The Line

CHAPTER 24

“They had some problems at the airfield with the lights, ‘ but they’re back up,” Harry reported.

Trace watched the beach along Waikiki glide past as the pilot descended into his glide path. The hotels lining the shore were well lighted despite the late hour. Trace was, startled as the plane banked hard left, further out over the; water.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Harry didn’t answer. He was busy buckling on a parachute that he’d pulled off it’s place on the wall of the cabin.

“What are you doing?”

“Can’t be landing with you, missy,” Harry said.

“The Secret Service and all those type folks will be waiting, and I killed a few people back there in New York. My job is done. It’s up to you now.” He stepped over to her and | grabbed the seat belt, buckling it in around her.

“You be safe now.”

Trace thought for a second, then reached inside her jacket. She pulled out the pages she’d torn from the diary | and thrust them into Harry’s hand.

“Just in case something I goes wrong on my end,” she said, “here’s part of the diary.

I hope to see Boomer soon, but if I don’t, you get this to him.”

i Harry nodded an acknowledgement and stuffed the pages inside his flight suit and zipped it shut. With a roar the back ramp opened, and Harry stepped close to the opening.

When it was fully open. Harry stepped out into the darkness and was gone. The back ramp immediately began to close, and the pilot turned them back on a heading for Hickam Field.

Trace felt like she was in a vacuum as the plane descended, all alone in the back of the aircraft except for the crew chief who had remained quiet for the entire trip. The velocity of the Rsprey slowed considerably. Trace remembered reading that the plane had to land in the helicopter mode as the blades were too big to allow landing with them in the forward position. She glanced out the window as the ground came up. She could make out military aircraft parked along the runway and several Air Police cars with lights flashing waiting to meet them.

There were also two unmarked cars with darkened windows there.

The V-22 touched down and the engines immediately began rotating down.

The back ramp opened, and Trace unbuckled her seat belt. Two men in three-piece suits stepped up in, stopping briefly in surprise at her condition.

“Major Trace?” the lead man asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m Special Agent Fielder,” he said holding out his ID card.

“I’m to escort you.” He paused.

“I understand you have a document.”

Trace held up the diary, but pulled it back when Fielder reached for it.

“I’d prefer to keep my hands on it until I see the President,” she said.

Fielder kept his hand out.

“What you prefer is not important right now. Give me the document.”

A pair of headlights swept up the trail and raked across the open area.

Boomer waited until Skibicki got out before moving. Skibicki must have heard Boomer coming because he knelt and pulled out a pistol, pointing it in his direction.

“Hold it right there.”

“It’s Boomer Watson, sergeant major,” Boomer called out.

Skibicki slowly stood.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Boomer twisted his head as he heard someone getting out of the other side of the jeep. The newcomer was a tall, massively built black man with a completely shaven head.

Skibicki did the introductions.

“Major Boomer Watson, meet Harry Franks.”

Boomer shook hands.

“I’ve heard about you,” he said.

“Thank you for what you did for Trace.”

“My privilege,” Harry said.

“Is she all right?”

“I jumped off the plane before we landed,” Harry said.

“Ski picked me up off shore a few hours ago. Last I saw the lady was fine. She suffered some injuries but she’s in good hands now.”

Boomer looked at both of them.

“We need to do something.

The Secret Service and those close to the President aren’t going to act. They’ve been infiltrated by these fake DIA people.”

Skibicki grabbed his arm.

“You ran away from them?

They don’t know you’re gone?” he asked.

“Oh, they know I’m gone,” Boomer said, remembering the car he’d left in the tunnel.

“You were supposed to warn the President!” Skibicki yelled at him.

“I couldn’t even get close to him!” Boomer said angrily.

Skibicki had no reply to that.

“Have you heard anything new?” Boomer asked in a calmer voice.

“The Sam Houston is lying off-coast. I think they’ll infil tonight sometime. Nothing from the north shore. Trace landed a little while ago, and your friends in the Secret Service have her in tow along with the diary. Hopefully that will make the President act. If not…” He slapped the dive knife he was throwing into a mesh bag.

