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  "Hey, Frankel, that's enough," Woods protested.

  "I don't want any shit from you, you—" Frankel's retort was interrupted by a familiar, deep voice cutting in behind her, as the next company took its seats.

  "Hey, smackhead, chill out."

  Trace didn't move, aware of the attention of Frankel, and also aware that Boomer was just a yearling, well below Frankel in the chain of command.

  "I said relax, chill out, sit back, take it easy," Boomer said with a laugh, leaning forward from his place behind her.

  "Who the hell do you think you are?" Frankel snapped, twisting in his seat. "This is my company, yearling, so butt out."

  Boomer laughed. "Hey, hero, you want the Army Chief of Staff to see a plebe sitting here in the fourth row braced? How come none of the other beanheads in your company are braced? You wanna be stupid, be my guest."

  "Watch it, Watson," Frankel growled.

  "Hey, Frankel, I know you're an asshole, you know you're an asshole, but do you have to show the whole world that you're an asshole?" Boomer replied.

  "That's it, Watson! I'm writing you up for insubordination!" Frankel cried out, reaching into his pocket and producing a pen and paper.

  "Fine," Boomer replied hotly. "And write yourself up for hazing at the Chief of Staff's address while you're at it."

  Trace was surprised when Woods interceded again. "He's right, Frankel. She shouldn't be braced here."

  Frankel's face turned several shades of red as he tried to control his temper. "All right, Trace. At ease." He turned to Boomer. "But I'm going to have your ass, Watson."

  Trace later found out from talking to Boomer that Frankel had been Boomer's second detail Beast Squad Leader and Boomer detested him. The incident in Eisenhower Hall had cost Boomer four hours walking the area for insubordination, but Boomer said it was worth it.

  Trace also remembered the content of the Chief of Staff's speech. The speech had been about the Academy's role and if Trace had not been so concerned about surviving the hell flying on around her, she might have paid more attention at the time. The most interesting thing about the speech was that it clearly laid out where the Academy was heading, yet the cadets were so young and simply wanted to survive that they really didn't give a damn what they were being changed into.

  Trace had looked the speech up a few weeks ago as part of her research for her manuscript. A transcript had been printed in the Assembly, the publication of the West Point Association of Graduates (AOG). Reading it had chilled her.

  With over 4,000 cadets in attendance, the Army Chief of Staff had talked about the Academy from a perspective the cadets had only begun to glimpse.

  ***

  "West Point has been in existence for 176 years. In that time we have graduated over 36,000 men. From the war of 1812 through the recent conflict in Southeast Asia, we have provided the moral spirit for our country's Army. Never has this spirit been more important than in today's society."

  "Just down the river in New York City—less than fifty miles from here—you can see a vision of the depths our society has sunk to. Drugs are rampant on the street. Crime is at an all-time high."

  "Even further down the East Coast, in our nation's capital in Washington, our leaders are caught in a malaise of inaction. But is that so surprising? One can not act unless one has the moral base to act from. That is what you are being exposed to in your four-year journey through the Academy. It is a journey that, upon graduation, will lead you through the wilderness of modern society with the moral tenets of discipline, loyalty, and honor to carry you when times seem bleak."

  "It is our duty to give back to our country that which West Point teaches us. In a world that sorely lacks those moral tenets, it is our responsibility to stand up to the rest of the country as a guiding light, a way out of the troubled forest of moral decay."

  "Duty, honor, country," the Chief of Staff intoned the Academy motto, evoking in all the cadets present the speech by Douglas MacArthur in front of the Corps in 1962 that every cadet had to memorize as plebes. "Never has our country needed our sense of duty and honor more."

  "In the upcoming years, as you spread out around the world to serve in the active Army, I call upon each of you to remember your duty to your country. I call upon you to pursue a more active role in our society—even beyond that demanded by your role as officers. That is no longer sufficient, as the recent debacle in Southeast Asia clearly shows. Men who walked the long gray line before you served honorably there, but they were let down by a lack of moral fiber in our very society. We cannot keep our heads in the sand and simply look outward for our enemies. We must also search within the borders of our country and fight them in the way the Academy has taught you: with perseverance and courage in what you have been taught here!"

  Trace remembered that the Corps had given the Chief of Staff a standing ovation, more for not taking up the full hour allocated, allowing them to get back to the barracks earlier for study or rack time, than for the content. But if one considered the existence of The Line, Trace began to understand how such speeches were allowed at an institution funded by the very society it so often lambasted. She had done some research and learned that the Chief of Staff's comments were by no means isolated. West Point existed in a timeless vacuum that only occasionally noted the changes of the outside world, and then only to contemplate what effect West Point could have on the outside world, rather than the more natural opposite.

  As the airport slowly came alive, Trace wondered what experience, if any, Colonel Rison had had with The Line, and what a man who had been relieved of his command in a combat zone would have to say about West Point and The Line. She had a feeling it would be very different from the Chief of Staff's speech.

