Raising himself slowly into a standing position, he looked around the spacious garage, pistol aimed in the direction of sight until he was sure he was alone. Inside, eight vehicles in various stages of repair sat dormant, the smell of antifreeze hanging in the humid air. Only the natural light allowed in by the building's windows lit the room, the tinted glass giving the interior a greyish hue. The ceiling was at least fifteen feet high with an arched center, and a sliding glass window sat high in the wall closest to the front of the building. As he walked down the center between the two rows of vehicles, a hissing sound caught his attention. The sound was coming from a maroon colored BMW SUV that was parked in the very first bay and indicated the vehicle's water pump was leaking. Declan moved towards it and reached for its hood, knowing that the only way the water leak could make the hissing sound was if the vehicle's exhaust manifold was still hot. Sure enough, as he placed his hand flat on the hood, he could feel warmth through the metal. The SUV hadn't been parked there very long. Had its occupants left in another vehicle or were they still in the building?
He moved to a doorway at the front of the garage and entered a hallway beyond. From the hall he could see the door that he'd peered through earlier and the papers littering the front office floor. Clearing the few rooms off the hallway, he made his way to the front office. The first floor of the building was empty, but he needed to make sure the second floor was, too, before he could begin searching for anything that might identify the four men he'd killed. Inside the office, he searched for a staircase that would lead him to the second floor he knew was there. Spotting a closed door in the far corner of the room, he strode towards it, raising his pistol in one hand and gripping the doorknob with the other. He pulled open the door and aimed the pistol up a set of stairs that hair pinned around a corner and out of view. Keeping his weapon aimed, he climbed the steps slowly, one at a time. On the landing halfway up, he rolled out around a wall, securing the second flight of stairs. There was no door at the top and whatever room was beyond sat off to the right. Nearing the last step before reaching the second floor, he moved as far to the left on the stairs as he could to get a view of the room. Suddenly he heard a loud blast and a piece of drywall disintegrated a foot from him.
"Stay away from here," a gruff voice shouted. "Get out!"
"I'm not here to hurt anyone!" Declan shouted in response. "I just need to ask some questions!"
"The hell you do! Get out!"
Another gunshot sounded, the bullet tearing loose more of the white drywall and causing it to fall to the floor in a dusty heap. Declan stayed put on the steps; unable to see who it was that was firing at him.
"I'm warning you, I'm not going down without a fight! I'll shoot you!"
"I believe you," Declan said, putting his pistol in his coat where it was hidden from view but still accessible. "I'm not here to hurt you. I'm one of the good guys. I'm unarmed. Now, who am I talking to?"
"You know who I am! I'm Tim Sweat, the guy whose family you've been threatening for the last month!"
"I think you've got me confused with someone else. My name's Declan McIver. I'm the owner of DCM Properties in Roanoke."
There was silence in the room for several seconds.
"Do you always go around breaking into people's buildings?"
"No. No, I don't. Now I'm going to step onto the landing slowly with my hands up. Don't shoot."
Declan raised his hands to shoulder level and stepped up onto the last step, gradually exposing one hand and stepping sideways onto the second floor, facing the direction the gunshots had come from. The floor creaked under his weight.
In the rectangular room beyond a heavyset man with white hair, a rose-colored complexion and a thin mustache crouched behind a long desk, aiming a .38 revolver. Perspiration beaded and rolled down his face.
"Easy," Declan said, keeping his hands up and stepping forward into the room. "Now, surely you can see I'm not the man whose been threatening you."
The man sniffed loudly and wiped his sweaty face with his hand. "There are four of 'em. How do I know you're not just a fifth sent here to keep me from talking?"
"I'm here because a vehicle belonging to this company ran me off the road last night. Then its occupants tried to kill me."
"Kill you? Oh, God." The man's grip on the revolver loosened a bit and he raised himself up a few inches to support his body against the edge of the desk. Breathing heavily he said, "I don't know anything about it. Oh, God." Tears streamed from his eyes and he wiped frantically at them.
Declan relaxed and lowered his hands, keeping them just far enough away from his body that the man could see he wasn't going for a weapon. "You said your name is Tim Sweat? Are you the owner of this company?"
"Yeah, at least I was until yesterday afternoon when the FBI walked in and shut us down."
"Why did the FBI shut you down? Because the car that blew up at the university belonged to your company?"
"Yes," Sweat said, nodding. "But I didn't have anything to do with it. I swear. They were threatening my family."
"I believe you," Declan said, being sure to maintain eye contact. "Let's put the gun down and talk about this. I'm here because someone's threatening my family, too."
Sweat stood and slowly lowered the revolver, his face contorting as he fought back tears.
"Now tell me who they are," Declan said, though he thought he probably already knew.
