Re: Burn Notice Season 2
Quote:
| And why do they need that specific sniper rifle. They're relatively easy to get, especially for a shadowy organization like this one. |
Generic sniper rifles are relatively easy to get for folks like this.
Custom sniper rifles are a lot less so. And most serious sniper rifles are, in fact, customized to the person who will be shooting them, like a hand-tailored suit or custom made shoes. Depending on how twisted this whole plot is, they may want to have Michael kill someone and pin the murder on whoever that particular gun was made for.
Quote:
| I don't think they want Michael to do anything with it, what would be the point in hiding it from him if they're just going to give it to him later with orders to assinate someone? |
If that's the question, then why hide it from him
period? The answer, in both cases, is the same: They don't want
Michael asking the same questions we are. Whether they are going to have Michael facilitate a shooting carried out by someone else, or they intend to force him to carry out an assassination hmself, they will want to spring that information on him at the last possible moment. The longer he has to think about it, try to figure out who the target is, plan counter-moves, line up allies, the more likely it is that he'll figure out some way to screw up their plan.
I think they plan to use Michael as the assassin, probably of a presidential candidate or the new president in 2009. He would be a conspiracy theorist's wet-dream of a patsy - a disgruntled ex-spy, fired by whatever shadowy agency he worked for, for who-knows-what transgression and a moody, anti-social loner to boot! He's basically an unemployed drifter who supports himself by hiring out as a "fixer" who uses highly illegal methods to help people who are at least on the periphery of criminal activity. All Karla and co. have to do is whip up a fake diary for Michael and he'll appear to have fit the profile to a "t". The burn notice then becomes just the first step in the plan to use him for this job.
BTW, if that's the case there probably isn't anything special about that sniper rifle. Sure it is easy for a shadowy criminal organization or intelligence ageny to lay its hands on such a weapon - but it
isn't easy for an unemployed ex-spy crazy lone gunman. If you want to sell
that story in the wake of an assassination, you want the cops and Feds to be able to figure out
exactly how the killer got that gun.
So maybe the particular gun
isn't important. Maybe they just wanted a very public and well-publicized robbery - which they certainly would have if Victor had killed the two guards as he obviously intended, and probably still did thanks to Michael's pyrotechnics and the two living witnesses. Maybe that whole shipping bay was filled with identical sniper rifles on their way to fill an order for the Army and the robbery was just done to explain how
the assassin got a gun from that batch.
(Of course, now they'll have to explain Michael's accomplice in the rifle robbery. Easy enough - they just bump Sam off and plant some incriminating evidence on him.
I doubt the security guards gave enough of a description of the guy breaking into the storage bay to rule Sam out.)
All of this assumes that Victor and Karla are the bad guys, and I'm not sure that's been established yet.
Everything we've seen so far makes them
look bad, but it is possible that they aren't. We only have a dead guy's word for the idea that Karla burned Michael. We only have Michael's assumption that Karla & Co. were responsible for shooting the dead guy. Certainly they want Michael to think they are badass and they threaten him a lot - but that may be the only way to get him to cooperate. He doesn't know them and it is hard to earn Michael's trust under the best of circumstances.
What if Karla and Co. are working
against the people who burned Michael? What if someone needed Michael out of the way and discredited, and Karla's group is working
against those people? (Creepy bad guys want Michael stranded in whatever country his jet out of Africa was taking him to. Karla's group steps in and finances his trip to Miami, where
they will need him.)
Don't forget - the sniper rifle was being moved from point "A" to point "B" for
someone else. What if they're trying to
prevent an assassination and keeping Michael in the dark as a basic matter of operational security? If they intercepted a custom sniper rifle it may have been to keep it out of the hands of the person it was made for. Or it could have been to plant a bug or GPS device in it so that they can track the assassin.
Now that Michael knows what is in that package, he will be working day and night to figure out what is going on and who the target is. If Karla and Co. are actually on the side of the angels, Michael could spend most of the season inadvertently helping the real assassin - which he wouldn't find out until the very end when Victor decides he "needs to know" what was in the box.
Either way I'm looking forward to this ride!
Regards,
Joe
