The Line

by Bob Mayer

Wilkerson leaned forward. "You should see the guy that took over for me. They've got two or three promotable captains in the battalion that they could have given the company to. Hell, my senior team leader is on the promotion list. Or even moved someone in from Japan or Korea. But instead they bring some guy straight from Benning."

  "Who's that?" Boomer asked, glancing over at the door Falk had disappeared through, hoping the XO would come back soon and get him out of this awkward conversation.

  "Some fellow named Keyes. Major Geoffrey Keyes. I checked with some of my buddies at Bragg and they don't even think this guy is SF-qualified."

  That caught Boomer's attention. Keyes was a classmate of his from West Point. Boomer remembered him well—Keyes had been ranked number one in Infantry Branch and number three overall in the class at graduation. At Ranger school Keyes had been in Boomer's platoon and had earned a reputation as a dick. Boomer had watched Keyes skate his way through, putting out effort whenever he was in charge of a patrol and being evaluated, but slacking off whenever he wasn't. Despite that, Keyes had been one of those glad-handers that walked on water and received maximum ratings. Someone who looked good but lacked substance. Boomer had not heard of Keyes going to the Special Forces Qualification Course. Last he had heard, Keyes was in the Ranger Battalion at Fort Benning, punching his regular Army career ticket in the elite infantry unit.

  "Does he have an SF Tab?" Boomer asked, referring to the cloth tab awarded to graduates of the SF School.

  "Yeah, he's got one. But hell, Boomer, you can buy one of those at clothing sales and sew it on. No one I know of ever saw him in a group. He's coming right from the 3rd Ranger Battalion at Benning. That doesn't make any sense."

  Boomer commiserated with Wilkerson while he waited for Colonel Falk to return, half his mind marveling at the tremendous capability of people to deny reality. First, Wilkerson had screwed up by leaving the classified material in his car unattended. Second, why would anyone want Wilkerson removed from command? Third, why would someone send a non-SF-qualified officer to take command of a Special Forces company? Sounded like Army politics to Boomer, but the bottom line was that Wilkerson had been wrong to leave the classified material in the trunk.

  Boomer was relieved when Colonel Falk returned and Major Wilkerson wandered off to nurse his bitterness elsewhere.

  Falk scratched his scant hair and peered at his desk, lost in thought for a few seconds. "So what have I told you so far?" he asked.

  "You said I could call you sir, sir."

  "That's it?" Falk sat down. "I got forty-five balls in the air right now and I'm dropping half of them so don't take it too seriously when I start ranting and raving. OK, Boomer, here's the deal. Everybody's jumping through their butt over the President's upcoming visit. JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command, got tagged to pick up some of the security out at Pearl since that's the military's turf. There's some other training operations going on, which you don't have a need to know about," he continued vaguely, "that's eating up all our time."

  "So I need someone to take care of our normal message traffic and screen it for hand grenades with short fuses. Go through our incoming message traffic every morning when it comes in and see if there's anything that looks like it needs immediate attention and let me know. That shouldn't be too hard. To fill up the rest of your time, I also need our classified files purged."

  "I've got a top secret Q clearance, sir," Boomer said, a bit surprised at the comment about training missions he wasn't cleared for.

  "I know. That's why I'm having you look at the message traffic." Falk popped to his feet, and Boomer followed him into a side tunnel which opened onto a parallel tunnel, identical to the first one. Locked four-drawer filing cabinets lined one of the sides, while desks lined the other. A few officers and senior NCOs were at work there.

  Falk pointed at the cabinets. "You can start at one end and work your way through. Don't worry if you don't make it through," he added with a smile. "Anything you do will be an improvement. No one's been through that stuff in years."

  Falk looked up at the large clock on the wall. "The Old Man's got a briefing here in four minutes and I have to go down to USPACOM and take his place for the weekly staff meeting." He tapped Boomer on the shoulder. "Glad to have you."

  Boomer watched Falk walk out of the tunnel, then turned to the file cabinets. He ran a hand through his long hair and smiled ruefully. Paperwork. Just as he'd expected.

