught only the quickest glimpse of them before he'd ducked away he was pretty sure there were only two of them, but he couldn't be certain. The men began speaking quickly in hushed whispers using a foreign language, then suddenly one of them bolted forward, firing into the garage. The back window of Kafni's SUV shattered and Declan rounded out of his hiding spot to return fire. Squeezing the trigger three times in rapid succession the report of the weapon echoed loudly in the hollow building.

  The running gunman dove for cover behind the passenger side of the dark red SUV and Declan's rounds passed over him. Suddenly, Declan caught sight of someone approaching from the edge of the garage. He moved left a millisecond too late and the broad end of a shovel slammed down on his extended arms and again in quick succession to the right side of his face as the first strike drove him downwards.

  Falling backwards from the second upward impact of the shovel, Declan held tight to his gun as his back slammed hard against the concrete, knocking the wind out of him. His attacker stepped fully into the garage and raised the shovel to deliver another blow. Declan rolled onto his left side as the tool banged against the concrete where his head had been seconds before. Rolling back to his right he raised his gun as the attacker brought the shovel over his head for another blow. Gunshots echoed through the building as three holes appeared in the man's chest and he flew backwards from the close range impact.

  Taking a shallow breath, relief was brief as Declan heard the sound of suppressed gunshots. Pushing his feet furiously against the smooth concrete floor and
scrambling towards the outer wall of the garage, he raised himself into a sitting position and returned fire towards the red SUV, his first shot impacting the vehicle's windshield. Following the gunman as he skipped sideways towards the front of the vehicle, Declan squeezed the trigger methodically, intent on hitting his target. The man shouted in pain as a bullet tore into his shoulder, followed by another that caught him in the side of the head. The man fell down and Declan stopped firing, breathing heavily as the sound of shell casings hitting the floor abated and the tang of cordite filled the air. The peaceful sound of crickets chirping in the trees lining the driveway returned outside the garage before being interrupted again by a gunshot, this one a distant echo somewhere to the north of the garage.

  Standing upright, Declan steadied himself against the side of the black SUV, becoming aware of the injury to his head for the first time as the room spun around him. He lifted a hand and touched a spot above his right eye that was throbbing with pain. Pulling his hand back he noticed blood dotting his fingertips. Turning his hand over, he saw a laceration caused by the shovel striking him. Wiping the warm fluid on his shirt, he pushed himself off the vehicle and moved towards the garage door, stepping over the body of the dead thug.

  Outside, he aimed his pistol to the left in the direction the two men had come from. In the distance he could see another building, this one longer than the garage and with a tin roof. The driveway leading to the garage extended past it and turned to gravel about fifteen yards from where Declan stood. Stepping in front of the dark red SUV he peered over the edge of the vehicle to see the gunman he'd shot moments before lying on the pavement. He moved towards him and kicked away the suppressed pistol before nudging the man hard with his foot. The man slumped onto his back and stared eerily upwards, the side of his face covered in blood that had pooled underneath him from the wound above his left ear. Along with an unkempt beard, a black crochet taqiyah on the man's head identified him as a follower of Islam, though he didn't appear to be Middle Eastern. He had a slightly pallid complexion and black hair, his skin rough like he'd spent a lot of time in harsh outdoor conditions. Declan turned away towards the north knowing the man was deceased.