The Big Blue Sky: Fifty-four

CHAPTER THREE

“Once Iran gets the bomb, they’re gonna use it…”
From the Michael Savage Program, August 19, 2010


Events were moving more quickly now, gaining their own momentum, like a stone tumbling towards a cliff’s edge. The dangers of fate and history are many, those sometimes still waters in which mankind could wallow in his arrogance and drown in ignorance. In that arrogance man could pretend he was the captain of his fate, but true fate has countless captains, each vying and scratching for their own prominence and significance. In the end, the specter of war is the destroyer of the illusion those captains pretend from their selfish fate.

Indeed, war is a storm, conjured by incompetence and foolishness. Those burning winds are whipped, and fat with the embers of cultures and communities betrayed by the propaganda of their leaders. And the Press, sometimes the tool, sometimes the victim fans the flames of that growing storm. Networks competed viciously and newspapers lost readers to the laziness of the internet, a laziness disguised as democracy. From the crumbling ruins of the so-called “old” media, rose the “new” media of the Twenty-first Century, interested more in personality and advocacy for corporations or political parties. It was a realm in which facts were less important than hyperbole and the lawyerly character of an argument.

As the world edged closer to war, in Congress and Senate, and on talk radio the direction and tone of the discourse changed notably. Newscasts, blogs and articles filtered in replacement words. Overnight Iran became “the enemy,” just as they had in the days before NATO’s actions to stop the butchery of the Serbs. To the average citizen, perhaps not taking enough interest, the words seemed to appear over night, like some team sport. There was talk of targets and tactics, and analysis of the military capabilities on both sides. Old animosities were recounted so often that almost anyone on the street could rattle off a litany of Iran’s transgressions; real, exaggerated and fabricated. Selling war is surprisingly easy because it engages the natural aloneness each soul struggles with and comes to individually.

It was no different in Tehran, perhaps more so, as small nations always feel their lot more tenuous, especially in the looming shadow of a larger nation. Preparations for war began apace, amid a continual deluge of images of allied bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq at the start of those conflicts. Mixed with images of mutilated civilian casualties, it was impossible to retain any reasoned perspective to events. Demonstrators filled the streets in cities throughout the Muslim world, with particular hysterics in Tehran and Shiraz and Mashhad. Regular alerts, and forced conscriptions to construct token defenses (anti-tank trenches were pointless in the face of cruise missiles and smart bombs) fed the strangling siege mentality gripping Iran. People taped windows, moved valuables to weekend houses in the mountains and stocked up on food and water. Everywhere there were fears and accusations of spies.

Countries do not find themselves at war. There isn’t peace one day and violence the next. Nations evolve into war, as much from within as without. It grows to become the norm, supplanting the everyday until peace, such as it was feels like naïve innocence, like a rape victim might look back upon her childhood with certain bitterness, as if she might have foretold her fate somehow. That evolution is lost to the final spark that sets that kindling alight into a great conflagration. The reasons for war become that moment, without any regard to all that came before.

The deaths in Iran became that catalyst. It preceded a string of events, more a character of fear and growing tension that seemed to underscore to the world that Iran had in fact declared war upon the West. In Raunheim Germany a young Persian student drove through a crowded café, killing six. In Skokie Illinois, a Muslim man shot dead a Jewish shop keeper, while two middle eastern men were arrested in New Jersey over an alleged plot to bomb a shopping mall. They were all signs to the West of Islam’s malicious intentions. Many Iranians could well understand the frustration that could cause some to snap and lose their minds.

Tensions in the Gulf caused oil prices to skyrocket worldwide. Markets tumbled, imperiling fortunes of those who could directly influence government and media. Airlines stocks collapsed, bludgeoned by spiking fuel costs, while the stocks defense firms blossomed overnight. War, and all that came with it, became the intention of the world, and was evolving to a point in which no one would be able to prevent it from happening.

The Big Blue Sky: Fifty-three

Molly slipped in and out of consciousness as Doug headed south through the forest, racing to put as much distance between them and the lakeshore as possible. The truck had taken a pretty fair beating. The grill had held, mostly, and the bumper was bent up and back, enough that he’d needed to bend it back with a tire iron to turn the wheel. One of the headlights had shattered. Only one remained, the light feeble in the forest. Wind shrieked through the bullet holes in the windshield, eclipsing some NPR program on the radio.

Molly was against him, her face against his chest. He had an arm around her shoulders, holding her close against the banging and bouncing of the uneven ground of the dirt logging road. The cut in her cheek had stopped bleeding some time ago. Her breathing was steady and even, almost as if she was asleep. He felt confident she hadn’t been badly hurt.

Doug took hope in having her there, like he was no longer in this fight alone. The comrades of the men he had killed would come looking for him. He had no doubt about that, but for now time and distance were his greatest adversaries. Molly moaned and stirred beneath his arm.

He thought about that night beside the Bosporus, and how he was so tempted to taste her lips, knowing full well he would not have been able to stop there. It would have been nothing to go up to her room, but he could never be unfaithful to Jane, and simply the temptation ravaged his conscience and soul to the day he sat holding Jane’s hand as she took her final breaths. He was tearing himself apart for even considering infidelity for a moment. It drove a halting and painful moan when her hand tightened briefly in his and then went limp. And now she was here beside him, her nearness only calling to mind all those old feelings and eternal guilt.

The decision to head south was as much a pragmatic choice as a deliberate one. They would have to head south to Chicago. For Doug, it was the surest way back to his girls, and that was all that mattered right now. Molly pushed away, falling slowly back against the door. Her eyes opened grudgingly to him, seeming at first as if she didn’t recognize him, or was sizing him up somehow.

Doug drew the truck to the side of the road and shut off the engine. The cold and silence of the night surrounded them. Molly sat up, wincing as she brushed her cheek while pulling back a lock of hair. He turned to her. There was confusion in the dark pools of her eyes.

“We were driving to, to…” Molly struggled to piece together her shattered thoughts. “All of the sudden…”

“Its okay,” he told her, his voice low and even. “You had…I’m sorry about your partner.”

She looked up at him quickly. Her expression was fluid and broken. “He was a good man, Doug. He didn’t deserve to die…”

“We are going after the people who did this,” he told her. “I’m tired of running and hiding.”

“Doug, they mean to start a war. Shosa and these mercenaries, they’re behind this, I’m sure.” Molly swallowed hard, her throat burning from thirst. She needed water, and a moment to sort out some things. Doug could help her with the former, and reach past her. He pulled open the glove box and pulled out a plastic bottle of water. He barely got the cap off when she took the bottle and gulped down two long swallows.

“Whoa,” he drew the bottle from her lips.

Molly nodded appreciatively. “I was investigating the death of Senator Bernstein. The official cause of death is acute brain hemorrhage. But there was more. The hemorrhage, it was as if the vessels had been burned away, hot enough to blister the flesh and leave a black residue.”

“I don’t get the connection.”

Two others died in an identical fashion, a US Attorney and a pentagon Colonel, both with their sights on…”

“FIRSTTHRUST INC!” Doug exclaimed.

“And Umberto Shosa.”

“Change the world as fundamentally as the discovery of fire.”

“Sorry?”

“Something Fallahi said right before he was killed,” said Doug. He turned to the wheel and started the truck. The engine came to life with a roar. With the motor the radio came to life, just as the news came on. Molly reached over and turned up the volume. The female announcer’s voice was even and emotionless:

“Iranian officials are accusing the US of waging a biological sneak attack for the deaths of all but one of the American captives, as well as scores of others in that country. IRNA, the Islamic republic News Agency reported that scores of people had died mysterious and sudden deaths, including that of an entire village near the sight where Iranian forces brought down two American helicopters on a rescue mission. White House and Pentagon officials did not immediately comment on the rapidly moving events in the Gulf, or regarding Iran’s accusations, but did say the President will give a rare Eight a.m. address to the nation tomorrow about the rising tensions between Iran and the United States. This is NPR.”

“Nano-weapons,” said Doug heavily. “That’s what killed Bernstein and the others. They’re testing the weapons against live targets in Iran.”

“God help us,” said Molly.

Doug pulled the truck back into the road. “If there ‘s a God, he’ll damn the human race for this abomination for sure.”

“What are we going to do?” Molly asked. “We have to tell somebody.”

“You aided and abetted a felon,” said Doug. “Our only hope is to create enough of a ruckus that it makes everyone pay attention>”

“How do you propose to do that?”

He looked over at her, finding her so beautiful by the soft green light of the dash. “Figure that out on the way to Chicago.”

“Chicago?”

“They’ll expect us to run away, but we are gonna take the fight right to their doorstep.”

The Big Blue Sky: Fifty-one

The bodies lay in the alley, not twenty yards from bristling coils of razor wire strung across the street and around the long apartment block in both directions. The man was face down, appearing as though he had been frozen in mid run. He was dressed in a loose fitting beige kafiya. His body dipped unnaturally in the middle where dark blood pooled, as if it was held in a bowl. One arm lay close to one side, the palm turned upward. The other had suffered the full weight of the man’s falling body and was bent cruelly just above the elbow.

Beside him lay a middle aged woman. She was sprawled on her back, one arm outstretched and pleading. Her handsome Persian face was pale, and painted with a mixture of agony and confusion. She was dressed in a pink terry-cloth bathrobe, now open to expose a white blood spattered slip beneath. A loosely tied hijab covered the woman’s long dark hair, which was streaked with rivulets of silver. The young Azeri conscript who had fired the fatal wounds became so inconsolable that he had to be hospitalized.

