Declan felt the bindings on his wrists tighten momentarily as something pushed against them. With a small pop his hands fell to his sides as the restraints were cut. Sitting forward, he placed his hands on his face, wiping sweat away. The bottle was tapped against his right hand. He took it and gulped cold water, allowing it to spill over his chin and onto his shirt. Placing the bottle on the floor, he took another moment to collect himself. He rubbed his eyes as his vision began to clear and the buzzing in his head slowed.
He looked around to see that he was in an empty walk-in freezer. A tall, dark-haired man with a square chin stood behind him, wearing a black trench coat, his face threateningly blank. Fintan sat a few feet in front of him and as Declan looked toward him he was surprised. He'd nearly forgotten he was wheelchair-bound, a gift from their days in Northern Ireland.
Fintan patted the armrests of the chair and smiled. He still had the same neatly combed blonde hair and angular features as the last time Declan had seen him. His face was a bit more lined, but his eyes still gave off the same I'm smarter than you look they always had. "A bit sportier a model than the one you last saw," Fintan said. "I can actually walk with the assistance of crutches, but with all the twists and turns in this place, well, it's just easier this way."
Declan remembered the night Fintan had been injured; a gunshot to his lower back had left him paralyzed from the waist down. In 1993, a group of left wing IRA leaders from Belfast had paid an assassin to attack the McGuire family home in Mullaghmore, just over the border with the Irish Republic. Their goal had been to put an end to an internal power struggle within the IRA that had pitted them against right wing commanders from around the six counties of the north who disagreed with the consolidation of power in Belfast and with the political ambitions of Sinn Fein.
Angered by what they saw as the Belfast leadership being more interested in pandering to the IRA's enemies in Stormont and Westminster, and using the armed struggle only as a negotiating tool to gain political power and garner small fortunes for themselves, the commanders united under the leadership of Eamon Maguire, Fintan's father and commander of the IRA's South Armagh Brigade, to begin a quest to take back the military council and continue the battle for a united, thirty-two county Irish state. Being independently wealthy, the culmination of McGuire's plan was a specially trained group of operatives that he'd codenamed Black Shuck and had sent to train in Afghanistan under the supervision of a rogue Russian commander in charge of a unit of special forces soldiers known as Vympel.
Naturally the politicians of Sinn Fein hadn't taken kindly to the challenge and with the help of a traitor named Torrance Sands, they'd attacked and eliminated the team. Declan had served as the leader of one of the four active service units that made up Black Shuck under Eamon McGuire's command and his tenure had ended the same night Fintan had been shot. Although Fintan was never involved directly in any operations, the assassin had spared no one. Eamon McGuire, a half dozen other commanders and a dozen of the IRA's most lethal operators had been killed, and Fintan had been left for dead. Declan and his fellow operative Shane O'Reilly had survived only because they'd arrived after the assault and had found only carnage.
Declan placed his head back in his hands. Dammit, he thought. Although the buzzing had stopped, his vision had cleared and he could finally move his arms and legs again, he still had a severe headache.
"What was that your guys got me with? Where's Constance?"
"Ah, your wife, you did well there, Dec," Fintan chuckled. "She's fine, just fine, upstairs in a suite probably enjoying a facial and a massage. I have no idea what they hit you with. Only two of these guys are mine. The rest were friends of friends. A fact I'm not exactly happy about, as I'm trying really hard to keep my presence here under wraps, but I didn't have much choice. I knew it would take some damn good training to handle you."
"So no one knows you're here?"
"No. The staff here is used to quiet visits by political figures so I'm hoping it will stay that way. I'm on a plane back as soon as we're done."
"How'd you find me?"
"Christ, Declan, you're not that hard to predict. I knew you'd have a bolt-hole somewhere remote, probably within a hundred miles of home, someplace nice and quiet. As soon as I saw the news I had one of my guys make some calls. He found this nice old boy, former U.S. marine recon as it was, who works here in the kitchen. He outlined all of the possibilities and between him and some friends they sat on them until you showed up."
"Jesus, Fintan. This whole thing has way too many hands on it. How do you know this guy isn't going to turn me in or hasn't already?"
"Well, my friend here says he's trustworthy," Fintan said, motioning towards the man standing behind Declan. "Met him in Desert Storm, says he's no friend of the government. You know, one of those conspiracy types. Seems trustworthy enough, but that's all the more reason why you need to get your arse on a plane out of here. If he found you, the peelers won't be far behind. I have some contacts in Switzerland that can set you and the missus up with a nice cabin. All the skiin' and screwin' you'd care for until this thing blows over in a few months."
Declan shook his head. "Its not going to blow over. We have to find these bastards and stop them. Abe isn't going to have died for nothing and they aren't going to get away with taking away the best life I've ever had. I've worked too hard to put the past behind me to have it all destroyed."
"Jesus, Declan. You always did buy into all that stuff about the American dream, didn't you? You've got bigger problems than you realize. We all do. Whoever's after you has gone all the way to the Security Service in London. Shane's department received the order earlier today. The service is to release all the information they have on you. Shane'll delay the order as long as he can and even try to figure out who made it, but that won't help much. You've got to go to ground as fast as you can and I don't mean hiding in a cabin by the lake. I mean real hiding, new names, new paperwork, everything."