  CHAPTER 4

  HONOLULU, OAHU, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS

  29 NOVEMBER

  7:00 p.m. LOCAL/ 0500 ZULU

  Boomer had a hard time finding a place to park his rental car until he realized that with the temporary military parking pass he'd been issued at Fort Shafter, he could park it in one of the restricted lots on Fort DeRussy, right across the street from the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

  In the less than ten hours he'd been in Hawaii, one thing that had already impressed Boomer was how strong a presence the military was on the island. From Pearl Harbor and Hickam Air Force Base in the south center, to Schofield Barracks taking up most of the interior, to Fort DeRussy and the military's Hale Koa Hotel staking claim to some of the most prime real estate in downtown Honolulu and along Waikiki Beach, there was no doubt that the U.S. military was the second largest industry in the islands after the tourism trade.

  Boomer crossed from one industry to the other as he left the parking lot and neatly cut grass of Fort DeRussy and crossed the street where an auditorium with bright signs advertised Don Ho's Hawaiian Extravaganza at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Directly ahead, he spotted the main lobby for the massive hotel complex. A piano bar beckoned off to one side and Boomer went in, scanning the tables. It was early and the bartender was watching a TV mounted at the end of the bar as he catered to the sparse crowd.

  Trace was seated at the end of the bar and she waved him over, rising to greet him. She was dressed in slacks and a short sleeve blouse, a large shoulder bag was lying on a chair next to her. Boomer wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet with an exuberant hug.

  "Easy there," Trace laughed. "Nice outfit," she commented.

  Boomer let her down and turned, modeling the garishly colored shorts and shirt he'd bought earlier at one of the downtown markets. "Pretty neat, huh?"

  "It's definitely you." Trace pulled him down into a seat. "So tell me, what have you been up to?"

  "You first," Boomer countered, not quite ready to get into his own story. "Last time we talked you were still at Fort Meade. I got a postcard with your new address and number here in Hawaii a month or so ago, but it didn't tell much. Where are you assigned now?"

  Trace shook her head and her tone of voice indicated displeasure with her current assignment. "USPACOM at Camp Smith."

  "Pacific Command?" Boomer repeated. "What do you do there?"

  "Public relations," Trace said, as she signaled to the bartender. After ordering two beers, they turned back to each other.

  "I didn't know the Army had a public relations specialty," Boomer replied. "And even if they did, that isn't what you trained for."

  "They don't. Technically, I'm assigned as the assistant PACOM J-l—Personnel. But considering the Unified Commands don't control people in peacetime, there isn't too much for me to do other than sit around and dust off the war plans every once in a while. Thus my real job of public relations for the PACOM commander. Once they saw that I worked in the public affairs office at Fort Meade before CGSC, I was doomed."

  "You couldn't get a flying job?" he asked.

  "The people in D.C. figured that this was a good opportunity for me to gain experience working at a unified command. Learn what the other services are about and all that good stuff. That's the big push in the real Army now," Trace said. "No aviation battalion commander is screaming for me to be in their unit. This assignment's my latest exile."

  "What do you do besides work?" Boomer asked.

  "I write."

  "Write?" Boomer repeated, surprised. H
is question had been more directed toward her personal life. This was an unexpected development.

  "I'm working on a novel," Trace said. "Well, sort of a novel."

  Boomer grabbed the two beers the bartender brought and slid one in front of her. "Here's to old friendships."

  They tapped glasses and were silent for a few minutes, each lost in their own thoughts and memories.

  "So, what about you?" Trace asked, breaking the silence. "If you tell me what you do, will you have to kill me?"

  "Pretty close," Boomer replied. "Kill you, cut off your head, and lock it in a safe."

  "Sounds like I don't want to know."

  "You don't," Boomer said.

  "Something's wrong," Trace quietly said. "I could tell by the tone of your voice on the phone earlier today. And you don't look happy to be here in paradise or to see me."

