The Line

CHAPTER 31

Having gained sufficient altitude. Senator James Jordan turned on the autopilot of his Learjet 25B and leaned back in the pilot’s seat. He was on his way back to Washington after Christmas break in Vermont. He had returned home to Vermont for Christmas for the past forty-two years.

The jet was his pride, and joy and had almost cost him the election four years ago. His opponent had pointed to it as a sign that Jordan had lost touch with the common man of Vermont. Jordan had been forced to retaliate by trotting out the trip logs for the aircraft proving that his ownership of the plane had actually saved the taxpayers money because he used it for much of his professional traveling at his own expense.

Jordan looked out the right window of the cockpit at the Green Mountains. There was a fresh covering of snow, and he could see skiers sliding down the slopes of Sugarbush.

There was a scraping noise from the back of the plane and Jordan’s head snapped around, staring at the door leading to the main cabin. He frowned as he stood up. Some of his baggage must have fallen over. He hadn’t used the cargo compartment since he had the entire plane to himself.

He’d simply dumped his bags in the first row of seats. The FAA wouldn’t approve, he knew, but the FAA didn’t look in his plane.

Jordan slid the door open, stepped into the main cabin, and froze at the sight of a man pointing a pistol at him. He recognized the face and he staggered back a step.

“Subsonic dum-dum bullets,” Boomer said, waggling the pistol slightly.

“It’ll make a big hole in you but won’t go through the skin of the plane and depressurize us.”

“What are you doing here?” Jordan demanded.

“I was in the cargo compartment. You really ought to stow your gear,” Boomer said.

“What do you want?”

“Did you know Earl Skibicki? I think you knew his mother, Maggie.

Pearl Harbor? 1941?”

Jordan didn’t say anything.

“You knew her, right?” Boomer insisted. He cocked the pistol.

“Yes.” Jordan swallowed.

“What do you want?”

“Did you know about her daughter getting killed?”

“What do you want?” Jordan repeated, his eyes casting about, searching for anything he could use as a weapon.

“Did you know about her daughter. Earl Skibicki’s sister, being strafed by Japanese planes and killed on the morning of December seventh, 1945?” Boomer asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you know about Skibicki’s half-brother — your son — being killed in Vietnam in the la Drang Valley?”

“What?” Jordan said, his eyes stopping their search and fixing on Boomer.

“What did you say?”

“You didn’t even keep track of your own son, did you?” Boomer said.

“Maggie told me you didn’t, but I couldn’t believe that. That a man wouldn’t even give a shit about his own flesh and blood. You just don’t give a shit about anyone, do you?”

Boomer shook his head.

“All the things you’ve done over the years. All the bodies. All the pain and suffering.

You are a sorry sack of shit, Mr. Senator.”

“What do you want?” Jordan said.

“The diary,” Boomer snapped. He smiled as Jordan’s eyes flickered toward his snakeskin briefcase.

“You’re stupider than I thought. You should have destroyed it, but I knew you’d still have it. You wanted to keep it because you never know, right? Might need it some day?”

Boomer grabbed the briefcase with his free hand and set it down on a seat next to him. He pulled out a knife and cut through the locked flap, pulling out Hooker’s diary. He stuffed it inside his parka.

“But that’s not really why I came here,” he said.

“I really wanted you.”

“We can work this out,” Jordan said.

“The Line is finished.

I did the right thing. I helped the President and General Maxwell too—”

“Spare me the bullshit. You don’t have much time left.

Better use it to pray. You tried to kill me once. Now I’m returning the favor.”

“I beg of you — I can make it right — I can—”

“You can’t make the dead come back to life,” Boomer said. He tucked the gun into his belt, and Jordan breathed a sigh of relief.

Boomer took one step closer to the senator, then spun, his right leg lashing out and the boot slamming into Jordan’s chest, forcefully expelling the air Jordan had just so gratefully inhaled.

Jordan crumpled down the floor, gasping in pain as the jagged edges of his broken ribs cut into his lungs.

“Please,” he gasped.

“Please.”

“Shut up,” Boomer snapped. He pulled a parachute out of the cargo bay and buckled it on over his parka, making sure all the straps were tight. Then he turned back to Jordan lying on the floor.

“Come on, senator. You’ve got a plane to fly,” Boomer said, grabbing the other man by the lapels and pulling him into the cockpit.

Jordan tried to scream as Boomer threw him into the pilot’s seat, but the act of screaming hurt as much as the movement. Boomer carefully buckled up the senator’s shoulder straps, making sure he was securely fastened to the seat.

“What are — you — doing?” Jordan managed to say, his hands gripping the armrests of his seat so hard the whites of his knuckles showed.

In response. Boomer knifed down with the outer edge of his right hand onto the senator’s left wrist. Bones cracked with an audible snap.

Before Jordan fully realized what had happened. Boomer did the same to the senator’s right wrist.

“Oh God!” Jordan screamed, his hands dangling helplessly.

“Please, please, don’t do this!”

“Have a good flight,” Boomer said. He reached over and flipped off the autopilot. Then he jammed the yoke all the way forward and the plane nosed over. Grabbing a hold of the doorjamb. Boomer pulled himself into the main cabin, where he hit the emergency opening on the crew door. It swung open and slammed tight against the outside of the plane. He could hear the senator screaming in the cockpit, and as he pulled himself out of the plane. Boomer idly wondered if the man had the guts to try and use his broken limbs to regain control.

Boomer was out into the wind stream and he spread his arms and legs until he stopped tumbling and was stable. He pulled his ripcord and gained positive control of his canopy.

He looked about and spotted the Learjet 2,000 feet below him, still in a steep dive. It hit into the snow-covered slopes of the Green Mountains and exploded.

“No fucking guts,” Boomer said as he turned his chute away from the mountains toward his landing zone and waiting jeep.