by Don Brown
“Lieutenant?”
Zack turned.
“Is there something I can help you with?”
His heart pounding like a jackhammer, Zack’s gaze moved from her smiling face to the name tag affixed on her blouse. He exhaled, almost laughing at himself. At the way he’d nearly mistaken the young woman for someone else. At the momentary wave of disappointment that washed over him. “No thank you. Just looking.”
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.” She looked enough like Diane Colcernian to be her first cousin. He stared at her as she walked away, then exhaled again, trying to get his ticker under control.
He looked down at the book in his hand, studying the face on the cover. But it wasn’t Levinson he saw.
It was Diane Colcernian.
CHAPTER 23
Oceana Naval Air Station
Virginia Beach, Virginia
Monday, August 4, 0400 hours (EST)
Harry Kilnap flashed his badge at the U.S. Marine sentry, then drove the government-issued navy blue Ford Taurus through the Oceana Naval Air Station main gate. A few minutes later, he turned the Taurus into the asphalt parking lot just outside VFA-115 headquarters.
Killing the Taurus’s headlamps, he drove slowly, creeping through the parking lot at three miles per hour, circling between the rows of parked cars in search of the subject vehicle. About a quarter of the way up the third row, his foot hit the brake pedal.
The light-green Dodge Neon bore a Virginia license number.
MLL-1961
THE OLD DOMINION
From his glove compartment, Harry extracted an index card, on which he had written al-Aziz’s license plate number. He flipped on the Taurus’s overhead interior dome light and read the card: Virginia tag no. MLL-1961, green Neon, registered to Sulayman al-Aziz.
He checked the tag number again. Bingo.
He backed the Taurus into a parking space about fifty feet to the right of the Neon, parked the car, and cut the engine. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves, got out, then walked to al-Aziz’s parked vehicle. At a few minutes after four in the morning, he doubted anyone else was in the parking lot, but he glanced around to make sure.
The first step was to pick the lock without setting off the car’s alarm. If it did go off, the roar of the jets doing touch-and-goes on the runway a quarter of a mile away would help buffer the shrill sound. If someone heard the alarm and showed up, so what? Kilnap would flash his Federal Agent–NCIS badge, explain that he was in the process of a federal investigation, and that would be that.
Of course, Harry Kilnap wasn’t worried about getting into trouble with the shore patrol. After all, the NCIS was the premiere law enforcement agency serving the Navy.
Neither the shore patrol nor the Virginia Beach Police Department—if they could get on base—could mess with him. Those guys were small potatoes. He was a federal agent. How he loved rolling those words off his tongue when presenting his identification badge, or announcing his presence, or making an arrest.
The “little boys” of law enforcement would never understand the awesome responsibility vested in the few agents bearing that mantle. The NCIS, the FBI, the CIA. Federal agents were in a league of their own. Harry Kilnap was one of the few, one of the elite.
As he approached the Neon by foot, dressed in dark blue jeans, a black sweatshirt, and a black windbreaker, he felt in his pockets for the picklock. He flipped on the flashlight and pointed it into the Dodge’s interior. Two newspapers were strewn in the backseat, a pair of athletic shoes lay on the front floorboard, and a copy of the Qur’an rested on the passenger’s seat.
Kilnap turned off the flashlight, then tried the driver’s side door handle. It was unlocked. Quickly flipping off the Neon’s dome light, he reached over into the backseat and grabbed the two newspapers, copies of the Virginian Pilot from different days.
The headline on one edition read “Navy Hornet Goes Down in North Carolina.” On the front page of the second paper, in the lower right corner, the header read “Investigation Underway on Downed Super Hornet.”
He snapped several flash photographs and then replaced the papers exactly as they had been. Then he opened the Qur’an. The flashlight beam revealed an inscription, handwritten in blue ink, on the inside of the book:
To Sulayman al-Aziz, Allah’s servant and warrior,
From Mohammed Reska, LCDR, CC, USN
Kilnap fished a pen from his pocket and wrote on the back of the index card the chaplain’s name, rank, and military occupation specialty. Next he photographed the Qur’an and glanced around to see if anyone might have seen the camera’s flash go off. The lot was still empty.