"I've got all of that; have had for years, French passports and papers, German passports and papers. It's not like they're going to stop looking for me just because I'm running and hiding. As long as I'm alive and I know the truth, they're going to be hunting me. Six days, six months or six years, any way you look at it, they're coming. We'll be running for the rest of our lives and I'm tired of running, Fintan. I've seen too many people die because the people in power were in collusion with the psychopaths out trying to murder everyone."
"How the hell do you plan on finding these guys? You don't even know who they are, do you? They made it all the way to Whitehall without breaking a sweat. What're you gonna do if this whole things goes all the way up to the presidency or something like that? You can't take on an entire government."
"I don't have to. This isn't the 1980s and we're not in Northern Ireland anymore. This is America and whoever these people are, they're on the fringe. They may have power and access, but that won't save them when the truth of what they're doing is revealed."
Fintan shook his head in seeming disbelief. "I should know better than to try to talk you out of anything. You're worse than a dog with a bone, always have been."
Declan thought for a moment. Slowly he sat back, took a deep breath and another long drink of water. He didn't like any of the options, but that was usually the way things worked in these situations. You always had to go with the best of the choices in front of you and Fintan was right. Staying in the U.S. didn't make much sense, Declan had settled on that fact the night before. The more distance he could put between himself and the conspirators trying to kill him the better off he'd be and the better his chances would be of finding out who they were without them finding him in the meantime.
"London," he said aloud, though he wasn't speaking to anyone in particular.
In all likelihood he didn't think there were any significant ties to London. His history in the U.S. was barely over a decade old and the information he'd supplied to the INS when he'd applied for citizenship left o
ut as much as it told. That was where the Security Service came in. Whoever was after him had needed information and had reached out to contacts within the British government to get it. Still, someone there had to know where the request originated and that person might just be the best chance he had at finding out who was responsible for everything that had happened since Friday night.
"Look," Fintan said, as if he could read minds, "your best chance of finding these guys is Shane. Let him stay on the London link while you lay low. When he's got something, we can decide the next move from there. You and the missus can shack up at the estate in Mullaghmore. No one will ever think to look for you there. It hasn't been used in years. You'll be close enough to act when Shane comes up with something and you'll be far enough away from the mess you're in here."
Declan nodded. "Hopefully you've cleaned up since the last time I saw Mullaghmore."
Fintan grimaced and Declan realized the insensitivity of his comment. The last time he'd seen the McGuire estate was the night Black Shuck had been wiped out and Eamon McGuire had died.
"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to—"
"Forget it. We need to get moving," Fintan said, as he pushed himself towards the door. "My pilot will get my jet ready and then we'll be off. You can be safe in County Monaghan by this time tomorrow."
Chapter Forty-Seven
6:53 a.m. Eastern Time – Thursday
Piney Ridge Trailer Park
White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
Nate Crickard knew that he was many things to many different people. To his thirteen-year-old son he was a father, or at least he had tried to be. To his ex-wife he was a deadbeat dad with a drinking problem. To his boss, Karl Lindgren, Executive Chef of the Greenbrier Resort, he was one of seven sous chefs, which translated to peon. To the staff at the VA Medical Center in Beckley, he was a veteran; and to untold thousands of Americans he was a patriot for his service to his country. He'd been called all of these names and more, but one thing he'd never been called was a traitor.
Sitting alone in the single-wide trailer that he called home, a bottle of Jack Daniel's beside him, fingers stroking the gray beard he'd grown during his first vacation in five years, he felt like a traitor to his country and he felt betrayed. He set the latest edition of the Lewisburg Mountain Messenger down on the cheap particle board coffee table in front of him and read the words again to be sure he hadn't imagined them. Terrorist sought in connection with bombing and deaths on the loose in Greenbrier County? was still emblazoned in bold black letters at the bottom corner of the page, over a photo of the suspect.
"Goddammit!" he swore out loud and threw the half-full glass he'd been drinking from onto the newspaper. A rust-colored stain soaked quickly through the paper. This was just his luck. How was it possible that everything he touched literally turned to excrement in front of his eyes? Was it damned bad luck or was he just flat-out damned? He slammed his fist down, cracking the particle board, and swore again as pain shot through his hand and up his arm. For the last ten years of his life, things had gone from bad to worse.
The downward spiral had begun when he had left the Marine Corp where he'd served for over a decade in the 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion, after he'd badly beaten a man he'd found sleeping with his wife. After a court martial, the choices had been made clear; resign his commission with the special operations battalion known as Marine Force Recon and never speak of the matter again, or receive a dishonorable discharge and a two-year prison sentence. He'd chosen the former and then watched as his wife packed up and took their then one-year-old son to live with her bruised and battered boyfriend in Charleston, South Carolina where, as far as he knew, they still lived.
