The Line bo-2

by Bob Mayer

  “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 “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 holes 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.

  Boomer had to concur with that reasoning.

  “It’s probably not safe to stay here,” he said.

  “If you’re right,” Skibicki said, “I’ve got a place where you’ll be safe.”

  PACIFIC PALISADES. OAHU

  30 NOVEMBER

  4:30 P.M.LOCAL 0230 ZULU

  The place Skibicki chose for Boomer and Trace was his mother’s house, high along the slopes of the Waiwa Forest Reserve, six kilometers due north of the East Loch of Pearl Harbor.

  Maggie welcomed them and after a brief huddle with Skibicki settled Trace down in her spare bedroom. The four of them met in her living room, brightly lit by the sun in a descending hover over the mountains to the west.

  “This is ridiculous,” Trace said.

  “I mean, I just got shot at for Christ’s sake and the police act like it’s no big deal.”

  “The crime rate is so high nowadays,” Maggie said.

  “I remember when you could leave your house unlocked all the time. I used to never lock my car, no matter where on the island I went. Now I have to carry a can of mace on my key chain.”

  “I don’t think the cops are going to do much about this,” Boomer said.

  He looked” at Skibicki.

  “What do you say we do a little work on our own?”

  Skibicki nodded.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  MAKAKILO, OAHU, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS

  30 NOVEMBER

  7:30 P.M.LOCAL 0530 ZULU

  Although night was settling over the mountainside, the two men had no trouble maneuvering. Their night vision goggles took what light there was and computer-enhanced it to provide a greenish version of daylight inside the lenses.

  One of the men set the tripod for the Remington 700 down, then carefully screwed the rifle onto the tripod. He flipped the on switch for the rifle’s night scope and gave it a few seconds to warm up, before trading his goggles for the view through the scope. He scanned the house, then the immediate area.

  “Anything?” the other asked.

  “House is dark, no cars parked outside.”

  The second man sat down, leaning his back against the small pack he was carrying. The woman comes back, you do her, first clear shot you get.

  Take out her trigger-happy boyfriend too and anybody else.”

  The first man smiled and settled in comfortably behind the scope.

  CHAPTER 7

  MAKAKILO, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS

  1 DECEMBER

  3:30 A.M.LOCAL 1330 ZULU

  Boomer watched as Skibicki unlocked the footlocker that was bolted to the back of his jeep. The drawer on top held tiger-stripe fatigues, their fabric worn with time. He lifted the tray to get to the contents beneath. He grabbed a Calico M-950-A machine pistol and checked its functioning. It had a built-in sound-suppressor that gave it a short, stubby barrel.

  The body consisted of a pistol grip and an open bolt assembly facing up.

  Skibicki reached in a black bag and pulled out a cylindrical magazine — the most unique feature of the Calico.

  The magazine, two and a quarter inches in diameter and a little over seven inches long settled into place on top of the weapon, overhanging the rear slightly. Totally unlike any other magazine Skibicki had ever used, the fluted cartridge carrier in the center of the magazine held seven 9mm bullets and the helix around the cartridge carrier held forty three more rounds, giving the moulded plastic contraption a fifty-round capacity and outgunning any other pistols and automatic weapons around.

  Skibicki slipped a shoulder harness over his head, hooking the pistol to the right side and sliding a spare magazine into the open pouch on the left. He took a small cloth brass catcher and slipped it over the bottom ejector, ensuring that his brass would stay with him if he had to shoot.

  He removed a second Calico and handed it to Boomer.

  “Fifty rounds in the magazine. It operates closed-bolt, retarded blowback, like the H&K MP-5 you use in Delta.”

  Boomer slid the magazine on top of the housing and chambered a round.

  He checked the heft of the weapon, sighting down the raised sights across the small parking lot where they were leaving Skibicki’s jeep.

  “You can fire one-handed,” Skibicki said.

  “Real smooth operation. It goes up and slightly right at first, then settles down on target. You can fire all fifty rounds in one burst if you want.” He handed over two additional magazines and a shoulder holster.

  “You got a laser sight on top.

  Switch is here,” he added, tapping the side of the gun. He handed over a set of PVS-7 night vision goggles and slipped on his own set.

  “Ready to go for a walk?”

  They’d driven back trails through the jungle north of Puu Makakilo until they were about a thousand meters away from a hill on the northeast side. The side opposite Trace’s house. They left the jeep behind and started through the vegetation, allowing the bulk of the hill to shield them from the site they’d found the previous day. After carefully checking both directions, they scampered across Palehua Road, the same road Trace had used when she’d unexpectedly come upon the men.

  As they got closer to the summit, Skibicki slowed down.

  Boomer matched the veteran’s pace. They went around the side of the hilltop. When Skibicki went prone, Boomer dropped to h
is belly also, and they remained frozen for fifteen minutes. Boomer caught a faint whiff of cigarette smoke borne by the landward breeze and his finger curled out and flipped off the safety on the Calico. He tapped Skibicki and then touched his nose. Skibicki nodded.

  They began moving down the hillside at an excrutiatingly slow pace, often pausing for five to ten minutes, using the rustle of the wind to cover their movement. They didn’t have to exchange a word, the two men moving as a unit.

  An untrained person would have thought their progress unbelievably slow, but Boomer appreciated the older man’s stealth.

  After two’hours, they finally reached a point on the edge of the small clearing, slightly to right of the tree that had been marked by the knife throwing.

  Boomer scanned the clearing, taking in the two men and the sniper rifle set on tripod. One man was watching the house through the scope on the top of the rifle. The other was lying down, his back against a rucksack. Several cigarette butts were in the dirt next to him.

  Boomer and the sergeant major watched them for a half hour waiting to see if there was any change to the routine.

  Finally, Skibicki glanced at Boomer, who nodded. He edged sideways until he was about fifteen feet away from Skibicki. When the sergeant major stood. Boomer did also, the pistol held steady in his right hand, muzzle centered on the man at the rifle.

  “Just hold it right where you are,” Skibicki said, Boomer was surprised when the one on the right rolled left, reaching for a pistol in his shoulder holster. Skibicki fired a sustained burst, the first round hitting the sniper rifle, ricocheting off, then he walked the line of bullets into the man, hitting him four times in the chest as the weapon the man had been reaching for cleared its holster. It fell to the dirt next to dead fingers.

  If the second man had reacted promptly, his partner’s death might not have been in vain, but he froze, caught between reaching for his own pistol and surprise.

  “Hands up,” Boomer said.

  The man bent forward to stand up, and his right hand brushed his pant leg. Boomer’s training kicked in and he fired, his bullets stitching a bloody trail up the man’s stomach and chest. The man’s arms flew wide as the bullets knocked him backwards. The Calico handled smoothly, the unique balance of weight caused by the nontraditional magazine allowing it to be fired accurately with one hand.