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

by Graham, Ian

  "Yes. But why are you—"

  "Just listen," he ordered again. "That's not me in the car. I'm behind it in a white SUV. You're being followed."

  He watched ahead and saw the Nissan's brake lights come on. "Don't react. Just keep going," he said.

  "Declan what's going on?"

  "Just keep going. I don't have time to explain. Just stay on the line with me and head towards the produce warehouse."

  "Okay."

  He could hear the fear in her voice and hoped what he was planning would work. Constance had no training for this kind of thing.

  Up ahead the Crown Vic followed the Nissan closely, a sign that its driver didn't have a lot of experience. Apparently whoever had hired this crew had run out of experienced men to do their dirty work and had been forced to rely on rookies.

  "I want you to get on the highway as quick as possible," Declan said.

  The Crown Vic backed off and was now following at a more experienced distance. Declan realized immediately that the driver had been using the headlights to try and determine how many people were in the vehicle he was following; maybe he was experienced after all.

  Ahead, Constance was approaching a stop light. Only a few vehicles were on the road at this time of night and the normally busy four lane intersection was empty. The green glow of the traffic signal changed suddenly to amber and then to red as she approached.

  Damn, Declan thought as he saw her slowing down to a stop. The Crown Vic came to a rest two car lengths behind her. Watching carefully as he approached, Declan looked for any sign that he'd been noticed. He leaned over and pulled the Smith & Wesson pistol he had taken from the men who'd attacked him off the passenger seat of the vehicle. Preparation was the key to survival and although he had hoped he would never have to use them, he'd stashed weapons, mostly semi-automatic pistols, throughout his house and vehicles; unfortunately he wasn't in his vehicle.

  "Declan, I wish you would tell me what's going on. Why are there people following me? Is this about Abe's death?"

  "Yes," he said, and let his words hang in the air for a moment before continuing. "I'll tell you more once we're both safe, but for now, just keep going."

  The traffic signal turned green and Constance made a left hand turn heading west towards the highway. Slowly, apparently being careful not to be too aggressive and tip her off, the Crown Vic rolled after her.

  "Remember, just keep going and lead them to the warehouse. I'll tell you what to do when we get there. Everything will be okay," Declan said hoping he was right.

  Sixteen minutes after leaving the house, Constance turned right off the interstate at the downtown Roanoke exit and drove east. She continued through two stop lights then made a left, heading into the city's southeast neighborhoods.

  Between the downtown market area and the expansive ward known commonly as "old southeast" were rows of dilapidated warehouses that had once been used by the Norfolk & Southern railroad and other businesses that had supported it. The railroad still maintained a working yard that occupied a large quadrant of Roanoke's south side, but it was a shadow of its former self. Staying about a hundred yards behind the Crown Vic, Declan could see to his left the dormant shapes of the hulking locomotives across the Roanoke River, their engines kept running throughout the night to avoid freezing.

  "Alright, we're almost there," he said to Constance. "Do you remember your uncle's favorite parking spot? The one around the back between the building and the fence, just big enough to fit a car into?"

  "Yeah, yeah I think so."

  "Grand. I want you to pull straight ahead into that spot and stay in the car until I come and get you. Whatever you hear, do not get out of the car. Do you understand?"

  "Yes."

  Declan knew he was scaring her. He could hear a quiver in her voice. He was doing it on purpose. He had a pretty good feeling that he had avoided being made, but that was about to change. The last thing he wanted was Constance out in the open when the shooting started. He hoped that the men in the car were only carrying smaller firearms, certainly nothing bigger than the one he carried. While he trusted his aim, he was using a firearm that wasn't his own and he had no desire to take on a sub-machine gun or some other automatic weapon.

  "Turn off the engine and the lights as soon as you're parked."

  "Okay," Constance said, her voice a high squeak.

  He hung up the phone and watched as she turned right into the fenced lot that belonged to a two story white concrete building with a loading dock wrapped around it. The gate that once prevented people from accessing the property after business hours had now rusted off its hinges and was lying in the muddy dirt lot. Weathered signs along the road and on the building identified it as Star City Fruit & Produce. The business had once shipped locally grown goods all over the southeast United States and had belonged to Constance's uncle, Nathan Cobrian. Upon his death six years earlier his two sons had taken over and run the company into the ground. All that was left of it now was the abandoned building, which Declan had bought out of foreclosure, and a few rusting box trucks that sat along the rear fence.

  Declan pulled his truck to the side of the road and watched as the Crown Vic cautiously entered the lot, trying to remain undetected. Constance had done exactly as he had told her and was now around the far end of the building out of sight. The driver of the Crown Vic turned off the headlights and proceeded forward. Declan turned off his truck and got out. He would have to be quick to avoid any chance of his wife getting hit during the fight that was about to erupt. With any luck he would get the drop on the goons before they could get a shot off.

  Getting out of the SUV, he tucked the pistol into his coat pocket and started off in a jog. Entering the dirt lot, he stayed in the shadows close to the fence as the Crown Vic came to a stop. The cloudy night and the tall, leafless birch trees that lined the rear of the property shrouded most of the one acre lot in darkness.

