The Line

by Bob Mayer

  Boomer reached into his pocket and pulled out Colonel Stubbs's ID card. He placed it on the desk. Jordan picked it up and glanced at it curiously. "And this is?"

  "That is the ID card of one of the members of the NATO inspection team killed in the Ukraine."

  "And how did you get a hold of it?" Jordan asked.

  "A team of Delta Force soldiers under my command conducted that ambush."

  Senator Jordan sat up straight. "You'd better hold on one minute, young man. Do you realize what you're saying?" General Maxwell was nodding slightly, as if his suspicions were confirmed.

  Boomer kept his eyes on the senator. "I know exactly what I am saying. I was sent on a military mission into the Ukraine on the night of the twenty-eighth of November. At the time we were told the target was a group of the radical Ukrainian parliament. The same group that was behind the shipment of that intercepted nuclear weapon."

  Boomer told the story of the mission from planning through the confrontation with Colonel Decker and his banishment to Hawaii.

  General Maxwell spoke for the first time, summing up Boomer's account. "So you believe that the mission was not a mistake but deliberately planned to embarrass this administration?"

  "Yes, sir, I do."

  "That's a pretty strong statement," Senator Jordan said. "You're accusing people of murder, including yourself."

  "I was misled—" Boomer began.

  "That didn't work for the Nazis," Jordan countered.

  "Those who worked for the Nazis knew what they were doing. They knew they were following illegal orders," Boomer replied. "I was following orders, but they were not illegal orders as far as I knew. And what actually happened was not at all what I was ordered to do. I would never have gone on that mission if I had known what it really was. Once I realized what was happening I did everything in my power to stop it. The blood on that ID card is the blood of a friend."

  Boomer fixed the senator with his eyes. "Sir, there's dirty work out there needing to be done all the time and somebody does it for this country. I'm one of those people. During Desert Storm I went into Iraq with three other men several weeks before the start of the ground war to try and get a shot at Saddam Hussein on direct orders from the National Command Authority. And if I'd gotten the shot, I would have taken it, regardless of the fact that there's a law against that in this country. I figure that one shot would have saved hundreds of Americans, and thousands of Iraqis. But beyond what I figured, those were my orders."

  Senator Jordan wasn't swayed and met Boomer's gaze. " 'Following orders?' So if the other guy is dirty, we get dirty too? Then who is right? We? Because we believe right is on our side? But doesn't the other guy think right is on his side? And if we use the same tactics and techniques, then don't we intrinsically sabotage the lightness of our cause by the wrongness of our methods?"

  "I don't know," Boomer said. "I don't have the leisure of philosophical discourse before I act. Because of the nature of covert operations, I often don't have the opportunity to find out all the information I would like to have in order to make an informed decision. I trust that the orders I am given are legitimate. That's the way it works."

  "But I do know the same man in Turkey who ordered me on the mission into the Ukraine, Colonel Decker, was involved in the parachute drop off the North Shore of this island. And that same Colonel Decker is somewhere on this island right now. And I believe those same people are involved in the movement of a Special Operations submarine, first toward the site of the C&C exercise, and now toward Pearl Harbor."

  "The sub has changed course?" Maxwell interrupted.

  "Last report I received—yes, sir," Boomer replied.

  "That's strange," Maxwell said.

  "All right," Jordan said in a flat voice, cutting through the discussion. "I think we all understand the ethics involved here, but the major does have a point—all the ethics and moral arguing in the world are not going to do us a damn bit of good if what he says is true. The problem is, Major Watson, that even with this"—he held up the ID card—"you really have no proof."

  "I just find it hard to believe that a secret military organization has been in existence for what—seventy years—yet we've never heard of it. That's stretching my credibility quite a bit."

  "Major Trace has proof," Boomer said.

  "Major Trace isn't here, nor is her proof," Senator Jordan pointed out. Before Boomer could say anything, he swiveled his seat and looked at General Maxwell. "Again, I want you to check out this submarine and those paratroopers."

  "All right."

  "You might want to try and find Colonel Decker," Boomer added.

  Jordan turned back to Boomer. "Major, I think you will understand if I want you kept close at hand. I'm turning you back to the custody of Agent Stewart. We have two days before the seventh. Let's hope we find something more solid before then."

  "Let's hope we don't," General Maxwell said as Boomer and Agent Stewart left the room.

  "General, is there anything more you can tell me about this?" Senator Jordan asked. "I find it very difficult to believe that this Line exists. You told me earlier that you do believe it. Give me your reasons, no matter how vague."

  "All I've ever heard are rumors," Maxwell said. "Every officer in the Army has heard of the WPPA, the West Point Protective Association. We know that most of the ring-knockers scratch each other's back." Maxwell sighed. "However, like the problem we have now—I have no proof but I've heard things. Things that I never cared to report because I didn't want to believe them."

  "Things like what?"

  "Let me give you an example," Maxwell said. "For the last thirty years, ever since Vietnam, there's been a big rift in the Army between the conventional forces and the Special Operations forces. The Special Operations forces have conducted over ninety percent of the real-world missions since the close of Vietnam yet receive less than one percent of the budget. The conventional folks who run the Army have always been preparing for the big war, yet the trend in the latter half of this century has been the little war. Anyway, I won't go into the details or the positions of all the players, but suffice it to say that there are two opposing camps, and that the camp with all the firepower and the money and the pull is the conventional camp."

