The Line

by Bob Mayer

  235 D MAG. 2.3 KM

  2.1 HOURS TOT

  EL + 256M

  STEER RIGHT

  Boomer stood and turned clockwise until the bottom line changed to read on course. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the other members of his team were all accounted for, and then he moved off in the indicated direction. They had slightly over two hours to get to their target, and it was downhill most of the way.

  The team had been dropped off along a mountainous ridge line in the southern Ukraine that ran parallel to a two-lane asphalt road between the town of Senzhary and the province capital at Barvenkovo. The road was their goal. Their target would be traveling this road between 0430 and 0530. Or at least that's what the Intelligence thinks doing the mission briefing had assured Boomer. He himself had little trust in the wisdom of those who kept their rear end comfortably ensconced in chairs and didn't have to live—or die—based on the accuracy of their information.

  That was left to Boomer and his team. He grimaced slightly as he remembered the colonel from the Joint Chiefs of Staff office, his nametag identifying him as Decker, who'd given them the mission briefing. Decker assured them that their target would be traveling along this road. In Boomer's opinion, the man would have been more comfortable in a three-piece suit on Wall Street than wearing camouflage fatigues at a secret forward staging area in the mountains of northern Turkey.

  Boomer especially remembered the flash of the large diamond set against black hematite in Decker's West Point ring as he slapped the pointer on the satellite photo of the ambush area. Boomer couldn't remember the last time he'd worn his own West Point ring. As a matter of fact, he couldn't quite remember where the ring was. Hopefully it was somewhere in the one-room apartment he kept back at Fayetteville, North Carolina, for the few weeks in the year he was actually back at his home base.

  The terrain steepened. Boomer could see the dark snake of the road ahead and below. He halted briefly, the team mimicking his actions, and did another GPR check. Checkpoint One. On course and ahead of schedule. Less than a thousand meters from the road.

  "Let's split," Boomer whispered, the acoustic mike built into the transceiver clamped on his head transmitting the message on low power FM to the other seven men. The whisper did little justice to his normally deep voice. It was a voice that instilled confidence in listeners. An advantage for a man who led others into death and destruction.

  Boomer and his commo and security men—Headquarters Element—moved to the left, the two men falling in place and covering his flanks. Captain Martin, the team executive officer, went off to the right with the remaining four team members to set up the kill zone.

  The Headquarters Element scrambled down the hillside, staying hidden under the pines that covered the rock-strewn ground, until they reached a small knoll overlooking the road. Boomer crouched behind the trunk of a tree, one of his men going off to the left to provide far left flank security, the other settling next to the team leader. Boomer scanned the deserted stretch of road fifty meters away and ten meters below.

  "Bronco, are you in position? Over." He asked over the FM radio.

  "Roger, Mustang," Martin replied. "In position. At my mark, I'll turn IR on for your identification."

  Boomer peered off to his right.

  "Mark. Over."

  Boomer spotted the brief glow as Captain Martin illuminated an infrared flashlight—invisible to anyone not wearing goggles—then just as quickly turned it off. "Roger, Bronco. I've got you. How's it look? Over."

  "Good field of fire. Good cover. Palamino Element is at the road installing their toys. Over."

  "Roger. We'll keep an eye open for the target. Mustang out."

  Boomer lay down on his stomach in the pine needles at the base of the tree, pulling the Russian overcoat in tight around his neck. It was cold, somewhere in the low thirties. He looked to his lower right along the road and spotted the silhouettes of the demolitions men, Palamino Element, at work. He checked the time on the GPR: 0413. Seventeen minutes before the estimated target window. Boomer tapped the shoulder of the man lying next to him. "Are we up on Satcom, Pete?"

  Staff Sergeant Peter Lanscom nodded. "Five by." He handed over the small handset for the satellite communications radio.

  Boomer pressed the send button on the handset. "Thunder Point, this is Mustang. Over."

  The reply from Turkey was immediate. "Mustang, this is Thunder Point. Go ahead. Over." Boomer recognized Colonel Decker's voice.