  The men got out of the car and Declan watched as they each drew a handgun from under their coats and chambered a round. He pulled his own pistol from his pocket.

  The men moved cautiously towards the far corner of the warehouse, their pistols raised and following their line of sight, as if they realized that there was a good possibility that they'd been led into a trap.

  Silently, Declan pulled himself up onto the loading dock and crept along the smooth concrete floor, his dark clothing and the lack of natural light concealing him perfectly. Flattening himself against the wall, he made sure the men were looking away when he moved.

  The men arrived at the corner of the warehouse, first pointing their weapons down the side of the building and then in the opposite direction, into the yard, towards the decaying box trucks. Moving down the side of the building they momentarily passed out of Declan's view, their pistols still aimed towards the back of the property.

  Declan moved quickly across the loading dock to the far corner and turned quickly, taking aim. The men swept from right to left with their backs to him as they looked for any signs of Constance's vehicle. They were twenty yards from where she was parked in the narrow but deep parking spot her uncle had used for thirty years, the ribbed sheet metal siding of the building easily hiding the slender sports car from view.

  "Looking for someone?" Declan announced.

  The men turned counterclockwise in a fraction of a second, aiming their weapons.

  Declan didn't wait. He fired three times, the report of the shots echoing against the metal building. His first shot hit the driver in the face, where he'd been aiming, and the other two struck the passenger center mass. Both men collapsed into the dirt lot and lay still. He jumped off the loading dock and breathed slowly but deeply as he approached, his gun ready. Standing at the feet of the passenger, he looked down at both men. Like the ones who had attacked him earlier, these two also appeared to be Americans. Their short haircuts and the movements they had been making also indicated that they were trained police or military. He watched for any signs that
they were still breathing and saw none. To be sure, he aimed and fired twice more, sending blood and brain tissue splattering into the tire tracks made by Constance's Nissan in the muddy parking lot.

  He did a full three hundred and sixty degree turn to be sure there was no one nearby and then moved quickly to the back of the building. His wife's convertible sat exactly where he had told her, a consistent tapping sound from the engine as it cooled in the night the only clue as to its presence. Through the rear window he could see his wife sitting in the driver's seat. As he approached the side of the car she stared straight ahead. He tapped on the glass but she did not move. Tears ran down her face and her chest heaved. Slowly she looked out at him.

  Declan felt his insides tighten as regret washed over him. As long as he lived, he would never be able to apologize enough for what she was going through.

  "Move over," he said, as he opened the driver's door. She slid silently across the console into the passenger's seat. He could hear her sniffing away tears as he got in and removed the pistol from his pocket, laying it on the black vinyl dashboard. He turned the key and revved the engine. All six cylinders whined as he shifted into reverse and stomped on the accelerator, guiding the vehicle straight back. He turned the wheel suddenly and ground the gears as the convertible slid to a stop in the wet mud. He heard Constance sob as she saw the two men a short distance away. He knew as they tore past the wrecked bodies that she would never look at him the same way again.

  Chapter Twenty

  9:36 p.m. Eastern Time – Saturday

  Graemont Lane

  Charlottesville, Virginia

  As his children slept in the luxurious bedroom suites below, David Kemiss sat at the desk in his third floor study. The television in the walnut armoire along the opposite wall flickered with images of the plane carrying Abaddon Kafni's body leaving the Lynchburg Regional Airport. The talking heads of the major media networks were aglow with speculation as to what could have happened to the outspoken professor and author who had frequently appeared on their shows defending Israel and America's war on terrorism, as well as analyzing dozens of other events, from the Arab Spring to the mass casualties in Syria at the hands of that nation's own government.

  Their experts, many of them Kafni's colleagues, seemed sure of only one thing: the Islamic extremists who had been trying for years to kill Kafni without success had finally achieved their goal. But who were the extremists? Had it been the act of a lone wolf? Was it a sign of a larger attack to come? The news media seemed barely able to contain itself at the thought of the possibilities. Peppered with bits and pieces of Kafni's life story, this event would give them something to report on for at least a week, maybe longer. But there was only one thing about the entire situation that Kemiss wanted to know as he leaned back in his red leather chair: had the witness to Kafni's death been neutralized? Nervously, he flipped his cell phone around in his hand. Suddenly the phone vibrated and he switched off the television, tossing the remote back onto the desk as he flipped open the phone. Looking at the display, he recognized Castellano's number.

  "Have you heard anything?" he asked as he heard a car door slam on the other end of the line.

  "Not a thing."

  Kemiss sighed loudly. "It's been over an hour since they were supposed to report. Something's gone wrong."

  "We don't know that yet. Maybe they had to take him somewhere else. These guys know what they're doing. They handled the situation last night, didn't they?"

  "Yes, but I'm not waiting to find out. Every minute that goes by, this guy could be contacting the press or someone else. I don't want anything left to chance."

  "He doesn't have anything to go to the press with, David. He can't even make a one hundred percent positive identification."