  CHAPTER 12

  KEAWAULA, OAHU, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS

  1 DECEMBER

  11:45 p.m. LOCAL/0945 ZULU, 2 DEC

  Boomer slid the magazine on top of the housing and chambered a round. He and Skibicki were at the end of the paved road that wound its way up the west coast of Oahu. A sign indicated that the rest of the way was off limits to vehicles. And, as if to reinforce the message on the sign, the road turned into a potholed dirt trail.

  "Switch for the laser sight is here," Skibicki added, tapping the side of the gun. He handed Boomer his night vision goggles. "Ready to go for a walk?"

  "How far is it?" Boomer asked, shouldering the weapon and stepping out with Skibicki onto the dirt road.

  "About three and a half klicks. We should make it in plenty of time." Skibicki pointed landward, toward the steep slopes that towered up. "See those lights up there?"

  "Yeah."

  "That's the Kaena Point satellite tracking station. All that land on the high ground is military reservation." He pointed down. "Maps show this road going around the point and continuing on the north side, but as you can see, you can't drive it. It's washed out at some points. Hardly anyone ever comes up here other than some fishermen during the daytime. Coast Guard's got a lighthouse on the point itself but it's unmanned."

  Boomer remembered that detail from the DZ message. "Sounds like they picked the one place off-shore of Oahu where you could do a water drop and not have civilians on the beach," he continued.

  "Roger that," Skibicki said.

  Boomer felt the warm night breeze, and reflected how different the coastal breeze was than the bitter arctic air he'd felt in the Ukraine. He wasn't quite sure what to expect this evening. His hope was that they would at least confirm that it was a jump and maybe find where the jumpers came ashore and camped out. It was still five days before Pearl Harbor Day, and Boomer hoped that Trace would come up with something concrete so that the information he discovered tonight could be given to the proper authorities whoever they were.

  AIRSPACE 200 MILES WEST OAHU

  2 December

  1:00 a.m. LOCAL/1100 ZULU

  The interior of the Combat Talon was illuminated by red light so that everyone inside could maintain their night vision. The
airframe was a modified C-130 Hercules transport, an aircraft that had served as the workhorse of the Air Force for four decades and was still going strong. The interior was large enough to hold five cars end to end, but the front half of the Talon cargo bay was blocked off by thick, black curtains, separating the flight crew from the jumpers in the back.

  The Air Force men in the forward portion of the cargo body were button-pushers and screen-watchers. It was their job to defeat electronic threats to the aircraft, allowing it to perform its stated mission of penetrating deep inside enemy airspace without being detected. This mission was considered a milk run by both the screen-watchers and the pilots up front. There were no mountain valleys to be negotiated at low level, where they could look up and see trees and the slopes above them; no electronic threat from enemy anti-aircraft systems to be thwarted; no special navigating problems as—unlike electronic silent missions—they were linked into the Navy's FLTSatcom network and their computers could locate their position on the move to within five meters every one one-thousandth of a second. The in-flight refueling had been the most exciting event and it had gone off without a hitch.

  As loadmaster, Master Technical Sergeant Johnson was the man who worked both sides of the curtain. He was a member of the aircrew, but his job was to ensure that whatever cargo or personnel was loaded into the rear half of the Talon got to its departure point intact. For him, this was no milk run. He had fourteen personnel packed into the cargo bay along with two Zodiac rubber boats and other gear. The men's parachutes and rucksacks were strapped down on the back ramp and they had mostly slept for the ten hours they'd been in the air.

  "We've got a TOT of sixty minutes," the pilot's voice sounded in the portable headset Johnson wore.

  "Roger that, sir. I'll wake up our sleeping beauties." Johnson walked over and tapped the man who had identified himself as the leader of these men when they'd on-loaded.

  The men wore no insignia or rank or organization patch—just black wet suits—and they had not identified themselves or their organization when they'd boarded the aircraft in Okinawa. Johnson didn't find that surprising. The Talon often flew missions for hard-eyed men with no indication of who they were or what their mission was. Johnson's job was to get them out of the plane intact at the right place and time, not to ask questions. In fact, he knew if he asked questions, he'd be looking for a new job as soon as they landed, if he was not locked in the brig.

  "One hour out," Johnson yelled over the roar of the engines.

  The man cracked an eye and nodded, immediately nudging the man next to him, passing the signal down. Johnson was always impressed that men who were about to jump out of a perfectly good airplane could sleep so easily.

  Johnson went to the back ramp and began unfastening the cargo straps holding down the parachutes. The men in the wet suits paired off into buddy teams and began rigging their parachutes. The dimly lit interior didn't affect the men's efficiency. Johnson had seen in-flight rigs on routes through rough terrain where the constant jerking of the aircraft had thrown the men around like rag dolls, and the floor of the plane had been coated with slippery vomit from airsickness. He was glad for the smooth and level flight two hundred feet above the wave tops.

