Black Ops Bundle: Volume One

by Allan Leverone

  Declan sat with his foot casually propped up on his other leg and leaned back in the chair. "Good morning, Dr. Coulson," he said, as surprise registered in the eyes of the professor. "The door was open so I thought I'd wait inside."

  Declan could tell by the look on Coulson's face that, unlike the student he had run into on his way in, Coulson had been paying attention to the news.

  "The door was open?" Coulson asked suspiciously. "I could've sworn I locked it."

  Declan shrugged. "Must not have, because it opened when I turned the knob."

  "Hmm." Coulson stepped fully into the room, running a hand through his neatly combed brown hair as he looked around. His thick mustache twitched as he spoke. "I wasn't expecting anyone, much less you."

  Declan could sense that the man was nervous. "I came to ask you a couple of quick questions and then I'll be on my way."

  "Questions? About what? I've been over everything with the FBI a dozen times."

  Now the professor sounded frustrated instead of nervous.

  "I'm sure you have been," Declan said, trying to sound reassuring. "I just wanted to know if you knew who–"

  "They're looking for you, you know?" Coulson interrupted.

  Declan stopped talking as the professor withdrew a business card from inside his coat.

  "One of the agents gave me this card and told me to call them if I saw you."

  Declan stood and looked at the man. "Did they tell you why?"

  "No. Only that they were looking to question you in connection with the—with everything. They asked if I knew you and said you hadn't been available since you left the hospital."

  Declan reached for the business card. Flipping it over in his hand he read the name of Seth Castellano. "Funny thing about that, someone tried to run me off the road and kill me when I was heading home after I left the hospital."

  Coulson looked up in surprise. Although he didn't speak, the words you're serious? were pasted on his face.

  Declan nodded. "They were driving a vehicle that closely matched the type of SUV that some of the security officers had the night of the gala. That's why I came. I was hoping you knew who the security company was and could direct me to them."

  Coulson stroked his mustache and chin with his hand as he took a deep breath. He seemed to be contemplating his next words carefully. He shook his head as he spoke. "We have our own police department here and they usually take care of any and all of the university's security needs. If we're expecting a big crowd for an event, for example, then our department hires off-duty police officers from the city for extra manpower."

  "The guys the other night looked more like a private firm, not off-duty officers."

  Coulson shook his head again. "I don't know who they were. I didn't plan the event. That was handled by our scheduling department. They coordinate all campus events."

  "Can you call them and find out?"

  Coulson brushed a hand through his hair again. "I don't think I should. I think you need to call the agent on that card and talk to him. He's in charge of investigating this, not you."

  Declan stepped closer to the professor, who continued his nervous and frustrated movements. "Look," he said, stepping to within a few inches of Coulson and allowing the obvious threat to hang in the air for a moment. "I've already spoken to Agent Castellano and he all but told me he didn't believe what I was saying. I was part of Abaddon Kafni's security detail for five years. You were with me in the Barton Center when that bomb exploded. Why would I put myself and my wife in that kind of danger if I knew what was going to happen? I followed Kafni to the home he was staying in after we evacuated him from the building and I saw his attackers carry his head out in a bag."

  Coulson swallowed hard at the mental images as Declan continued.

  "Since then someone has tried to run me off the road. When they succeeded, they came back to make sure I was dead and I overheard them talking about killing my wife next. Luckily, I'm not an amateur when it comes to such situations and those men and the men I found watching my house are no longer with us. The men I saw kill Kafni were Islamists, the same type of men that have been trying to take him out for over a decade, but the men who came after me were different. They were Americans, and until I find out who they are and who was running them I'm not going anywhere near Agent Castellano or anyone else involved in this investigation."

  Reading into the professor's wide-eyed look, he knew he had the man on the ropes and decided to go in for the final blow.

  "Now all of that, to me, adds up to a conspiracy and that means the bombing wasn't a terrorist attack and that there are other people involved. Since you opened that door and saw me you've been sweating bullets and fidgeting like a hyperactive child. Do you have something you want to get off your chest, Dr. Coulson?"

  The professor broke eye contact and looked at the floor. "I'm an academic. I don't know anything about bombs or murders or any of this stuff. All I know is that two nights ago I watched a lot of my colleagues get killed or injured in that explosion and the investigation has yet to come up with any kind of an explanation as to exactly what happened and why. You want the name of the security company? Fine, I'll get it for you and then I want you out of my office."

  Coulson's eyes were filled with emotion. He removed his glasses and wiped his face with a handkerchief before reaching for the telephone on his desk. He punched a button and a dial tone sounded over the speaker. After he dialed a few numbers, Declan heard a female voice pick up the line.

  "Scheduling, this is Nikki."

  "Nikki, this is Michael Coulson over at the Helms School of Government. I'm standing here with an investigator who has asked me the name of the security company that was used the other night and I'm afraid I can't help him. Would you know who they were?"

  "Yes, sir, but I've already given that information to the investigators that came here."

  "Well, I'm sure they're just trying to build as complete a picture of things as possible. We're on speaker phone, would you mind telling him again?"

  "It was a company out of Moneta called Sweat Security. They were providing the security for the home Dr. Kafni was staying in as well."