  "I am happy to see you," Boomer insisted. "I'm just beat. I was in the air all night and I didn't have much sleep before that."

  "In the air coming from where?" Trace asked.

  "So what's this book you're writing about?" Boomer attempted.

  Trace smiled. "You're not very good at changing the subject. Don't they teach you guys a course on that at Bragg? The art of evasive conversation?" She didn't expect an answer. "I've only just started it. It's about West Point. Well, not exactly West Point. About a group of West Pointers who influence the country's policies in favor of the military."

  "The infamous WPPA?" Boomer asked. When he had first come on active duty he'd never heard the term—West Point Protective Association—despite four years at the Academy. As far as Boomer could tell, the WPPA was an informal organization that existed wherever West Pointers scratched each other's back.

  Trace picked her words carefully as she answered his question. "No, not exactly the WPPA. It's about a secret organization called The Line that's been in existence for over sixty years and really came into power after World War II."

  Boomer was interested despite his own personal problems. "So how'd you think this up?"

  "I didn't think it up," Trace said. She leaned forward. "Just before I left Fort Meade I was briefly assigned as Post Public Affairs Officer. While I was there we received a strange letter at the office. It was from this woman, Mrs. Howard, who was a nurse in the European Theater during World War II. In the letter she claimed to have been one of the nurses assigned to General Patton after his accident in 1945."

  Trace paused in thought. "To make a long story short, she claims that just before his death, Patton told her about this organization called The Line that had been formed in the late twenties. And that it was getting ready to really expand its power at the end of the Second World War. So I took her story and I've been trying to make a novel out of it. Sort of 'what-iffing' it out, as if it were true."

  "Why'd she send the PAO this letter?"

  Trace shrugged. "She was sending letters to a whole bunch of people—the Pentagon, Fort Lee, everywhere. I just happened to be the only person who read it and bothered to talk to her. It was a pretty wacko letter but I thought it was kind of interesting. Plus, she was this nice old lady living in this home out in the country. No family, no friends. I guess I just felt sorry for her."

  Boomer smiled, remembering Trace as the sort of person who took stray cats in even at West Point where it had gotten her in trouble. "Do you think Mrs. Howard's story was true?"

  "I don't know," Trace said. "Her mind wasn't in the best shape. A lonely old lady reliving the past is not exactly an accurate source. But you know, ever since I started writing this, what she told me has really made me think twice. I think I've been getting slightly paranoid."

  Boomer laughed. "We have a saying in Special Forces: 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.' "

  Trace didn't smile. "There's been so much strange stuff going on in this country in the last fifty years that it makes you wonder sometimes."

  "Stuff like what?" Boomer asked picking up his mug.

  Trace pulled a newspaper out of her shoulder bag. "Lots of things look different if you simply assume a different perspective. Take today's paper for example." She ran her hand over some of the headlines of the late edition of the Honolulu paper. "The MRA and the conflict between the Joint Chiefs and the President. Hell, the Army Chief of Staff came within a hair of uttering statements about the President at that AUSA convention on Tuesday that he could have been court-martialed for. Like that Air Force general last year who was forced to retire."

  "Then there's everyone in the defense industry and the Pentagon screaming about the President cutting out funding for development of the Hard Glass anti-ballistic missile defense system. The nuclear blast over Turkey last week certainly made that move seem unwise."

  "Or these NATO inspectors that were ambushed the other day and killed in the Ukraine. It's causing the President's foreign policy regarding the START II treaty with the former Warsaw Block to be questioned even further. Congress is passing a special resolution to freeze the disarmament funding for the Ukraine after this latest incident."

  Boomer's hand halted in midair, a small bead of condensation dropping off the bottom of the mug and splashing unnoticed. "Let me see that."

  He grabbed the paper and scanned the story.

  AT LEAST THREE U.S.

  SOLDIERS KILLED IN UKRAINE

  President offers condolences.

  Reaffirms disarmament funding.