The entire block had been cordoned off, trapping a number of people within. Razor wire and flood lights went off, the perimeter secured by soldiers, police and guard dogs. It had been simultaneous, four of the six American captives died almost immediately. A fifth was clinging to life in a military hospital, unconscious and without any notable brain activity. The last, a young Army Staff Sergeant, who had been held alone in a bank vault near the airport was apparently unaffected. All of the officers who had taken part in the battle and had accompanied the Americans to Tehran, seventy soldiers as well as an entire village near the crash site and simply dropped dead, as if someone had flipped a switch. Given the circumstances, a shoot to kill order for anyone attempting to escape the quarantined area was arguably unavoidable.

The bodies were the human face to the unfolding tragedy. The quarantines all around the country had proved nightmarish to pull off. People fled in panic, trudging through sewers, disappearing into the night or slipping through cordons as they struggled to close off whole blocks amid urban sprawl. Police and soldiers and doctors were allowed to pass after viewing the bodies, and few if any precautions were taken once the order was given to move the dead. If the deaths had been caused by a pathogen that was easily transmitted from person to person, the initial response might well have spread it throughout the population already.

The mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths drove the Iranian leadership into a near panic. Within an hour Iranian airspace was closed and the military thrown into chaos. The immediate reaction was that this was indeed a biological attack by the Americans, some long feared sneak attack of some sort. But it couldn’t be confirmed, and after several hastily conducted autopsies no one was any closer to an answer. In truth, in all but one of the seven independent post mortems, only one had correctly identified severe brain hemorrhage as the cause of death, and only because that was conducted in a hospital with CT Scanning equipment, as opposed to the others done at military bases, outlying clinics, and in one case, a woefully outdated local mortuary. What was sure was that it was well beyond any reasonable chance that all the deaths, occurring at precisely the same moment were a coincidence.

From the Islamic revolution during the late Seventies, Iran saw the United States as its greatest enemy. It began a long covert war between Iran and the West, with assassinations, sabotage and open hostilities. Almost immediately the new Iranian Islamic Republic adopted Hamas in Lebanon, as well as their patrons, the Palestinian Liberation organization under Yasser Arafat, joining a common front against Israel and the West. In response, the Americans aided Iraq against Saddam’s war against Tehran.

Cyber warfare against the West had been in the works for years, targeting US companies, satellites, power grids and the like. Sleeper cells had been in place since the first months of the Islamic revolutions, prepared to unleash waves of terror attacks against soft targets around the globe and across the United States. Some would attack shopping malls and public gatherings to terrorize the population, while others would target infrastructure: bring down a bridge, blow up a railway line and bring down a hand full of highway overpasses in any American city and it would become paralyzed for weeks or months.

The operatives had lived and worked in the US and the West for years, often decades, awaiting orders or the signal to undertake a given operation. Those orders would come through foreign news sources, local classifieds, coffee house message boards or Facebook. Some were ex-patriots and émigrés; others were sympathizers, criminals, and even some willing to make a fast buck.

Simultaneous to terror attacks Iran would scuttle several large freighters in the narrow Straits of Hormuz, cutting off sea-going traffic in and out of the Gulf, and effectively trapping two American fleets. Combined air and sea suicide assaults by the Iranians would turn the Gulf in a cauldron. Bridges and roads all along the Iraqi border would be mined and blown up. Already there was an alarming number of Iranian troop movements into the mountains, while others began dissolving among the population all around the country for the inevitable insurgency against an expected Allied invasion

Once the order was given, the government would scatter, or flee to sanctuaries. Iran and its people would suffer America’s punishment and the years of hardship to follow. That was their history, far more of the people than the government. The nation had lasted five thousand years, from the advent of farming through the Iron and Bronze Ages. They survived Alexander’s armies, the Mongol hordes, the Shah’s abuses, Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollahs. This they could surely endure.

But the order wasn’t given, at least not yet, despite the desperate pleas of the army and the apocalyptic fatalism of the ruling party. In the end, it was the Mullahs, the nation’s religious leaders that called for prudence. If it came to war, they said, the Mullahs would offer their unanimous support, but given the terrible destruction that would rain down upon the Iranian people, a moment’s pause, at the very least, was justified. There was still time to prevent a war, but the moments remaining grew scarcer and more precious each second that passed. No one could have known that best hope for stopping war were fighting for their lives on a lonely rain-swept stretch of road among the wilds of Northern Michigan seven thousand miles away.

The Big Blue Sky: Fifty

Moon watched the Suburbans pull away, turning east back towards town. He waited until they disappeared behind the hill before climbing from the rocks and trees beside the beach. He jogged across the road to the motel where Molly waited, covering his crossing from the corner of the Inn. The rain had returned, whipped by sharp frigid gusts off the lake that howled, bending small trees back. Showers of wet autumn leaves joined the rain.

“I’m ready to turn the table on these guys,” Moon said, almost eagerly.

“Nothing good about these guys. Time we got some answers.” Molly opened her Agency jacket and checked the weapon holstered there. She wondered if all this would come to shooting, and hoped that it wouldn’t, but she wouldn’t retreat from that possibility either. Obviously, by the weapons found with the bodies on the island, these men were fully prepared for that eventuality.

“Looks like they were headed back to Munising. I’ll drive,” said Moon, jangling the keys in his pocket.

Molly held out her hand. “I’m pulling rank.”

He nodded and dropped him into her open palm. “Have to learn that I ain’t gonna be the knight come to rescue the fair maiden.”

“This fair maiden kicks ass when she has to,” said Molly, patting the pistol under her arm.

They climbed into the Jetta, giving each other a long encyclopedic look. Moon reached into the back seat for two bulky blue Kevlar vests and handed one over to Molly. She slipped her on over the thin Agency jacket she wore, noting as Moon set his on the floor at his feet. She said a silent prayer that they wouldn’t need the vests. Both knew the potential danger they were heading into. Neither had any illus ions about the men they were after.

The Jetta spit gravel as Molly pushed the gas pedal to the floor, turning east onto the dark two lane road. The agents had a determined look. Not in some sort of Rambo sort of way. Neitherof them had any intention of forcing a confrontation. Molly pulled the phone from her pocket and quickly dialed a number. The Operator at the State Police in Munising answered immediately.

“This is Agent Karaman with the Federal Bureau of Investigation…” Molly described the vehicles and the men, adding that they were likely armed. Her plan was simple enough. The State cops would stop the vehicles just outside town. That was the plan, at least. Molly and Moon were still nearly a half hour away, and a lot can happen in that little bit of time.

Molly wished that he had Doug’s number. She looked over at Moon, deciding.

“I have to tell you something,” she said.

“Let me guess,” he replied. “You spoke with Springer.”

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“You care about this guy?” he studied her, even as she didn’t answer right away. He was impressed by her. He was amazed at her thoughtfulness, and a certain sympathy Moon wondered wasn’t a better quality to her sex, because it struggled in him.

“Think its clouding my judgment?”

“Hope not,” he said simply, staring out into the night.

Molly looked over at the lake, painted in deep blue hues and breathed deeply. “Me too.”

The road left the lakeshore. It rose, allowing sweeping views of the coastline behind them. Ahead, in the distance, the textured expanse of Grand Island floated upon that midnight blue lake.

Molly was thinking about Doug. She smiled recalling that philosophical smirk that October Day at Ground Zero. Her thoughts tumbled invariably to Istanbul and how she wished to kiss him so desperately that night. Molly looked again at Moon, his attention fully on a web page on the tiny glowing white screen of his phone.

It was reasonable, she thought, that he might assume Molly’s feelings for Doug were a potential risk. If things were reversed about a suspect, Molly might feel the same way. That he didn’t spoke volumes about the trust he placed in her. For her part, Molly might have recused herself from the case once Doug became a suspect and fugitive in Fallahi’s murder. But she was more convinced than ever of his innocence, and knew that he was probably his last good hope.

“Anything interesting?” she asked. Molly fumbled with the phone in her lap.

“Just reading about this arms dealer, Shosa,” he said.”He’s moving heavily into this Nano-weapon technology market.”

“Nano-weapons?”

Machines, weapons that work on a molecular scale. They can be programmed to work independently, or with a trigger of some sort.”

“Like a cell phone ring tone?” she asked thoughtfully, her mind teetering on something.

“I suppose,” said Moon. “Anyway, real nightmare stuff. He’s been buying up congress people, buddy-ing up to the Pentagon and schmoozing the Administration.”

The image of Bernstein’s X-ray flashed in her mind, as if a light had suddenly come on, illuminating a terrible evil only now making itself apparent. She knew. She didn’t know everything, but Molly knew enough. Ay that instant the phone in her lap rang, startling her.

Molly held it up before her. She didn’t recognize the number. It was a local number, and she knew in an instant who it was, as if they were thinking the same thing at that very same moment. Molly pressed the receive button nd lifted the phone to her ear,

“Doug,” she began, almost breathless with nervousness. “Where are you? I need you to get to Munising as fast as you can. Go to the State Police…”

From the corner of her eye she saw the dark shape rushing towards her. It was huge and metallic, Molly’s mind struggling to make sense as it bore down upon the little Volkswagen Jetta. Moon saw it an instant later, but had no time to react before their world was abruptly and violently interrupted by the crushing of metal, of exploding glass, of shattering bone and screeching tires.

The Big Blue Sky: Forty-eight

Brower pulled up beside the others. The other Suburban was parked beside the road a mile or so east of the Sea Coast Inn. It had grown quite dark, and the worst of the rain had moved off, leaving a frigid drizzle that coated and glistened upon everything. McCullough was beside him, as reserved as ever about his private misgivings. Brower rolled down his window, which was speckled with rain drops, and glared silently at the other three men for a purposely long uncomfortable time.

