The Line bo-2

by Bob Mayer

  Skibicki shook his head.

  “He ran into the establishment and they broke him. And he was one of them too, a West Pointer, but they busted his ass. We damn near had the closest thing to a revolt that the U.S. Army ever saw when they arrested Rison at group headquarters in Nha Trang. A camps all over the country were locking and loading and ready to fight it out with the regular Army. Hell, all us guys in SOG were ready to fly into Saigon and waste those regular motherfuckers at MACV headquarters.”

  “Rison was arrested?” Boomer asked.

  “For what?”

  “Remember that double agent I mentioned earlier?” Skibicki paused and seemed to consider what he was saying and then changed his mind.

  “You don’t want to get into all that.” Skibicki waved a hand.

  “Forget what I said all right? I’ve heard so much bullshit in twenty-nine years in the service that I can’t remember what’s real and what’s not. Forget it.”

  Despite Boomer’s attempts at rekindling the subject, Skibicki refused to talk and Boomer reluctantly went with him back to the tunnel. He spent the rest of the morning going through the classified files, destroying out of date folders and inventorying what was left.

  His mind was only half on his job, and just before lunch he cornered Skibicki, who was in the very rear of the tunnel, pulling maintenance on scuba equipment.

  “Sergeant major, do you know someone at Bragg in the schoolhouse who can check records?”

  “What kind of records?” Skibicki asked, carefully leaning a scuba tank against a wall locker.

  “Q Course graduates. Or, more specifically, eighteen qualified officers.”

  Skibicki nodded.

  “Sure.” He glanced at the large dive watch on his wrist.

  “Only problem is that it’s 1200 here.

  That makes it 1700 on a Thursday afternoon on the east coast. They’ll all be at the Green Beret club at Bragg sucking down brews.”

  “Can you do it first thing tomorrow?”

  “Who do you want me to check on?”

  “A major named Keyes.”

  “The new CO for Alpha, 1st of the 1st?”

  Boomer nodded.

  Skibicki’s heavily tanned’ arms rippled as he hoisted the air tank and settled it in place in the wall locker.

  “That battalion in Okinawa has been fucked up for twenty years, sir.

  Never could quite figure out what was going on out there. They had that big shit storm eight years ago about running demo into Thailand and selling it on the black market.

  Hell, 60 Minutes did a special on it. Then they had that plot to kill one of the company sergeant majors.”

  Boomer had heard about some of that. It had been a bad blemish on the name of Special Forces in the media. Every so often there was an article about some Green Beret doing something stupid, and it tainted the entire Special Operations community. One of the most aggravating things for Boomer was when he walked into a bookstore and saw the book Fatal Vision with the green beret with the old 5th Group flash and the medical corps insignia on the cover.

  The subject of the book, McDonald, had not even been Special Forces-qualified, yet he had always been referred to as the “Green Beret Doctor.”

  There was no doubt that some Special Forces people went over the edge occasionally. When an organization attracted highly qualified people as S-F did, it invariably attracted its own share of highly qualified wackos. When Boomer had gone through selection for Delta Force, he had to go through severe physical and mental challenges that had knocked out over ninety-five percent of his classmates.

  Then the survivors had undergone a rigorous psychological screening to find out if they could handle the stress of the job and were mentally stable.

  In retrospect. Boomer found the psych screening amusing, although at the time it had been very serious — several otherwise highly qualified individuals who had passed all other tests had been washed out on the rd of the psych panel. Boomer had to wonder what kind of stable personality they were looking for: one that was capable of performing brutal tasks, yet not enough of a sociopath to ignore orders.

  All those thoughts brought Boomer’s mind back to the matter of 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group.

  “Lheard the battalion commander out there got relieved over that black market stuff.”

  Skibicki took out talcum powder and began sprinkling it on the rubber cuffs of a dry suit.

  “Nope. He finished his tour and got his little command box checked off. They said he wasn’t responsible. That he didn’t know what was going on in his own unit.”

  “You heard anything about strange personnel procedures out there?” Boomer asked.

  Skibicki put the talcum powder down.

  “We don’t use this scuba gear too much here, but we’re authorized four dive slots. I pull one. Colonel Falk has one, and we got two open.”