  "We're in position. What's the latest from the eye in the sky? Over."

  "We're getting live downlink from an Intelsat on your target, Mustang. You've got two vehicles en route your location. A car in the lead and a bus following. Just as briefed," Colonel Decker couldn't help adding. "They're approximately twenty-two klicks from your position, moving at about sixty kilometers per hour. Over."

  "Roger. Out." Boomer replied. He returned the handset to Lanscom. The math was easy: twenty-two minutes, give or take a couple. Nothing to do but wait. He glanced down the road. The demo men were done.

  Boomer hissed in a lungful of cold air, trying to still the churning in his stomach. The flash of white teeth was framed in the moonlight by his naturally dark skin, an inheritance from a grandmother on his father's side who had been a full-blooded Cherokee. His black hair, a few inches longer than allowed by regulations, had just the slightest tinge of grey at the temples. His eyes were so dark as to appear black, but more unusual was the warmth they emanated regardless of Boomer's mood. While Boomer's overall reputation as a calm, likable individual was valued by friends and acquaintances, it mattered little to the organization that received the bulk of his time and attention.

  Boomer was a long way from home. He'd grown up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where the George Washington Bridge touched New York City. Boomer's earliest memories were of his mother taking him on walks in Fort Washington Park along the banks of the Hudson beneath the high arch of the bridge. She'd taken him there when he was ten years old after receiving the telegram that his father had been killed in action in Vietnam. That was in 1969, prior to the Army instituting the policy of having notification officers deliver the grim news. At that time, the Army had simply sent telegrams and had them delivered by cab drivers.

  Virginia Watson had had the driver take them down to the park and drop them off, the piece of yellow paper gripped tightly between her clenched fingers. The news of Michael Watson's Medal of Honor for actions on the last day of his life would come many months later, but on that bright fall day nothing had mattered other than the intense grief Boomer could feel and see in his mother. Boomer's emotions were more complex. His father had been gone for eight of the first ten years of his life and Boomer's memories of him were blurry images of a large man dressed in a uniform with a strange green beret that he wore cocked at an angle.

  Just as Boomer had sensed the grief that day, seven years later, he had sensed his mother's disapproval of his decision to accept the automatic offer of an appointment to West Point that every child of a Medal of Honor winner was given. Boomer's attitude had been that at least something good had come from his father's death. Besides, he had rationalized, she couldn't really afford to send him to college anywhere else. The idea of a free education and pay more than satisfied his seventeen-year-old mind.

  His mother had already gone into debt to send him to Cardinal Spellman Catholic High School in the Bronx. And though she would have preferred more bills rather than give another man to the Army, Boomer was not to be swayed. His easygoing attitude was blunted in this regard, and she accepted his decision.

  She'd seen this tenacity on the basketball court at Spellman. Despite his—by basketball standards—relatively short height of six feet, he'd earned a starting slot on the Spellman varsity team by outworking all the other players on the team and impressing the coach with his hustle.

  What had really caught the coach's eye though, was Boomer's actions as a sophomore in a game against perennial New Yo
rk basketball mecca Power High School, alma mater of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Boomer had been sent in after the starting backcourt had fouled out trying to guard Power's all-city forward, later an NBA player. The coach had told Boomer to let the Power forward have no free shots. Boomer had promptly stuck to the more talented player like glue, hacking him severely every time he handled the ball, to the point where the Power player had lost his temper and took a swing at Boomer. The fight that erupted had cleared both benches and half the stands and resulted in Boomer and the Power player being ejected, but not before Boomer had returned the swing and decked the other player. The action had surprised the coach, but not Boomer's mother in the stands. She knew that, like his father, her son had a hard streak in him.

  The years had passed and now Boomer was lying in wait, a familiar but always nerve-wracking position as far as he was concerned. As the countdown to action continued, Boomer was shifting to his action mode, his nerves freezing over and a wary calmness settling in. He grabbed the handset for the Satcom radio again. "Angel, this is Mustang. Over."