He jogged back to the Taurus to get one other item.
It was a small, black, plastic device, maybe two inches long and a half inch wide. Kilnap slipped it under the driver’s seat. He then rechecked everything in the car to make sure it was left as he found it. After another glance around the parking lot, he walked back to the Taurus and waited.
And waited.
And as he waited in the Taurus, his eyes glued to the Neon, he nursed a lukewarm cup of black coffee from McDonald’s. And he fumed about the past weekend’s events and particularly about that liberal judge who refused to issue the search warrant.
As it turned out, Captain David Guy had been right when he had predicted the federal magistrate would deny the search warrant of al-Aziz’s apartment. Some garbage about not having “probable cause.”
Probable cause was just another fancy phrase some lawyer invented two hundred years ago, which, along with the other Latin phrases bantered about by the esteemed juris doctors of this world, was invented by juris doctors to separate them from good, ordinary, law-abiding citizens. And to get in the way of federal law enforcement.
Lawyers or no lawyers, Special Agent Harry Kilnap would get to the bottom of this.
Two hours later, when the suspect walked out of the hangar at the end of his morning shift, Kilnap was wolfing down the last few bites of a stale Egg McMuffin. He swallowed a big gulp of cool coffee, washing down the wad in his mouth, then rolled down his window, ditched the coffee onto the asphalt, and brought his binoculars to his eyes.
In the dim light of the early morning dawn, he could see several dozen enlisted airmen pouring out the front doors of the hangars onto the asphalt parking lot as they headed to their cars.
He pulled the binoculars back, squinted, rubbed his eyes, then swept the binoculars to the left until he found the light-green Dodge Neon.
He grinned. A swarthy-complexioned petty officer, dressed in blue dungaree uniform jeans, a windbreaker, and a ball cap, opened the driver’s side door of the Neon and got in.
A burst of smoke puffed from the Neon’s exhaust pipe, quickly followed by the glow of the car’s headlights and taillights. Kilnap quickly cranked the Taurus and clicked on the Norfolk Naval Base dispatcher radio.
Showtime.
“Suspect is on the move,” he told the NCIS dispatcher. He pulled the Taurus into a double line of outbound traffic on Tomcat Boulevard, three cars back and to the right of the Neon.
“Acknowledged,” the voice on the radio crackled back.
Now in slow-moving traffic down the main artery exiting the air station, Kilnap reached over and flipped a switch on the portable model UHF-AR, UHF receiver/recorder on the passenger’s seat. This was not a government-issued device. Kilnap had paid for it out of his own wallet. All fifteen hundred bucks of it. For that matter, the NCIS hierarchy didn’t even know he had it.
But so what?
If agents could voluntarily upgrade their sidearms, above and beyond the standard 9mm Glock, at their own expense, then why not upgrade other tools of the trade? If spending a few bucks on some high-tech electronic gadgetry would get the job done, Harry Kilnap was willing to do that. He was, after all, a federal agent, a professional in every sense of the word.
After a crackle of static, he heard sounds coming from the Neon: the engine revving as al
-Aziz pressed the accelerator, the car radio—tuned to an all-news station—playing, and al-Aziz coughing. The ultrasensitive transmitter, now set on channel A, was doing its job.
Kilnap rode the bumper of the Chevy just in front of him, close enough to keep the Muslim’s brake lights in view. In this rush-hour traffic, there was no immediate danger that al-Aziz could break loose, at least not until they had cleared the main gate.
As he watched the Neon’s brake lights go on again, ten short, distinctive beeps came through the portable UHF receiver. Someone dialing?
“Commander Reska . . .” This was al-Aziz’s voice.
“Yes, sir. This is Sulayman . . .”
Reska. The same name written in the copy of the Qur’an.
“Yes, sir. I’ve just gotten off duty . . .”
Harry pulled the index card from his coat pocket.
Reska. I knew it! Kilnap, you’re a genius.
