The Line

CHAPTER 23

Trace noticed a slight change in the Osprey’s speed and twisted on the web seating, peering out the window. Below, she spied the snow-covered mountains of Utah. The V-22’s propellers were laboring in the thin air to keep it going.

They were heading into the sun, which was low on the horizon.

Trace had slept quite a bit. Harry stayed at her side, only occasionally going up to the cockpit. Trace had settled her leg up on the web seat as comfortably as possible while at the same time trying to avoid twisting her ribs into a painful position. Harry had helped by placing two kit bags on the seat to give her some support.

Trace noticed a reflection to her right and tried to focus in the dwindling sunlight. Soon she didn’t have to squint as the object came closer on an interception vector. Trace wondered what a twin-bladed Chinook was doing here. The answer wasn’t long in coming. The Chinook swung out in front of the Osprey, the reason the V-22 had slowed down.

The back ramp of the helicopter came down and she saw the refueling nozzle.

Trace had heard about Special Operations Chinooks being modified to accomplish inflight refueling of other helicopters and she had no doubt that this particular helicopter — coming from the Nightstalkers of Task Force 160, the secret Army helicopter unit — was a specially modified MH-47. The Chinooks own refueling probe in front,

not standard equipment on regular CH-47s, reinforced that identification.

Harry came back from the cockpit.

“Doing all right?”

Trace nodded.

“As well as can be expected. My leg is starting to itch.” She pointed out the window.

“Where’d that come from?

“We can’t make it on one tank of gas, and we don’t want to be landing, so I asked Skibicki if he could get us some help.”

“Is that how we got this plane?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Trace wondered. Skibicki might be a sergeant major, but he certainly did not have the power to order an experimental aircraft to fly such a mission or to get the inflight refueling.

She felt a tremor of unease in her gut that Harry believed that.

Harry stood.

“We’ll be in Hawaii in about eight hours.

Try to get some more rest. You won’t be getting much when we land.” He went back to the cockpit.

Trace looked about at the interior of the Osprey, then out the window again at the Special Operations Chinook. The plastic box with the diary in it was on the seat next to her.

She opened the box and pulled it out. Trace turned to the first page.

The words were written in very neat, block letters and Trace read the initial entry:

12 June 1930 I will indeed mis my “rockbound highland home” above the Hudson, but I must admit to a certain degree of anticipation for the assignments that await me. I have become a man at West Point, and as a mman I will take my allotted place in the long Gray Line.

I thought my heart would burst today as we sat on the Plain and listened to Secretary Hurley give the graduation address. I find it difficult to believe four years have gon so quickly, yet looking at the faces of my classmates on either side I can see the changes wrought in us by the years. We came hera as boys we leave as warriors. And I have been fortunate enough to be the first of the chosen ones. I have received my instructions and training beyond that of my peers for the past two years. Now I am finally ready to go out into the Army as one of the Line.

Trace scanned slowly, reading Hooker’s account of his graduation. She paused and leaned back in the seat, feeling the throbbing from her legs. This was real. She was almost afraid to continue. Hooker was part of The Line. It was no longer a fanciful idea for a novel.

Indeed, she could see that she had had it wrong in her own writing.

Hooker had not been approached the night before graduation. He’d been part of The Line for two years prior. It made sense. They’d want to draw the cadets in and make them feel something even more special than being part of the Corps. Trace wondered when The Line approached cadets. Maybe Ring Weekend, when the new third-year cadets received their band of gold marrying them to the Academy and the Army.

She wished Hooker’s diary had started at the beginning of his association with The Line, but she realized it made little difference.

The important question was what had The Line done over the years. The part of her that was afraid to know grew stronger. Then she remembered Mrs. Howard lying in her bed in Maryland, telling her story of Patton and his death. Trace turned the page She scanned Hooker’s account of fulfilling his Rhodes Scholarship. There was no further reference to The Line.

Impatient, Trace flipped the pages. Where was Mrs. Howard’s story?

The story that had started all this. She found it a quarter of the way in:

Mrs. Howard’s story was true. And fifty years later she died because she repeated it. Trace knew there would be time later to go through the diary in detail. Now she just wanted a feel for what they were up against. Trace turned a chunk of pages, jumping several years. Her eye caught an entry on the bottom of the page, dated 1951:

Such casual references about events that preceded her life and were written about in history texts astounded Trace. Obviously the staff was the ruling council of the line. She turned several more pages, this time halting at a section that mentioned Eisenhower again.

