Burn Notice Loose Ends 1 (Dead Drop)

Sam came with a job offer from his buddy Pete and offered it to Michael Westen; but, M was worried about the Phillip Cowan thing. Cowan did make contact but then didn’t show because Sam was there watching his back. Instead, Cowan left a friendship card containing a clipping about some activity in Belgrade. Gillian, a supervisor at a government contractor, S.X.G., told Sam that her friend Melissa was having an affair behind her controlling, abusive husband Kent’s back and had enticed her to sign in her lover as a guest. Her boyfriend then had stolen files, took photos and had begun blackmailing her to sign for packages from Turkey containing heroin.  Of course that put Gillian in the middle needing to sign for them so Melissa could smuggle them out the building. Gillian asked Sam to help; but, when confronted, incredibly the friend Melissa she said “I don't want any help” (Huh?) Mellissa claimed that she couldn’t even remember in which bar she had med “Dave,” the blackmailer. Cowan called Madeline and just said: “Van Buren Avenue,” which frightened her. Nate showed up, missing a meeting with an investor in his recycled titanium golf club business, and M asked him to stay with Madeline for protection giving him a gun and some money.

 

Sam made nice with Fiona trying to get her to help with Gillian. She said she would help but "for $500 up front, expenses and an hourly" – explaining she didn’t charge M because she “expected other things from M.”  M put together Cowan’s clues and went looking in South Beach for a “cutout” – a person hired to wait at a pre-arrange location and show a given “sign” in order to be recognized and to deliver a message. The message turned out to be on another friendship card and gave the time and date but only a newspaper clipping about a terrorist being killed in Budapest. Trailing Melissa’s credit card to a gay bar, and using a photo, Sam found that the guy was a hustler named Ray Wagoner and got his address. Sam haymaker’d Ray into giving the information that they needed but he revealed that he had only been hired to be in some photographs. Mellissa and her husband were the blackmailers.  Sam realized that he needed to bring in M and they decided to try and get info which they could use to counter-blackmail Melissa. Gillian offered more money because the job was getting bigger; but, Fiona took it upon herself to say they didn’t’ need any more money even though she expected Sam to keep paying her.

 

Sam coerced M into playing a green beret and getting to be buddies with Kent in order to get some blackmail info on him. M pretended to be Rod Bucksey a Green Beret who got out in ’97 and requested that Kent let him “use his hook at S.X.G. that his buddies in Istanbul told him about.” Kent said “he’d think about it.” Fiona acted like a self-centered ass the whole time to Sam while he needed her. As a distraction, Sam went to tell Melissa that he couldn’t find anything which would help so he was going to give up looking while Fiona put a bug in her phone. Madeline stormed into Ms loft dragging Nate with her whining about M giving Nate a gun and demanding to know everything. M had had enough and asked her just what she thinks he was doing, was he just playing games?  She demanded that he trust them because they were family and he asked back “just when would I have learned to do that?” Typical to her living in her own little world, she shot back, “you were the one who left us” which seemed to stun M. Incredulously, he only asked back “I was the one who left you?”  And Nate broke the tension with “and you still got the car.”  M told her that he had a meeting so she stormed out ranting about that he should get some furniture.

 

At the meeting Kent pulled a gun on M and demanded to know who had told him about their scheme so he could close the leak. M had to brake Kent's trigger finger so he could run while sniper-Sam kept Kent pinned down. Kent wanted to quit the scam but there was another package ready to be picked up; so, they decided to get it first and then “clean up the mess” before their bosses found out.  M and Sam decided to let Kent get the heroin out and then use it to bring him down. While Sam was staking out Gillian’s work, and M was waiting to meet Cowan, Fiona monitored the Mellissa's bug and heard Kent tell his boss that he had “set her car this morning.” M had to leave a “John 3:16” note on the sidewalk to reset his meeting with Cowan and go to prevent Gillian from being blown up. Melissa got the heroin out but while they waited in their van for the bomb to go off so they could get a “visual” for their boss, M disarmed the device. Then Sam and Fiona went to photograph and audio record Kent’s sale of the heroin while M went to meet Cowan at St. John’s church at 3:26 pm..

 

Sam and Fiona watched as Melissa found out that Kent had actually told his boss about Gillian and M.  When the buyer didn’t show up and they started to leave their car was hit by a stinger missile coming across the water. Men showed up and captured Sam; others tried but couldn’t catch Fiona because she jumped off a bridge. Cowan called the pay phone where M was waiting and said he was back at the first place and would leave unless M ran all the way there in 10 minutes. Cowan said it was ridiculous to think that one man did everything to M alone and then come to Miami to explain himself. He told M, “You are on the edge of something much bigger than me. The people I work for have plans for you. Powerful, dangerous people… and man are they upset with me. I misread you. I didn’t expect you to buck quite so much.” As he said: “you are making everyone nervous,” a single bullet hit his chest and killed him. M needed to escape, because police had already been called by someone, and called Nate to come and get him. When they arrived at the loft, and M was asking Nate to take their mom out of town, they spotted a bunch of stalkers waiting for them so fled. Fiona called saying that Kent’s boss was cleaning house and had taken Sam, she needed their help.  (Continued)