The Big Blue Sky: Thirty-Eight

Molly bent and looked into the Honda. It had been ransacked thoroughly enough that she doubted there would be anything of use in it any longer. The State Police boat was just unloading the bodies from the island. Each was carried off the boat in heavy black-plastic body bags, and laid along the small metal pier. The house on the island, or what remained of it, still smoldered. The gray-white smoke drifted oblique through trees and out over the bay.

Agent Moon was looking over a file on his Blackberry, a military record for one of the two tentatively identified bodies. The third was so badly burned that positive identification would require a DNA test. Moon squinted into his PDA at the files uploaded from the Milwaukee office. He read parts of it aloud, though Molly was only half listening, as she wondered how Doug had gotten involved in all this.
“…distinguished service, eight years special forces, two tours in Afghanistan. This guy was a friggin’ hero,” said Moon. “Various connections to military contracting firms. Last three years he was a CTM…”

“CTM?” asked Molly.

“Combat Tech Manager, for a company called FIRSTTHRUST. I know that company, real cowboys. They’d go after local bad guys in Iraq, but they’d tear up a neighborhood in the process. No rules of engagement. They’d roll in, do a job, kill a lot of people and undo a year’s worth of work winning hearts and minds.”

“What’s he doing here in Michigan?” Molly asked. She tapped Moon on the arm and motioned towards the small metal pier and three black body bags. They started for the pier.

“Interesting little aside,” said Moon. FIRST THRUST was just bought by this upstart tech firm out of Chicago with connections to an international arms dealer.”

“Umberto Shosa?”

“Great guess,” Moon replied, surprised. “How’d you know?”

“Buying their own army?”

“Probably just like the idea of an unending cash flow courtesy of the American taxpayer.”

“Dead Iranian diplomat, fugitive reporter and three dead mercs,” Molly said thoughtfully. She knelt beside one of the body bags and looked across at the island. “Doug Springer, what did you get yourself into?”

More than a mile away a big coal freighter entered the bay. It’s great dark gray hull slid past the eastern limb of the island, dwarfing a small wooden lighthouse on the shore, and eclipsing the mainland beyond. The rhythmic clunking of the ship’s massive rudders, as it slowed and made a wide arc past the island, echoed from the surrounding hills and island cliffs. The ship turned slowly, picking its way through the deeper channels to bring coal before the winter snows all but cut the town off from the outside world. At three hundred feet the ship was a behemoth in the little harbor. Molly watched the freighter for a moment before reaching for one of the body bag’s zipper. She thought better of that, realizing there was little point in it. She stood and walked to the end of the pier. Moon followed.

“How’d these guys get up here so fast?” Molly turned suddenly as the thought struck her.

“Don’t follow?”

“Think he’s guilty?”

“If your boy is innocent, why hasn’t he turned himself in?”

It was a valid question. Molly watched the ship as it seemed to drift powerless in the bay, framed by the mottled autumn trees beyond. The scene seemed to coax deeper thoughts from her, as if all the world was a river predicted by unseen currents deep beneath the surface.

“Let’s say this was a hit,” she began. “Maybe Doug Springer was supposed to take the rap, but instead he gets away, and now he’s a loose end?”

“I saw that episode of CSI Miami.” He quipped.

“Seriously.”

“To what end?”

“What if we, the country are being steered into a war with Iran?”

“By who?”

“I don’t know. Wealthy industrialists? Arms dealers? Umberto Shosa buys a military contracting firm, and then these guys end up here?” Before us?”

Moon scoffed with a chuckle. “Forgive me, but maybe aliens and Dick Cheney brought down the Twin Towers.”

“Wow,” she shot back. “That’s cynical.”

“Just saying, a bit conspiratorial, don’t you think?”

She thought a moment, feeling that this was one of those critical moments upon which a career or a life changes. Almost a mile away the big freighter sort of slid sideways past the Munising City dock.

“Trust me?” she asked, standing and wiping her hands.

“Sure.”

“I think he’s being set up, and I think if we get to him first we should be very cautious about who knows that.”

“Agent,” he said formally, “let me remind you he’s a suspect in a federal case.”

“There’s something else here,” she said, drawing him away from the State cops and the county coroner. “I’m just asking that you give this all as much of a benefit of a doubt as you can.”

“He’d be safer in custody.”

“He’ll be in our custody.”

“I don’t know.”

“I know this man,” said Molly.

Clearly torn, Moon sighed heavily. He looked across at the smoke drifting from the island and shook his head. “I’ll make you this promise. Let’s find your boy. If there’s something there, we’ll see.”

She motioned to the three black body bags lined up along the dock. “Hopefully before their colleagues do.”

“Certain they weren’t alone?”

“The waitress at the diner said 6. I have to believe there are at least three more.”