  The reply from the pilot of the MI-25 was instantaneous. "This is Angel. Over."

  "Status? Over."

  The pilot's laconic southern drawl was reassuring. "At hold position. All clear. We can be there in a jiffy to pick ya'll up. Over."

  "Roger." Boomer checked the time display on the GPR. "We're probably going hot here in five miles. We're going to need you real quick then. Over."

  The Russian-made aircraft, appropriated from Saddam Hussein's air force during the Gulf War years previously, and the Soviet made weapons and uniforms, were a subterfuge to influence any possible survivors of the ambush—or anyone who might be in the area—that the events that were about to occur were the work of a renegade Ukrainian militia group of which there certainly were many. The only pieces of equipment that were not endemic to the area were the GPR, night vision goggles, and satellite radios, but if any of them were captured, there would most certainly be a body captured also, at which time the foreign origin of the equipment would no longer matter and diplomatic denial would take over.

  The muted roar of the helicopter blades sounded behind the pilot's voice. "No sweat. Over."

  "Mustang, out." Boomer glanced down the road, trying to catch the glow of the oncoming vehicles headlights in his goggles, where they would show up like brilliant spotlights. Nothing yet.

  Boomer spoke into his FM radio. "Bronco, this is Mustang. Status? Over."

  Martin's reply was swift. "All set. Over."

  That meant Martin's team had the Soviet made PK machine gun set up and their RPG rocket launchers ready. Contrary to the movies, Boomer knew a good ambush consisted of setting up the kill zone, then backing off so that the weapons can effectively cover the killing ground which must be too far from the ambushers for the victims to overrun. In this case, Boomer was satisfied his men had all the little checkmarks in the manual of efficient killing ticked off.

  A faint glow appeared in the hills to the south: the reflection of the headlights. Boomer picked up the handset for the Satcom. "Thunder Point, this is Mustang. Over."

  "This is Thunder Point. Over."

  "Request final mission authorization. Over."

  "Your mission is a go, Mustang," Decker said. "Authorization code Victor Romeo Two Four. I say again, your mission is a go. Code Victor Romeo Two Four. Out." The radio went dead.

  "There's gonna be some hurting puppies in a few minutes," Lanscom whispered, the snout of his NVG pointed down the road, picking up the glow, as he fingered his AK-74. This was Lanscom's first live mission, and Boomer could understand the younger man's nervousness. He himself had been on several, but that didn't necessarily make it any easier. In fact, having witnessed the effects of modern weapons on the human body did little to relieve the anxiety of being on the receiving end.

  Boomer didn't bother trying to allay Lanscom's fears. Now that he had the final go, his job was to concentrate on the mission at hand. The bus was carrying members of one of the factions of the newly formed Ukrainian parliament. A faction that was vehemently opposed to following the guidelines of the standing agreements on nuclear arms reduction between the United States and the Ukraine.

  NATO inspection teams in the Ukraine to ensure treaty compliance had recently been forced to curtail their activities. The political situation was growing unstable. A NATO team had been attacked two days earlier by a mob, and the U.S. Congress was getting very vocal about sending 200 million dollars a year to the Ukraine to dismantle nuclear weapons when the job wasn't being done. The Ukrainian parliament, defying the Ukrainian president's signing of the START II Treaty, was making vague threats of nuclear blackmail as the country's economy slid into a morass. It was the politics of the late 1990's, and since military force was an extension of politics, Boomer was here to extend the wishes of the United States government.

  Thirty-six hours ago, the issue reached crisis level. A Ukrainian Backfire bomber flying low toward Iraq had been intercepted over Turkish airspace by two American F-16s assigned to NATO. The Backfire had refused to land, and the F-16s had attempted to force it down. The result had stunned the world as the Backfire disintegrated in a nuclear fireball, taking with it the two American jets.

