Black Ops Bundle: Volume One

by Allan Leverone

  Minutes later he stood at the end of the rickety pier thirty yards from the front door of the cabin. He lit a match and placed it into the end of his churchwarden pipe, inhaling the first burst of smoke from the cherry tobacco. He only smoked when something was bothering him. Flicking the lit match into the air towards the black water in front of him, he watched as the orange light moved through the air and vanished with an audible hiss. In its absence he realized exactly how dark it was at night without any street lights nearby.

  A brief light broke the darkness again as the front door to the cabin opened. He took another drag from the pipe and exhaled slowly as he felt a pair of slender arms slide around his waist in a light embrace, followed by a head resting against his back. He held the pipe between his teeth and placed his hands over his wife's arms.

  "None of this is your fault," she said after several moments of holding him silently. "I didn't marry you because you were a fisherman from Galway. I married you because I loved you, and I love you now. I don't understand everything that's happened, but my feeling is that the outcome would have been much different if you weren't who you are."

  One of the things he loved most about her was that she never held a grudge. No matter how angry she got, she worked through it quickly and always had a clear way of thinking about things afterwards. This time, as usual, she was right, whether he liked it or not. If not for his past experiences, the outcome of several situations would have been much different. For starters, he'd be dead, the two goons on the highway would have seen to that, and the other two waiting in the park would have killed Constance. Despite the sins of his past, they were both alive now because he was a trained killer. He silenced the thought that if he hadn't been, he never would have met Kafni and none of this would have even happened. Following such thoughts led a man in circles.

  "It's not that I didn't want you to know that I'd done some bad things," he said. "I wasn't running from you, I was running from myself. I'd been running for years. When we met, for the first time I actually dared to believe that I could have a normal life."

  "And we do have a normal life," she said, moving around to face him. "Or at least we did."

  He snorted a short laugh and said, "Yeah, past tense. Abe's timing has always been an issue."

  She hugged him tightly and rested her head against his chest. "How'd you meet him?"

  "He was a Mossad agent working illegally in Belfast. He was acting on intelligence Israel had received that Arafat's PLO was being aided by the IRA. The 'ra was helping to train some of Arafat's men in the use of IEDs in exchange for shipments of weapons and semtex. I was on the outs by then, most of the right-wingers I'd run with were dead. I supplied him with some dates and times. Earned myself a right good beating for it, too," he said, tracing his index finger down a small scar beside his right eye. "They'd have killed me that night for being a tout if Abe and two of his men hadn't shown up."

  "He saved your life?"

  "Aye. Moved me to the Republic that same night, to a Mossad safe house in Galway. The Brits didn't have anything on me so I was able to leave the country on a freighter heading to Boston."

  "And once he quit Mossad and came to the U.S. you two met up again," she said.

  He nodded. "I worked in Boston doing the only thing I knew how to do, smuggling and gun running. I got wind of an assassination plot that my employer was involved in and found out that Kafni was the target."

  "And you saved his life to return the favor he did you?"

  "Aye."

  Several minutes passed as they stood holding each other in silence.

  "What do we do now?" she asked, finally breaking the silence.

  Declan shook his head. "I don't know. My mind keeps going back to that FBI agent, the one who interviewed me in the hospital. He was combative from the very beginning and stopped just short of accusing me of being involved. It was his voice on that phone a while ago, I'm sure of it."

  She drew back and looked up at him as if she was studying his face to see if he was serious.

  "I met him too," she said finally, “in the waiting room last night. I didn't really think much of it at the time, but I got a weird feeling from him. He kept insisting that he needed to talk to you right away, but the doctors and nurses wouldn't let him."

  Her voice trailed off and he knew she was thinking the same thing he was. If an FBI agent was involved then they were in a lot of trouble. Not only did it mean that the people against them weren't just some two bit thugs, it meant there was a much wider conspiracy that could involve countless numbers of people. What did they do now? Run?

  Declan felt a surge of anger rise inside him as he considered the options. He and Constance had built a life together and if they ran then that life would crumble away into nothing. Sure, they could rebuild somewhere else and probably even live safely, but they'd never be able to stop looking over their shoulders and he didn't want that kind of life. He'd been down that road before and had determined to leave it behind.

  "That's why I didn't want to go to the police. If there's some kind of conspiracy going on, then we'd just end up back in the same situation. By coming here, by disappearing, we've got the advantage. We get to decide when and where we surface, or even if we surface."

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  6:46 a.m. Eastern Time – Sunday

  Lynchburg Federal Building

  Lynchburg, Virginia

  Seth Castellano sat alone in the fourth floor field office his counterterrorism unit had taken over thirty-six hours earlier. The other agents assigned to the case were either out, following the hundreds of leads that had poured in through the FBI's eyewitness hotlines, or had taken a few hours off to freshen up and get some rest. He'd spent most of the night going over ways to spin the fact that Declan McIver had killed the four assassins that had been sent to make sure that what he knew never reached the ears of the public at large.

  Castellano had had a pretty good idea that McIver was hiding something when he'd first begun to pull information on the man after learning his identity at the hospital, and the deaths of the four men all but proved it. Now the question wasn't if McIver was hiding something, but what.