  MOSCOW (AP)

  Three U.S. servicemen were among ten NATO nuclear weapons inspectors killed in an ambush along a road outside the town of Senzhary in the Ukraine. A representative of the Ukrainian government blames the attack on dissident forces trying to derail the START (Strategic Arms Treaty) II agreement worked out between the President's administration and the Ukraine. These same forces were also believed responsible for the attempted shipment of a nuclear weapon to Iraq two days ago that cost the lives of two U.S. pilots and the first non-test detonation of a nuclear weapon in over fifty years.

  "The situation is somewhat confusing because we are working from reports relayed to us by Ukrainian authorities," an anonymous Pentagon spokesperson said. "We should have some of our own people at the site shortly. All we know is that a ten-man NATO team, which was comprised of three Americans, three Germans, two Dutch, and two Norwegians, was involved. The report we have received is that there were no survivors. Some Ukrainian military personnel were also killed in the attack."

  The Administration's commitment to this mission comes amid increasing resistance from the Pentagon and calls from Congress for a pullout of American forces from the mission until the political situation in the Ukraine has been resolved. "I offer my deepest sympathy to the families and friends of the American soldiers who were killed in the Ukraine last night," the President said in a statement. "These brave Americans were engaged in a mission vital to continued world peace and security."

  An anonymous source at the Pentagon reemphasized the position General Martin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made public during testimony last week in front of Congress: "There's no way a handful of inspectors can ensure that these weapons are being accounted for and destroyed. We're talking about over 1,700 warheads. Piecemealing it like we are doing presently allows them to play a 'shell game,' switching warheads around. The only adequate response to this situation is a pullout of NATO forces until the political situation stabilizes in the Ukraine and increased emphasis on the Hard Glass ballistic missile defense system that the President has withheld funding for. The explosion over Turkey two days ago shows that without immediate, absolute positive control over those warheads, we cannot be sure where they will end up or how they will be used. We don't know for certain that other nuclear weapons might already have been sold and be in the hands of unstable forces."

  There are 32 other Americans among the peacekeepers . . .

  Boomer was confused. "What connection do you see between this and your story?'' he asked.

  Trace shrugg
ed. "The Backfire incident, these inspector deaths, both were the worst possible thing that could have happened. The Pentagon didn't want to send those people in, but the President overrode that at the urging of the State Department. Now there's a big whiplash effect, just like the Somalia peacekeeping operation a few years ago, and we all saw what happened there. And this is happening just prior to the President coming here and making his MRA speech. You could certainly make a case that these incidents are not good for the MRA."

  "But what does that have to do with your novel?" Boomer asked, his mind still on the article.

  Trace smiled. "Not much, really. I guess I'm just getting so used to writing fiction that I start playing 'what-if ' with everything that goes on."

  Boomer put the beer down on the table. "Do you think this Line is real?"

  "I don't know. I'm making the story up," Trace said.

  "But you didn't make up the original idea," Boomer noted.

  "No, but like I said, this lady's mind wandered quite a bit when I talked to her two months ago. She was pretty bitter. Her husband had been killed in the war when he was in Patton's 3rd Army."

  "But you must have checked her facts. Was she a nurse on the staff that worked on Patton after he had his accident?"

  Trace nodded. "Yeah, that checked out."

  "So, I'm asking you again, do you think it's possible that an outfit like this Line exists?"

  Trace spoke slowly, as if considering her words carefully, picking up Boomer's serious mood. "I suppose it is possible. But I find it hard to believe that such an organization could be kept secret for so long."

  "How much have you written?"

  "I've done some research and outlining, but I've only worked on two chapters."

  "And you've made it all up, based upon one interview with this woman?"

  Trace nodded. "I'm writing it with the fictional premise: 'What if it were true?' I'm going back over the past fifty years and looking at various events that West Point graduates were involved in and making some speculations using what she gave me. There are a lot of areas I'd really like to research in depth. Lots of intriguing premises, if you accept my initial one and believe even half of what she told me, but I don't exactly have the time to do that. The stuff I did find scared me plenty."