The Mackinac Incident

by Len McDougall

  “Oh God, Baby, I’m so sorry.” Shannon might have asked such a question for her own peace of mind, but she knew in her heart that the man she loved wasn’t capable of murder. The only way he would have done the things he said he’d done was in defense of his own life.

  “Listen, Sweetheart,” Rod said, “I’m betting somebody is tapping our phone. Our conversation is probably being recorded right now, and if so, they’ve got a fix on where I’m calling from. I’ve gotta make this short.”

  “Okay,” Shannon was all business now. “The sheriff’s department seems to be blaming you for murdering your survival students, but there’s an FBI agent named Colyer who told me that he thinks you’re innocent. Colyer wants you to turn yourself in.”

  Rod snorted cynically, “Yeah, don’t they always.”

  “I think Colyer might actually be a good guy, and I wouldn’t deal with anyone but him if I were you. The sheriff and his deputies have you convicted of murder already.”

  “All the more reason not to turn myself in, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” she said with a deep sigh, “I do think. What’re you going to do?”

  “I’m not going to go into detail because I figure our phone is tapped—and I’m not too sure what my next step is myself—but I do know that there’s one more terrorist out there. I think he’s the head honcho behind all that’s happened, and I think he’s still really dangerous. I’ve tracked him to hell and back, and I think he’s here in Mackinaw City right now. I don’t know where.”

  “How will you find him?” she asked more or less rhetorically.

  “I don’t know,” Rod answered. “I just don’t know. It’ll be pure luck if I do. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

  “Take care of yourself, please. I love you, Rod.”

  “I love you too, Baby. I miss you something awful. I’ll call when I can. ‘Bye.”

  “G’bye, Baby.” Rod got away from the payphone as soon as he’d hung up the receiver. He withdrew to about a block away, where he could watch the location without being noticeable himself. Sure enough, in about ten minutes, two uniformed city police officers nonchalantly strolled over to the telephone Rod had used, approaching from either side. They confirmed what he already knew: His movements were of interest to law enforcement, probably at the highest level, and his home telephone line was tapped. They could get a fix on any telephone he used to call home in just seconds. But there was still the human factor, the delay between knowing his location and getting an armed human being to that location.

  Now that he was in the city, Rod had no idea where the terrorist had hidden himself. Maybe he had a motel room. Maybe he had a sympathetic friend who lived here. Hell, maybe his was one of the faces in this crowd roaming the sidewalks this morning. Rod was sure that he’d recognize him if he saw him, though; the face of that killer was forever etched on his brain.

  The crowd hadn’t milled for long before a National Guard pickup truck with a bullhorn attached to its roof began ordering everyone who had a home or motel room to get back to it and await evacuation to a decontamination center in buses driven by uniformed officers. Everyone who didn’t have a place to go was to report to the open space at the waterfront, where an impromptu refugee center had been constructed, complete with Porta-Potties, a soup kitchen, and sleeping cots—all under big tents. The place looked like it was hosting some sort of festival. But, in reality, martial law was being imposed, and all persons were to evacuate the streets to await transport.

  Rod looked at his watch. It was a little after 11 AM now. The imposition of martial law would inhibit the terrorist as much as it did him, but he was betting that it wouldn’t stop him from getting away or from doing what he’d planned. This guy, doubtless, made a science of finding chinks in his enemy’s armor, and he’d find a way to do what he needed to do, no matter how many personal freedoms were restricted under the mantle of increased security. Besides, even normal people would now act furtive and suspicious, as if they were doing something wrong; people always behaved that way when they were being scrutinized by Big Brother. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t make it any easier to spot the real terrorist.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  THE SNIPER

  Benjamin “Biff” Katz took off his black cotton ball cap and used it to wipe the sweat from his brow. He liked the image and the perks that went with being a state police SWAT sniper, but this type of duty took all the romance out of it. He’d been here manning a plank scaffolding suspended under the southern end of the Mackinac Bridge since 7 AM.