"Four men, they came in just a little over a month ago when we first booked the job at Liberty. I don't even know how they knew about it. They said they wanted in on the job but I've got a good crew here. Most of them have been with me for over a decade and I wasn't about to bump them so I could hire these guys. Something about 'em, I don't know, something just wasn't right."
"But they didn't go away when you said no?"
Sweat shook his head. "No. They came back here that same night. I'm always the last one to leave and they approached me as I was getting in my truck. Told me that if I didn't agree to hire them on as part of the security team for the university, they'd hurt my family. They had pictures of my granddaughters getting on the school bus, pictures of my wife in the garden at home. I didn't have a choice."
Declan nodded. Sweat was obviously scared and was showing no signs of deception. The revolver quaked in his hand and clamshell-shaped stains formed in the underarms of his white button-down shirt.
"I knew they were up to something bad," Sweat continued, "but I couldn't have imagined anything like this. I wanted to call the police, but then everywhere we went one of them was there. My wife and I would go out to eat and one of them would walk in and sit a few tables away from us, making sure that I saw him. At night they'd drive one of my own company vehicles by my house and park in the cul-de-sac, watching. I thought you were one of them. I thought you'd come to make sure I didn't talk."
Declan shook his head. "Until two days ago I was just a real estate investor attending the grand opening of the Barton Center where a good friend was the keynote speaker. Now he's dead and there's men trying to kill my wife and me."
Sweat's face contorted again as he said, "Until these four men walked into my life, I was just the owner of a small, family-run security company in Moneta, Virginia. Now the business I started with my two sons in 1986 is gone and I'm going to end up in jail."
Declan could understand both the fear and the frustration Sweat was feeling. Like Sweat, he'd worked hard to build his company and his life. What effect the current situation would have on his business, he didn't know. First, he had to survive, and that meant taking the fight to those responsible. "When was the last time you saw these men?"
"Saturday morning," Sweat said. "They left just before the FBI arrived. It's like they knew they were coming."
"They might have," Declan said, thinking about Castellano. He'd yet to find any evidence to prove it, but his gut instinct still told him the agent was involved. "Do you know anything about these men, their names? Can you tell me what they look li
ke? I need to find them."
"The FBI raided the office downstairs completely and searched the entire building. They took all of my employee files and years of financial documents, but I made copies of the paperwork these guys filled out for their DOJ clearance and kept them up here, tucked away in a filing cabinet full of instruction booklets and warranty information. That's why I came here, to get the files."
"DOJ clearance?"
"Yeah, we do a lot of guard work for government buildings so our guys have to have a security clearance from the Department of Justice. I don't know if the names and information they put down are real, but it passed DOJ, so if not they're damn good fakes."
Sweat spread out a stack of four folders side by side on his desk and opened them. Declan stepped around the desk and looked down at the passport-sized picture on each one. "I don't think you've got anything to fear from these men anymore," he said as he looked at the photos of the men who'd tried to kill both him and Constance. "They're all dead."
Sweat looked up abruptly, fear evident in his eyes as if he was thinking that he'd let his guard down to soon. His grip tightened on the revolver held at his side.
"Relax," Declan said. "These are the four men who tried to kill my wife and me Saturday night."
"But you got them first," Sweat said, as his grip on the gun loosened again.
Declan nodded.
"How? I mean, I'm a twenty-year police veteran, I know a dangerous man when I see one and those four guys were dangerous. Ex-military for sure, maybe even Special Forces. They were killers. I could sense it."
"I guess I didn't have time to be scared."
"Yeah, right, what were you, British military or something?"
Declan shrugged. "Something like that."
Sweat nodded. "Yeah, I thought so, the way you carry yourself and all. That's why I thought you were one of them."
"We need to get these files to someone who can tell us if the information is real or not. Maybe that will help us find out who they were working for, because they definitely weren't alone."
"No one's getting these files."
Declan looked up as Sweat backed away from him and raised the revolver. "I'm not risking anyone coming after my family," the white haired security man said.
"So that's your answer to this? You're going to blow your brains out and just hope that whoever these men were working for will leave your family alone when you're gone?"
Sweat grimaced, tears streaming down his face. "What other choice do I have? If I'm dead I can't talk and they've got no reason to hurt anyone."
"These guys have the word 'henchmen' written all over them. They were doing someone's dirty work. I've seen people like this operate before. If you think they're going to leave your family alone because you're dead you'd better reconsider. Men like that don't leave loose ends hanging."
Declan heard the sound of gravel crunching underneath the wheels of a vehicle outside; he reached towards the picture window and flipped up a single section of the blinds. Outside a police cruiser had pulled onto the company's parking lot. He could see the officer inside was on his radio, his attention focused on Declan's blue Mercedes alone in front of the building. Moments later a second cruiser came up the road and made a left into the lot, stopping beside the car already there. Declan had no doubt that they were there looking for him. Just as he'd thought would happen, Michael Coulson had called Castellano and now the police were closing in. He'd found what he was looking for, information that identified the four attackers, but now he needed to get it and himself out of here fast.