“Sir, we must talk.” A pause. “I have many questions, sir.” Another pause. “Now, if possible, sir . . . The usual place? Shoney’s on Dam Neck Road? . . . See you in fifteen minutes, sir.”
Harry’s pulse raced. He knew the place.
Fifteen minutes later, the sun crested the eastern horizon, casting an occasional blinding reflection in his rearview mirror. Kilnap followed the Neon into the Shoney’s parking lot on Dam Neck Road. He parked the Taurus about seventy-five feet away, keeping the subject car in his line of sight. He switched to his binoculars. A moment later, al-Aziz opened the driver’s side door, stood up, and scanned the parking lot. He was obviously nervous. He slammed the car door and quickly strode toward the front door of Shoney’s.
Kilnap switched the UHF receiver on the front seat from channel A to channel B, then punched the record button for channel B. Shrill static poured out. He turned the volume down, then got out of the car and opened the trunk. The large briefcase in the trunk contained more spy gadgetry—all purchased by Kilnap.
He pulled out three devices: a pen bug, a small, ultrasensitive directional listening device resembling a ballpoint pen, which when pointed in a certain direction could transmit voices up to 230 feet; a calculator bug, an ultrasensitive device that looked like an electronic handheld calculator, but picked up and transmitted noises, particularly the human voice; and a slightly more conspicuous Model B-E “Orbiter Electronic Listening Device.” This one was known as the bionic ear and resembled a small black plastic handgun with a small plastic dish at the tip of the barrel. It could pick up a whisper from a hundred yards away, transmitting it to an off-site receiver.
Kilnap set all three devices to transmit to channel B on his receiver, then closed the briefcase, took it from the trunk and walked quickly toward the restaurant. He would survey the situation inside to determine which, if any, of these gadgets would be useful in Shoney’s.
Kilnap gave the restaurant a quick visual sweep. Al-Aziz sat alone in the smoking section, halfway between the reception station and the bathroom.
He smiled benignly at the hostess. “I’ll seat myself.”
A few patrons shuffled back and forth between their booths and the all-you-can-eat breakfast bar. Other than that, the smoking section was mostly empty.
Kilnap selected a booth twenty feet behind and catercorner to al-Aziz.
“Breakfast bar, sir?” An eager young waitress with a topknot ponytail stood by his table.
Serving himself would keep her out of his hair. “Sure.”
“Coffee?”
“Black, please. Just leave a pot.”
“Comin’ right up.”
Kilnap fidgeted with the briefcase on the floor under the booth just to the left of his feet. He lifted the specialty pen and pocket calculator out of the case and placed them on the table.
“Here’s your coffee.” The waitress tossed her ponytail as she set his cup on the table. The pot followed.
“Thanks. Just leave it there.” Kilnap waited until she walked away; then he placed the bionic ear on the seat between his left thigh and the wall.
When he looked up, al-Aziz was gone. A quick glance to the bathroom door showed it just closing.
Harry looked over his shoulder quickly.
No sign of the chaplain.
He got up, the pen bug in his hand, walked toward the restroom, then quickly bent down and slid the pen directly under the table where al-Aziz had been sitting. He returned to his booth, took his clean, empty plate, and headed to the breakfast bar.
With his serving spoon in the scrambled eggs and his eyes on the bathroom door, he saw al-Aziz, his cap now removed, come out of the bathroom and return to the same booth.
Kilnap moved past a bowl of hardboiled eggs to a vat of bacon. He’d just picked out his third strip when a dark-complexioned officer, wearing a khaki windbreaker with the gold oak leaves of a lieutenant commander, strode into the restaurant.
Lieutenant Commander Mohammed Reska, I presume.
He dropped one more bacon strip onto his plate as the officer made a beeline to the enlisted airman, gave him a brief bear hug, then sat in the booth across from him.
Kilnap returned to his table, forked his eggs, and sipped his coffee, all the while glancing periodically toward the Muslim chaplain and his follower. At one point, Reska’s eyes briefly caught his, which prompted him to head back to the bar for pancakes. From a less auspicious position behind the pancake grill, he saw the two engaged in what looked like a heated discussion.