As Trace read on, the U-2 crisis unfolded, but with a vastly different tint than that laid out in history books. CJ was Eisenhower’s top aide — a West Point graduate who had temporarily put aside his Army green uniform for a suit and tie and the role of National Security Adviser. Trace remembered him as a three-star general in charge of the III Corps at Fort Hood, Texas, while she was at West Point.

But in reality, CJ was the link between The Line and Eisenhower.

The cover story that CJ persuaded the President to issue — that the U-2 had wandered off course — was the key to destroying the summit when Khrushchev trotted out Gary Powers and another version of what — had happened days after the cover story was issued.

Despite these later deceptions, it was clear from Hooker’s writings that Eisenhower had had the complete support of The Line from the early days of World War II. They had groomed him after the end of the war for the Presidency, and his election was perhaps their greatest coup.

But somewhere along the way, Eisenhower had begun to disregard the advice of The Line. Trace could well imagine the difference for the former general. As commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War 2, his and The Line’s goals had been in congruence. But as President of a country at peace, Eisenhower’s vision must have shifted and become larger. No longer was having a strong military the number one priority. He had the entire welfare of the country to think of.

Trace flipped back several pages. The Line had strongly opposed any attempt at contact with the Russians and most particularly objected to the summit in Paris. Hooker’s diary didn’t exactly say how they had set up the U-2 incident, but there was a later mention of the CIA getting Powers back from the Soviets and taking care of him in order to keep him quiet.

Trace closed her eyes briefly in weariness. The Line had put forward one of their own and gotten him elected President and then when he failed to heed their wishes, they had sabotaged him repeatedly. She remembered reading about Eisenhower’s final speech as President where he had warned of the military-industrial complex. It was as blunt as he could get without directly exposing the machinations that had been behind his own rise to power. And after reading what The Line had done to Patton after he stepped out of cadence with their plans. Trace had no doubt that Eisenhower had been aware of his predicament.

If The Line could threaten and coerce presidents, what chance do we have? Trace thought to herself. She turned a few more pages.

Eisenhower had two terms. She noted Hooker’s shock at Kennedy’s election. The Line had sunk its claws into Nixon and backed him with a lot of help from Howard Hughes, who certainly had a stake in the military-industrial complex.

Trace kept reading. She read how The Line had helped the CIA mislead Kennedy about the invasion of Cuba and how they had assisted bringing about the disastrous events in the Bay of Pigs. After that Kennedy had paid more attention to his instructions from Langley and the Pentagon.

Trace found a diversion in the diary. Hooker had been at West Point, heading up the history department, but in early 1961 he went to Vietnam. There had been a U.S. military presence in that country since 1951, but it was a minor one.

No one had really heard of Vietnam up to that point, despite the French debacle at Dien Bien Phu.

Trace closed the diary. In a way she was surprised that it really didn’t surprise her. She’d already considered this idea when she was planning her novel. When people studied history, they often overlooked the obvious in search of reasons they considered valid historically, instead of reasons that were valid realistically. The two were often different.

Trace knew that Vietnam had been fought in an illogical manner. Never mind all the military complaints about civilian interference, it had not been the civilians who had invented the one-year rotation plan for all troops and the six-month rotation plans for officers to field leadership positions. The Army had known better. Its own studies from World War II had stated conclusively that the average junior officer lasted less than a month in combat. If they survived longer than that, they got much better and their survival rate, and that of their men, was considerably higher than average.

In its haste to “blood” as many officers as possible, the Army — The Line, Trace amended — had not only gotten the country involved in an unnecessary war, it had implemented procedures that had killed over 50,000 young Americans.

Trace knew that Hooker and his cronies would not decry that cost. They would point to the fact that the Cold War in Europe had been won. If Europe had gone hot, 50,000 dead could have occurred in one day, never mind over the course of a decade and a half.

But it was wrong. Dead wrong. Trace flipped the pages, jumping a couple of years ahead. 1963. The Line was not happy with Kennedy, as they had not been with his predecessor.

He had not pushed the missile crisis to the conclusion they had desired, that was evident from Hooker’s tone.

Trace paused. She ran her finger down the center of the book — there were pages missing. Between September, 1963, and December there was a gap. Why would that be?