"Who is it?" Sweat asked.
"The police."
"The police?" Sweat said, as he strode towards the window with a hand out.
"No, wait," Declan said, moving to stop the man, but he was too late. Sweat reached the other window, pulled down a large section of the blinds and looked out. Over his shoulder, Declan watched as the sudden motion in the upstairs window attracted the attention of the officers sitting in their cruisers. The officer in the first car brought his radio to his mouth and began talking, without taking his eyes off the window.
Sweat backed away quickly as he sensed Declan behind him. "Stay back," he yelled, raising the gun to his temple. "I'm not going to jail!"
"You don't have to do this," Declan said urgently. "I can help you. We just have to get out of here!"
The sound of crunching gravel as more vehicles pulled onto the lot reached the second floor office and Declan held his hands out in a stop motion. "Let's go! We can make it out the back door before they get the—No!"
Sweat's hand tightened as he pressed the stout barrel hard against his temple, closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The report echoed through the small room as blood and brain tissue spattered the white drywall. Sweat's body fell to the floor with a heavy thud.
"No! Dammit!" Declan yelled, throwing his hands in the air and turning away from the grisly sight of the man's eviscerated head. He could feel liquid warmth on his face, droplets of blood that had been cast from the self-inflicted wound. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his coat. His mind raced as car doors slammed shut outside and officers left their vehicles, having heard the gunshot. He scooped up the four files and placed them under his arm. Sitting underneath them was a note written in chicken-scratched handwriting, a capitalized T and an S obvious in the signature at the bottom. Declan shook his head and moved quickly towards the stairs. Taking them two at a time, he looked through the tinted front windows as he reached the first floor. The police presence had multiplied to at least a half dozen and a group of officers was at the front door trying to get it open.
"Hey! There's someone inside!" one of the officers yelled, his voice muffled by the glass but still audible. Without making eye contact, Declan ran through the office to the hallway leading into the fleet garage. "He's going out the back!" he heard an officer yell.
Declan ran between the eight cars parked in the garage and reached the back door as the shouts of officers swarming over the front fence reached his ears. Tearing the door open, he exited the humid garage into the crisp spring afternoon and ran straight for the fence at the rear of the property. Jumping onto the hood of one of the parked Dodge Durangos, he ran over the roof and jumped the fence behind it, landing with a painful gasp from the eight foot drop.
"Where's he at? Where'd he go?" voices shouted from the fenced-in lot as the police reached the rear of the building. Declan darted into the thick brush that surrounded the building, branches tearing at his face as he pushed past the trees trying to get out of sight. He crested a small hill and stopped, breathing heavily. With his back against a tree, he craned his neck towards the building. Through the thick brush he could see parts of the fenced-in lot, now thirty yards behind him. Officers searched between vehicles, others gathering at the back door and preparing to enter. They hadn't seen him jump the fence, but he knew it wouldn't take them long to figure it out.
Chapter Thirty-Two
11:50 a.m. Eastern Time – Monday
Offices of Sweat Security
Moneta, Virginia
Seth Castellano slowed the dark blue Crown Victoria as the female voice on his GPS unit told him he needed to turn right and that he had nearly reached his destination. "Damn," he said aloud, as he saw the mass of police cruisers in the parking lot. He'd told the local dispatcher to make sure the deputies didn't approach the property until he got there and he had reiterated that statement to the Franklin County Sheriff minutes later when the man had returned his call. How could they screw up an order so simple? Clearly Seth's decision to call them in to make sure Declan McIver didn't leave the area before he could arrive had been the wrong one.
Pulling the car to a stop, he shifted it into park and stepped out. He folded his badge over the breast pocket of his suit coat as he walked around the vehicle towards the front of the building. Men in brown police uniforms looked up at him as he approached, but clearly saw the badge and chose not to address him. Maybe he was lucky and t
hey'd managed to apprehend McIver. While that would be problematic in another way, at least he wouldn't be running around loose where he could cause other problems.
As he neared the front door of the building he saw a hastily written sign saying closed until further notice and wasn't surprised. He'd sent a team of agents to this building the previous morning to obtain as much of the company's paperwork as possible and to interview the employees about the company's involvement in the car bombing outside of the Barton Center. The interviews had turned up exactly what he wanted them to: nothing. None of the employees had known about the four men placed inside Sweat Security, which meant that the company's owner had done as he was told. Likewise, the paperwork would show no record of them either. The glass door swung open and a broad man with salt and pepper colored hair stepped out.
"Are you Castellano?" he asked. Castellano nodded. It was clear from the white shirt of the man's uniform that he was the Sheriff and his introduction a moment later confirmed it. "I'm Steve Scruggs, Franklin County Sheriff."
Black Ops Bundle: Volume One Page 21