  "Thank you, Nikki," Coulson said, as he terminated the call. "There, Sweat Security in Moneta."

  Declan softened his demeanor and looked at Coulson. "Thank you, Dr. Coulson. I'm truly sorry for your losses. Abaddon Kafni was good friend of mine. We all lost people close to us. I'm just trying not to lose anymore."

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  10:48 a.m. Eastern Time – Monday

  Verndale Drive

  Roanoke, Virginia

  Seth Castellano looked over the living room of the house located at the end of a long driveway on Verndale Drive in the northern part of Roanoke County. If not for the fact that the home was set apart by an acre of forest, it would stand in direct contrast to the working middle-class neighborhood that bordered it. Behind the stone-columned gate, the long paved driveway and the forest, the house wasn't the anomaly it would otherwise have been, but instead a neat gem hidden perfectly in a little valley. He'd been here once before, but hadn't gone inside. Everything he'd needed to do he'd accomplished inside one of the two garages on the property.

  "Found another one, sir," a young man in a suit and tie said as he entered from the basement steps and walked down the short hallway to the living room, carrying an AR style rifle.

  "That makes nine," Castellano said. "Put it on the kitchen table with the others."

  "What the hell do you think this guy's doing with all these weapons anyway, sir?"

  "No idea, Agent Carter, but my guess is he wasn't planning a safari."

  The agent laid the rifle down on the oval kitchen table next to the others they'd found stashed in various locations throughout the house. In total there were nine guns; six semi-automatic pistols, two AR style rifles and a Mossberg pump action shot gun. "You want me to start on the master bedroom?" Carter asked.

  "No," Castellano answere
d. "I'll handle that. Head out back and help the others search the garage. I'm betting there's more hidden there than there is in the house."

  "Yes, sir."

  The young agent disappeared out of the back door that led onto the wrap around porch. As the door banged closed Castellano withdrew a pair of nitrile gloves from his pocket and put them on. He walked slowly around the living room, looking at the two curio cabinets filled with pictures. Declan and Constance McIver certainly looked like the typical, upper middle-class American couple and in addition to the photos of the smiling couple, their house testified to it.

  Despite its private setting, the house was small by most upper crust standards with only three bedrooms and two bathrooms. One of the bedrooms upstairs was used as an office and two technicians from the FBI's Computer Crimes Division were there searching the filing cabinets and two computers located in the room. He doubted they'd find anything. Although Declan McIver clearly had a penchant for concealing weapons, they'd found nothing else to indicate that he was involved in any criminal activities. As far as Castellano could tell there was nothing that would help him tie either of the McIvers to the murder of Abaddon Kafni, but that was okay. He had placed all the evidence they would need.

  Craning his neck to look out of the home's windows for any of his men that might still be nearby, he slowly pulled out a gallon-sized ziplock bag from the oversized pocket on the side of his overcoat. Inside was a suppressed pistol that he'd obtained from Ruslan Baktayev through an undisclosed shipment with DHL. While it was technically against the company's policy to ship firearms, what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. Opening the bag, he walked down the hallway off the living room towards the master bedroom which, except for being cleared of any occupants upon their initial arrival, had yet to be searched.

  Inside the bedroom it looked as though someone had left quickly and he had no doubt that someone had. The comforter and sheets on the bed were tossed back as though someone had gotten out of bed and a pair of pink fleece pajamas lay crumpled on the floor near a pair of slippers. The local police had found the bodies of two men that he knew had been watching the McIver house and from the scene at both locations it was obvious what had happened. Declan McIver had killed the two men who ambushed him on the highway and had driven their vehicle to his house where he'd found the other two men waiting. He'd then called his wife and used her leaving the house as a decoy to draw the remaining assailants into a less populated area so that he could take them out as well, which he'd done with the kind of precision only an experienced killer could muster.

  The bedroom, like the rest of the house, showed no signs of anyone having returned since then for clothes or anything else, so wherever the McIvers had gone it was obviously a place that had been prepared in advance. That fact, coupled with everything else, played right into the idea that Declan McIver was some sort of terrorist in hiding.

  Checking his surroundings again, Castellano lifted the edge of the mattress on the side that hadn't been slept in and placed the suppressed gun underneath. Its presence in the home and the ballistics tests that would be done on it once it was found would be more than enough to prove Declan McIver had killed the guard in front of the Briton-Adams mansion and would cast serious doubt on his story of having seen terrorists kill Kafni. Castellano stuffed the ziplock bag back in his pocket and left the room.

  "Agent Schultz?" he called, as he reentered the living room.

  A man dressed in a dark blue Windbreaker with yellow letters on the back reading FBI appeared from one of the upstairs bedrooms and looked over the landing bannister. "Yes, sir?"

  "Kindly start searching the master bedroom, will you? I've got to make some calls."

  "Yes, sir."

  Castellano heard the agent's footsteps on the stairs as he walked into the kitchen and left the house through the back door. He fished his cell phone from the inside breast pocket of his coat as he strode across the porch to where his car was parked on the wrap around driveway. Opening the door and getting inside, he pushed and held a key on the phone until the sound of a number being dialed could be heard.