Trace turned back to the beginning of the diary. If she was stuck here, she might as well read it from beginning to end.

A few hours later, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean she was done. Trace glanced up at the cockpit then reached into her coat and pulled out the pages she had torn out of the diary. She borrowed a pen from the plane’s crew chief and wrote a brief note on top of the front page, and then pushed it back into her jacket.

Boomer followed the edge of the jungle until he was directly behind Maggie’s house. He hoped no nosey neighbor was watching as he strode directly across her back yard, grabbed a hold of the deck and pulled himself up. The sliding glass door was unlocked as he had hoped, and he let himself in.

There had been no sign of Skibicki or Vasquez in their camp site in Waiwi, so Boomer had continued south. He needed to get a hold of Skibicki and figure out what to do next. Maybe Vasquez could come up with some new information.

Boomer walked through the living room, glancing at the phone. He went down the hall, and the half-open door to Maggie’s bedroom beckoned.

Boomer glanced in and saw a silver-framed picture among several on the table next to the bed. He stepped into the room for a closer look. A much younger Maggie, dressed in a bright sundress was standing with a young man in a Navy uniform, his two stripes of gold braid indicating he was a relatively low-ranking officer.

There was something vaguely familiar about the officer but the man’s eyes were shielded by the visor of his dress hat.

Maggie had a stroller in front of her with a baby in it and she was looking at the camera. In the backdrop, Boomer could see the hills of Oahu and Pearl Harbor.

Something caught Boomer’s eyes and he peered at the background more closely. He could make out Ford Island and numerous cranes on the island, dipping down into the water. There was a metal object poking out of the water and Boomer could swear it was-“Find something interesting?” Maggie asked from the doorway.

Boomer spun, embarrassed to have been caught snooping, the picture in his hand. Maggie glanced down at it, then pulled a cigarette out of her purse and lit it.

Boomer handed her the picture.

“I thought your daughter was killed in the raid on Pearl.” He pointed at the picture.

“There’s a child here, and it looks like the Arizona is sunk in the background of this picture and—”

“It is,” Maggie said. She walked over and took it from him.

“That’s Jimmie, my lover. Or more appropriately at the time of that picture, my former lover. George was at sea as usual when that was taken. And the child is Peter.

Jimmie’s son,” she added.

“Ski’s older brother, half brother to be more exact.”

Boomer blinked, and Maggie gave a sad smile.

“Oh, I ended the affair after the seventh when Grace died. But Peter, he was my answer to all that happened that day. I knew as soon as I found out I was pregnant that it had happened the night of the sixth.

George knew it wasn’t his — the timing and all. But he never said a word and raised Peter as his own.”

She tapped the photo.

“That’s the last day I ever talked to Jimmie. It was about a year and a half after the attack and he was doing something with his new job. We decided it was best if he moved on and we both forgot. Jimmie’s done real well with himself. I guess a lot of people are attracted to him.

He had me under his spell for a long time.

But he forgot and so did I, and I don’t want Ski to know, and, well, now I guess I’m just rambling.

“Peter died in Vietnam in 1966 with the 1st Cavalry Division in the la Drang valley. Like I told you — I lost one generation each way.”

Boomer wanted to know more about Jimmie and Pearl Harbor, but her mood told him it would have to be later.

Maggie took the picture and put it back next to the others on her nightstand.

“All I’ve known is military men, and I’m tired of it.” She led Boomer out of the bedroom.

“It’s just death and more death.” She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another.

“You want to find Ski, right?.”

“Yes.”

“He’s not here, and he won’t be back. If you look out the front window you’ll see a van parked down the street, keeping an eye on the house. I assume you came the back way since I was on the front porch watching the watchers.

Your best bet is to go out that way and go to the campsite in Waiwa.”

“I’ve already been there,” Boomer said.

“Last I spoke to him,” Maggie said, “Ski said he’ll be in and out of there sometime tonight.”

“What’s he doing?” Boomer asked.

Maggie sighed.

“Everything he can to stop these people, son, everything he can. Now you’d better get going too, before they come looking for you here.”

An hour later. Boomer was settled into the vegetation next to the campsite. With night coming. Boomer settled down for a long wait, praying that Skibicki would turn up sooner rather than later.

Senator Jordan rubbed a hand across his forehead.

“So what are you trying to tell me. General Maxwell?” he demanded.