  He looked at the patch on Boomer’s chest.

  “You definitely want to get some diving in while you’re here. We got some great water. I’ll sign you out a complete set.”

  “I’d like that,” Boomer said.

  Skibicki leaned back against the wall locker and folded his massive arms. He spoke slowly.

  “Yeah, there’s some weird shit going on in 1st Battalion. I’ll check on that name for you.”

  The scuba gear reminded Boomer of the message in his pocket.

  “One other thing, sergeant major. Do you know of a jump scheduled for early morning on the second?”

  “Saturday morning? No.”

  “Ever heard of a Task Force Reaper?”

  “No.”

  “Ever heard of a water DZ named Gumbo?”

  “Yeah. That’s off the northeast corner of the island: We use it once in a while for water jumps.”

  Boomer pulled the message out of his pocket and silently handed it over. Skibicki scanned it.

  “If someone’s jumping Gumbo Saturday morning, I sure as shit should have heard about it because there ain’t too many people that can be drop zone safety officer for a water jump on this island other than me.

  I should have been tasked for bodies to pull drop zone safety.

  According to safety regs you have to have one boat per jumper. It’s a damn nightmare. I don’t know why the colonel hasn’t told me about this.”

  “Maybe they aren’t having any safety boats,” Boomer said.

  “Maybe the colonel doesn’t want you to know about these people coming in. He got kind of pissed when he saw that I had broken the message out.”

  Skibicki’s eyes widened slightly.

  “If they ain’t using safety boats, then they’re violating about twenty fucking regulations. And that means they’re planning on drowning their chutes and not recovering them. You know how much a chute costs?

  Sounds to me like someone’s planning a real world operation.”

  “Any idea where these people are from?” Boomer asked.

  “Not a clue, and I don’t think I’ll be going to ask the colonel either.

  He don’t want me to know, I don’t fucking know.” Skibicki answered, handing back the message.

  Boomer pocketed the piece of paper and hesitated. He had one last question, triggered by Skibicki’s comments.

  “Sergeant major, have you ever heard of an organization called The Line?”

  Skibicki paused ever so briefly, then answered almost inaudibly, his eyes locked on the scuba locker.

  “No.”

  “You sure?” Boomer pressed, picking up the hesitation.

  “The reason I’m asking is cause you said my dad’s death was caused by West Pointers and I’ve heard that there was this group of West—”

  “I said no,” Skibicki snapped, glaring at Boomer. He turned and looked away for a few seconds, regaining his composure. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card and handed it to Boomer. A green beret with a knife across it was embossed on it. Along the top it said PARATROOPER, RANGER, SPECIAL FO
RCES, WORLD TRAVELER, SINGER, SALESMAN, BULLSHIT ARTIST. Skibicki’s home and work address and phone numbers were listed in the center. At the bottom the rest of Skibicki’s qualifications were listed: revolutions started; orgies organized; ASSASSINATIONS PLOTTED; BARS EMPTIED; ALLIGATORS CASTRATED; TIGERS TAMED; VIRGINS CONVERTED; OTHERS SATISFIED.

  “I only did that shit in my younger days,” Skibicki said, noting Boomer reading it. “you need anything, you give me a call, OK? I don’t know why you’re here, but it sounds like you might be needing some help.”

  Boomer took the card.

  “Thanks, sergeant major, but I’m just here TDY for a couple of weeks to take it easy.”

  “Uh-huh,” Skibicki, said, turning back to the equipment.

  “Well, be careful taking it easy.”

  CHAPTER 6

  MAKAKILO, OAHU, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS

  30 NOVEMBER

  1:30 P.M.LOCAL 2330 ZULU

  It was payday, a significant event for the military. Although most soldiers now had direct deposit twice a month, the last duty day of the month was still formerly known as payday. It was usually designated as a half day of work with the morning being given over to such vital military acts as a Class A (dress) uniform inspection.

  Trace had forgotten that it was payday when she’d told Boomer what time she’d be home. Camp Smith, where she worked, was a small post run by the Marines nestled in the foothills of Halawa Heights. It was the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) and also housed Headquarters Fleet Marine Force Pacific.

  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 OP CON 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 WEST COM (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 eye
s 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 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 escalatod 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 treeline waiting in ambush.