The Line

by Bob Mayer

  USPACOM was the Unified Command for military forces in the Pacific. When Trace had arrived in Hawaii and been assigned to USPACOM she'd been astounded at the clutter of commands and headquarters all camped on the island of Oahu. The command and control system for the armed forces of the United States was anything but simple, and Trace had spent several days simply studying the flow charts of organizations to get oriented to her new environment.

  In the U.S. military there are six unified commands which cut across service boundaries: USEUCOM (European Command); USPACOM (Pacific Command); USLANTCOM (Atlantic Command) which is mainly a Navy show; USSOUTHCOM (Southern Command) which is primarily in Army hands, covering Central and South America; USCENTCOM (Central Command) which received fame and fortune under General Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War and ignominy for the embarrassments in Somalia; and USREDCOM (Readiness Command) in charge of forces in the continental United States.

  While those commands sound very cut and dried and split the world up quite neatly in various areas, the actual practice of those commands was somewhat ludicrous as Trace had learned at USPACOM. During peace, the Unified Commanders controlled no troops (other than the staff— such as Trace—assigned to their headquarters). The separate services controlled their own forces during peacetime and jealously guarded that right.

  Thus in Hawaii, the USPACOM commander could order a car to take him down to Pearl Harbor, but until the Joint Chiefs decided to give him operational control (OPCON) in time of crisis, he could only stare at the ships in the harbor and the jets at nearby Hickam Field which were, respectively, under the control of the admiral who commands the Pacific Fleet and the Air Force general who had the title of Commander of Pacific Air Forces. The Army troops at Schofield Barracks would salute the USPACOM Commander, but they answered to a three-star Army general at Fort Shafter who held the title of WESTCOM (Western Command) Commander.

  The various services on Hawaii—indeed throughout the US military establishment—only worked together at the very lowest or the very highest of levels. At the lowest level, Trace could get on the phone and call a buddy of hers at Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station and get some flight time in a Huey helicopter to keep her flight status current. At the highest level, joint exercises were scheduled—such as the annual Team Spirit in Korea—where the services grudgingly agreed to work together and the Air Force would actually allow Army troops inside their cargo planes and Navy pilots might acknowledge the presence of Air Force planes in the same sky. But in the middle levels it was as easy to coordinate a Navy ship into an Army exercise as it was to get Congress to agree on a new gun-control bill.

  Trace knew it was this intractable system-wide separation that the President was trying to address in the MRA. Because not only did the gulf between the services threaten their operational capabilities, it was devastating when it came to the world of weapons and equipment procurement. Only under the greatest of stress—usually the threat of loss of funds—would the Air Force and Navy agree on, say, a jet fighter to be jointly developed and purchased. And in the process they usually ignored the bastard stepchild of military procurement, the Marine Corps, which was one of the major reasons the MRA Commission had recommended the Marines be integrated into the Army.

  Trace had entered the military listening to horror stories of interservice incompatibility, such as the Navy SEAL teams in Grenada that were attacked by Navy planes because their radios didn't work on the same frequencies. It was that same lack of communication in a different form that was sending her home at 1:30 in the afternoon rather than her usual 6:00 p.m. The senior Army officer on the USPACOM staff had announced the previous week that his troops would work the full day, but that directive had run counter to the USPACOM Chief of Staff's (a Navy officer) instruction that all service people were to be given the afternoon off. The brief squabble had been resolved in traditional military fashion: since the Chief of Staff was a one-star admiral and the senior Army man was a full colonel, the troops went home after lunch.

  Such weighty matters seemed to fill up the time for the USPACOM staff at Camp Smith, Trace thought as she swung her AMC Jeep onto H-l and headed west, happy to be missing the rush hour traffic out of Honolulu. She was glad for the time off. It would give her some time to clean the house up before Boomer got there. She knew that Boomer would be working a full day. The only troops in the Army that ignored such things as payday were Special Operations troops.

  Trace continued west past Waipahu and turned off on Kunia Road, then made an immediate left on Cane Haul Road, a small gravel road that ran through the sugarcane fields. She was renting her house from a Marine Lieutenant Colonel who was currently at sea for eight months. It was a good deal, and Trace enjoyed being away from the monotony of Army housing.

  The colonel had bought the land years ago when Makakilo City was first being developed. It was a choice location, well up on the slope leading to Puu Makakilo, the hilltop from which the area received its name. It was a one-story house, the edge of which was on stilts, hanging over the hillside, looking toward the ocean. In dry weather Trace liked going the "back way" as she called it, taking Cane Haul Road up between Puu Kapuai and Puu Makakilo. This brought her to the house from down the shoulder of the mountain, rather than up the tar road the other less adventurous residents used.

  She stopped in the driveway and disengaged the four-wheel drive before getting out. She slipped her key in the lock and stepped into the main foyer which opened onto the large living room facing the ocean.

  Trace was shocked to see a man dressed in black standing over her computer, his figure frozen in mutual surprise at her unexpected entrance. A second man was on the balcony, looking down toward the main road, which explained why she had come upon them unannounced. They both wore black balaclavas over their faces and had small backpacks slung over their shoulders. The room was trashed. The couch had been slashed apart, drawers emptied, picture frames shattered.