“There’s a good chance whoever met her isn’t Secret Service,” Boomer said.

“She’s might be in the hands of The Line right now.”

Skibicki shook his head.

“I talked to General Maxwell.

He said he’d make sure she’s safe. Tell me what happened from the time I dropped you off at the hotel.”

“Maxwell was there when they took me away to kill me,” Boomer said.

Boomer laid out the events of the past twenty-four hours starting with meeting Stewart in the lobby through killing the two men at the abandoned ammo depot.

“I don’t think Maxwell’s with them,” Skibicki said.

“I don’t think so either,” Boomer said, “but that doesn’t mean Trace is safe.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Skibicki said.

“So what now?” Boomer asked, looking from Skibicki to Harry.

Skibicki pointed down to the harbor.

“My guess is that they’ll sneak into the harbor probably around four or five in the morning,” Skibicki said.

“Hooker’s on the island,” he added.

“He’s staying at the V.I.P quarters at Pearl.”

“How do you know that?” Boomer asked.

“I have sources,” Skibicki answered as he sat down in the passenger seat of the jeep. Harry sat on the hood.

“What sources?” Boomer asked.

“Listen,” Skibicki said.

“You opened this can of worms. I’m doing the best I can to deal with it.”

“What’s the plan?” Boomer asked.

“Can you at least tell me that — our plan, that is.”

Skibicki had a long, double-edged knife out and was sharpening it on a whetstone. Skibicki checked the edge against the hair on his forearm.

“We go down to the channel entrance around midnight. I’ve got a sonar device that can listen for them coming in on their SDV. We hear them, we go into the water and meet’em.” The hair curled up as the blade slid up his arm.

“Winner walks away. Loser’s shark bait.”

“Did Trace tell you anything about the contents of the diary?” Boomer asked Harry.

Harry shook his head, but then suddenly remembered something. He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out some pages.

“She said to give you this — it’s part of the diary.”

Boomer took the pages and looked down at them. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the note in Trace’s handwriting on the first page.

Boomer: The “fist” doesn’t sound right Trace.

Boomer remembered telling Trace the story of the radio operators jumping into France and how they were betrayed.

Boomer looked over at Skibicki who was still sharpening his knife.

Boomer could clearly see the depression on the side of Skibicki’s head — from the wound he had received serving with Boomer’s dad.

“What about the Vice President?” Boomer asked suddenly.

“It’s taken care of,” Skibicki said shortly, without lifting his eyes.

“It’s taken care of?” Boomer repeated.

“How?”

“Trace got the diary to Maxwell, who will get it to the President,”

Skibicki said.

Boomer wasn’t so sure about that given what had just happened to him.

“Then why are we here?” Boomer asked.

“Why not let the Secret Service take care of everything.”

“Insurance,” Skibicki said.

“I don’t think the Secret Service could handle what’s happening. As you say, these fake DIA guys are all over the place. For all we know Major Trace won’t get the diary to the President.”

Boomer glanced at Harry, then back at Skibicki.

“What’s going on?”

Skibicki kept sharpening the knife.

“Something’s not right with all of this,” Boomer said, tucking the pages into the breast pocket of his fatigues. He leaned forward, looking Skibicki directly in the eyes.

“I want your word, as someone whose life my dad saved, that you’re being straight with me.”

Skibicki’s eyes flickered away for the shortest of moments, then came back to lock into Boomer’s. He pointed down at the harbor.

“To the best of my knowledge there’s going to be an attempt to kill the President tomorrow morning We’re going to stop that attempt. I give you my word on that.”

Boomer was not satisfied at all. The answer was well short of what he had hoped for. He thought again of Trace’s short message, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it right now except ride this thing out.

Jordan stared at the diary as, if it were a rattlesnake someone had placed on his desk. He looked at General Maxwell.

Trace was seated in the corner of the room in a wheelchair, forgotten once she’d briefed the senator on her experiences of the past several days.

“If one-tenth of what’s in here is true, we have a crisis of unprecedented magnitude on our hands,” Jordan said.

“This, this…” He shook his head at a loss for words.

“My God, if any of this is true, we…”

“People tried to kill me to keep you from getting that,” Trace said.

