The Line bo-2

by Bob Mayer

  “I’ve played the game.”

  But Skibicki wasn’t done.

  “Those guys we killed could be Company. Sooner or later they’re going to backtrack to us, if they haven’t already. Our names are on that damn police report.”

  “But what’s the CIA doing operating inside the States?” Boomer asked.

  “I just said they might be CIA,” Skibicki said.

  “There’s so many damn private armies running around sanctioned by the government it could be anybody. Hell, you guys in Delta are just the tip of the iceberg.”

  Boomer leaned toward Skibicki and spoke in a low, measured tone.

  “Do you think’ there’s a connection between these guys here on the island and 1st of the 1st.”

  “If those are Keyes’ guys making the jump,” Skibicki answered.

  Boomer pulled out the copy of the JAVIS report from his breast pocket.

  “What about the plane for this water jump? If we can find out about that, then maybe we can get an idea what’s going on. We need to know if it’s coming from Okinawa.”

  Skibicki started turning pages in his spiral notebook.

  “That will take a little while.”

  “I’ll give Trace a call and fill her in on what’s going on,” Boomer said. He went to the desk across from Skibicki and dialed Trace’s work number. When she came on the line, he related what had happened at the hotel and their discoveries so far. As Skibicki hung up. Boomer told her to come to the tunnel.

  “The plane isn’t from the island,” Skibicki said.

  “And it ain’t from the mainland. At least it’s not listed in the Military Airlift Command master files.”

  Boomer looked at the message and considered the contents in a different light. “Why fourteen men and two bundles for a water jump? Why not two full teams? That would be twenty-four people.”

  “Can’t fit twenty-four on a Combat Talon with bundles.

  Especially if the bundles are rubber boats. Normal load for a rubber boat drop from a Talon is two boats and fourteen personnel,” Skibicki replied, referring to the modified ME-130 transport plane that the Air Force used for special missions.

  “That makes sense,” Boomer said.

  “Then it’s probably a Talon doing the drop. They’ll be able to come in low to the coast of the island and not get picked up on radar. Hell, I talked to one of those Talon jockeys last year, and he said they flew right up on the aircraft carrier America at wavetop level and never came up on the radar screens.”

  “Plus they’re pushing bundles,” Skibicki said.

  “That means ramp jump from a 130. It’s a bitch to get a bundle out of anything larger than a 130.”

  “What about SOW?” Boomer asked, referring to the Air Force’s Special Operation Wing that had all the MC-13 °Combat Talons under its command.

  “They’re not under MAC control. Anything on their location?”

  “I checked that too. My buddy at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida says that two of their Combat Talons are deployed and he isn’t saying where, but I got the impression they were over in Europe supporting NATO missions. They moved the squadron of Talons that used to be stationed in the Philippines to Japan. It’s too early for me to be checking there.”

  Skibicki tapped the phone.

  “The problem is every time I call someone on this thing, the chances increase that someone’s going to get counter-curious about my questions.

  Besides, I don’t think these people are going to be dumb enough to have the flight plan for this operation listed anywhere,” Skibicki concluded.

  “Not if they’re using fake DIA ID cards for cover”

  “Come here,” Boomer said. He led the sergeant major into the empty conference room and closed the door behind them. He pointed at the large map of the Pacific posted on the wall. “I agree that the flight plan for the aircraft flying this mission will probably be classified and we won’t be able to get a look at it. But how far is it from Okinawa to the drop zone here?”

  “About 4,000 miles,” Skibicki said, having flown across the Pacific numerous times in his career.

  “Mission range on a Talon without refueling is 2,800 nautical miles, which is a little over 3,000 miles,” Boomer said, figuring the numbers on a notepad. “Which means—”

  “Which means if the plane is coming from Okie they’re going to have to inflight refuel,” Skibicki said, catching Boomer’s logic.

  “Which means we can check on KC-10 tanker missions scheduled for the night of the jump. I’ll get on it as soon as they wake up. Most of the tankers in the Pacific fly out of Guam.”

