The Line

by Bob Mayer

  "You think it's an assassination?" Boomer had not taken it to that drastic conclusion. "I don't think they'd go that far. More likely they have something planned to politically hurt him."

  "I don't even know that anything's planned," Skibicki countered. "We're just speculating here. We got some strange shit going on and we're checking it out." He looked at the map. "The President's exact itinerary is classified, but there's one place and one time everyone knows exactly where he's going to be: the Arizona Memorial at 7:54 a.m. on the seventh of December. If I was doing a target folder, I'd start with that fact. And the Memorial is in the center of Pearl Harbor, which just happens to contain a lot of water," he added, looking at Boomer.

  Skibicki sat down in the seat marked commander and swung his boots up on the conference table. "Let me ask Vasquez to do some checking."

  "Vasquez?" Boomer repeated.

  "She's smart and she's hooked into the intelligence apparatus on this island like you wouldn't believe. She can go up to PACOM or over to Pearl and check on damn near anything. Hell, she's got a direct computer line into the NSA back on the mainland."

  "What will you tell her to look for?" Boomer asked.

  "Anything out of the ordinary," Skibicki said. "In fact, I'll set it up like I would if I was going to do a mission. Have her check to see if anyone else has done any checking on information about the President's visit or about security, or the setup at Pearl. Anything."

  "Sounds good," Boomer said. He turned to Trace. "Try to remember. Is there a way to learn more about The Line? If it's real it had to have had a history. More than just involving Patton. Sixty years is a long time for a secret organization."

  "You've made up your mind this thing exists and you," she said, pointing at Skibicki, "think they're going to kill the President. Do I have this right?" She waited and their silence was her answer. "Hell, then I have the entire history of The Line. It's my outline. The stuff I made up last month that now turns into fact."

  Boomer grabbed her hands. "Listen, Trace. You don't want to believe it, but those guys at your house had a sniper rifle loaded with a bullet that had your name on it. Maybe that's why. Maybe taking the nurse's story and what-iffing through history like you did is exactly what happened. Can you talk to this woman again? Is she still alive?"

  Trace was pale, her hands trembling in Boomer's grip.

  She nodded with resignation. "She lives on the mainland. I'll have to go, won't I?"

  Boomer nodded, but his brain was racing over the events of the last few days. He turned to Skibicki. "You told me that you saw Hooker in Vietnam."

  Skibicki was looking at the map. "Yeah?"

  "If The Line exists, Hooker's one of them. You said he was involved in what happened at Nha Trang with your commander."

  Skibicki nodded. "Yeah, he was."

  "Does Colonel Rison know anything about The Line?" Boomer asked.

  "Who's Colonel Rison?" Trace asked.

  "The Special Operations Commander in Vietnam in 1968," Skibicki replied.

  "Why would he know about The Line?" Trace asked.

  "It's a long story," Boomer said.

  Skibicki flipped open his spiral notebook one more time. "Let's find out. Last I knew Rison retired to New York. Up in the Adirondacks." He checked his watch. "It's just after two in the afternoon there." He turned on the conference room speakerphone, punched in the number, and waited.

  After two rings, the other end was lifted and a strong, but very guarded voice came out of the box. "Hello?"

  "Colonel Rison?"

  "Yes? Who is this?"

  "This is Sergeant Major Skibicki calling from Fort Shafter in Hawaii."

  "Earl Skibicki?" The voice warmed considerably. "How are you doing, you young fool?"

  "I'm not so young any more, sir."

  "Hell, none of us are, son, none of us are. What can I do for you?"

  "I've got some people here that want to talk to you. You remember Mike Watson, RT Kansas?"

  "Hell, yes, I remember him."

  "Well, I'm with his son, Boomer Watson. He's a major now, assigned out of Bragg."

  "I guess from the echo I'm on a speaker," Rison said.

  "Yes, sir," Skibicki answered.

  "Well, Major Boomer Watson, your dad was one hell of a soldier. Who else do you have there?"