He'd like to have said that things got better after that, but he'd be lying. He'd moved back to White Sulphur Springs where he'd been born and raised and where the employment for unskilled workers was limited to putting nuts on bolts in nearby factories or taking out the trash and maintaining the grounds of the Greenbrier Hotel. Nobody cared that he could break apart an M4A1 rifle in less than fifteen seconds or that he could put a single round between the eyes of a target from hundreds of yards away.
After choosing the Greenbrier, he'd slowly worked his way into the good graces of the hotel's Executive Chef and earned promotions from dishwasher to line cook to sous chef and another forty dollars a week, bringing his take home pay to just over three hundred. Somewhere in between, he'd gained fifty pounds and been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and neuropathy, which often left his hands and feet feeling numb. The doctors at the VA had told him that his drinking would kill him and he'd told them to shove off. It wasn't like he wanted to live anyway, he just lacked the courage to pull the trigger and end it.
The last good memories he had were of his days in the marine corp running black operations in countries like Iraq, Somalia and Yugoslavia, or whatever they were calling it this week. For years he'd entertained his coworkers at the Greenbrier with tales of bloody daring and steel testicles, and for their part they'd smiled and nodded, allowing him his illusions of grandeur, or so they thought.
For that reason he'd jumped at the opportunity when he'd received a phone call from an old friend, a fellow Special Forces man with the British army, offering him a chance to work side by side again. The last time they'd met was a NATO mission in Kosovo in 1999 and Dean Lynch was one of the few people he'd kept in contact with over the years of his exile.
To the best of his knowledge the Brit had no idea of the circumstances in which he'd left the marines or the shambles in which he found his life. If he did, then he'd never mentioned it, which was fine by Nate. In their occasional e-mails, which Nate read at the Greenbrier County Public Library every Wednesday on his day off, they swapped bloody stories and traded barbs, with Nate always signing off, God shave the Queen.
The +44 country code in front of the calling number had caused him to look twice at the caller ID on his night stand and the British accented voice on the line when he'd picked up had come as a complete surprise. Dean Lynch now worked in the private sector and had needed help locating a specific individual who was thought to be hiding somewhere in the vicinity of Roanoke, Virginia. Lynch couldn't tell him who the man was or why he was wanted, and at the time, Nate hadn't cared. It was a chance to forget the pathetic existence he called a life and to be a marine again, even if it was only for a day or two.
Now, looking down at the image of a suspect in an international crime, he cursed himself for not paying more attention to the national media and realized all he'd been was a convenient patsy in the right geographic location. In the right place at the right time, he thought.
With the help of some other veterans he knew from the VA, Nate had identified four likely areas for a hideout. With the promise of good money and the excitement of reliving the old days, they'd fanned out and watched the areas until the man they were looking for had shown up. Then, together with Lynch, Nate had cornered the suspect, whom Lynch had assured him was extremely dangerous, and they'd managed to take him down without firing a shot, a fact that Nate wasn't all that happy about. He'd just as soon have had the whole thing hit the fan and just maybe he'd have caught a bullet and gone down shooting.
He would certainly have preferred that to feeling like he'd betrayed his country and realizing that he'd been used by a man he'd thought was his friend. Now a man that the newspaper said was guilty of countless murders on U.S. soil was safe in the air, having been hustled away in the middle of the night by Lynch at the behest of some bigwig whose name Nate had never been given and whom he'd never been allowed to see.
I should've known better. That limey bastard better never show his face near me again. I'll kill him and display his decapitated head. Nate's face flushed two shades of red and he unscrewed the cap on the bottle of Jack, taking a long swig directly from the bottle and exhaling loudly as it burned all the way down into his stomach. I can still fix this, he thought, looking at the Washington D.C. phone number listed at the end of t
he article. The paper identified the number as that of a taskforce that had been setup to find and arrest the suspect, a man named Declan McIver. Surely the FBI could make contact with the authorities in other countries and they could intercept the plane when it landed, wherever it landed.
Why Lynch's employer had cared so much about the fate of an Irish terrorist was beyond him. Who knew why the micks did anything? All Nate Crickard cared about was setting things right and maybe, just maybe, he could salvage some of his former honor in the process. He took another sip from the bottle and screwed on the lid before picking up the phone and dialing the number.
Chapter Forty-Eight
7:23 a.m. Eastern Time – Thursday
Van Deman Industrial Park
Dundalk, Maryland
"The boy is a danger, Abu," Anzor Kasparov said. "All he has done for the last two days is stare at his brother's body. He is making the others nervous."
"Vakha was a good soldier. But Sharpuddin, he is no longer one of us," Ruslan Baktayev said, as he stood at the back door of the abandoned welding service with Kasparov and looked into the fenced-in lot behind the building. Baktayev assumed that at some point in the past valuable equipment had been stored on the lot because wooden pallets had been hung across the entire fence to keep anyone from seeing what was inside. Rusted strands of barbed wire prevented people from climbing over and signs reading beware of dogs had been placed throughout the property. Whatever had once been there was now long gone. Only three empty sea containers and stacks of rusted junk remained. At the mouth of one of the sea containers, Sharpuddin Daudov knelt, looking mournfully into the trailer where the bodies of his brother and two other men lay.
"I will talk to him," Kasparov said, and started forward.
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