  The first man swung up a large-bore pistol and pointed it directly at Trace. "Don't move and you won't get hurt," he hissed.

  "How'd she get here?" the second man asked, coming into the room from the porch.

  "That's what I was going to ask you," the first said. "Cover her." The second man produced a pistol as large as the first's.

  Trace froze but her eyes were searching the room, looking for anything she could use as a weapon. She could see a bat she used for softball, but it was too far to be practical. The man shoved her computer display over. It thudded onto the carpet, the glass screen somehow staying intact. He expertly flipped open a butterfly knife with one hand and slashed the razor-sharp blade through the cords at the back of her hard drive base unit, which he tucked under one arm.

  "Got it all?" the second man asked.

  The first man nodded. He walked over and cut the cord for the living room phone. The two men looked at Trace, then glanced at each other, as if trying to come to a consensus.

  They took too long. A shadow loomed behind Trace in the doorway and a familiar voice called out in a Bronx accent. "Hey, sweetheart, what ya' doing?"

  Trace dove to the right as one of the men fired, the round splintering the doorjamb, the gun hardly making any noise at all. "Watch out, Boomer!" she screamed as she scrambled behind the dubious cover of the couch.

  Boomer didn't have to think. Thousands of hours in the killing room in the Delta Force compound had automated his response. He had his 9mm pistol in his hand in a flash. Boomer fired as he dove across the doorway to the cover of the other side, letting loose two quick shots into the room, caught between trying not to get shot himself and concern for Trace's position.

  The cost had escalated beyond what the two men were willing to pay. They'd assumed after forty-eight hours of surveillance that Trace would follow the same pattern she had for the past two days both in terms of time of return and direction of return. They bolted for the balcony. Together, they leapt over and disappeared. Boomer carefully slid into the room, his Browning High Power at
the ready.

  "You OK?" he asked.

  "Yeah," Trace answered.

  Boomer kept moving. He flattened himself just inside the balcony door, then "pied" his way around the corner, muzzle of the pistol leading, taking the corner in sections. He spotted the two men scrambling up the slope. As he took aim, they disappeared into the jungle. Following was not the wisest option; for all Boomer knew they were inside the tree line waiting in ambush.

  "What did they get?" Boomer asked, walking back into the room and examining the full extent of the damage as he put a fresh magazine into his pistol.

  "I don't know," Trace replied. "The only thing I saw them take was my computer hard drive."

  Boomer sat down at Trace's desk and looked at the cut wires. "Why didn't they take the whole computer?"

  "They probably would have if I hadn't caught them in the act."

  Boomer shook his head. "It doesn't make sense. How much could they get for the hard drive?"

  Trace was searching through her desk. "My checkbook's still here and some cash." She continued searching. "The manuscript is gone."

  "The manuscript?" Boomer repeated. "Your book about The Line?"

  "Yes."

  "It was on your hard drive, too, wasn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "What about back-up disks?"

  "My disks were in this drawer." She lifted up an upside down drawer, then searched wreckage on the floor. "They got them." She looked at the bookcase behind the desk. "They took all my notes too."

  "You must have caught them just as they were ready to leave. The hard drive was the last thing they needed." Boomer walked out to the railing and glanced up. The slope was very steep—not the easiest way to get to the house.

  Trace followed him out there. "I'm going to get the bedroom phone and call the cops."

  After Trace left, Boomer sat down in a wicker chair and gazed out at the ocean several miles away as he collected his thoughts. When she came back in, she sat down across from him. "They'll be here soon."

  "Why would someone want to take the manuscript?" Boomer asked.

  "You think this was all about two chapters of a manuscript?" Trace asked.

  "When it's obvious, accept the obvious," Boomer said. "That's what they took, that's what they came here for. And it looks like they were getting ready to waste you when I stumbled in here."

  Trace remembered looking down the barrel of the pistol and the cold eyes of the man holding it and shivered. "Why were you back so early?" she asked.

  He reached out and took her hand, feeling the trembling in it. "They had sexual harassment awareness training scheduled for the afternoon, and since I'm an expert on sexual harassment, and I'm not really assigned to the unit anyway, I thought I'd take the afternoon off and greet you when you got home."

  "Who do you think they are?" Trace asked, sitting down on his lap and leaning against him. He ran his hand through her short hair.

  "I don't know."

  "Why did they want the manuscript? What good is it going to do them, whoever they are?"

  "I don't know," Boomer said. "You tell me."

  "Well, maybe someone thought it would be a bestseller," Trace joked nervously, "and they wanted it."

  "Do you have a list of the publishers you sent your book proposal to?" Boomer asked.

  "I don't need a list," Trace said. "There were only two. Lister Press in Las Vegas and Air Force Institute Press in Boulder. They're both small publishers known for doing military non-fiction and an occasional work of fiction. I figured that would be my best shot."

  "What do you know about those publishers?"

  "Will you tell me what you're getting to?" Trace asked.

  "Someone came here and stole your manuscript and all records of your manuscript. Who knew of the manuscript's existence besides those two publishing houses?"

  Trace paused in thought. "That's it. Besides you, I haven't told anyone else about it."