  "I'm Major Benita Trace, sir. I'm a friend of Boomer's."

  "What can I do for you?" Rison asked.

  Skibicki gestured at Boomer, who took the cue. "Sir, this is Boomer Watson. I appreciate what you said about my dad. The sergeant major told me about his last mission. We have a problem and Sergeant Major Skibicki says you might have some information that could help us out." That earned a glare from Skibicki, but Boomer didn't have time to play games.

  The voice hesitated. "What do you need to know?"

  Boomer took the plunge cold. ''Sir, have you ever heard of an organization called The Line? It's a group of—"

  "Wait a second," Rison's voice snapped. "Skibicki, you still there?"

  "Yes, sir." The sergeant major sat up straight in his chair.

  "Verify for me the name of the mascot at the B-50 base camp in early 'sixty-eight."

  Skibicki nodded. "We had a mangy old dog there named I Crazy, sir."

  "And who did what with the dog every Friday night he was in camp?" Rison demanded.

  Skibicki glanced at Maggie and Trace. "Uh, well, sir, Howie Mendenez used to get plastered, then take the dog in the club and—"

  "All right, that's enough." Rison interceded. "You're Skibicki, but I won't talk about this over the phone."

  Boomer leaned forward. "Sir, this is important. We need to—"

  "No, young man, you listen to me. You want to know about that organization, you come here and talk to me."

  Boomer looked at Trace. She shrugged. He turned back to the phone. "Sir, that's not possible right now. We—"

  "It mustn't be that important to you, then," Rison replied sharply.

  "It's very important to us," Boomer protested. "But we're in Hawaii and we need to know now. There are things going on that are vital to national security."

  There was a loud snort of derision. "I've heard that bullshit before. I don't know who the hell you or the young woman are. I know who Skibicki is, but they've turned others on me before. I won't talk over the phone." He paused. "You want to see me, you come to me."

  "Wait one minute, sir." Boomer hit the hold button on the phone, then turned to Trace and Skibicki. "What do you think?"

  "I think if you want to know what the colonel knows, one of the two of you ought to go talk to him," Skibicki said. He pointed at Trace. "I think she ought to go. We're going to have to guard her if she stays here. This way we can get her to the mainland and out of sight for the time being, while we figure out what is going on."

  "We don't have much time," Trace added.

  "Can you go?" Boomer asked.

  Trace nodded. "I can get leave this evening. If he's in New York, I can see Mrs. Howard. Maybe she does know more."

  Boomer took it one step further. "Will you go?"

  "This is so crazy," Trace said. "I know everything you say fits a pattern but—''

  "People have died, Trace," Boomer said. "That we know for sure." He pointed at the phone. "Rison acts like he's heard of The Line."

  "Rison does know something about The Line," Trace agreed. "And I guess I'm the one who started all this with my manuscript. I want to know what he knows."

  Boomer reached over and turned the phone on. "Major Trace will come to talk to you, sir. She can meet you in New York."

  "I won't be here," Rison said. "Meet me Saturday in Philadelphia."

  "Philadelphia?" Boomer asked.

  "Yes. The Army-Navy game. I'll be seated in section GG. Row Twenty-three. Seat One." There was a click, then a loud dial tone buzzed through the room.

  Boomer turned off the phone. "Rah-rah-rah-boom. On brave old Army team," he began to chant in a derisive voice.


  "I've heard it before," Trace snapped. "What are you two going to be doing while I'm seeing Rison?" she demanded.

  "We," Boomer said, "are going to try and find out several things. We need to know the departure airfield for the plane. That will give us a good idea who's dropping in. So while you're in Philly enjoying the game, we'll be greeting our incoming guests."

  Trace pulled out her wallet, removing her credit card. "Let me call the airlines and see what they have leaving this evening for the mainland." She paused. "I can't believe I'm doing this."

  Boomer stood up. "Believe." He pointed at the phone. "Rison knows about The Line and I think The Line is here on this island. We've got six days to uncover what they have planned."

