Veil of Civility: A Black Shuck Thriller (Declan McIver Series) (33 page)

The sunlight temporarily blinded him as the cool spring air touched his sweaty face. With his hands raised up past his shoulders he walked fully out to the edge of the porch and looked towards the grouping of police cruisers at the top of the hill. He felt his chest tighten as he noticed that a new face had joined the group. Seth Castellano now stood beside the sheriff, his Glock .22 service pistol raised over the top of the cruiser's door.

"Turn around slowly and stand with your back to us!" the sheriff announced over the bullhorn. Declan took a deep breath and slowly obeyed. He didn't like the idea of turning his back on Castellano when he had a gun aimed, but he didn't have any other choice. He listened closely as the sound of men in uniforms moved into position at the bottom of the steps. Moments later two deputies with their weapons drawn moved cautiously up the steps and confronted him.

"Turn around and stand still," one of them barked in a southern dialect. Declan turned around again and waited until the man reached for his hands and pulled them down one at a time behind his back where a pair of handcuffs were snapped over his wrists.

"C'mon," the deputy said, as he tugged backwards on the cuffs. Declan allowed himself to be guided to the stairs and walked to the gravel lot below. As he and the two deputies reached the bottom, the sheriff and Castellano walked towards them as one of the police cruisers was moved down the hill and pulled sideways to a stop where they could load him inside.

With his dark red tie blowing in the slight breeze, Castellano leaned in close as the deputy pushed Declan towards the rear door of the cruiser, now being held open. "Thanks for the help," he whispered in a snide tone as Declan felt a hand placed on top of his head to push him into the car. He closed his eyes as he entered the vehicle, his hands uncomfortable between his back and the edge of the seat. Slowly the car pulled forward and he opened his eyes again to look forward as the car moved up the hill. How was he going to get out of this?

5:52 p.m. Eastern Time – Monday

Van Deman Industrial Park

Dundalk, Maryland

"I don't want to be here, Vakha."

And Sharpuddin Daudov didn't. He had crossed into America over the Mexican border in 2004 along with his brother and ten other men. What he had found when they'd entered the country was very different to what he had expected. The leader of the group he had belonged to in his native Chechnya, a man who called himself Abu Tabak in place of his more Slavic sounding birth name, had preached for years about the imperialistic attitudes of the people who lived in places like America and Great Britain. He had told the group time and again about the endless atrocities committed by these people. Sharpuddin had witnessed such events at the hands of the Russians, whom Tabak assured the group were just like the Americans. "They may not be killing your brothers, your sisters and your neighbors, but they are killing your fellow Moslems across the world and taking their land." Those words had echoed through Sharpuddin's mind for months when he'd first arrived, but after a few years of living in American neighborhoods, shopping alongside Americans in supermarkets and working with them at the various jobs he did to support himself and his brother, he'd settled on the fact that Tabak's words had been one of two things; a lie, or the voice of a man who really didn't have the experience to back up what he was talking about and was only repeating a message that had been passed to him from someone else. Americans, as far as Sharpuddin could tell, were generally accommodating, kind and curious people who were far more interested in what was going on in the lives of their families and friends than in hurting or taking anything from anyone else. But here he was with his older brother, who still believed in and hung on every word and teaching of Tabak and other radical Imams. Here he was parked in front of a dilapidated building in an out of the way suburb of Baltimore, about to meet Abu Tabak for the first time in eight years.

"I'm not going in. I don't want any part of this anymore."

Vakha Daudov turned in the driver's seat of the tan, two-door Chevy Cavalier and stared at his younger brother. "Do not embarrass me, Sharpuddin!"

"Embarrass you? You're an embarrassment to yourself! You don't work, you live in squalor and you drive this rundown car just so you can say you still adhere to a way of life that we left behind a dec—"

Vakha lashed out and struck Sharpuddin on the face with a closed fist. The young man's head thumped against the passenger side window.

"Ah, c'mon man! What the hell?" Sharpuddin looked back at his older brother. He could feel tears in his eyes and the side of his face stung from the ferocious strike.

Vakha's nostrils flared with anger. "You're not going to embarrass me! The only reason you're in this country is because of Abu! You will do what he wants or so help me I will beat you senseless!"

"The hell with you, Vakha!" Sharpuddin pushed open the car door and stepped from the vehicle.

"Where are you going to go?" Vakha said getting out and rounding the car after him. "Where are you going to go?" he repeated as Sharpuddin felt himself being grabbed by the shoulders and pulled back until he hit the side of the car. "You're two hundred miles from home! Where are you going to go?"

"Anywhere but here, I don't want any part of what you're about to do!"

Vakha held him against the car as he struggled. "Stop, just stop!"

Sharpuddin gave up.

"Now," Vakha continued, "we're going to go inside and you're not going to say a damn word."

"You're going to get yourself killed."

"Not a damn word! Do you understand me?"

Slowly Vakha let go and turned towards the vacant-looking garage they were parked a few hundred feet from. "Not a damn word," he repeated.