  "Anyone at work?"

  "No."

  "All right," Boomer said. "So therefore someone from one of those two places sent those people here or, more likely, they forwarded your submission to someone who sent those people here."

  Trace's eyes widened as she finally understood. "You're saying The Line exists and they did this?"

  Boomer shrugged. "Actually, no, I don't think The Line exists, but I do think someone wanted your manuscript."

  They heard a car pull up in the drive. They walked to the door and reached it just as two men in khaki pants and colorful shirts arrived on the other side.

  "Inspector Konane," a large, dark-skinned man announced, holding out an ID card and badge. "My partner," he nodded at the other man, "Inspector Perry."

  Perry was short and compact, several shades lighter than his partner. He hung in the background as Konane entered and looked around. "Tell me what happened." He flipped open a notebook and wrote as Trace relayed the story. When she was done, he looked at Boomer.

  "Let me see your gun."

  Boomer pulled out his Browning High Power and handed it over.

  "Do you have a license to carry?"

  Boomer reached into his wallet and removed the special federal license all Delta Force operatives had to carry a weapon anywhere in the United States and on airlines.

  Konane seemed disappointed that Boomer did have a license. Boomer noted that the policeman wrote down his name and license number in his notepad.

  Konane pulled out a card and handed it to Trace. "When you make a list of everything that was stolen, fax it to the number on this card. If you think of anything else, call me.

  "That's it?" Trace asked as the two cops turned toward the door. "Aren't you going to check for prints or something?"

  "Ma'am," Konane said, "this was a robbery. We get a dozen of these a day. Once you get us a list of the property we'll put it into the computer and keep an eye out. Since you say the men were wearing masks you can't give us a description more than their height and approximate size. We really don't have much to work with."

  "This wasn't just a simple robbery," Boomer said.

  "Oh no?" Konane waited

  "We were shot at," Boomer said. "That's attempted murder."

  Konane nodded. "True, but we still don't have anything more to go on at the moment. Like I said, we'll see if anything stolen turns up. Once you get us a list of what was stolen, of course."

  "What about the slugs in the wall?" Boomer demanded. "Aren't you interested in those?"

  Konane sighed. "This isn't like a cop show on TV. OK?"

  Boomer shook his head, but he didn't say anything. Konane had Trace sign the report and they were gone.

  Boomer felt the pocket of his shirt. "Give me the phone. There's someone I want to call." Boomer pulled out the card Skibicki had given him and dialed the number.

  "Skibicki," the voice on the other end growled.

  "Sergeant major, this is Boomer Watson."

  "What's up, sir?"

  "Can you get out to Makakilo City right away? I need to talk to you."

  "Reference?" The sergeant major succinctly asked.

  "My friend just got robbed here and both of us got shot at."

  "You call the cops?"

  "Yeah, but they weren't much help," Boomer said.

  "What's the address?"

  Boomer got it from Trace and relayed it

  "I'll be there in a half hour." The phone went dead. During the wait, Boomer and Trace cleaned up the house as much as possible, although there was little they could do about the bullet holes in the wall.

  Skibicki arrived and Trace and Boomer told him what had just happened as he checked out the place.

  "You didn't get a good look at them?" he asked Boomer.

  "No. I heard Trace yell and didn't know what the setup was inside so I just tried to clear the room out by returning fire. They ran up the hill there and I spotted them just before they hit the tree line."

  Skibicki took out a pocket knife and dug into one of the bullet ho
les in the wall, extracting the spent round. "Nine millimeter. Had to be subsonic since you say the weapons were silenced, and this round didn't penetrate very far into the wall. Your ordinary crook doesn't carry silenced weapons."

  He walked out to the patio and looked around. "If you're right about professionals here to steal the manuscript, they most likely had the house under surveillance. And if I was going to surveil, I'd do it from there," he added, pointing up to the lush vegetation adorning Puu Makakilo. "That's where they ran, right?"

  "Let's take a look," Boomer suggested. They went out the back door and began scrambling up the hill.

  Skibicki led the way, snaking through the vegetation, following the trail the two men had made in their scramble to escape. They came to the small clearing where the two had obviously spent some time, judging by the cigarette butts littering the ground. It was a perfect place to watch the house.

  Boomer and Skibicki quartered the ground, searching. Finally Boomer halted and pointed. "They had either a scope or rifle set up here on a tripod. Maybe a camera. They were watching you for a while, Trace. Normal burglars don't sit for a couple of days before they rob a house," he added.

  Skibicki walked over to a tree and noted the numerous scars torn into the wood. He turned and checked out a faint line scratched in the dirt with what looked like the toe of a boot. "Not bad," he muttered noting the placing of the impacts and the distance of the line from the tree.

  "Do you think they'll come back?" Trace asked as they went back down the hill.

  "I don't know," Boomer said. "If all they wanted was the manuscript and your notes, then they won't be back."

  "That doesn't make much sense," Skibicki said.

  "What doesn't?" Trace asked.

  "They may have gotten the manuscript and all her stuff, but she still has everything in her head, right?"

  Trace nodded.

  "Then they'll be back," Skibicki concluded.