He wasn’t happy, and if he failed to make that clear before, Brower intended to leave no doubt whatsoever now. Again, they had allowed Springer to slip through their fingers. All the high tech gear that could track and trace most anything on the planet, the ability to access and monitor cell phone calls and text messaging, wi-fi internet connections, access to BCI- the Federal Bureau of Criminal Identification, credit card and debit card transactions and databases, credit histories and real time satellite imagery, and still he managed to get by men who’d benefitted from the greatest military and intelligence training on the planet.

The dome light was off in the other Suburban, all but concealing the three men in shadow, and the ambient light of a deepening night. Brower could still see their stony faces. Even if he couldn’t have seen them he could feel their embarrassment and frustration, and not a small amount of trepidation at facing the full fury of their pissed-off boss.

“Really?” Brower shook his head in supreme disappointment. “I bet a pack of snot nosed cub scouts could find this guy quicker than you men.”

Brower could push, but he knew he could only push so far. None of them, not even Brower could pretend they weren’t part of a much larger conspiracy. No longer was the mission to train Iraqi cops, illiterate Afghan militias or protect Western oil workers and executives in Nigeria against rebels. The mission had moved into questionable territory, only made palpable for the legally tax-free cash each man was paid. Indeed, the nature of the mission was the only thing separating them from being an outright criminal enterprise. Maybe they could argue and convince themselves there was a higher, even patriotic purpose, but at the end of all rationalism were they shared crimes.

The mission now had changed and grown, something often called mission creep, which happened when facts on the ground necessitated changing the fundamental aspect of an operation. Brower’s training an experience eschewed so-called mission creep, and he took great pains in avoiding and minimizing it, but now he could feel it all getting away from him in the worst way. What had been a mission to shadow Fallahi to see who he contacted had grown at the last minute to an ad-hoc scheme to discredit and frame Doug Springer for Fallahi’s murder. He’d given the authorization to eliminate Springer after he’d escaped the first time. That he had made contact with an FBI agent who had let him walk away without notifying her superiors was perhaps most disturbing of all. What had he told her, and why was she keeping quiet about it?

Brower didn’t wait for, nor want an answer from the men in the other Suburban. He pulled a phone from his pocket and pressed the redial button. Despite the late hour it rang only once. The voice on the other end was familiar and low, as though not wanting to be heard.

“Please, tell me the mission is complete,” the voice said, with notable exasperation. He was Archer Waverly, the founder and director of FIRST THRUST INC, a stoic and resolute man, a deeply devout Christian man, who saw the company as far more than a military contracting business, but also a spiritual and political crusade.

“Need a little guidance on company policy,” said Brower. “Threat assessment criteria?”

Unchanged,” said Waverly.

“In a non-hostile environment?” His tone was purposely misleading.

“All environments are potentially hostile, Mister Brower. The deployment of your team and the mission presupposes a hostile environment. Are you unclear on the mission?”

“Clear, sir,” he replied. “Mission. Company. Team. God. Country.”

“That’s the order. Will this be concluded tonight? Things are ready to hit the fan in a big way, and this is one loose end that definitely needs cutting.”

“That loose end got a bit longer tonig…” said Brower.

“Are you a bunch of fucking new recruits?” Waverly erupted in anger, enough that the men in the next vehicle could hear as well. But for a furl of the brow, Brower made no reaction. “I want this concluded tonight. Mister Shosa will meet tomorrow with the president’s assistant National Security Advisor and several congressional leaders. Finish this, now! Before you left I authorized additional resources for you. This would be the time to use them.”

The line went dead abruptly. Brower looked off into the dark night and let it slip slowly to his lap. He looked over at McCullough and gave him a reassuring nod. They would deal with Springer, while the others handled the agents. He swallowed a yawn and looked over at the three men.

“Chicago authorized an additional five thousand dollar bonus for each man if this is concluded tonight.”

“By concluded?” asked the grizzled veteran, leaning uncomfortably across the driver, with an almost sexual sort of eagerness.

“McCullough and I will be on Springer. He can’t be far. By your report he’s dropped his girls somewhere close by. He’ll try to make contact with them or with the agent. The clock is ticking on all this, and Mister Springer understands that as well as we do. You men will be on the agents. All loose ends are to be cut, with no traces left behind. Clear?”

“Fuckin’ eh!” snarled the old veteran, pushing over the driver’s door and practically shoving the guy out the cab. “I’m pulling rank. I’ll drive.”

The Big Blue Sky: Forty-five

The presidential limousine pulled quickly into the underground garage of the Walter E Washington Convention Center In Downtown Washington. There were protesters on the street, their shouts and chants aver Gay marriage echoing hollowly. There was a veritable army of security between them and the President, a sad comment on the evolving concept of modern democracy, in which for reasons of security the man appointed by the people was completely insulated from them. It was ironic that the nature of government was to protect the weak and give voice to the powerless was surrounded and secured by abusive and powerful corporatists.

The car had hardly stopped when a Secret service agent, smart in a dark black suit was already out of the front door and reaching for the silver handle of the President’s door. As the door opened a phalanx of secret service converged around the door. A dozen pair of eyes searching the shadows and pillars for any sign of a threat to their client. On the ramp, hardly thirty yards away, two activists had somehow slipped into the basement, or had hidden there, and ran shouting towards the president, just now climbing from the Limousine. He hardly noticed as they were tackled, still shouting protests.

“Gay rights are Human Rights!” one of them cried.

“All men are created equal!” the other, a slight, attractive young woman, quoted the Constitution, before a knee to the side from an officer hammered the wind from her lungs.

An Aid met the President as he stood o straighten his suit coat, pressing herself through that formidable wall of security. They knew her, of course, allowing her a minimal gap to get through. Her name was Allison Danon, or “Ali D.” to friends and close colleagues. She was small, but strongly built. Not in an unattractive way, but her passion for triathlons was evident in toned physique and deeply focus unstoppable energy. A Harvard lawyer by trade, it was her passion and talent for poetry, and an internship with a prominent Washington Public Relations firm that won Ali a position on the President’s staff.

“The Iranians attempted to reach us through an intermediary about an hour ago, sir.” She said, with notable urgency.

“Legitimate?”

Ali fought to keep pace, scribbling notes as the President entered the hotel through a loading bay door and into a waiting freight elevator.

“We believe that it is. Mister President.”

“Let’s get out a strong statement,” he said. “My hope is that we can bring this to a fairly quick resolution.” He was thinking of the three Americans backpackers arrested for hiking inb the border region of Northern Iran. They were still in custody, while quiet, albeit painfully slow negotiations continued. There was a much higher priority with the servicemen that carried the specter of war and much greater tragedy, and involved a number of International players. That was the plan anyways, and plans have a way of going terribly awry. The elevator door opened to a backstage area behind the auditorium. The President stepped from the elevtor. Ali remained frozen, holding one more piece of news.

“One other thing,” Ali said, dimly.

He stopped dead in his tracks. The President turned, taken aback by the grave expression on the young woman’s face.

“Not good news, is it, Ali?” he asked.

“Mister President, the information is that four or more of the hostages are dead.”

The President weighed her words carefully a moment. “Dead or killed?”

“Sir, I…”

“Does the Press know about this yet?”

“Not sure” she replied. “No one has repeated it yet. A BBC reporter in Tehran asked if we could confirm the rumor. We cautioned him about any premature release of uncorroborated information, but that we would confirm our position with him first.”

“Can we hold onto this for a while?” he asked.

“Hard to say?” she replied, swallowing hard.

The President laughed dryly, rubbing the ever deepening tension from his forehead. His mind spun through a thousand different scenarios. “I have to face an auditorium filled with Veterans of Foreign Wars. How the fuck…?” he took deep breath, straining against the supreme pressure of the moment. “Shit.”

“Sir?”

“Feel like we are getting steamrolled into war?”

“Yes sir,” she said dutifully, not quite sure what he was talking about. For that matter, neither was he.

One of the Secret Service agents interrupted. “Mister President, you are about to be introduced.”

He nodded and turned back to the mortified young woman. “What’s our confidence level on this?”

“I won’t say one hundred percent,” she replied. “It comes from a very high level Chinese source, who quoted the Iranians as damn near begging forgiveness.”

The President looked to the stage, just visible through great blue flowing curtains. A gray-haired Vietnam veteran, a silver sash across the navy blue suit coat, metals sparkling upon his chest was well into an energetic introduction. Camera flashes painted the front of the man’s body. The President took a breath and checked his blue and red striped tie.

“We have no choice but to give them the benefit of the doubt until we know something for sure. At the end of the day, the Iranians are responsible for the lives of those young people, and no matter what we will absolutely hold them accountable.”

“Are you going to announce, sir?”

“Have to,” he said. “Send a message back as soon as have confirmation.”

She flipped over a notebook, but fumbled to find a pen. The President pulled one from his jacket pocket. It was shiny and blue, with a little Presidential seal on the side. He started dictating right away.

“This event…” he began, picking the words skillfully. “This grave event carries potentially grave repercussions…”

“Sounds too vengeance-ee,” she corrected respectfully, following up with a bashful smirk.

“…consequences for both our nations, and for the International community. The American people expect, scratch that. The American people demand a full accounting of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of their fellow citizens while in Iranian custody. I am sworn, destined, charged…”

“Compelled,” she offered, scribbling madly.

“…compelled to deliver that accounting.” He pursed his lips, thinking. “It needs something.”

“We expect?”

“We demand!” he said with emotion.

“Too ultimatum-ish, and you already used demand once.”

“We expect,” he nodded, “the full cooperation and transparency for an immediate and thorough multilateral investigation into the deaths…”

“Trial in US courts?” she suggested.

“Too much, too soon,” he said. “Hmm. “I am assembling a delegation…”

“How about just, ‘a delegation will,’ and give the impression we are always a step ahead on this?”