  "What do you have?" David Kemiss answered.

  "I've got enough illegally converted automatic weapons to put Declan McIver in jail for the next twenty years if we take the charges before the right judge."

  "Good, but we still need a motive."

  "I've got men upstairs pulling their personal financial records now and I have a warrant to search the company's offices as well. With the real estate market being what it has been over the last few years I'm sure we won't have a problem finding a financial motive."

  "That'll work. I don't care if this guy brings in two hundred thousand a year. All we have to prove is that he's brought in more in previous years and that he's not happy about the cut in pay."

  "Like I said, shouldn't be hard." Castellano looked up into the rearview mirror as he heard a vehicle pull in behind him. "Let me call you back, David. Someone's just arrived."

  He closed the phone and opened the car door, stepping out at the same time as a stocky woman from the white mini-van behind him. "Can I help you, miss?"

  The woman looked stunned at the number of unmarked police cars in the driveway.

  "I guess I uhh came at the wrong time," the woman stammered.

  "Why are you here?"

  "I'm Carol Minnix from up the road. I'm here for the dog, Shelby."

  Castellano looked towards the house. "There's no dog here that I'm aware of. Did the McIvers call you and ask you to come?"

  The woman shook her head. "No. I always take care of Shelby when Declan and Constance are away."

  "And how do you know they're away?"

  "I just figured they were because of what the news was saying."

  "I see. Well, as I said, there's no dog here."

  "She's under the couch. That's where she hides when someone she doesn't know is around."

  "We've searched the entire house, miss. There's no dog. Agent Carter, did you find a dog?" Castellano asked, as the young agent strode up the driveway from around the other side of the house where the garage was located.

  "No sir, but I found traces of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in an old Jeep inside the garage."

  "I'm sure you did."

  "May I go in and get her, sir? I know where she is," the woman pleaded.

  Castellano pointed at the door. "Don't touch anything. Get the dog and get out."

  He followed the woman onto the porch and watched as she stepped inside. "Oh," she said solemnly as she saw the assortment of firearms laid out on the kitchen table.

  "'Oh' is right," Castellano said. "Do you have any idea why the McIvers have so many weapons?"

  "No, sir. I didn't know they did. I didn't even know Constance knew how to fire a gun."

  "Of course not, it's just like an episode of the Greatest American Hero around here, or so everyone tells me."

  The woman looked ashen as she stood there apparently wondering what to do next.

  "The dog," Castellano said, pointing into the house.

  "Oh, right. Okay," the woman stammered as she moved quickly into the living room and sank to her knees in front of the couch. She whistled and said, "Shelby, it's Carol. Come here."

  Castellano watched as the woman reached under the couch and pulled a beefy beagle out by its collar. "I'll be damned," he said. "Some guard dog, huh?"

  The woman picked up the dog and moved quickly out of the house.

  "Do you have any idea if the McIvers have any properties that they stay at for vacations or anything?" Castellano asked, as he followed her out.

  The woman shook her head as she loaded the beagle onto the passenger seat of her van and closed the door. "No," she said as she moved around to the driver's side. "They travel a fair amount, but not to the same places, so far as I'm aware. I'm usually jealous when they go out of town, to be honest. They've been all over the world. Paris, Madrid, all over."

  "I see; and what about Mr. McIver? Does
he have any place that maybe he'd go without his wife?"

  "Declan's got property all over the place, sir. He's in the real estate business. Always buying and selling something. Constance mentioned a fishing cabin that he liked to go to sometimes, but I don't have any idea where it is."

  "A fishing cabin," Castellano said, raising his eyebrows. "Interesting, and you have no idea where it is?"

  "No. She never told me. To be honest I'm not even sure if she knew where it was."

  Castellano nodded. "Thank you. You take care of that dog now," he continued with a smirk. "It looks a little underfed."

  As he turned away from the woman he heard his phone ringing in his car. Walking over and opening the door, he reached in and picked up the device. Call From (434)565-2674 flashed on the screen. "Castellano," he said as he thumbed the display and brought the phone to his ear.

  "Agent Castellano, this is Michael Coulson from Liberty University."

  "What can I do for you, Dr. Coulson?"

  "You asked me to call you if I saw or heard from Declan McIver, sir. He's just left here a few minutes ago."

  Chapter Thirty

  11:03 a.m. Eastern Time – Monday

  7th Street & Pennsylvania Ave.

  Washington D.C.

  David Kemiss watched as the wait staff moved promptly around tables set in well-defined rows. He was in the large rectangular restaurant that made up the ninth floor of the Frederick J. Cooper building. No clanking dishes or noisy push carts. No breaking china or dropped silverware. No banter with the clientele, as there was in most restaurants. Like phantoms that appeared and disappeared at the most opportune moment they went about their jobs silently, every move planned well in advance like a Black Ops team whose goal it was to liberate dirty dishes and half-eaten entrées, safely extracting them beyond enemy borders before allowing them to make a sound. Such was the atmosphere of the exclusive 701 Restaurant, adjacent to the United States navy memorial and six blocks from the US Capitol building.