  "Hell, yeah, I know about that," Senator Jordan said. "I was on the committee that drafted a law over the Joint Chiefs protests to get the Special Operations Command designated a separate entity."

  Maxwell nodded. "Anyway, there are rumors. About seven or eight years ago, one of the Ranger battalion commanders was causing a lot of trouble. The Rangers were under the Special Operations Command, but they were the darling of the regular Army guys. The Ranger has always been viewed as the ultimate infantryman."

  "The Army made a big push to get the Ranger regiment out from underneath the Special Operations Command and back into the regular Army fold, under the 18th Airborne Corps."

  "The problem was that the battalion commander of the 1st Ranger Battalion at Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia thought they should stay under 1st SOCOM command. And he was quite vocal about it despite warnings from his chain of command. He even went so far as to agree to testify before a congressional committee investigating the controversy."

  "Two weeks before he was scheduled to testify, he was participating in a joint exercise at Hurlburt Field in Florida. During a night operation, his helicopter crashed. He and twelve other Rangers were killed. The safety board at Fort Rucker investigated the case as they are required to do. I talked to one of the members of that board. He told me that they couldn't get access to some of the information they needed to determine cause of crash. They ended up labeling it, like so many other unexplained crashes, as pilot error. But he told me that what he did see of the crash site showed signs of a midair explosion."

  "You're saying the battalion commander was killed?" Jordan demanded.

  "It certainly was convenient," was Maxwell's summary. "There have been other incidents over the years. Other accid
ents. Hell, no one has yet figured out exactly what happened at Desert One, but that certainly cost Carter the presidency. I talked to Charlie Beckwith before he died, and he was bitter. There was something he wouldn't tell even me. He had those Marine helicopters forced on him by the Joint Chiefs and he indicated there were other things that occurred at the behest of the Joint Chiefs that were not conducive to the success of the mission."

  Maxwell shrugged. "I can't prove anything, but there have just been too many coincidences. And there are too many right now."

  Jordan drummed his fingers on the desktop for a few minutes. "All right, you've convinced me that doing nothing isn't a good idea. The possibility of a real threat here is just too high. I'll go to the President with this and inform him of the situation."

  Maxwell had been thinking about this ever since landing. "Let's bring General Martin in for a meeting," he suggested.

  "For what purpose?"

  "Let's let him square off with Major Watson. See what happens," Maxwell said. "It might be interesting."

  CHAPTER 22

  OAHU, HAWAII

  5 DECEMBER

  2:00 A.M. LOCAL/1100 ZULU

  It was a perfect night for lovers on Waikiki but a terrible night for covert operations. The sea was smooth and flat. The moon was three-quarters full and reflected off the mirror surface, giving forty-two percent illumination. The sound of the minimal surf on the sandy beach was surprisingly loud.

  The submarine lay off shore, due south of Fort Kamehameha, over the horizon so the lights on shore couldn't be seen. It was submerged, lying dead in the water 100 feet down, ten kilometers from the coast. On the back deck, a hastily welded hatch opened in the hull, leading into the pressurized compartment—the dry deck shelter (DDS)—bolted to the deck. The two men climbing into the DDS wore wet suits and carried their gear in black mesh bags.

  They ran through the pre-operations checks on the vehicle cocooned inside the DDS—the Mark IX Swimmer Delivery Vehicle (SDV). The batteries were at full charge, everything was functioning properly. The Mark IX was a long, flattened rectangle with propellers and dive fins at the rear. A little over nineteen feet long, it was only slightly more than six feet wide and drew less than three feet

  The two divers slid inside, closing the hatches behind them. For the trip in they would breathe off air from the tanks on the vehicle and they hooked their breathing gear up appropriately.

  The man on the right spoke into the radiophone which was connected by umbilical to the sub. "Mother, this is Little Bird. We are clear to proceed. Over."

  "Roger, Little Bird. We read all green in here. Over."

  "Flood and release. Over."

  "We'll be waiting for you. Good hunting. Umbilicals cut and flooding and releasing. Out."

  The radiophone went dead. With a hiss, water began pouring into the DDS. The pilot worked at keeping the SDV at neutral buoyancy as the chamber flooded. Water also flooded into the chambers inside the SDV where the two divers lay on their stomachs peering out the front glass canopy.

  Once the chamber was full, the large hatch on the end swung open. The pilot goosed the twin propellers, and the SDV was free of the submarine, clearing the DDS. The pilot controlled the Mark IX using stabilizers, both horizontal and vertical, added to the rear of the propellers.

  The second diver was the navigator and he was currently punching in on the waterproof panel in front of him.

  "Fixing Doppler," he announced over the commo link between him and his cohort. The computerized Doppler navigation system was now updated with their current location and would guide them on their journey, greatly simplifying a task that previously was a nightmare in pitch-black seas. The SDV also boasted an obstacle-avoidance sonar subsystem (OAS), which provided automatic warning to the pilot of any obstacles in the sub's path—essential given that they could see little more than an inch out the front window and would be "flying" blind, trusting to the Doppler and their charts for navigation.