“Good,” he touched her arm. The veteran was concluding his introduction. The applause had already begun, thundering from the hall. “…a delegation to Geneva on Tuesday to meet with their Iranian counterparts and, and…”

“Assess the situation?”

He shook his head once. “…to assess the seriousness of their intentions. We expect that they will be as committed to that full and open accounting as the American people are, and though we pray and work for a peaceful resolution, the United States will use all means at its disposal to bring about-to bring those responsible to justice. That’s it.”

He turned on his heel and jogged the last few steps to the stage. He emerged from the curtain, waving and nearly obliterated by camera flashes, the hall shuddering with riotous cheers and clapping. He stood at the podium, looking out across thousands of veterans from a dozen different conflicts, spanning nearly a century and wondered if he wasn’t about to add a whole new generation to the auspicious club if at all possible. With each passing hour, it seemed, the chances for peace seemed to fade. The President formed a smile, nodding to a hand full of donors and familiar faces nearest the stage. In the end, no small part of being Commander-in-chief was marketing.

The Big Blue Sky: Forty-three

A storm front was moving in. The darkening thunderhead spread across the western sky above the Keweenaw Peninsula like a great gray-blue hand. As it spread across the face of the sun great golden rays of light reached out like an iconic halo. At that moment Doug could not have escaped thoughts and memories of Jane. Even with all if this, she was constantly with him. And though he longed to look in her eyes once more, to hear her voice and taste her lips Doug would almost feel she was beside him.

There were other thoughts. He wondered about their love. Jane loved to say how she knew they were meant to be together, that they were soul mates, as if the whole Universe had weighed their happiness in its impossibly complex equation. But Jane was gone now and Doug remained at the start of a new and long life ahead. Was it a betrayal of their love if one day he found someone else? The thought tore a hole in his chest, and no amount of strength he could muster could hold back the inevitable tears.

Could he love again, john wondered. Was living the ultimate test of his love for Jane? If he loved again, was he being selfish? And if something of a body persisted beyond life, who would be remain beside for eternity? Would finding love again hasten the fading of her memory? Was it reasonable that he should spend life alone? And what of the girls? These were hardly questions that stood any chance of being answered any time soon.

Her watched as Geoff ushered the girls into a car and climbed behind the wheel. In a moment they were gone, heading west along the highway to a secluded cottage Geoff and carol rented to artist and writers and lovers, or those wishing to escape the world for a time. Doug knew they would be safe and sound there, even as his heart went after them. As the car disappeared in the distance, it was more than Doug could bear any longer.

It wasn’t a sobbing sort of cry, and it certainly wasn’t the first since losing his wife. But the tears came in unstoppable rivers, and the breaths shuttered and caught in his chest. Doug wiped away the tears again and again, gripping the cold plastic steering wheel of the truck and taking it hard. Doug moaned through gritted teeth, and if not for the girls, would have wished for death that instant. That’s when he noticed the Jetta pull into the motel and come to a stop in front of one of the rooms.

Molly climbed from the driver’s seat and tossed the keys to her partner. Doug studied him for a moment, and found something in his movements that made him believe the guy couldn’t be trusted. He would have to get Molly alone somehow, but didn’t have a clue how that might happen.

She remained outside, alone, strolling thoughtfully up to the highway and looking out across the stormy lake. Doug watched her pretty face, as stormy as the Superior, and recalled that moment of temptation in Istanbul. He failed to notice the black Suburban, and the three men within watching her from a lakeside overlook just up the road.

Molly’s partner returned a moment later. She turned and returned to the car, climbing in on the passenger side this time. As they pulled out and turned off onto the highway Doug spied the Suburban as it swung around to follow at a good distance. Doug waited until they were both nearly out of sight before pulling out onto the highway behind them.

The Big Blue Sky: Forty-two

In the afternoon light the towering trees crowding the two lane county road through the Hiawatha forest formed a deepening channel of shadow. Autumn leaves drifted and tumbled, tossed by a strengthening west wind. Joined with the hymnal of rustling trees and the lonesome cry of a hawk, the road should have properly coaxed quieter and more eternal thoughts. The two men inside the shiny black suburban were instead thinking of war and revenge. The nature and beauty of the Hiawatha meant nothing to men possessed of such thoughts.

They’d come to help clean up an awful mess. They’d come to put out a fire before it grew into a conflagration. They came because they were told to come, and because the money they were paid made the moral and legal transgressions inherent in their mission easier to rationalize. They came because the company was their tribe now, much more than the nation or the Constitution. Money was their new religion, much more than the God to whom they once pledged their lives in defense of the nation and its lofty ideals.

The driver had been with FIRST THRUST since the NATO action in Albania, and was probably the most senior man in the company (Though not the oldest. Two men were Vietnam-era veterans.), behind the CEO, a Vietnam-era veteran who’d made a fortune training South and Central American militias. John Brower’s head was neatly shaved, shrewd and calculating eyes hidden behind dark round sunglasses, making him almost appear robotic and sinister. Brower was solid, and focused the three dead men, whom he viewed as sons as much as employees. Their deaths cut him deeply, and disappointed him as well. They had been murdered by civilian, he thought, which meant, as professional soldiers, they had become sloppy and unfocused.

Beside Brower was a young Irish kid from the hills of West Virginia named McCullough, his bright red hair trimmed severely. He had come to the attention of Brower during a firefight on a sun-baked Samara street. His Marine platoon ambushed in a narrow alley by insurgents, McCullough expertly turned the tables on the enemy and swept them from the alley without suffering a single casualty. Square-jawed and intense, the green-eyed kid could be cocky and headstrong, but with a temperance that allowed him to maintain supreme self-control where others lost theirs.

They’d driven most of the night, leaving Chicago almost immediately when word that Doug Springer had eluded his tail and disappeared. They were in Green bay when the call came of the deaths of their three comrades. The news only added urgency to the mission, and made it all the more personal. The clock was ticking on the mission, as events began to unfold in Iran. Forty-eight hours was all they had to conclude the mission. Doug Springer would have to be found and eliminated altogether, or their futures and fortunes would be lost. It wasn’t enough anymore to implicate and discredit him in the murder of the Iranian diplomat.

The Suburban crested a low hill and rounded a bend. There was another Suburban was just ahead, parked beside the road near a small brown-painted wooden sign that read: ECHO LAKE. The lake could be seen in glimpses through the trees.

The three remaining contractors stood anxious and wary beside the truck. Their expressions were stark, like men who had just suffered battle and the deaths of close friends, and who longed in their grief for vengeance. Brower fumed. He owned these men. At two hundred thousand tax-free Dollars a year-taxpayer money-they had sold themselves lock stock and barrel, and brower was damned if he wasn’t going to get his money’s worth.

Brower guided the truck off the road and behind the other Suburban. As he slid from the cab onto the soft ground the others came around towards him. In the military they would have snapped quickly to attention. Brower missed that aspect of military life, and wondered if that hadn’t contributed to the other’s death.

“Discipline!” he snapped, catching the men off guard. McCullough was behind Brower, happy to be out of the line of fire. “God damn if I don’t say it again and again. Let up on your training and discipline and this is what happens!”

“Sir,” said one of the men, “I don’t think they figured Springer would…”

“Bullshit!” he exploded. “This SOB eluded you, surveilled you and ambushed you. You got punk-ed by a Journalist, by a civilian because you were sloppy! You put the entire mission at risk”



“Sir…”

Brower cut him off. “This is what will happen. We will maintain strict discipline at all times. No cowboy shit, and no emotion. Clear?”

“Roger that,” the men said in unison.

“Okay,” he said calmly, with a cleansing breath. “So our guy is no dummy, but he’s alone and cornered, so he’ll need a lot of luck. Where that luck runs dry is where we’ll be waiting.”

They spread a large area map across the hood of the truck. Each man helped to hold it down against the wind. From within the first vehicle a police band radio chattered.

“Been monitoring police and fire all day.” One of the men pointed to the island on the map, running a finger across the channel to the Sand Point Ranger Station. “This is where the house blew. A few hours later a Ranger reported a jeep was stolen.” He tapped a place on the map a little further west, roughly half way between the island and Marquette. “The jeep turned up here about an hour ago.

“What’s there?” asked Brower. McCullough was beside him, intently taking it all in.

“Nothing,” the man replied. “Dense forest, a few squatters and survivalists. Couple of abandoned shacks, but nothing remotely habitable.”

“Somebody he’d likely go to?” asked Brower.

“Doubt it,” said a grizzled Gulf War vet. “Most of these folks pretty militant about being left alone. I think maybe he hot-footed it into the weeds.”

“McCullough shook his head. “With two young daughters, in this weather? No way.”

“How would you know, Junior?” The Gulf War Vet shot back, dismissing McCullough as if he was a young punk. McCullough chafed at the rebuff, but held his temper.

“Grew up in country like this, Pops,” he said coolly. “Takes preparation. Weather changes in a heartbeat. I don’t think he’d be that reckless.”

“Why is that?”

“He hasn’t so far,” said McCullough.

The grizzled Vet frowned and shook his head. Brower nodded. “I think McCullough is dead on. Leaves two options. He’s running, or he’s still close by.”

“So where is he?” asked another.

“Our boy made a call to a Federal Agent,” the man beside him said. “We monitored the number on his call. Real quick, then hung up.”

“Signal?” Asked Brower.

The guy shrugged. “The agent checked into a motel out on Highway Twenty-eight, not far from where the jeep was abandoned. Coincidence?”

“Okay,” Brower rubbed his brow. He needed a cup of coffee badly. “You guys get on that agent. If they haven’t made contact yet, they will. McCullough I will run down some other leads and check out the motel. We’ll hook up later tonight.”