  CHAPTER 10

  MAKAKILO, OAHU

  1 DECEMBER

  4:50 P.M. LOCAL/ 0250 ZULU

  "Think I ought to take this?" Trace asked, holding up a black sweatshirt with a large number twelve silkscreened onto it. The Army mule, hooves kicking, was on each shoulder. "This is from my firstie year, December 'eighty-two. We all took off our dress gray in the fourth quarter to cheer." She laughed at the memory. "We got our butts kicked."

  "That was the game out in California wasn't it?" Boomer asked.

  "No, it was in Philly. We lost twenty-four to seven that year."

  Boomer vividly remembered the four years of Army football he'd watched. Every cadet did, because, like it or not, you were a fan once you were a cadet. The Academy took the money for season tickets out of every cadet's pay. A plebe who didn't go to a home game wouldn't have lasted the first semester hazing.

  Of course everyone went. What else was there to do on Saturday afternoon at West Point? The one concession the Academy made for home football games during Boomer's time was shortening Saturday morning classes. But that wasn't so the cadets could get ready for the game. It was so they could get back to the barracks and change into full dress uniform for the parade for the American public prior to every game.

  The culmination of every season was the Army-Navy game. The team could lose all ten prior games, but all that went out the window when the classic interservice showdown rolled around. Boomer had never particularly enjoyed having to stand during every game, another great West Point tradition. He especially remembered standing in the fourth quarter during a 55-0 drubbing by Baylor his plebe year. Not his idea of fun.

  "You have everything?" he asked, as Trace stuffed the sweatshirt into her overnight bag. Trace had spent the afternoon getting her leave approved and Boomer had stayed with her the entire time. Skibicki was back in the tunnel trying to unearth new information.

  "I guess so."

  "Let's roll," he said grabbing the keys for her truck.

  Boomer watched the rear-view mirror the entire way to Honolulu International Airport, but he didn't spot anything. He parked in the short-term garage. Boomer showed his special federal ID to the guard at the security gate and he was allowed to pass with the Browning High Power hidden in its shoulder holster. They arrived at Trace's departure gate with a half hour to spare. Boomer chose seats for them where they could watch the center of the terminal.

  "Am I off on a wild goose chase?" Trace asked, leaning back in her seat and regarding Boomer with skeptical eyes. "And yes, I know people have died. But the more I think about it, the crazier this all sounds. You're talking about the military taking action against the government. We've never had anything like what you suspect in the history of this country. I know the MRA isn't very popular, but hell, there's always been unpopular stuff going on."

  "When I arrived in 10th Group for my first Special Forces assignment, my company commander was a fellow named Major Stubbs," Boomer said. "When I went for my inprocessing briefing with him, he gave me a couple of books to read. He told me that being in Special Forces meant that I had to think differently and I also had to understand the history of covert operations."

  "This have anything to do with what I asked?" Trace asked, fingering her ticket and watching the waiting area.

  "Bear with me a minute," Boomer said. "I was thinking about this because of that chapter in your manuscript, the one about Patton and the Second World War. One of the books I had to read was about covert operations in Europe during that war. The title of the book, Bodyguard of Lies, came from a quote by Winston Churchill. He said: 'In wartime, Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.'

  "I've heard it said that truth is the first casualty of war," Trace said.

  "Maybe it's just misplaced," Boomer replied. "Anyway, anyone who's studied World War II has heard about the city of Coventry and how Churchill had advance warning of the bombing raid there but didn't inform the populace of Coventry because doing so would tip off the Germans that the Brits had broken the German secret cipher with Ultra. That's one case where the bodyguard was the truth being withheld. But in this book, the author spent a lot of time talking about the Resistance in France and the Allies' SOE, Special Operations Executive, the American contribution of which was called the OSS, Office of Strategic Services, from which both Special Forces and the CIA draw its lineage."