  Shortly before 11 p.m. the previous night, Castellano had received word from the Virginia State Police that a vehicle belonging to DCM Properties had been found overturned along a deserted section of a four lane highway between Lynchburg and Roanoke and that two bodies had been nearby. He'd immediately ordered his agents in the field to secure the scene and to prevent any of the local or state police from contaminating it. By the time he'd arrived to have a closer look, he'd also learned that the Roanoke City Police had found two more bodies near a warehouse owned by the same company.

  Now, with four suspicious bodies attached to property ostensibly belonging to Declan McIver, he was beginning to feel much better about their chances of success. Even with McIver still on the loose, the bodies meant a huge hit to his credibility and he would have a lot of questions to answer when he was located. In the meantime, Castellano was sure that he could make the four dead men work in his and David Kemiss's favor if he could figure out the right angle.

  Castellano's thoughts were interrupted by the bell on the elevator. He turned in his chair to see an agent entering the office. "Good morning, Agent Kelly," he said.

  Kelly placed a black computer bag on one of the many desks and took a seat. "Good morning, sir. Have you been here all night?" She was one of the newest agents in his unit, but one of the most experienced investigators on the team, having had many years of prior service in the FBI. She was middle-aged with scraggly, dark hair and a lined face. Not the most attractive person, but certainly one of the most motivated agents he had under his command.

  Castellano nodded. "No rest for the wicked, I suppose."

  "No rest here either, sir, I spent most of the night trying to locate a lead that I thought you might be interested in, in light of last night's discoveries."

  "Oh?"

  Kel
ly zipped open the computer bag and withdrew a tip sheet. "I remembered seeing this yesterday morning and didn't think much of it. At the time it seemed like just another nutjob calling in conspiracy theories, but since those bodies were found near Kafni's former bodyguard's property...I thought maybe there was more to it."

  Castellano reached out and took the tip sheet. Looking it over he said, "What kind of name is Lorcan O'Rourke?"

  "Irish, I believe, sir."

  "Well, let's see if we can get him on the phone, shall we?"

  Kelly took the tip sheet back and dialed the phone number listed. Pressing the speaker button, the agents listened as the phone rang on the other end.

  "Yeah?" a gruff voice answered.

  "Is this Lorcan O'Rourke?" Castellano said, over-enunciating the name.

  "Depends on who's asking, boyo." The voice was accented and when the man spoke it sounded as though he was gargling broken glass. Whoever he was, he needed to lay off the cigarettes or else he was going to have a serious disagreement with cancer before long.

  "You're speaking with Assistant Special Agent in Charge Seth Castellano, at the FBI. I understand that you phoned one of our tip lines and said you had information on the Kafni investigation, is that correct?"

  "Well, boyo, I have some information that might be related to your investigation and it might not be. It's more of an additional direction you could take a look in, besides Islamic terrorism."

  "You indicated that your information had something to do with a former bodyguard. Why don't you tell me more about that?"

  "Aye. Have you run across a man named Declan McIver in your investigation yet?"

  Castellano couldn't believe his ears. Had the man just said Declan McIver? He sure as hell had, and now Castellano was listening intently. "I can't comment on an ongoing investigation, sir. You'll have to tell me what it is that you have and I'll decide from there whether it's something we need to pursue."

  "McIver used to be a member of Kafni's security detail back in the late nineties, but before that he worked for me, as a smuggler. Turned out to be quite a lot of trouble, too, and cost me a damn fortune. After thirty years at sea, I can tell you that he's the worst thing I've ever plucked out of the Atlantic Ocean."

  "I'm sorry, plucked out of the Atlantic Ocean?"

  "That's right, boyo. McIver's an immigrant, and not the legal kind, at least not originally. He came to the States aboard a freighter that originated in Ireland. That freighter was carrying, well, we'll call it undeclared cargo, and when we offloaded it onto our own boat, McIver came with it. We used to get a lot of guys like him in the late eighties and nineties, all running from the British Army or the Royal Ulster Constabulary or some damn agency or another over there."

  "Running? Why?"

  "Three words, boyo: Irish—Republican—Army."

  "The IRA?" Castellano said rhetorically.

  "Yeah, the IRA, revolutionaries, terrorists, whatever you want to call them. My point is, Declan McIver was one of them, and if I was looking for a man close to Abaddon Kafni who was capable of the kind of violence that happened Friday night, I'd be looking right at this man. Do some digging and you'll see what I mean. And when you do...I want you to jam him up really hard and tell him Lorcan O'Rourke sends a hearty up yours."

  The caller hung up with a laugh that quickly turned into a wheezing cough. Agent Kelly picked up the receiver and hung it up again to turn off the speaker system. "Sorry, sir, I guess he was a nut after all."

  "Maybe," Castellano said with a shrug, "maybe not."

  "I don't see how that could help our current investigation, sir."

  "Well, it's a bit of possible background on McIver, which has been hard to come by, but no, you're right. It doesn't help us much at the moment. Good effort though, Agent Kelly. Keep it up. I'll be in my office for a while before heading out if you find anything else."

  "Yes, sir."