“And if we find Springer and the agent together?” asked the Grizzled Vet.

Brower thought, looking through the trees to a moment of sunlight glittering upon the lake. He was thinking of the dead men, the company and the mission. “I want this concluded. Whatever you do make it clean and untraceable.”

The Grizzled Vet slapped McCullough on the back causing the kid to stumble, a cruel grin creasing his face. “Try and keep up, kid!”

The Big Blue Sky: Forty-one

“Lufthansa Six-oh-one just diverted to KWI,” the deputy NSA through the door, using the airline three letter designation for Kuwait International Airport. There was an urgency to his tone that thoroughly annoyed George Osborne.

Osborne drew the round spectacles from his face and rubbed his tired eyes. He had a deafening headache, driven in no small part by absolute exhaustion. He’d hardly slept or eaten a thing since the crisis began. He’d held up well at first, thanks to his military training but it was all piling up on him now. Prone to terrible migraines, it was all he could do not to curl himself into a corner and suffer its full fury and storm. He felt nauseous and dizzy and badly needed sleep. He could hear his wife admonishing him for being a pig-headed fool at not taking better care of himself. He took a deep, measured breath and looked up at the excitable young man, Osborne’s eyes noticeably blood shot.

“Stop the presses,” he replied flippantly.

He was still trying to sort out the magnitude of damage and danger the unexpected leak of some ninety thousand pages of documents relating to the Afghan War on some European website He’d never heard of before. The Press would focus on Pakistan’s assistance to the Taliban, a supposed betrayal of their would-be alliance with the United States. That was hardly a revelation, as a whole range of transgressions by the Pakistanis had been “accepted” rather than have the nuclear-armed country dissolve a fractious civil war. What concerned Osborne most was that previously unreported incidents of civilian deaths that would be exploited for propaganda throughout the Mideast and the rest of the world, threatening local alliances. Here at home, the item was a distraction from the Ian issue, the economy and the Gulf oil leak.

“Who in God’s name is Wikileak?” he asked, frustrated.

“A European anti-war site, sir,” the deputy replied, clearly distracted from the original purpose of his visit. “They did the Sarah Palin emails too.”

“What can we do to this guy, just for being a little piss?”

“Maybe the CIA could plant a bomb in his dog’s ass, and the next time the pooch takes a shit…ka-blew-ee!”

“How about I just fly over there and kick him in the nuts real hard? I like dogs. Its people that bother me.” Osborne groaned against the pounding waves of pain in his head. “What do you got?”

“Turkish Airlines, Austrian Air 872, Aeroflot out of Moscow, and Azal out of Baku, all turned around.”

“No mood for games,” grumbled. If you’ve got…”

The whole international bank into IKA, Tehran Airport. They’ve closed their airspace,” said the deputy. “Something’s happening. I called the State department. They’ve been working through the Turkish Consulate as an intermediary. They were meeting with the head of the Iranian national security Services when he received a message.”

“Do we know what that message was?” asked Osborne.

“NSA’s working on it, but nothing so far. In fact, everything in Tehran suddenly got very quiet. Spooky quiet.”

Osborne pushed himself away from the desk and stood. He felt unsteady on his feet, not unlike being a little drunk. The difference was that brutal pounding in the front of his brain, accompanied by a sickly-warm throbbing that drove his head down in a steady rhythm. All at once the room began to spin. Osborne groaned and caught himself at the edge of the desk. The deputy rushed forward to support him. George Osborne looked up at him, momentarily confused, more so as the room spun wildly around him.

“Sir, can I…” the deputy began. Osborne didn’t hear the end of that sentence. The world faded to black and he crumbled to the floor.

The Big Blue Sky: Forty

Good friends ran a quaint little roadside motel about a dozen miles or so down the road. The “SEA COAST INN stood beneath sheltering pine, which made the place feel comfortably serene and protected from the outside world. The unassuming sign stood out front, beside the highway, in front of a simple long gray building with white trim and shutters. Doug and Jane had spent a fair number of romantic escapes locked away in the comfortable rooms within that deceptively simple building. The owners, a kindly, deeply spiritual couple named Geoff and Carol, lived in a comfortable home out back. There was a garage beside the house. The woods deepened at the back of the property, the afternoon sunlight falling in patches through the thickening trees and brush.

Doug pulled around behind the motel, leaving the girls in the truck. Across the road waves thundered against the shore. Carol was just coming around the garage, relying on a cane for a bit of support. A small woman, with pewter hair, Carol wore an ankle length denim dress and orthopedic shoes. She caught Doug half way to the office, hooking her hand in his arm, as much for support as for their long and close friendship.

“Douglas,” she said sympathetically, “so terribly sorry to hear about Jane. Geoff and I were just devastated.”

He touched her hand and stroked it softly. “I know.”

“We were just sick that we couldn’t be at the funeral.”

“Thank you for the flowers. You remembered that red Geraniums were her favorite.”

Doug reached for the door and opened it for her. Carol paused and gave him a serious look, then nodded knowingly. She knew everything. Doug could see that she knew everything that had happened, and he returned the look. He understood the risks for involving her in any of this, but could see no other way.

The office was small and cluttered. A simple reception desk was situated between the stairs leading up to their home, and the door down to the basement. Beside the door was a plate of pastries, small cheeses and some fruit left over from their usual breakfast offerings for guests. Doug hadn’t eaten a thing since the night before and felt the twist of hunger in his gut. There were racks of postcards, area tourist maps, and locally made candles. Beside the desk was a coffee grinder. Geoff selected and sold his own exquisite coffee blend that Doug long to taste at that moment.

On the countertop the guest ledger was open. Doug saw that Molly’s was written next to one of the room numbers, and wondered if it was for his phone call. It gave him a rush of cautious hope. It was too much to expect that she would help him, but it was enough to hope. What else remained to him, and to the girls? At the end of all hope is desperation, and a desperate man is a dangerous man, but as much to himself as anyone. Doug was becoming desperate.

Carol’s husband came through the door at that moment. He was cradling an arm full of bed linens from one of the rooms. Geoff was tall and slender, with patchwork curly silver and white hair. His smile was hospitable, and his eyes endlessly considerate. Geoff slouched a bit, in a humbling sort of way, as if never wishing to put anyone ill at ease. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see Doug, which was likely more a product of a soul that tended to take life as it came. Geoff adjusted the bundle in his arms and gave Doug’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

“Just sick about your beautiful Jane.”

“Appreciate that, Geoff.”

“Want you to know, we don’t put much faith into what we hear on the news.”

Doug met each of their eyes, finding something deeper than friendship, which he believed was more a quality of these good folks than of his own corrupted heart. Doug had so much he needed to say to them, but then he didn’t have to speak a word. All that was confirmed when Carol laid her hand over his.

“Sorry to involve you guys with this,” he said.

“Where are the girls?” Geoff piled the linens into a basket.

“Out in the truck.” Doug took a deep breath and reach for the five hundred he’d parceled earlier for this, leaving him just enough to get by on. “I need a week.”

He held the bundle of fifties and twenties out, still folded. Geoff frowned sympathetically and waved him away.

“Put that away,” he said. “Don’t worry, the girls’ll be fine. Now you best get moving. ‘Couple of Federal agents in one-oh-four.”

Doug laid the cash on the ledger and patted it quietly. “In case the girls need something.”

He sighed started to leave, laying a hand on Geoff, as if using his strength and decency for much needed momentum. Carol stopped him, pulling a cell phone from her pocket. “You take this. The girls will need to hear from their dad.”

Doug took it, fighting back emotion. “Don’t know I can ever repay…”

“Get,” said Geoff, shooing him out the door. “Get going and take care of this mess.”

The couple followed him out to the truck. The girls climbed down, warmly embraced by their new hosts. Doug paused at the door of the old Ford for one last look.

“If the authorities ask,” he said to Geoff and Carol, “tell them everything you know.”

Geoff managed a smile and nodded, in this sort of Mark Twain-esque sarcasm. “Then it’s a good we don’t know anything!”

The Big Blue Sky: Thirty-nine

Doug used the cover of the freighter to cross the harbor to the mainland. He “borrowed” a fiberglass canoe leaning at the back of the old wooden lighthouse. The girls crouched in the front of the boat until they came ashore along a driftwood strewn stretch of deserted beach. It was a short hike up from the beach through the forest to the small Sand Point ranger Station.

The station was a simple two-story white house, with a green shingled roof just beside the coast road leading south to town. It was shielded on two sides by trees. To one side it faced the bay. Doug waited until the lone officer, clad in shorts and a tee-shirt stretched with a yawn and went inside. Doug dodged across the road and crept carefully from vehicle to vehicle. There were three official vehicles parked side by side just past the door. Doug paused and heard the shower begin from one of the upstairs windows.

The last vehicle was a Jeep Wrangler, with its ubiquitous bright white color and forest green letters on the side. The door was unlocked. Doug searched the glove compartment and the visors but came up empty for the key. Under the floor mat beneath the driver’s seat Doug discovered a single key.

The jeep started easily. Doug dropped it into reverse and backed it across to where the girls were waiting, keeping a cautious eye to the house. Doug waved the girls over and they climbed inside. As Doug swung the jeep onto road he said a small prayer. There was a single road all the way to town, and then he’d have to get past a State Police outpost. If the jeep was discovered missing before then he and the girls hardly stood a chance.

“Jane, if you can hear me,” John muttered under his breath, “I need you now more than ever.”

“Dad, are we going to be in trouble?” Dana asked.

“Guys, we’re already in trouble.”

There was no point in hiding the truth. The road narrowed, bounded on one side by steeply wooded hills, and dropped sharply towards the lake on the other. He might have enjoyed once how beautiful and secluded this place was, but now it only felt like a trap.