“It all fits with what—” She halted as Jordan held up a hand.

He tapped the diary.

“But some of the things here are just unbelievable. These people are crazy.” Jordan leaned back in his chair.

“This could all be an elaborate plot designed to embarrass the President into going public with this and then looking very stupid.”

Jordan rubbed his forehead.

“This diary ends in 1968.

We have no idea if this Line still exists and if they have anything plotted for tomorrow. We’ve canceled the C&C exercise aboard the SHARCC, which was the most likely place and time for them to try something. This document gives me nothing the President can use on General Martin or any of the service chiefs.”

General Maxwell cleared his throat.

“Senator, I believe you are still underestimating the situation here.

In the military we always try to worst-case things. All the evidence we have points to the fact that The Line exists and that there is a plot. We alerted General Martin to that yesterday and they’ve had time to deal with the cancellation of the C&C exercise. If they did have a plot you can be sure that they had backup plans. This is more than just a political situation.”

“But I’m a politician, general,” Jordan replied.

“I’m not being facetious,” he explained.

“I’m being realistic. I can not move to their playing field and expect to compete. I have to deal with them on my playing field, and that is the field of politics.”

Trace twisted in her seat and caught General Maxwell’s eye. He raised his eyebrows as if to say he understood what she was thinking but that he had made the best case he could. She was very confused. She’d asked about Boomer, and Maxwell had told her that he was in custody, although he couldn’t tell her where he was in custody.

Jordan caught the look.

“Let me ask you two something.

In the over 200 years this country has been in existence, we have never had a military coup or even come close to having had one. Why are you both so willing to believe that one is occurring now?”

“We have had one, senator,” Trace replied. She felt curiously calm, cast adrift from all known anchors, all her old allegiances gone, but now that she was here, it didn’t bother her. She would worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

“If you believe that diary, the military, in the form of The Line, has been acting against the elected officials of this country for over fifty years. If that’s not a coup, I don’t know the definition of the word very well then. Just because they don’t pull up to the front of the White House in tanks with guns pointed at the front door, doesn’t mean they haven’t been controlling things. Hell, Eisenhower himself warned us against the military-industrial complex when he left office.

“I find it very disturbing that all entries for the last three months of 1963 are missing. That was when President Kennedy was assassinated and—”

“Let’s not get into that,” Senator Jordan cut in.

“That is something we don’t dare get into. That could tear this country apart.”

“But, sir,” Trace said, “we need to get into it. We need to understand what we are up against here.”

“It does not matter what we are up against,” Senator Jordan said. He leaned back in his chair and gazed out the window at the bright sun coming up over Diamond Head.

“There’s a big picture here that no one seems to be considering, but we have to consider it. What if this”—he pointed at the diary—’ ‘is true? Do we release it to the media?

Tell everyone that the past fifty or sixty years our country has been unduly influenced by a military junta?

That we fought wars, and American citizens died and were maimed and wounded, because some generals sitting in a room somewhere decided we needed to test weapon systems and keep our forces in fighting trim? We can not let that information out!

“This is an abomination that has festered and grown in the shadows. And it is weak now—” He shook his head as General Maxwell tried to protest.

“No, general, it is weak. Weaker than it has ever been. The world is changing, and many don’t want it to change, but it is. The Wall did come down. We won the greatest war in history without a shot being fired. People are not going to stand for going back to the old ways, with nuclear missiles pointed at each other.”

Jordan stood.

“I’ll brief the President. He will have to make the decision.” He tucked the diary under his arm and left the room.

General Maxwell stood and wheeled Trace out of the room, the door shutting behind them.

“Do you know a Sergeant Major Skibicki?” Maxwell asked.

“Yes.” Trace looked over her shoulder at the general.

“Why, sir?”

“He called a little while back and asked me to look after you.”

Trace smiled, but it quickly disappeared.

“Do you think the President will believe Senator Jordan?”

Maxwell’s lined face was worried.

“I think the President is an excellent politician, but he’d make a crappy second lieutenant in the Infantry. Let’s hope Jordan’s right and The Line can be dealt with politically.”