  “All right, let’s play with this a little,” Boomer said.

  “Let’s assume it’s fourteen guys from 1st Group under Keyes command jumping in tomorrow night with rubber boats. What’s the plan?”

  “It’s got to involve water,” Skibicki said.

  “They could just as easily do a rough terrain jump into the center of the island.”

  “I disagree,” Boomer said.

  “A water jump is the most secure way to go. They can drown the chutes, get accountability for everyone, and come ashore together. They try a rough terrain drop on the island they could lose someone or somebody could break a leg.”

  “We’re on an island,” Skibicki said, circling his finger around his head.

  “That means we’re surrounded by water.

  Odds are, they’re going to come from the water to do whatever they have planned.”

  Boomer looked at the calendar.

  “They’re jumping at 1200 Zulu on the second. What’s that local time?”

  “0200 local time on the second — Saturday morning,” Skibicki calculated.

  “Who’s jumping?” Trace asked from the door of the conference room.

  “Sergeant Vasquez told me you were back here.”

  Boomer quickly brought her up to speed, then went back to the problem.

  “So what are they coming here for?” Boomer asked.

  “And what do you think this means?” He reached into his pocket, pulled a ring out, and looked at it.

  “What do you have there?” Skibicki asked.

  “I took this off the man I knocked out at the hotel.”

  Boomer turned it around.

  “Class of’eighty-four.”

  “West Pointer,” Skibicki said, taking the ring and looking at it.

  “Whose is it?” Trace asked.

  Boomer took the ring back and looked on the inside.

  “Peter Killington.”

  Trace shook her head.

  “Don’t know him.”

  “Let me run his name,” Skibicki said.

  “Find out where he’s assigned.”

  They waited as Skibicki made several phone calls. When he was done, his face indicated that the news wasn’t good.

  “There is no Peter Killington listed on active duty or in the reserves.”

  “Another person who doesn’t exist,” Boomer said.

  Skibicki held up a hand.

  “Just because he’s not listed doesn’t mean he isn’t in the service. I remember when I was in 7th Group our battalion XO didn’t get picked up for lieutenant colonel. When he sent a letter to the board asking why, they sent the letter back saying he had not been considered because they never saw his file. He didn’t exist.

  “Turns out, his previous assignment was with the ISA-Intelligence Service Agency,” Skibicki clarified for Trace.

  “A high-speed unit that did a lot of covert work. People in that unit are buried deep and their records pulled.”

  “So you’re saying these people could be military but working under deep cover,” Trace said.

  Boomer nodded.

  “You won’t find my name listed anywhere at the Department of the Army.

  But that still brings us back to the question: who are these guys working for?”

  A thought struck him.

  “Decker!” Seeing the looks on their faces, he exp
lained.

  “Colonel Decker — he was here in the tunnel the other day. He’s the one who—” Boomer paused as he realized what he was about to say. Then all the pieces came together, and Boomer staggered back. He grabbed a chair to steady himself and sat down.

  “Are you OK?” Trace put a hand on his shoulder and leaned over.

  “Oh my God,” Boomer muttered.

  “Oh my God.”

  CHAPTER 9

  FORT SHAFTER

  1 DECEMBER

  9:45 A.M.LOCAL 1945 ZULU

  “Sit down and let me explain from the beginning,” Boomer said, forestalling Skibicki’s and Trace’s questions.

  He began with the mission into the Ukraine, sketching out the events and the people involved. Trace was shocked to learn that the inspectors had been killed by Boomer’s team, but Skibicki seemed none too surprised.

  “You think it was deliberate?” he asked Boomer.

  “Yes. Especially after seeing the fall-out in the press over the deaths. I think we were sent there to kill exactly who we killed and I think Decker knew it from the start.”

  Then he described seeing Decker in the tunnel, the strange happenings in A Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group, with Wilkerson being set up and relieved and Keyes taking over. He added the mysterious jump scheduled for the night of the second with the men in the hotel room who happened to have a load of scuba gear.