  "The SOE sent agents into occupied France to work with the Resistance, particularly wireless operators to relay information back and forth. Of course the Germans weren't too keen on that and ran counter-operations and managed to scarf up quite a few of these wireless operators along with their radios and ciphers. The Germans then set up a false network. Communicating back to Britain as if the agent was free and doing his or her job."

  "After the war there were a lot of accusations that the SOE parachuted agents into Resistance nets that they knew had been compromised. Particularly female agents."

  "Why women?" Trace asked.

  "The feeling at the time was that the Germans would not believe that an English gentleman would sacrifice a woman in such a manner. Deliberately giving her false information in training, then handing her right over to the Germans to eventually give up that false information as truth under torture prior to being executed."

  "Jesus," Trace whispered. "Is that true? Did that happen?"

  "The author of the book said there was no proof," Boomer said. He snorted. "Of course there was no proof. Who would have been stupid enough to document such a thing? Everyone wants proof, when all they really need to do is look at what really happened, instead of what they hoped happened."

  "What I took from the book was that those radio operators had three security checks. The first was a cipher to encrypt the message. If they were captured before they could destroy their cipher, then that could be compromised and used by the Germans without the receivers in Britain knowing. The second was a security check—a code word each agent had memorized that was supposed to be in every message. If the code word wasn't there, the SOE people in England knew the message was being sent under duress."

  Boomer looked at Trace. "There were numerous messages sent that lacked these code words, yet the SOE handlers still sent agents into those nets. The excuse they used after the war was that they thought the radio operator had forgotten to include the safety code word. Can you believe that?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I'm sitting in an attic in occupied France transmitting valuable information to England and I'd forget to use the security code word that would verify my message as legitimate? Not likely."

  Boomer shook his head. "The third one though, is the most damning. Every radio operator who sends Morse code, which is the mode they used then and we still train on in Special Forces, has what we call a 'fist.' That's each individual's way of tapping the key. If you listen to someone long enough, their fist is like their personal signature and it can't be duplicated. Quite a few of those messages that came back setting up drop zones for new agents not only lacked the proper security codeword, but the radio people at SOE headquarters could tell that the fist was not that of the radio operator they'd worked with in training."

  Boomer's voice hardened. "No matter how much they deny it, they knew at SOE head
quarters that some of their nets had been compromised and they still sent people into them."

  "After reading all that," he continued, "there was one damn thing I was sure of, and it was the reason Major Stubbs had me read that book: I learned never to trust the 'official' story. I think there's a good chance The Line exists, and I think we've got to give that chance our best shot. If we're wrong, no harm no foul, but if we're right . . ." He left it at that.

  He reached into his pocket. "There's something I didn't tell you last night when I told you about what happened in the Ukraine." He laid a plastic military ID card in Trace's lap. It was smeared with dried blood. "I took that from one of the bodies at the ambush site. I didn't show it to Decker."

  Trace looked at it, reading the name through the red film. john k. stubbs. She raised her eyes to meet Boomer's.

  "I had known he was working some kind of NATO deal. Most of the officers who work those sensitive assignments are Special Forces because of their background and training," he said. "The man who taught me not to believe what I'm told died because I believed the bullshit they were feeding me over there in Turkey. I can't let this rest, not after that and what happened at your house."

  The waiting area was beginning to empty as Trace's flight began boarding. Boomer put the ID card back in his pocket and stood. Trace threw her overnight bag over her shoulder. "I understand," she said. She turned for the gate.

  "Take care of yourself and be careful," Boomer said walking with her, both stopping just short of the gate.

  Trace stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. "You take care of yourself. Let's hope this turns out to be for nothing."

  "That would be nice," Boomer conceded, returning her hug.

  Trace hesitated. "The other night. That was like it was down in Texas, wasn't it?"

  Boomer hesitated, then answered slowly. "I'm not sure what it was, but I don't think it was like Texas."

  Trace smiled knowingly. "Yeah, I didn't think so." She leaned forward and held him tight. "Please don't say anything, Boomer. Just hold me hard and know I need you." She let go just as suddenly and rapidly walked to the gate and disappeared.