  Directly below was the entrance to the Fort Michilmackinac tourist center, which was, almost unbelievably, doing a booming business in spite of being quarantined and having a limited audience. Almost none of the people who went inside the building below him even looked upward to see the sniper over their heads. He peeled back the Velcro cover strap that protected the crystal of his wristwatch and sighed. It was just past ten o’clock now, and he was roasting in the sun, uncomfortable, and bored out of his mind.

  Biff was twenty-nine years old, he’d been married to his high school sweetheart for the past four years, and he’d been a Michigan State police officer for five years. He held a Bachelor’s degree in public safety from Northern Michigan University in Marquette, but sometimes he wondered if he hadn’t wasted his shot at an education by choosing such a limited career. Being a state cop was pretty prestigious in itself, and he was a natural when it came to handling a rifle. This job was tough on a wife, though, and there wasn’t much chance for advancement.

  Still, his years in civil service probably weren’t a complete waste. If he kept his nose clean and didn’t make a lot of waves, he was entitled to a shot at a political office, maybe even the state senate. He was one of the good guys, he thought. He was a servant of the people, and he liked to think that he deserved the respect that should be accorded a state trooper.

  He had earned the nickname “Biff” from the way he described steel silhouette targets that he “biffed” when he knocked them over at long ranges. Around here, he was considered the best, but he’d tested his mettle against the big boys at Camp Perry in Ohio a couple of times, and he really didn’t want to talk about the experiences he’d had there. It sort of irked him that the best rifle and pistol shots in the world had always been civilians. Still, he’d found his comfort zone. He’d rather be a big fish in a small pond than the other way around.

  Biff checked the safety mechanism on his Winchester Model Seventy bull-barreled rifle for the thousandth time, making certain that it was engaged—he’d never had an accidental discharge, and he wasn’t going to have one today. Like many urban police snipers, he’d opted for 243-caliber, instead of the more publicized 223 or 308. The 243 was hair-splittingly accurate, and although he’d never shot anyone—and hoped that he never would—he wanted to have every advantage if he did. A gunfight was one contest in which he definitely didn’t want to place second.

  But actual sniper work was unglamorous. He knew that most of a sniper’s job consisted of long hours behind a weapon, “glassing” some point of interest through a binocular or telephoto camera lens, maybe never firing a shot. But actually doing that was maddening. He couldn’t even listen to a radio or watch TV on his iPhone. He had to stay focused on the area he was charged to watch.

  He positioned himself behind his Steiner binocular again and scanned what he could see of the south side of the bridge. It looked so different with the center of the span missing. He’d grown up with the Mackinac Bridge as part of his local culture, and to see it in ruins was just surreal. How many times had he crossed that span? How many times had he driven his family across for vacation? He shuddered to think that this might have happened while those he loved were crossing.

  His binocular was mounted to a short Gorilla Pod, whose balljoint construction allowed its articulated legs—and whatever optical device was mounted to its baseplate—to be firmly affixed to just about any object. His Olympus 14.0 megapixel digital camera was
similarly mounted about a foot away, and it was also affixed to a Gorilla Pod. This outfit was rugged, and it let him pick up and change location in under a minute.

  He gazed through the binos until he began to get sharp pains in his brow line. Just another of the sniper’s laments. Worse than the long hours spent behind camera, binocular, and riflescope was the realization that he probably wasn’t going to see anything anyway. The deed was already done. What terrorist would be stupid enough to return to the scene of this crime?

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  COMMAND CENTER

  Colyer answered his cell phone on the third ring. He’d been sleeping, sitting upright in his Charger in the welcome center parking lot at the northeast end of the bridge. It was uncomfortable as hell, but it was a lot quieter than the state police post across the highway, where a never-ending stream of vehicles was coming and going. Every motel and hotel from here to the Soo was filled up with stranded travelers. Even the truck stops and rest areas were filled beyond capacity. As one redneck had put it, there wasn’t enough room to fart without a dozen people smelling it. After spending several hours at the hospital, where he was hosed, showered, tested, and finally dressed in ill-fitting but nonradioactive clothes from the resale store in Saint Ignace, he’d spent the night here in a parking lot.