  “Combine all that with the military’s unhappiness over the MRA and the existence of The Line—”

  “Possible existence,” Trace cut in.

  “This doesn’t look like just possible,” Boomer said, pointing at the ring he’d taken off the man at the hotel.

  “Nothing here has just been a coincidence.

  “Anyway,” he conceded, “add in the’ possible existence of this Line organization, and I think we have a bad situation here.”

  Trace shook her head.

  “I don’t understand what 1st of the 1st has to do with this. So you’ve got a new CO for A Company 1st of the 1st. One who’s politics are sort of right wing.”

  “But he’s not S-F-qualified,” Boomer noted.

  Trace continued on.

  “And he’s taking over because the last commander said he got set up to be relieved and his company is getting new people in that he doesn’t have authority to slot where he wants. Did they set up his making the mistake that got him relieved?”

  “They’re stacking a couple of teams there,” Boomer insisted, giving his explanation for events on Okinawa.

  “Uh-huh,” Trace said.

  “And you have these fourteen people and two bundles jumping into a water DZ on the night of the second off the coast.”

  “Most likely those same teams from 1st of the 1st,” Boomer said.

  “But how can you connect them to The Line. If The Line exists?”

  “I don’t have a direct connection,” Boomer conceded.

  “But I think someone, somewhere, is pulling some strings and most of the principal players are West Pointers.”

  “So are we,” Trace interrupted.

  “Yeah, but we aren’t Rhodes Scholars,” Boomer said sarcastically.

  “If they only pick a couple of people every few years, I’m not too surprised they didn’t pick us to be part of their little organization.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Trace said, trying to smile.

  “I ranked in the top twenty of my class.”

  “Shit, Trace,” Boomer said.

  “Get real. You could have been number one and they wouldn’t give you the time of day. The Line probably had a shit fit when Congress passed that law allowing woman into the Academy. The damn super intendant at the time threatened to resign.”

  “Let’s get back to facts,” Trace said.

  “We have no proof that The Line exists. All I had were the muddled memories of an old lady. And what does that have to do with my manuscript? The men in the hotel were connected to the men you killed behind the house. You’re only connecting them to this jump because of their scuba gear—”

  “The map,” Boomer said tapping it, “locks them together.”

  “OK, they’re connected,” Trace said.

  “If this is all fact, what are they here to do?”

  Boomer rubbed his eyes, his voice cracking with fatigue.

  “When is the President arriving?”

  Trace slumped back, the disbelief apparent on her fine features.

  Skibicki silently went to a table in the corner of-the room and pulled out a sheet of papers with a classified stamp on the cover.

  “This is the OPLAN for security. He arrives on Ohau the morning of the sixth. He’s attending a fundraising dinner at the Royal Hawaiian on the night of the sixth, then the ceremony at Pearl on the morning of the seventh. He’s scheduled to commemorate the anniversary with a minute of silence at 7:54 a.m.” the time when the attack started.

  His speech is set for 8:00 a.m.

  “So we have six days.”

  “Hold on one second,” Trace said.

  “How do you come up with a plot against the President? I think you’re stretching here. Boomer.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who’s writing the book,” Boomer replied.

  “You’re the one that told me about The Line.”

  “But I was talking about fiction. A novel. Boomer, you know like Stephen King and John Grisham.”

  “You based it on facts as told to you,” Boomer said.

  “You just automatically assumed she was senile. What if she’s floating with all her oars and told you the biggest secret of the century? God, Trace, it’s as if she told you the mob shot JFK and you called Joe Bonanno and said, “Hey, wanna hear a good story?”

  “Calm down, both of you,” Skibicki said. He was looking at the map.

  “The water jump. It makes sense now. The President’s speaking at Pearl Harbor; that has quite a bit of water in it, last I checked. If I was going to plan an operation, knowing the security that the President always has, I don’t think I’d come at him on land.”

  “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 PA COM 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 mi
nd this thing exists and you,” she said, pointing at Skibicki, “think they’re going 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 whatiffing through history like you did is exactly what happened. Can you talk to this woman again? Is she still 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.