  Castellano stood from the chair he'd been sitting in near a wall mounted map of the Western Virginia area. He walked into the office he had commandeered and closed the door behind him. The caller hadn't given them anything that was really pertinent to the official investigation, but that didn't matter. Whatever the guy's angle was, three words that he'd uttered were more than helpful to the goals that Castellano wanted to accomplish.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  7:27 a.m. Eastern Time – Sunday

  Graemont Lane

  Charlottesville, Virginia

  David Kemiss turned up the collar on his black wool overcoat as he stepped onto the concrete porch of his house; he expelled several short breaths, which quickly evaporated into the cold air. Placing his hands in the oversized pockets of the coat, he suppressed a shiver as he strolled quickly down a brick walkway that led to a circular motor court, about twenty yards in front of the three story Georgian mansion.

  He turned and looked back at the house as he arrived in the motor court. Four gray pilasters held up a triangular gable, under which stood his front door. That there were many rooms in the brick-built industrial era house was evident from the eight windows that studded the front elevation on each of the two lower levels, with four more sitting just below the roof line. He looked over each of the windows for any sign that he'd woken his family and saw none. He himself hadn't slept more than a few hours, and even that had been sporadic. He had tossed and turned and slept for only brief periods, his troubled mind unwilling to let go of his problems.

  He tried to distract himself with thoughts of the beautiful landscape surrounding his home as he plodded along the narrow gravel driveway: rolling hills that looked out over the tall peaks of the Shenandoah Mountains to the west and a sloping valley to the south overlooking the Revolutionary era city of Charlottesville, glimpses of the Rivanna River trickling down the wooded expanse toward the city's many brick-fronted institutions. The nearly one hundred acres around him had been in his family since the 1950s when his father had moved to the area and opened the law firm of Kemiss, Cronk and Caulfield. Since then the Kemiss name had been synonymous with the area and both he and his father had served as the elected representative for what was known politically as the 5th District of Virginia. In 1992, he'd given up that seat to run for the more influential position of senator and had held it in each of the three elections since.

  Kemiss' heart leapt as a familiar buzzing sounded from inside the left breast pocket of his coat, and he reached inside to retrieve his cell phone, hoping this was the call he'd been waiting most of the night for.

  He looked at the 410 area code and took a deep breath. The caller was from the Fort Meade area of Maryland, which meant that it was indeed the man he'd been waiting for.

  "What do you have, Allan?"

  "Not much, I'm afraid. I've had my entire class at it since ten o'clock last night and the only thing I've got for you is a few GPS pings off the woman's cell phone. They came in shortly after we started our search, but we've had nothing since."

  "But we know where they're at, right?" Kemiss felt his stomach tighten. The NSA had to have a location. That's what they did.

  "No. We have no idea where they're at."

  "What do you mean no?" Kemiss snapped. "Isn't locating people what you do?"

  "Yes," Ayers said dryly, "but sometimes our work can take days or even weeks to find an actionable location. The pings came from a cell tower in the Lewisburg, West Virginia area. Now the satellite can trace the location, but unfortunately they were stationary at the time and then the signal disappeared, which means they either turned the phone off or lost service."

  "Well, where were they?"

  "In the parking lot of a gas station in White Sulphur Springs, but that isn't going to help you much. There's a major east-west interstate going right past there so they literally could have been going anywhere."

  "Why didn't you call me sooner? We could have had someone in the area on the lookout!"

  "We've been on the lookout and found nothing. No more pings in any direction for two hu
ndred miles and we've been checking every airport, bus station and train terminal within the region continually. More than likely they turned the phone off and continued on. This class is over at ten and I'm pulling the plug. I'll keep the search parameters open for another twenty four hours and see if the system returns anything. I'll let you know if anything comes back, but I'm not risking my head any further for this."

  "Fine, maybe I'll pull the plug on you, too." Kemiss slapped the phone closed. He'd let Ayers twist in the wind for a while and see what the gnawing idea of being fired motivated the man to do, but for now it was time to move onto another plan. If they couldn't find Declan McIver then they couldn't kill him. But maybe they didn't need to kill him. The idea of discrediting him somehow had been tossed around, but had been ditched in favor of dealing with the problem more permanently. Since that idea had obviously failed, it was time to revisit the other options.

  He flipped open his phone again and dialed Castellano's number. "It's time to move on to Plan B. What do you have?" he said as Castellano picked up the call.

  He could practically hear the smile in the agent's voice as he answered. "I've got four bodies, each near a piece of property belonging to our man. That's enough probable cause for me to get search warrants and to open up an official investigation, which will put a lot more resources at our command. As far as I'm concerned, Declan McIver just did us a big favor and eliminated four witnesses to Friday night's events. And I'm going to paint it to look like he eliminated four witnesses to his involvement."

  "That's good—"

  "That's not all I've got, either."

  "Well? Don't keep me in suspense."

  "What was going on in Ireland sixteen years ago when this guy first showed up in the U.S.?" Castellano didn't wait for an answer. "Terrorism," he continued, "the Irish Republican Army. We tie this guy to the car bombing, which the IRA had a proclivity for, and we brand him a terrorist."