“What if the police catch us?” Megan asked.

“If that happens,” he said, “you’ll tell the police everything” He looked to the girl’s reflection in the mirror and saw their turmoil. Megan was holding her sister’s hand, clutching it tightly in her lap. The State Police post was just ahead; a small brown building just beside the road. The freighter was already offloading a mountain of coal just across the road.

“We’ll get through this,” Doug said.

“Is it terrible that I’m glad mom isn’t here?” Megan said soberly. Dana looked up at her, her chin quivering with emotion

The words crushed him.

“No, honey.” He found her eyes in the mirror. “But I hope that she’s watching over us right now.”

The passed the post without incident, and passed quickly through town. The two-lane highway more or less followed the lakeshore. In places it climbed to heights offering sweeping views of the lake and forests. Where they came together was akin to two great armies crashing headlong in eternal battle, their meeting marked by ranks of heavy white waves crashing upon timber-strewn beaches.

Always dominating this pristine view was the great expanse of Grand Island. Doug could make out the tattered haze of smoke hovering over the southern end. He’d watch from a distance, safely hidden among the woods as the men approached the house. The man at the back kicked in the door and charged inside. A moment later, with a blinding explosion that knocked Doug backwards, the house disintegrated. There was little doubt as to the fate of the three men. They had come to kill Doug and the girls, and Doug had intended that they would die before they could harm Dana and Megan. Still, those deaths weighed on him. They tore at his heart for the families left behind, for their pain, and for the waste of it all. Wrong or right, those deaths would feel like a stain upon his soul for all time.

This was still a primitive land settled by stalwart souls who carved tentative parcels in some hard scrabble existence between the modern and pioneer worlds. These tentative places dotted the road, seemingly symbiotic with the surrounding wilderness. These folks were oddities to the outside world, and nefarious to out of town visitors unaccustomed to life in these parts. Truth was they were a mix of folks from the poor, anti-government types, loners, and aging hippies to people who just didn’t wish to be found.

Below the road, almost hidden from view among a thick bank of trees was one of those ramshackle little houses. It looked to have been patched together with tar paper and old boards. The small shack leaned slightly to one side, where it was braced hastily with a number of two by fours of varying lengths. Several of the he small windows on the one story structure were missing, replaced with heavy plastic or pieces of plywood. There was an ancient-looking outhouse out back and a clothesline. The yard was crowded with rusting tools, engine parts, and an old plastic lawn chair the front chassis of a 72 Chevy Impala. What caught Doug’s eye was the Sixty-five Ford F-100 pick up for sale in the grass beside the weedy driveway. It was hand painted a dull black and the rear bumper had been replaced with a single wood plant bolted to the frame. Doug swung the Jeep around to the opposite side of the road and got out with the girls. They hurried across the deserted highway and scrambled down the embankment to the shack.

The girls remained beside the old truck as Doug approached the shack. Nearly to door when a hobbling old man came out of the woods with a rifle and a big Canadian goose he shot for supper. Swimming in a dark Navy Pea Coat from an army surplus store, he glared suspiciously from beneath a bright orange hunter’s cap.

“Help you, Mister?” said the man, abruptly. He was leery of the strangers, nothing in particular to do with Doug and the girls, just that the old loner was naturally wary of all strangers.

“Interested in the truck,” Doug replied. “She run?”

“Looks like hell, but she’ll get you where you need to go.” He laid the dead goose over a stump, and set the rifle against the crooked house. He reached over and shook Doug’s hand, looking him straight in the eye. It was as much a test as a courtesy. “Got a three fifty-two, V-Eight under the hood, rebuilt carburetor, decent brakes, patched-up radiator. She looks like hell, but she’s solid.”

“I need a…”

“The old timer stopped him quickly. “Don’t much care what you need it for. By the looks of you and your girls, must be some sort of trouble. Want it, or don’t ya?”

“How much?”

The man studied Doug a moment, the girls no doubt weighing into whatever calculation he was making. “Whatever trouble you’re in ain’t none of my business, especially if you don’t make it any of my business.”

“Just need a truck, that’s all.”

“Four hundred. Firm.”

“Five hundred, and throw in the hat and coat.” said Doug.

“Got yourself a deal.”

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.”

The Big Blue Sky: Thirty-seven

Tehran. Eight-Thirty p.m. Amir and Sayed Armanjani were patriots. They believed in another Iran, one less adversarial to the West. But patriotism, at its core, is blinding. It is a volatile mix of personal narcissism, national egotism, manufactured sentimentality and emotionalism. The Armanjani bothers raged with their own desires for freedom, an exalted wish for Iran’s proper place in the world, fantasies of grand Persian heritage and the demands for justice against the regimes outrages against its own citizens.

Amir was the smallest of the pair. A studious sort, he was a bit on the overweight side, with a scruffy dark beard, thick curly hair and soft green Oriental eyes. He was a genius with computers, at least as much s the kid from a working class family could be, quite unlike the older Sayed, who was clean cut, self-confident, mechanically gifted and good with girls. Sayed looked after his excitable younger brother as best he could. It was that deep and unwavering relationship that bonded them so fully to the movement, and carried them unquestioning and unwavering to their mission.

They were from a good family. Their father taught economics at Azad University, dabbling a bit in politics as he neared retirement. He’d run on the reformist ticket for a parliamentary seat, losing to a more conservative candidate, who exploited his son’s “extremist” activities. Despite his own progressive views, he and the boys would erupt in blistering arguments over politics, religion and the regime. Their mother, a well-respected Gynecologist, was far more tolerant, always managing to diffuse each fight in favor of the fact that they were a family, which was the most important thing. It was less the substance of her words than the love and pleading in her pretty face that broke the hearts of all three men, and led them to understand they were carrying it all too far. That was how it was until the June riots, when everything changed. They moved out of the house, considering themselves more than protesters, but rather combatants in a war.

The brothers had given everything to the opposition, and were prepared to sacrifice everything, if necessary. Amir was on the street on that steamy June day in 2009 when an Iranian police bullet found a pretty young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan. As she bled to death before the world, her stormy and pleading eyes finding a nearby camera man, there could be no doubt this was absolute murder. He vowed at that moment, to fight the regime with his last breath. Sayed would not betray his brother, and vowed to remain at his side even at the cost of his own life.

Night climbed like a demon from the city, pulling itself from the umber shadows where it coward by day to meet the lavender sunset. Tehran’s ambient pollution, the burden of eight million souls and Mehrabad Airport all but shrouded the Alborz Mountains, rising behind the city, from view. Even here in Zafaraniya, among the wealthy homes, stylish boutiques and thoughtful parks, the city’s pollution was unrelenting. To the east, rush hour traffic along the Medarres Highway was only just beginning to abate. The opposing lines of pale headlights and scarlet tail lights appeared as through a dingy gray fog. It came as a cacophony of light and sound that blurred together, like shapes and colors blurred of form a reality upon an Impressionist’s canvas. There was a chill to the air, and a scattering of the brightest stars overhead.

There was a danger within that scene. The Iranian authorities hunted opposition activists relentlessly, calling them a fifth column working in concert with Western governments to weaken the Republic. The Iranian government shut down the internet when it suited them, blocked and interrupted networking sites, monitored cell phones and created false links to trap or harass the opposition. All of this to little effect until two US helicopters crashed in the desert and the specter of immediate war all but eradicated the opposition in favor of paranoiac nationalism. But overt State censorship is by its very nature self-defeating, and fully at odds with individual human nature, that is unless an individual can be tricked or cajoled or pressured into self-censorship. Freedom is best suppressed when suppressed by one’s own heart and mind.

The message had come only a short time before. ”Inshallah,” God Willing, was all the text message said, from their unknown contact. It came to Amir’s phone as he was buying bread at a neighborhood market. He looked at it oddly for a long fluid moment before hurrying down the street to the third floor one-room apartment he and Sayed had rented since being approached for this mission almost a year before, while the government’s crackdown was still uncoordinated and chaotic. An acquaintance from the University approached them with a promise that they would play a historic part in bringing down the regime and bringing true democracy to Iran. The bothers accepted immediately despite the dangers and within a month had begun training at a safe house very near the spot Neda was killed.

The brothers only knew their part of the plan. They had no clue to the broader scheme. Not that it would have mattered. Not that it would have mattered that their action would bring the country to the brink of war, and perhaps beyond. The costs in blood and lives was inconsequential, as once they resigned their own lives to fate everyone else’s life was negotiable as well.

Amir hurried down the street, and had just reached the flat when two Mercedes police vans rounded the corner. He dove inside and sprinted up the stairs as they screeched to a halt in front of the flat. The rear doors of the vans burst open, disgorging a dozen heavily armed VEVAK commandoes in full battle armor. They stormed into the building, charging up the stairs, tipped by an anonymous source that two would-be terrorists were plotting an attack.

Sayed was at the window, smoking a cigarette, his thoughts lost somewhere among the hazy lights of the city, when Amir burst through the door. The stark and nearly empty room, lit by a single bare light, made him appear forlorn and tragic somehow. He turned, startled at the sound, framed by the window and the city. Amir was holding the phone, fighting for breath, fighting for a clear thought. Sayed knew immediately and leapt to his feet. Amir was already scooping up the laptop from the kitchen counter.

“The Police,” he managed somehow, to his dumbstruck and frozen brother. Amir already had the laptop open and had pressed the power button. There was a connection cable on the counter. Amir pushed the flat end into the USB port on the side of the computer and looked again to Sayed, still staring at him.

“They’re coming,” Amir snapped. “Get the fucking gun!”