  "That won't stop them from spreading his story all over the airwaves and turning this thing into more of a three ring circus than it already is. All we need is one tabloid journalist to wave some money under this guy's nose and he'll be on the front page in every grocery aisle in America."

  "Okay...okay. I'll call them and find out what's going on, but it needs to be kept short and to the point. We have got to maintain as much silence on this as possible. These throw-away phones are only so secure."

  "I don't like forcing your hand," Kemiss said, "but you're not the only one with contacts that might be able to help if need be. Use the three-way calling feature. I'll wait."

  He listened as Castellano tabbed through the calls received to the only other number that had ever called the phone, the number belonging to the throw-away phone of the man who should at that very moment be trying to wash Declan McIver's blood off his hands. He tensed as the phone rang, followed by the sound of someone picking up the call, a rustling sound perhaps caused by the mouthpiece brushing against facial hair as the phone was raised into the proper position.

  "Hello? Who's there?" an accented voice asked.

  "Who is this?" Castellano asked severely. But as the words left the agent's mouth Kemiss knew who it was. Declan McIver was alive and had just answered the phone of the man who was supposed to have killed him. He terminated the call by closing the phone and slowly placed the device on his desk, his mind racing as he sat forward in his chair. The owner of the phone not answering could only mean one thing: he was dead. What did they do now?

  The phone vibrated again on the desk.

  "Yeah," Kemiss said as he picked it up.

  "They're dead," Castellano said. "We have to get rid of these phones. Take out the battery and the SIM card and keep them separate from the phone. I'll take care of destroying them, but don't turn it back on or try to use it for any reason."

  "Then what?"

  "I'll call the state police and monitor any traffic reports. We need to find out what happened and where. You said you had contacts that can help? Now would be the time to call them. This guy knows there's someone after him now and if he's smart he's going to run. We need someone that can catch him."

  "I know just the person to handle that."

  Kemiss closed the phone and pressed down on the back of it, removing the battery covering. Taking the battery and the tiny black SIM card out, he placed all three items in a neat line on the side of his desk. Castellano could take care of the rest.

  Picking up the land line phone on his desk, he dialed a number and waited for an answer.

  "Yeah, Allan? It's David Kemiss."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  9:43 p.m. Eastern Time – Saturday

  National Security Agency Headquarters

  Fort Meade, Maryland

  "Were you present during the Bush administration, David, or were you just voting that way?" Allan Ayers asked pointedly as he brushed a hand over his goatee. "I know you were there because you were leading the charge against warrantless wiretaps in the Senate."

  He listened to the uncomfortable silence on the other end of the line as he rested his elbows on the black Government Issue desk in his office, on the seventh floor of the National Security Agency's headquarters fifteen miles southwest of Baltimore. In his position, the last thing he wanted when he came to work was a phone call from a sitting senator, even if that senator happened to be a friend of the family.

  Under normal circumstances, the politicians that called expected a favor to be done for one of the many new recruits that passed through the Live Environment Analyst Development, or LEAD, facility that sat just outside of Ayers' office. The recruit would likely be the offspring of an influential but not necessarily wealthy constituent. He or she would have recently graduated from college and have somehow figured out his or her way through the absolute maze that was the federal hiring process, and now their parent's political connections would be brought into to play to ensure that they received as high a pay grade as possible at the agency of their choice, which for computer science majors, was always the NSA. Ayers had seen many of these individuals rise through the ranks rapidly after his aid in securing them the highest possible scores on the agen
cy's systems and some had even surpassed him in the chain of command, which made filling more such requests far more difficult. But tonight, just as he was about to begin loading in a fresh batch of targets for a class, Senator David Kemiss had called for an entirely different type of favor, one that Ayers didn't want anything to do with.

  "Don't insult me, Allan," Kemiss said, after allowing the uncomfortable silence to grow to a cacophony. "I was there and so were you, thanks in no small part to my intervention on your behalf. It's time to pay the piper. I need wiretaps and a team of analysts searching for two individuals and I needed it done five minutes ago."

  There it was. The advancing locomotive that Ayers had seen coming a mile away, his dirty little secret plastered to the front of it like a windswept Christmas wreath. He too, as an unemployed IT worker from Silicon Valley, had once reached out for help the same way many of his students did. He'd always reasoned to himself that his situation had been different, that he'd had a family to feed and that waiting for the dot-com industry to repair itself after the bust in the late nineties would have meant stocking shelves at Wal-Mart for a decade while his children were raised on food stamps. But in reality, the scenario was the same as for a recent college grad needing to pay back the student loans taken out to finance their education, and as Kemiss had so pointedly put it seconds before, the piper always came calling.

  "So you're telling me that this is a matter of national security and that these people are suspected of involvement in the attack in Virginia?"

  "He is; she just has the misfortune of being married to him."

  "Then why isn't this going through the Surveillance Court and up to one of the analyst centers with a warrant attached?"

  "Because we don't have that kind of time. Within the last hour this guy killed at least two men sent to apprehend him and he's going to be on his way out of the country in a matter of a few hours more. Now, if we find him this way the Richmond Field Office can put a collar on him before he even leaves the region and no one, including him, will ever know the NSA was involved."