  Colyer pushed the TALK button and answered groggily, “Hello?”

  “This is Ed Jameson. Elliot just called his wife from a pay phone in Mackinaw City.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And we sent two men to that location, but it’s safe to say that he’s long gone by now.”

  “Did you call his wife?”

  “Yeah, she says she told him you wanted him to turn himself in. We have the entire conversation recorded. She did say that. He didn’t sound like he thought that would be a good idea.”

  “Humph,” Colyer said, “I wouldn’t expect that he would.”

  “The governor has declared Emmet and Mackinac Counties to be Disaster Zones, and we’ve begun to implement martial law. We’ve got a recent photo of Rod Elliot, and we’re circulating it among officers and military police. We’ll find him.”

  “Keep me posted,” Colyer said, and then hung up. He wanted to talk to Elliot, too, but Rod Elliot wasn’t the prime suspect in this case, not from his perspective. The way Colyer had it figured, even if they caught Elliot, they wouldn’t get anywhere toward solving this case. Oh sure, the prosecutor would hang it on him just to have something to show for their efforts, but an international terrorist living the simple, meager life that Rod and Shannon Elliot had been living for the past ten years didn’t fit the profile. And it was unreasonable to believe that he might’ve been a part of the sophisticated planning and huge expenditure that had been required to accomplish the bombing of the bridge. Especially not without his wife knowing something about it, and she obviously didn’t. No, Rod Elliot wasn’t the driving force here; he was just caught up in it somehow. The state cops weren’t just barking up the wrong tree; they were in the wrong forest.

  Forcing himself awake, Colyer drove to McDonald’s to get a large cup of black coffee. Most businesses in Saint Ignace were still running as usual. Ironically, some of them were enjoying increased revenue as a result of the bombing and subsequent imposition of martial law. He then drove to the waterfront, where Moonlight Lines had committed a ferry to transit the Straits between the peninsulas. He needed to get to Mackinaw City, because if Rod Elliot was there, he had a hunch that the real terrorists were there, too.

  The ferry was named the Moon Beam. It was a sixty-foot, catamaran-style boat that was touted as the fastest of ferries. The Moon Beam didn’t carry anything but passengers and luggage; it was designed for transport to Mackinac Island, where motorized, wheeled vehicles were prohibited, so Colyer had to lock up and leave his Charger at the docks. He’d borrow a police cruiser when he got to Mackinaw City.

  The catamaran made the five-mile distance between Saint Ignace and Mackinaw City in about fifteen minutes. Most of its passengers were uniformed police officers and National Guard personnel of varying ranks. There wasn’t much conversation between them; they seemed to still be in a mild state of shock.

  And, of course, there were the obligatory assholes, a handful of large-mouthed, testosterone-filled civilians who’d either been up all night getting stoned and drunk, or had sucked down a blunt and beers first thing that morning. They were ostensibly talking among themselves, but loudly enough so they could be overheard.

  “Yeah,” one young man with a shaved head and an unshaven face announced to his buddies, “when we find out who bombed the bridge, we’re gonna fuck them up.”

  “Yeah, America, Dude,” said another, his camouflaged overshirt open so anyone could see his T-shirt said KILL ’EM ALL, LET GOD SORT ’EM OUT.

  There was a round of high fives. Colyer just stared out to sea, not wanting to look at these miscreants that he had taken an oath to protect. At some point in every day, he wondered if he’d made the right career decision. He was wondering that now. When he looked around him again, he was pretty sure he saw the same thought in the minds of most of the people in uniform, too. Maybe the America of today didn’t deserve protecting.

  All that aside, he was an FBI agent, and he loved what he did, because in some small way, he was making the world a better place to live. He would’ve felt the same way if he’d been a priest, a school teacher, or a plumber. It was in his nature; he derived satisfaction from taking something that was bad, and turning it into something good.