  According to the intelligence analysts, the Backfire had been caught while trying to smuggle a nuclear weapon to Saddam Hussein's regime in exchange for desperately needed cash. When confronted with the possibility of capture, the crew of the Backfire had chosen suicide. The Ukrainians claimed the aircraft had wandered off course during a routine training mission and an on-board accident caused the explosion. It was a feeble excuse at best. No one seriously believed that the plane could be that far off course and the experts pointed out that nuclear weapons did not explode by accident.

  The incident infuriated Congress. Claiming treachery and deceit, it demanded that the START II Treaty be scrapped. Boomer knew that in the biblical tradition of an eye for an eye, he was here to inflict hurt on those that had harmed the United States. In this case the radical politicians who had sent the Backfire on its fateful mission. Intelligence had placed them in a bus on this road. Boomer and his team were here to kill them.

  Boomer wasn't exactly sure how his team's mission was going to affect things, but in a few minutes there would be fewer people opposed to NATO gaining positive control over the nuclear stockpile. Boomer, like most of his comrades in arms, drew no ethical lines when it came to nuclear weapons in the hands of extremists. Using the cold calculations of the professional military man, the potential body count of a rogue nuclear bomb weighed against the lives of the men approaching his kill zone left him with no qualms.

  The lead car came around the bend and into sight, closely followed by a bus. Boomer twisted the focus knob on his goggles. The Ukrainian flag flapped from the radio antenna on the right rear of the car. It roared by, rapidly approaching the ambush area. Boomer looked at the bus and blinked. There was some sort of emblem pasted to the right side of the bus, next to the door. As the bus rumbled by below him, he tried to make it out; he could almost swear it was the globe/compass marking of NATO.

  The car had entered the kill zone, and the bus was less than thirty meters away from the point of no return. Boomer knew he had less than two seconds to make a decision.

  "Abort!" he hissed into his radio. There was no immediate reply. "Martin, abort! Answer me, goddamnit!"

  A bright flash split the night sky, followed immediately by the roar of an explosion as a remotely detonated mine went off under the front tire of the lead car. The blast lifted the car twenty feet into the air and tossed the crumpled machine off the road. A line of fire seared from the area of Martin's team and slammed into the bus—the warhead of the RPG rocket detonating on impact. Designed to stop tanks and armored personnel carriers, the warhead tore through the thin metal skin and exploded inside, blasting apart flesh and machine with equal ruthlessness.

  "Abort!" Boomer yelled helplessly.

  Green tracers
licked out from the hillside disappearing into the ravaged body of the bus, the crack of the PK machine gun filling the silence left by the explosions. Boomer could see men crawling out the windows of the bus, trying to claw their way to safety.

  "Get the chopper here!" Boomer ordered Lanscom. He got to his feet and ran along the hillside toward Martin's position. He slipped and fell, grabbing onto a sapling to keep from rolling down the hill. As he got to his feet, he could hear the snap of AK-74s adding to the din of the PK machine gun.

  Just as Boomer arrived at the kill team's position, the firing suddenly stopped. In the sudden absence of the sound of killing, the screams of the wounded echoed up the hillside.

  The members of Martin's team were standing, peering down, weapons at the ready, the barrel of the machine gun glowing bright red. Boomer grabbed Martin on the shoulder, and the captain turned, startled, a glazed look in his eye.

  "Why didn't you obey me?"

  Martin blinked. "What?"

  "I ordered you to abort, goddammit!"

  Martin shrugged and pointed downhill. "They were in the zone. There was nothing else we could do. It was too late."

  "You didn't have to fire up the bus," Boomer retorted.

  "What's the big deal?" Martin asked. "This was what—"

  They both froze as an eerie voice floated up the hill, crying out in English: "Oh God, help me!"

  "That's why!" Boomer yelled. "That was a NATO bus."

  The members of the kill team stared at him. Boomer was looking down the hill, thinking furiously. Flames were flickering out of the engine of the bus. He could make out some movement among the bodies lying around the shattered vehicle. There appeared to be one or two unwounded men down there, dragging the hurt to the shelter of the drainage ditch on the far side. Lanscom and the other man from his headquarters element came running up.