There was a grenade in the cupboard. Amir stuffed it in his pocket and followed Sayed into the hall. Two commandoes appeared at the end of the hall. Sayed chased them back with two poorly aimed shots and followed Amir up to the roof.

“Send the signal!” Sayed cried. Amir was already in the farthest corner of the roof, on his knees behind a metal vent. His handsome young face was awash in the pale blue-white glow of the laptop’s thin screen. His fingers weren’t working properly. Fear and excitement made them do dumb things that be instead blamed on the computer.

“Not taking my fucking password!”

Near the door Sayed could hear the VEVAK commandoes on the landing below. Chambering a round in the Iranian-made Zoaf pistol, he threw open the door and emptied the clip into the stairwell, turning his head away as he fired. With the last round he shoved the door closed and dropped to his belly as the anticipated storm of AK round chopped through the wooden door. Showered with splinters and bits of wood, Sayed dropped the empty clip and immediately shoved his last full clip into the handle. There was no chance for escape, and no illusion of it any longer. The brothers would die upon that roof. No it was simply a matter of revenge for Sayed and Amir.

“Sayed!”

“Hold them back!”

Amir took a breath and tapped in the eight letter password one last time, this time getting it right. A single small box appeared that said simply:

LAUNCH PROGRAM
YES. NO. CANCEL

Without hesitation Amir slid the cursor over and clicked YES. Behind him the VEVAK fire tore the door from its hinges and hammered it to one side. It was all Sayed could do to roll clear. He came up a few feet away, already aiming the pistol at the door. He looked to his brother, who gave a thumbs up without looking, his interest fully into the task at hand.

Amir thought he might scream at how slow the upload was. Time was almost at an end, at least for him and Sayed. That much he was certain of. He could only pray that this would begin the end of the regime as well, and heralding the start of a new and democratic Iran. The gunfire was deafening and close now, as his brother exchanged point blank fire with the VEVAK.

DOWNLOAD COMPLETE

The screen read, with a single command box.

EXECUTE

Amir clicked the box and looked to Sayed. He drew a grenade from his pocket and slid a finger through the firing pin. Sayed, down to his final bullets, realized there was little need to fight any longer. He stood and took aim with his final shots. They went high as a commando stepped into the open and fired a burst from the shoulder. Hot AK rounds stitched a line from Sayed’s hip, shattering his pelvis, across his body, eviscerating him in a spray of blood and gore. Amir spun around, independent of his legs, his final vision of the lights of Tehran and the mountains beyond.

The commandoes were through the door now and already firing at Amir. He screamed as Sayed was cut down. His cry carried a mixture of anguish and bottomless hate. He was still crying as he pulled the pin on the grenade and held it in his lap. Suddenly one of the VEVAK commandoes was over him, leveling a weapon. The man’s eyes went wide with terror seeing the grenade in Amir’s hand. It was the last thing he would see as it went off an instant later.

The American President feared another Sarajevo 1914, in which a peasant boy stepped from a crowd, a seemingly random act. But there was nothing random on that June day and nothing random about the death of the two brothers on that Tehran rooftop.

The Big Blue Sky: Thirty-six

The wind had come up with a vengeance. It howled off the lake, driven beneath deepening clouds, whipping leaves and branches against the two men crouched in the brush opposite the small house on Grand Island. Their MP-4 Assault rifles covered the small white house, ready as the third man returned from reconnoitering the seemingly deserted place. He dipped back into the brush beside his comrades and gave a satisfied grin. The men wore tan canvas clothing, camouflage hunting pants, black gloves and dark ski caps, nothing that would distinguish them from the weekend hunters that flocked to the area each autumn, except these men were not hunting deer.

They relied fully upon the good government training of their former military careers. There was, however, a fundamental difference. There was a vast philosophical difference between the military and the business of war. Not that the former could not be perverted, if wielded imprudently, but among the ranks of paid for soldiers, in which finance not freedom was paramount, military discipline became blunted. Camaraderie was not expressed beneath a flag and history and shared community, but through something that needed to be invented and manufactured, and which at its very core was corrupted by money and greed.

“He’s inside,” said the third man, in hushed tones. “He’s waiting in the front room, set up on the floor in the north east corner. He’s prone behind a leather chair with a blanket over him. Looks like he’s got a twelve gauge with a pretty narrow kill zone. I’ll breach the back door and throw a flash bang. You two enter the front door and take him out. Clear?”

The two men nodded and waited for their comrade to cross to the side of the house. As he moved cautiously around to the back they slipped across the yard to the front step. Through a rip in a window shade they could see the figure on the floor. The head and shoulders were hidden from view behind the brown leather chair. The shotgun barrel extended out from the chair, the twin barrels propped upon a hand full of stacked books. The figure’s short legs extended along the floor in a pair of faded brown corduroy slacks, protruding from beneath a thin black and red checkered fleece throw, where they ending in a pair of big rubber galoshes.

Upon closer inspection something about the figure just wasn’t right. It took a moment to sink in for the two men. The galoshes on one foot were cocked at an unnatural angle. The toe of the other was bent under the rubber boot in such a way that the toes would have to have been broken completely. The arch of the figure’s back was far too severe. It was then they noticed the gas canisters near the fireplace, the nozzles opened completely.

“Smell gas?” one of the men breathed in deeply, catching just a whiff of the sickly sweet aroma of propane gas.

They shared a fatal glance and realized they were absolutely helpless. They had been led into a trap and had taken the bait fully. At that moment the man at the rear door slammed through the door, flinging a flash bang grenade into the house in the very same motion. It was barely out of his hand, momentum still carrying him across the small kitchen when he too smelled the gas. It was too late. The grenade exploded, and with it the house, disintegrating in a massive fireball. It thundered across the bay and turned heads five miles away.

The Big Blue Sky: Thirty-five

A mile and half to the Southeast, as the crow flies, lays the little town of Munising. Wrapped around the end of the bay, the town was hardly more than a smudge of pale color against the forested hills of the Hiawatha National Forest. State Road 28 cut a pathway along the coast from Marquette through the town, running east towards Mackinac and Saute St. Marie. Hundreds of miles of unrelenting wilderness separated the town from those destinations. Twenty-eight ran past the navigator restaurant, a pleasant little diner overlooking the bay and Grand Island beyond.

Molly Karaman and her partner had left Washington during the night, flying into Green Bay on a chartered American Airlines flight. It took the better part of four hours to reach Munising. As they found a table looking out across the bay neither agent took much note of the motor boat bumping and bouncing towards the island.

Molly’s partner was a rookie named Charlie Moon, a full blooded Chippewa native from Duluth. He was an energetic sort, tall and powerfully built, with short black hair and exotic green eyes. Moon had graduated from Annapolis, doing a tour in Iraq in 2002 before joining the FBI. Molly didn’t look upon him as rookie. She knew only too well from her time in the Mideast what he had gone through, and knew he was more experienced, and better prepared for a fight than half the more senior agents in the Bureau. He was competent and bright, and she was happy to have him along.

Molly opened her laptop and turned it as an old waitress limped over with pot of coffee and a pair of menus tucked under one arm. Her white orthopedic shoes squeaked slightly along the tiled floor, in an odd rhythm to her limp. A pen was tucked behind one ear, and half covered behind shoulder length gray hair, which was more akin to a dry tumbleweed than a hairstyle. But she had a warm sincere smile, and Molly was instantly endeared to, as if she was long lost relation.

“Get you kids some coffee?” she asked, already reaching for Charlie’s cup. It was turned upside down on the saucer. She turned it over and filled the cup with the strong steaming brown liquid. As she reached for Molly’s cup the waitress happened to notice the Federal badge on her belt.

“Say, how many of you folks they got up here?”

“Sorry?” said Molly, turning from the computer screen.

“Federal agents and such?” the waitress repeated.

“Why do you ask?” said Moon.

The old waitress shrugged, and laid the menus down on the table. “Half dozen fellas in here yesterday. Said they were up here to fish, but I watched ‘em leave. They were parked over there, just down the hill, with all this military type stuff in the back.”

“Lot’s of militia and survivalists up in these parts,” Charlie observed, while subtly pressing the issue a bit.

“Naw,” she said. “They were talking about that fella from Marquette. I heard some, but they shut up real quick when I came over to take their order.”

“Stood out that much, huh?” Molly asked.

The waitress laughed. “Get a lot of characters come in here, but not many that pay with a corporate credit card. Worst part is, they ate a ton and had me running for this and that, which don’t fly so good with this bad hip. And then, don’t ya know, they didn’t even tip!”

“Maybe you still have a copy of that receipt?” asked Molly.

“Think I just might.”

The waitress returned a minute later with a carbon copy of the receipt. As Molly and Charlie looked it over carefully the waitress explained she didn’t normally run carbon imprints of credit cards like folks used to once upon a time, but she didn’t much like those guys and thought it prudent to be on the safe side, just in case the card came up stolen. Molly held her blackberry over the receipt and snapped a couple of pictures before handing the receipt back. The company name at the top of the receipt was light and hard to read, still Molly could make out the letters well enough. It read: FIRSTTHRUST, INC.

“I was right, wasn’tI” said the waitress. “Something wasn’t right about those guys!”

“Molly smiled sympathetically. “For one, I waited tables in college, and I hate people who don’t tip.

The Big Blue Sky: Thirty-two

CLASSIFIED REPORT:
…a five year plan from 2010 through 2015 that intends to make Iran the preeminent regional power. A multi-faceted effort by the Iranians is already underway to strengthen and broaden regional and international relations, a critical aim of the so-called Five year Plan. The Iranians are aggressively strengthening their military’s deterrent capabilities, as well as expanding offensive capabilities.