Ruslan Baktayev got up from the stool he was sitting on, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, and looked to the workshop entrance as the metal door to the office of the former welding service banged open loudly. The laughter in the grimy workshop came to a quick halt as the door to the workshop was slowly pushed open. A tall man with dark closely cut hair and a vertical scar down the left side of his face leaned his head around the door and looked inside.

Baktayev grinned. "Vakha!"

The tall man stepped fully into the room and smiled. "Abu."

The two embraced tightly, their hands slapping over each other's backs loudly.

"I'm sorry I missed it," Vakha said as he drew back. "I missed your victory over the Jew."

Baktayev grinned and raised his arm, the sleeve of his coat covered in dried streaks of dark red that appeared to have run down his hand past his wrist. "I held his head up high! You were with me in spirit, little brother."

Vakha grinned broadly. "Glory be to Allah, you haven't changed a bit."

"The Russians could not break him," Anzor Kasparov said, as he stood from a lawn chair in the center of the room, where several men sat smoking and drinking. "Not in years of war or imprisonment could they break him! Abu Tabak!" The obviously intoxicated Kasparov raised a can of beer and several men followed suit with elated cheers of, "Abu Tabak!” A toast to their leader, Ruslan Baktayev.

The hinges of the door whined as it was opened again and a thin young man with shaggy brown hair and an almost sickly complexion stepped in, his face full of disgust.

"Sharpuddin," Baktayev said, as he looked past Vakha at the boy. "You've grown."

The boy leaned up against a workbench and folded his arms across his chest, turning his head to hide the reddish welt on his cheek.

Vakha turned slightly. "My little brother has gotten too used to American life. He has forgotten what it is to be one of the Nokhchi! But we'll remind him, won't we?" Vakha raised his fist in triumph as more cheers came from the small gathering of men.

The cheers stopped as the ringing of a phone echoed loudly through the high-ceilinged room.

Baktayev walked over to the workbench where the phone was located and picked it up. "Nokhchi Welding Service, how may we kill you?"

A barely contained snicker passed through the group of drunken men but Baktayev's face quickly turned serious. "Quiet," he barked. A hush fell over the room and the twenty men present looked at their leader, a question on each face as Baktayev listened to the caller.

"I'm not an errand boy," he said. "Find someone else!"

"You'll want to do this yourself, I promise," a tinny voice said over the phone. "The man we are talking about was once the bodyguard of the Jew. He is the man who killed your brother."

Baktayev's grip tightened on the phone as he thought about what Levent Kahraman was saying. "You told me that you didn't know where he was, that you couldn't find him."

"I couldn't. But glory be to Allah, he came to us."

"Where is he?"

"He is in the custody of the American FBI in a place called Rocky Mount in Virginia."

"And how the hell am I supposed to get to him if he's with the police?"

"I promised you I would help you get revenge on Kafni and, if possible, the men who worked with him to kill your brothers. This is me keeping that promise. They'll be transporting him from the jail tomorrow morning, with only one agent; I want you to follow them until you find a safe place and then kill them both."

Baktayev nodded as a smile formed on his face. "We will do it."

"Good. Make sure they are both dead. The agent cannot become a witness." Kahraman hung up and Baktayev lowered the receiver back to its cradle. Looking at the faces staring up at him from the center of the room he said, "I need three of you to gather some weapons and leave tonight. The Sheikh has found another of Kafni's men who needs to meet his maker."

"Me, Abu. I will go." Vakha said. "I will not miss another chance at victory."

"Vakha, you can't do this!" Sharpuddin said from across the room. "You're going to get yourself killed!"

Every eye in the shop moved to the boy standing near the door and a laugh passed through the room.

Vakha blushed. "I told you not to talk, Sharpuddin! If I die, it will be for Ichkeria in the service of Allah!"

"We left Ichkeria nine years ago! This isn't a game!" Sharpuddin shouted. "Do you think this man cares anything about you? Look at him! All he wants are mindless soldiers to do his dirty work for him!"

Baktayev strolled back to the center of the room, his eyes on Sharpuddin as he gripped Vakha by the shoulder and said, "Tomorrow you will kill a man for me, the man who killed my brother."

6:02 p.m. Eastern Time – Monday

Russell Senate Office Building

Washington D.C.

David Kemiss hung up the phone and dialed another number.

"I made the necessary calls. There'll be a federal warrant releasing McIver into your custody by morning," he said, as he poured two fingers of Glenmorangie into a glass and turned towards the window behind his walnut desk. With his office located on the fifth floor at the corner of Delaware Avenue and C Street, he could see the entirety of the Upper and Lower Senate Parks from his window. With the sun setting behind it, the waterworks of the Senate Garage Fountain glowed orange and the cherry blossom trees swayed in the light breeze; within the next month their pink and white flowers would be at full bloom.

"And what am I supposed to do with him once he's in my custody?" Castellano asked, over the secure connection.

Kemiss was certain Castellano already knew the answer. "This has gone on long enough, Seth. No more hired guns." He took a sip of the amber-colored spirit in his glass and listened as Castellano took a deep breath.

"Unless you want this entire thing to unravel at our feet," he continued, "you need to take care of this guy personally this time. You're a creative guy, I trust you'll find just the right place and time to make sure Declan McIver is no longer a problem for us. Any idea what he was looking for?"