Night Fall

“Uh… yeah, but that’s not important. The case is closed, and even a great theory is not going to reopen it. Someone would need hard evidence to get those divers and dredges out there again.”

“I have no evidence except my own eyes.”

“Right.” Captain Spruck, retired, may have too much time on his hands, I thought. “You married?”

“I am.”

“What’s your wife think?”

“She thinks I’ve done all I can.” He asked me, “Do you know how frustrating this is?”

“No, tell me.”

“If you’d seen what I’d seen, you’d understand.”

“Probably. You know, I think most of the people who saw what you saw have gotten on with their lives.”

“I’d like nothing better. But I’m very bothered by this.”

“Captain, I think you’re taking this personally, and you’re pissed off because you’re pretty cocksure of yourself, and for one of the first times in your life, no one is taking you seriously.”

Captain Spruck did not reply.

I glanced at my watch and said, “Well, thank you for taking the time to speak to me, Captain. Can I call you if I have any further thoughts or questions?”

“Yes.”

“By the way, do you know this group called FIRO?”

“Of course.”

“You belong?”

“I do not.”

“Why not?”

“They haven’t asked.”

“Why not?”

“I told you-I’ve never gone public. If I had, they’d be all over me.”

“Who?”

“FIROand the FBI.”

“You bet.”

“I’m not looking for publicity, Mr. Corey. I’m looking for the truth. For justice. I assume you are as well.”

“Yeah… well, truth and justice are good. But harder to find than a missile at the bottom of the ocean.”

He didn’t reply, and I asked him, pro forma, “Would you be willing to testify at some sort of official hearing?”

“I’ve been waiting five years.”

We shook hands, and I turned and walked toward the door of the watchtower. Halfway through the door, I turned back to Captain Spruck and reminded him, “This conversation never took place.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

I found Kate in the Jeep talking on her cell phone. I heard her say, “Gotta go. Talk to you tomorrow.”

I got in the Jeep and asked, “Who was that?”

“Je

I started the Jeep and headed back toward the gate.

She asked me, “How did it go?”

“Interesting.”

We rode in silence awhile down the dark, narrow road leading away from the Coast Guard station. I asked, “Where to?”

“Calverton.”

I looked at my dashboard clock. It was close to 11P.M., and I inquired, “Is this the last, last stop?”

“It is.”

We headed toward Calverton, which is a small town toward the north shore of Long Island, which was the site of a former Grumman Aircraft and naval installation plant, where the pieces of the TWA Boeing 747 had been trucked for reconstruction in 1996. I wasn’t sure why I needed to see this, but I guess I needed to see this.

I turned on the radio to an oldies station and listened to Joh

There are times when I want to lead a normal life; to not carry a gun, a shield, and the responsibility. After leaving the NYPD, under strained circumstances, I could have and should have left law enforcement. But my stupid former partner, Dom Fanelli, hooked me up with the Anti-Terrorist Task Force.

At first, I looked at it as a halfway house to civilian life. I mean, the only thing I missed from the NYPD were my buds, the camaraderie, and all that. And there was little of that with ATTF. The Feds are weird. Present company excluded.

And on that subject, my relationship with Special Agent Mayfield had been born and bred in the cauldron of the undeniably important work we were doing. So, therefore, I wondered if the marriage would survive if I took a job on a fishing boat while she was still hunting terrorists.

That was enough introspection for the month. I switched mental gears to more immediate concerns.

Both of us knew we had crossed over the line that separates lawful and assigned investigation from unlawful and freelance snooping. We could stop now, and probably get away with what we’d done since the memorial service. But if we went to Calverton, and if we kept following this trail, we’d be unemployed, and indicted.

Kate asked me, “Did that gentleman mention that Liam Griffith and Ted Nash did a follow-up interview?”

I nodded.

“Did you find his eyewitness account compelling?”

“He’s had five years to work on it.”

“He had barely sixteen hours to work on it before I interviewed him, and he was still a bit shaken up. He had me convinced.” She added, “I did eleven other interviews with eyewitnesses. They all basically corroborated one another’s testimony, and none of them even knew the others.”

“Yeah. I understand that.”

We continued on for about twenty minutes, the oldies station cranking out songs that co

Kate said, “Can I turn that off?” She shut off the radio and said, “A few miles from here is Brookhaven National Laboratory. Cyclotrons, linear accelerators, laser guns, and subatomic particles.”

“You lost me after laboratory.”

“There’s a theory-a suspicion-that this laboratory was experimenting with a plasma-generating device that night-a death ray-and that was the streak of light that took down TWA 800.”

“Well, then, let’s stop there and ask them about it. What time do they close?”

She ignored me, as usual, and continued, “There are seven major theories. You want to hear about the underwater methane gas bubble theory?”

I had this disturbing image of whales in an underwater locker room lighting farts. I said, “Maybe later.”

Kate directed me along a road that led to a big gate and a guardhouse. A private security guard stopped us and, as at the Coast Guard station, ignored me and glanced at Kate’s Fed creds, then waved us on.

We entered a large, almost treeless expanse of flat fields with a few large industrial-type buildings here and there, lots of floodlights, and at least two long concrete runways.

In my rearview mirror, I saw the security guard talking on a cell phone or walkie-talkie. I said, “You remember that X-Files episode where Mulder and Scully go into this secret installation and-”

“I donot want to hear about the X-Files. Life is not an X-Files episode.”

“Mine is.”

“Promise me you won’t make any analogies to an X-Files episode for one year.”

“Hey, I didn’t bring up the plasma death ray or the methane gas bubble.”

“Turn right over there. Stop at that hangar.”

I pulled the Jeep up to a small door beside the huge sliding doors of a very big aircraft hangar. I asked Kate, “How are we breezing through these guard gates?”

“We have the proper credentials.”

“Try again.”

She stayed silent a moment, then replied, “Obviously, this was pre-arranged.”

“By who?”

“There are people… government people who aren’t satisfied with the official version of events.”

“Sort of like an underground movement? A secret organization?”

“People.”

“Is there a secret handshake?”

She opened the door and started to get out.

“Hold on.”

She turned back to me.

I asked, “Do you belong to this FIRO group?”

“No. I don’t belong to any group except the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“That’s not what you just said.”

She replied, “It’s not an organization. It has no name. But if it did, it would be called ‘People Who Believe Two Hundred Eyewitnesses.’” She looked at me and asked, “Are you coming?”