This effort could be controlled by a policy of containment and through continuing support for a growing internal opposition. The assessment of this report indicates that time favors the opposition over the current government. It also cautions against a direct attack against the religious ruling authority to prevent offending moderate Iranians who could eventually support the opposition against the political regime. A continued effort must be made to support and strengthen moderates among the religious ruling authority.

The Iranian’s have no illusions about winning a conventional war against the United States and her allies. If threatened or attack they will fight war of attrition and/or terrorism. Through embassies and internationally protected diplomatic channels they have built a substantial global network throughout the West capable of sowing substantial damage in a protracted asymmetric warfare strategy. Iran’s substantial ideological, financial and material support for such groups as Hezbollah is part of that international network. Although it is beyond the scope of this report, the assessment of the West’s ability to prevent such attacks from occurring would be a failure. Though a number of these cells are currently under limited surveillance the resources available to stop multiple simultaneous attacks in progress would meet with only limited success. In that regard, it must be said that Iran would not activate these cells unless faced with an active attack against its sovereignty. Bus stations, shopping malls, airports, sporting events, and any place Americans gather in numbers would be considered targets of choice. In a country of three hundred million it would be impossible to prevent possibly very substantial civilian casualties. An assessment of potential casualty figures, should 10% of the cells reach their targets, could reasonably exceed…


Doug woke with a start, the shotgun almost spilling from his lap. He sat forward and wiped a cold clammy sweat from his face, wincing when he brushed across the gash at his temple. The pain had faded, retreating to the area immediately around the gash. It was deep enough that most any movement of his face, touching his nose, blinking, raising his eye brows brought a wave of needle sharp pain. It was enough to stifle a yawn, drawing instead a teeth-gritting groan.

The girls were still asleep, dressed in the clothes they had worn from the house. Dana was turned to one side. She was covered protectively by her big sister’s arm. There was a big sliver butcher knife on the end table beside the sofa bed where the girls swept. Doug hadn’t noticed it the night before. He wondered if Megan had placed there and he had missed as he tucked them in, or if Megan got up to get it during the night.

The fire had gone out, and the morning cold had crept into the house. The wind had come up as well, rushing across the bay from the mainland. It whistled through gaps in the old windows and pushed branches noisily against the house. Waves thumped against the bank, joined in the constant soft chorus from the lake.

Doug went into the kitchen hoping to find a bit of coffee before getting some wood for the fire. He set the shotgun beside the door and stretched an uncomfortable sleep from his body. Doug checked the cupboards, but could only find canned goods, pancake mix and a couple of cans of soda. Under the sink was a bottle of propane, matches and another box of shotgun shells. Doug removed a couple of extra shells and slipped them into his pocket.

It was bright and clear when he stepped outside. An early golden sunlight painted the small birch trees along the shore line. Waves splashed against the island, sending up fat white sprays of water. Doug rubbed the sleep from his eyes and bent to gather up several pieces of firewood from the pile beside the house. That’s when he noticed the two black Suburbans parked near the pier on the mainland.

He ducked quickly out of sight and slippeded back inside the house. There were a pair of old binoculars on top of the refrigerator. Doug snuck past the sleeping girls to the front window and pulled aside the shade. He kept back from the window, poking his head out and lifting the binoculars to his eyes, sweeping the far shore as best he could.

He counted eight men in all. Several were armed with pistols strapped to their thighs. Two of the men hovered near the top of the road. They cradled military-style automatic weapons. Through a gap in the trees Doug could see that a third Suburban blocked the entrance from the highway. One man strode slowly along the beach, a pistol held against his leg. He was searching the bank carefully, while the others tore apart the inside of Jane’s Honda. They looked military, with severe haircuts, but with the opulence and arrogant swagger of military contractors. Whoever they were, Doug had no illusions about their intentions.

It was quite certain that they weren’t law enforcement. The passenger-side window of the car had been smashed. The trunk was open as well. The contents, tools, a blanket, camping stuff and an old bag of recycled magazines and news papers were strewn across the ground. There was no careful collection of evidence. These men were hunters, and Doug was their prey. His heart raced haphazardly, the chill of fear and dread washing through his body. It was a nauseous feeling. He glanced back at the girls, as if renewing his resolve for the fight to come, then back to the window.


The man on the beach bent, peering into the fallen log where Doug had stashed the cell phone. He called several of the others over, each taking their turn to look while being careful not to touch it in any way.

“Dad?” It was Dana. She was still dressed, standing in her stocking feet on the cold floor. Her blue ski jacket was undone, but pulled tight around her.

Dad, it’s cold,” she complained, being careful not to disturb her sleeping sister.

“I know, honey,” Doug replied.

Doug turned back across the channel. The men stood along the beach looking back across t the island. It would be a relatively simple process of elimination to deduce where Doug and the girls were hiding. The lake was choppy, boiling to small white caps. Not enough to prevent anyone who truly wished from crossing to the island. And these men would come. Doug knew they’d come.

The Big Blue Sky: Chapter Two-Twenty-nine

When Doug awoke it was still dark. He could hear the girls whispering in the back seat. Doug pulled himself up, feeling weak and momentarily disoriented. He pulled the mirror aside and found the girls looking up at him.

“How long was I out?” he asked, his throat parched and sore. The stabbing pain in his temple had not subsided, but instead was replaced by a nauseous thumping pain.

“Dad, you need to go to a hospital.” Megan slid forward and gingerly ran her fingers across his hair. Dana leaned forward beside her.

“Remember when I was a little girl,” Dana began. “When I fell off the monkey bars and the doctor said I shouldn’t sleep for a day because I might never wake up?”

“Right now,” said Doug, “I’m more concerned about you two.”

Doug turned and explored the girl’s faces with his fingers, as if they were rare and precious works of art. Their expressions were strange. They were calm and committed, and Doug wanted to sweep them into his arms as his heart swelled nearly to bursting from pride.

“Dad, we’re worried about you too.”

In glimpses Doug could make sense of bits and pieces. How they all fit together, and how they related to Fallahi would remain unanswerable for a time. The bigger picture eluded him for now. The best he could figure was that whoever wanted Fallahi dead benefitted from framing Doug for murder. What else would explain why he and the girls weren’t dead already? Doug doubted that whoever was behind the murder believed that Doug would escape before the police arrived. No doubt they would come looking for him now. Doug resolved to be ready for them when that eventuality arose.

“Okay, then,” he turned and started the engine. Doug rolled the window down and let the cold night air bring him around. He groaned and washed his hands across his face, then guided the Honda back onto the muddy road.

They headed south through the forest, and caught Forty-one east. Just outside Marquette he pulled into a drive-thru ATM. Doug emptied the account of fifteen hundred in cash. There was a security camera above the ATM. On the back of a bank slip he hastily scribbled a simple note, and held it up. It read:

I AM INNOCENT

The Big Blue Sky: Chapter Two-Twenty-eight

The girls were down quickly, dressed in jeans and tennis shoes. Coats and blankets were bundled in their arms. Dana cradled an old Alf stuffed animal that had once been Jane’s. Doug took very little. He had his cell phone, a bank ATM and credit card and a single business card he’d kept since that blustery October day at ground zero. Doug took one last look around the house before ushering the girls out the back door. He paused momentarily to consider the pistol one last time before turning away leaving it behind. No doubt he would be considered a fugitive, but the last thing he wished to be considered was armed and dangerous.

They could hear the sirens approaching, out past the low curve of the two lane road. Doug swung Jane’s silver Honda Civic out of the driveway, spitting gravel. Running without lights, he pushed the gas pedal towards the floor. He could see the flashing blue lights splashed across the dark canyon of tall pine. The girls held each other in the back, watching as the lights faded before being swallowed by the night as Doug raced away in the opposite direction.

He hated to think what this might do to the girls. After all they had been through, it wasn’t right they should suffer this too. He cursed Fallahi and the men who brought their violence into his home. Someone would have to pay for that. But now they were running. They were running for their lives, ripped from the peace and privacy of their mourning. Doug fought to keep his rage from getting the better of him. He gripped the wheel until he felt the blood leave his knuckles and did all he could to keep the girls see that he was all but coming apart inside. He turned onto a muddy old logging road, nearly overgrown with grass. It was all Doug could do to stay focused and not pass out again. That he was being tracked through the deep and dark Michigan forest was simply not a consideration at the moment.

Still, Doug felt safe here. He knew these roads well. He’d hunted these forests as a boy, and hiked them a hundred times with Jane and the girls. This is where he came to escape the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the undeclared Pakistani Civil War and the Intifada in Gaza and the West bank. He knew where the roads softened under bubbling springs and where they were rutted the worst. He knew by heart the twists and sharp turns, where they doubled back, where they ran to dead ends, or where they crossed hidden creeks and cut through all but impassable thickets.

In the back Dana and Megan were quiet. They were smart and level-headed girls. Jane had given them the foundations to become competent women. Doug would have liked to take some credit, but felt he had spent too much time away. They were fully aware of the gravity of the situation, and came to it with a maturity Doug was awe by.

He worried, though. He worried what all this would mean to them. He worried about the scars it might leave. Foremost in his mind was the thought that every mistake he made through all of this would be magnified immeasurably in their young psyches. For now his primary concern was in keeping them safe until he could properly sort this all out. Just how he would accomplish that was still open to debate.

Winning the debate at that moment was his injury, which wasn’t critical, but serious enough that he just wanted to close his eyes and be done with the pain thundering in his head. Since leaving the house Doug was holding onto consciousness by threads. Rounding a narrow bend, limbs and branches scraping the car loudly, and skidding along a muddy decline, Doug could feel that tenuous hold slipping away. He pulled off the road into a small. Grassy clearing, and with the last ounce of strength remaining looked back at the girls.

“Sorry,” he said, “ but I have to pass out for a while.”