Maxwell was not in the best of moods either.

“I have not been able to find where they took Major Watson. I’ve checked his file and talked to his commander at Bragg. He’s got an excellent record. I’ve checked on the information he gave us and as I told you earlier, I can neither confirm or negate it. I’d like to talk to him again.”

“Why don’t you just drop this whole thing?” Jordan asked.

“Because we finally heard something. I received a phone call a little while ago from a Sergeant Major Skibicki. He said that a plane with Major Trace and proof will be arriving sometime after midnight,” General Maxwell said.

Jordan leaned back in his chair.

“All right. I’ll arrange for Major Trace to be met at the airport and for her evidence to be brought here. As for Major Watson, he’s in the hands of the military. He’s not our problem any more.”

Skibicki glanced at the glowing hands on his watch and steadied his breathing. Another ten seconds. He checked the rope one last time, even though he had tied the knots himself and was confident they were secure. He looked down into the hangar. The large bulk of Air Force One loomed in the bright lights illuminating the inside of the hangar.

Vasquez tapped him on the shoulder and held up ten fingers.

“Ten seconds, sergeant major.”

Those lights went off exactly on schedule, as did all of Hickam Field and half of Pearl Harbor. Skibicki pulled up the night vision goggles that had been hanging on a string around his neck. He stood, climbed over the edge and carefully lowered himself into the vent, allowing the rest of the rope running from the snap link in the front of his waist harness to fall onto the top of the plane. He leaned back and extended his right arm, releasing the friction brake of the snap link pressure, and he slid down the rope. He’d rappeled hundreds of times, and even with the distorted depth perception of the goggles, he slid all the way, braking in perfect timing, just five feet above the top of the aircraft fuselage. He slowly dropped the remaining distance and landed just in front of the intake for inflight refueling.

Skibicki knelt and looked into the intake. He saw a small, plastic-wrapped package. He pulled off the leather gloves he’d worn for rappeling and carefully felt around the package.

It was covered in adhesive, but there seemed to be no obvious external anti-handling devices. Of course, Skibicki knew, that didn’t mean it might not have some sophisticated device on the inside, but he doubted that. They wanted it to go off once the plane was in the air, which meant the bomb had to be able to survive take off. He figured the odds were that the detonator was set to go off at a predetermined altitude.

It was the way he would have designed it.

Using a knife, Skibicki carefully pried the bomb loose, then tucked it into a small backpack, which he threw across his shoulders. He pulled two chumars off a snap link on the side of his harness and hooked them into the rope. The chumars locked into place, one-way metal devices that he could push up, but then they would hold against downward pressure. Nylon straps were attached to the chumars with loops on the end that he stuck his feet through. He slid the left hand one up as far as he could reach, then stepped up, levering himself up with a leg.

He did the same with the right and began his ascent. A mental clock was counting down in his head. His worst case estimate was that he had ten minutes before the post engineers would find the Junction box with the “electrocuted” snake jammed into it. It was a rare accident but one that was known to happen.

Once they found that, the power would be back on.

Halfway up, Skibicki had to halt, out of breath. He could hear the Secret Service agents down below, yelling to each other, not overly concerned from the tone of their voices.

They could see out the hangar door that the rest of the post was in darkness. Skibicki would have cursed if he had the breath; he was getting old. He was surprised when he felt the rope jerk and then move upward a couple of feet. He looked up and in the goggles he could see Vasquez reach over the edge, grab a fistful of rope, and pull him up a few more feet.

Skibicki grinned, took a few deep breaths, then resumed climbing. He reached the top and and with Vasquez’s help pulled himself over the edge. Quickly they pulled the rope up and resecured the vent top.

They made their way to the edge of the roof and began the climb back down to the ground on the metal rungs bolted into the side of the building. The outside lights flickered on for a second then went off.

Three-quarters of the way down, the lights went back on for almost ten seconds, and Skibicki and Vasquez froze until the lights went out again.

Reaching the grass at the back of the hangar Skibicki paused, Vasquez bumping into him. Off to the left was the safety of the canal, to the right the E4-B the Joint Chiefs had arrived in sat on the tarmac.

Skibicki hefted the back 9 pack and paused. The lights for the airfield came back on and stayed on. Then he made his decision; he still had time before he had to make the rendezvous.

“Wait here,” he whispered to Vasquez.