  "Course set. All clear," the navigator announced.

  The pilot increased power to the propellers and they were moving, heading due north.

  *****

  "It's like a shot in the dark, sergeant major," Vasquez said. "They're not going to come paddling through in a canoe."

  "No, they aren't," Skibicki agreed. "But that's why we got this, Vasquez," he said slapping the small black box between his legs. They were seated on the breakwater, just to the west of Fort Kamehameha, facing toward the channel leading into Pearl Harbor. A housing area for Hickam Air Force base was just behind them, but all was quiet, the two having crept in just after dark and taking up their position, easily hiding among the rocks whenever the rare Air Patrol car rolled by.

  "According to my buddy in Navy Special Ops we can pick up an octopus farting with this bad boy," Skibicki continued. "If they come in, we'll hear them and we'll be able to track them. We still up with the commander?" he asked, referring to the Satcom radio in the backpack she had carried.

  "I got them six by." Vasquez considered the situation. "But why tonight? The ceremony isn't until—"

  "Recon," Skibicki interrupted. "No man worth his salt would hit a target without taking a look first." He glanced out at the dark strip of water through which generations of fighting ships had passed. "They'll come."

  *****

  "Running clear," the navigator said. "I put us at three klicks off coast. Change heading to three-four-five degrees."

  "Three-four-five degrees," the pilot confirmed, as he manipulated the controls.

  "ETA, forty minutes."

  "Roger."

  The SDV slid through the water, the propellers leaving no trace, fifty feet below the surface. As they got closer the navigator directed the pilot up closer to the surface, at the same time being aware they were getting closer to the coral reefs lying off the shore.

  "We have one hundred feet under us," the navigator announced. Since Oahu was a volcanic island, the hydrography dictated rapid loss of water depth due to the steep slopes.

  "Eighty feet."

  "Sixty. We're near the reefs."

  The pilot slowed their forward speed.

  "Forty. I've got contact off to the right front Path still clear."

  The pilot slowed until they were at a crawl.

  *****

  "Hey, why does the commander—"

  "Shh," Skibicki said, slicing his across his throat. "I've got something." He listened hard into the headphones. "Something's coming underwater. Something small."

  *****

  "I've got solid contact," the navigator said. "Shoreline," he confirmed. "New heading, one-one-zero degrees."

  "One-one-zero degrees." The SDV turned hard right, paralleling the shore to the east.

  "What the fuck?" Skibicki muttered. He turned the hydrophone in the water, tracking. "They're going east!"

  "Not the harbor?" Vasquez asked, shifting her gaze in the indicated direction, even though she knew the vehicle that they were looking for was under water.

  "Come on," Skibicki said, pulling up the cord for the phone. "We've got to follow. Call it in."

  As Skibicki packed up the hydrophone, Vasquez called in the change to their higher commander.

  *****

  "Easy, easy," the navigator muttered. "On my mark. Hold."

  The pilot brought the SDV to a halt, then slowly let them sink down until they rested on the bottom, in forty feet of water, inside the coral reef off of the edge of Hickam Field, 200 meters off shore. To their front, due east, was the reef runway for Honolulu International Airport.

  "Switch to personal air," the pilot ordered before he shut down the vehicle system.

  The two men quickly turned off all the equipment on the SDV. They pushed open their hatches and slid out, pulling their equipment bags with them. Leaving the Mark IX resting on the bottom, they swam forward, toward the shore.

  "I've lost them," Skibicki cursed, throwing the headphones down. "They must have stopped. They'll be coming in some
where around here. Keep your eyes open," he ordered, pulling out his own set of night vision goggles. Putting them on, he then checked his MP-5 submachine gun, insuring the safety was on and a round was in the chamber.

  He looked over his shoulder. The hangars for the Hawaii Air National Guard abutted the shore, and in the distance the runways of the Air Force base lay straight ahead and those of the international airport were off to the right.

  *****

  The two swimmers cut smoothly through the warm water, their fins flickering back and forth. The lead man held his computer nav board in his hands, directly under his mask, reading the data off it. There was no visibility and they dared not use lights. He followed the indications on the small glowing screen in front of his face and turned slightly right, his buddy close on his fins.

  *****

  Skibicki and Vasquez walked past the Hickam Marina, weapons at the ready, eyes open for both the infiltrators and the Air Police. Skibicki saw a dark line ahead, cutting in from the shore—the Kumumau canal and, although he didn't know the destination, he now knew the route. It was what he would do. "Let's go," he ordered, sprinting toward the canal.

  *****

  The two swimmers found the entrance of the canal. It was very shallow, less than eight feet, and they swam just above the bottom. They put their navigation devices away now. There was only one way to go. They followed the narrow waterway until it ended, then carefully popped to the surface. They were inside the perimeter of Hickam Air Force Base and the large hangar that housed Air Force One was less than forty feet away.

  Caching their swim fins and nav devices, the two men slithered out of the water and began making their way through the six-inch grass toward the back of the hangar.