As Harry doused his cakes with butter and a healthy squirt of maple syrup, al-Aziz stood up, his face contorted, and strode out the door. The chaplain also stood up, threw a five-dollar bill on the table, and walked out.
The whole encounter had lasted less than fifteen minutes.
Kilnap took his plate to the table. He dropped a ten on the table, then causally walked over to the booth that had been occupied by the Muslim tandem. Nothing, except the five-dollar bill and two glasses of water. He sat down where the chaplain had been seated and reached down to check on his pen.
It was still there.
With a smile, he picked it up and put it in his pocket. Then he grabbed his briefcase and left the restaurant.
CHAPTER 24
Navy-Marine Corps Trial Judiciary
32nd Street Naval Station
San Diego
Monday, August 4, 1100 hours (PST)
The Navy jury members sat attentively in the jury box in Courtroom 1 just a few feet to the left of the prosecutor’s table where Zack sat in his black swivel chair.
There were nine jurors altogether, six officers and three enlisted, resplendent in their summer white uniforms. Five sat in the lower row, just behind the oak banister above Zack’s left shoulder. The other four, plus an alternate, sat in the second row, elevated about a foot above the first row. Just behind the jury box rose a large double window. A few rays of sunlight streamed through at a shallow angle from the late-morning sun, glinting off the rich mahogany walls.
The members had seemed attentive, Zack thought, during the opening phase of the trial. Their eyes had followed him during his opening statement. Some of them winced when he told them how Ensign Marianne Landrieu was overpowered in the parking lot of the Officers’ Club by an enlisted Navy SEAL, thrown behind a hedgerow, and brutally assaulted. A couple of the female members had cast menacing glances at the accused.
Several times during his opening statement, he had turned and gestured toward the accused, earning a vicious glare from Diane Colcernian.
Now, as he concluded his opening statement, he walked dramatically around the courtroom, stopped in front of Blount, and stared at him.
“The government will prove, ladies and gentlemen”—he kept his voice commanding, pacing his delivery—“that this man, a man entrusted with the high and prestigious mantle of the most elite fighting force in the world, the Navy SEALs, did, on the night in question, use his strength, his athleticism, his force, and his training to overpower and subdue Ensign Marianne Landrieu, a Naval Academy graduate and
a member of the officer corps of the United States Navy.
“We will show”—he spoke in a measured cadence, surveying the members from left to right—“that on the night in question, shortly before midnight, the accused was lurking in the dark shadows of the Officers’ Club parking lot at the North Island Naval Station. When Ensign Landrieu left the club, walking to her parked car”—Zack pointed at Blount—“the accused spotted her from his hiding place. Liking what he saw, and seeking to take what was not his, the accused waited until Ensign Landrieu, who was walking unaccompanied to her car, in a dark corner of the parking lot, was perhaps two hundred yards from the nearest human.” He paused. “Then, like a predator springing from the dark, he struck.”
As he went on to describe the assault, including every brutal detail, he studied the expressions of the members, refusing to let their attention waver for even a split second. As he drew to a close, he let the thunder come into his voice. “This we will prove, ladies and gentlemen. And we will prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Thank you.”
His dramatic display drew a quick objection from Diane Colcernian, who complained the statement was overly argumentative. At this point, all eighteen eyes of the members fell on the defendant, their brows furrowed, some looking angry. One member, a female ensign with aviator’s wings, had been staring at the accused from the beginning of Zack’s opening statement. Blount did not meet the jury’s eyes, but kept his eyes on the floor.
Judge Reeves overruled the objection, which in Zack’s opinion made Diane look desperate and made her client look even guiltier.
When Diane declined to make an opening statement but reserved the right until the beginning of the defense’s case, it was time to present evidence. Zack turned and nodded to Amy DeBenedetto, seated three feet behind the counsel table in a metal folding chair. She inclined her head slightly in return before leaving the courtroom.
Zack rose to his feet. “Your Honor, the United States calls Ensign Marianne Landrieu to the stand.”
“Very well.” When Amy returned with Marianne Landrieu at her side, the judge inclined his head. “Ensign Landrieu, take the stand and be sworn, please.”