  The bump of the ferry making contact with its dock broke his reverie. As soon as the crew extended the gangplank, he was onto the wooden walkway. Several marked and unmarked police vehicles waited in the parking lot. A state police sergeant with a photograph of Colyer’s face in his left hand walked over to him and said, “Inspector Colyer?” The sergeant extended his right hand, and Colyer shook it. “I’m Sergeant Wilson from the Petoskey post. I volunteered to come here, and I’ve been assigned to be your driver.”

  “Why in hell would you volunteer to come into a radiated zone? You know you can’t leave now?”

  “Yes Sir,” Wilson said, “I know that, but I figured that I at least might be able to do something more valuable than chasing speeders and arresting drivers for having a beer with dinner.”

  Colyer grinned. “Let’s hope that we don’t get more than we bargained for.”

  They drove to the Mackinaw City Municipal Building on Nicolet Street, where a command post had been set up. Inside, it was crowded with desks, long folding tables, and personnel from every law enforcement agency in Michigan; National Guardsmen; and a few feds from Washington DC. There were even a handful of state representatives and senators making an appearance for appearance’s sake. There were maps all over the walls, laptop computers on every desk, and every other person was talking or texting on a cell phone. One wall was lined with full-face, N94 respirators.

  “Agent Colyer?” Colyer turned to see a hand thrusting toward him. “I’m Dave Williams, the Emergency Services Coordinator for Emmet County. We’re glad to have you on board.”

  “Glad to be on board, Dave. What do we know?”

  “So far, we know the Mackinac Bridge was bombed. We hope to find out by whom and what their long-term objectives might be very soon.”

  “Okay, keep me in the loop, will you Dave?” They knew jack. The bustle of this command post consisted mostly of keeping patrol cars on the road, transporting radiation victims to the nearest hospitals in Petoskey and Cheboygan for decontamination, and establishing a pecking order.

  Colyer laid his large attaché case on an open spot atop a folding table and got online with his Toshiba laptop. He turned to Wilson. “Sergeant, I’m looking for information about a 2008 or 2009 Ford E-150 panel van, marked with a logo that says JACKSONVILLE PAINTING. It’s a phony company, but the driver of that van gave a bridge officer a business card and phone number just before the bridge blew. He didn’t get a license plate number.�
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  Wilson nodded, jotting the information quickly in a spiral note pad.

  “Next, I want you to get me everything you can find on the Dodge utility truck that ran a roadblock on the south end of the bridge at the same time that van did—here’s the license number of that truck; it’s registered to B and B Welding, and it’s beige in color.” He handed Wilson a scrap of paper with the truck’s identifying information. “If you find anything about either vehicle, no matter how seemingly insignificant, I want to know.”

  “Oh hell,” Wilson said, looking at the paper Colyer had handed him. “Two vehicles fitting both those descriptions were reported out at the dam on French Farm Creek early this morning. A bass fisherman found ’em. The truck was smashed into the side of the van. Nobody was around, though. Sheriff department just figured that it was probably a couple of drunk kids in stolen vehicles. They had them towed back here, because the usual impound lot is beyond the containment boundaries. They’re investigating it.”

  “Shit!” Colyer exclaimed. “I hope they at least printed them.” Wilson shrugged, it wasn’t his case. “Take me to them,” Colyer said.

  The impound lot was a grassy field a mile west of Mackinaw City. When Colyer ran the police report, he saw that both vehicles had been dusted for fingerprints, and the prints from the stolen truck had been identified as Rod Elliot’s. The two sets of prints lifted from the van, which had been rammed hard in the side by the truck, remained unidentified at this point.

  Colyer ran his Geiger counter over the inside surfaces of the van. It showed several hundred micro-Sieverts of radiation. Not a lot, but certainly more than normal. Aside from that, the van was clean. Too clean for a work van, but being too clean didn’t insinuate criminal activity in a court of law.

  While he was searching the pickup truck, Colyer’s cell phone rang. It was Dave Williams from the command post in Mackinaw City.