  It took the men twenty minutes to put their chutes on, hook their rucksacks up underneath their reserve chutes in front, rig their weapons, and stuff their swim fins underneath the waistband of their parachutes and secure them with a safety line. Then they sat back down and started their wait. Johnson could feel the change in atmosphere inside the aircraft. The adrenaline was beginning to flow.

  KAENA POINT

  2 December

  1:30 a.m. LOCAL/1130 ZULU

  "Should be due north of us," Skibicki said. "Track will be from left to right."

  Boomer twisted the focus on his night vision goggles and surveyed the ocean. The cresting waves were glittering green lines with sparks flying off as the spray pounded the rocks. The ocean beyond was a greenish-black slate out to the horizon where stars glittered brightly in the computer enhanced image.

  He and Skibicki were hidden in the sand dunes of Kaena Point on its north side. The small Coast Guard lighthouse was to their right rear and unmanned as Skibicki had said. Five hundred meters inland, the ground swooped up precipitously to Puu Pueo, the beginning of the mountain chain that was the backbone of the west side of Oahu.

  "Do you think they'll come ashore here?" Boomer asked.

  "I wouldn't," Skibicki replied. He pointed with the muzzle of his Calico. "The shore here is rocky, and as you can see the waves aren't very gentle. They'd get pounded pretty bad trying to swim in here. If those two bundles they're jumping are boats, I think they'll go one of two ways: east and try to beach somewhere opposite Dillingham Air Force Base, which is an old abandoned airfield on the inland side of the Farrington Highway that runs along the coast there. The only problem with going that way is that the mountains are very steep and if they are trying to go inland, they got one hell of a climb.

  "The other possibility is that they go south," Skibicki continued, pointing to their left, and then to their rear, where the coast came in. "Lots of beach they can land on. Also, that's the best way to eventually get to Pearl. Hug the west coast all the way around, then along the south, and into the harbor. They could take a couple of nights to make the move and do it without getting spotted if they're very careful. Going around clockwise to the east they'd eventually have to round Diamond Head and pass Waikiki—not exactly the most secure way."

  "The message said the RP for the jumpers would be marked by IR strobe," Boomer noted. "I don't see anything out there."

  "Normally the strobe would actually be at the RP," Skibicki said. "However, in this case, they might track the aircraft from land and flash an IR strobe when the aircraft is at the RP. I got the impression that the IR was just a safe signal that the jump could proceed. Hell, those damn Talons got such good navigating equipment that they'll release those jumpers within ten feet of the planned RP." Skibicki pointed at the mountains. "If I was running this drop, I'd be up there somewhere, almost on level with the aircraft."

  Boomer glanced down at the glowing face of his watch. "We'll find out in twenty minutes."

  ***

  Four hundred meters to their right rear, on the other side of the lighthouse, two figures carrying rifles moved silently through the darkness, the snout of their night vision goggles centered on the lighthouse, beyond which Boomer and Skibicki lay.

  FINAL CHECKPOINT

  2 December

  1:40 a.m. LOCAL/1140 ZULU

  "Charlie Papa Fourteen at my mark," the navigator said. "Five, four, three, two, one. Mark." He checked the numbers on his screen. "We're two seconds ahead of schedule," he announced.

  "Roger," the pilot said. "What about electronics?”

  His answer came from the countermeasures officer in the front half of the cargo bay. "I'm getting atmosphere bounces off the radar from the International Airport but we could go up another six hundred feet and they wouldn't have a clue we were here. No sign of ships or other aircraft."

  "All right," the pilot said. "Johnson, we're twenty minutes out."

  In the rear of the plane Master Technical Sergeant Johnson relayed the time until drop to the jumpmaster, who turned to the other men seated on the web seats and extended both hands, fingers spread wide. "Twenty minutes!" he screamed, repeating the gesture twice to give them the visual count.

  The jumpmaster then turned to the two rubber Zodiacs and checked the cargo chutes rigged on each, hooking their static lines to the steel cable—one of which ran the entire length of the cargo bay on each side, ending far in the tail well. At loading, Johnson and his assistant loadmaster had placed the Zodiacs in position, one on each side, nose facing the rear. Each boat rested on a metal pallet, and the attaching points for the cargo chutes were on each corner of the pallet.

  The boat was attached to the pallet with cargo webbing, all centered on one quick release inside each boat
so that once in the water, the pallet would release and sink, leaving the boat floating on the surface. The forty horsepower engine for each boat was tied down inside. The pallets were held to the inside of the aircraft with one length of cargo webbing attached to the back of each pallet, tied to an O-ring on the floor of the aircraft.

  "Ten minutes," the pilot's voice announced in Johnson's headphones. He gave the information to the jumpmaster who again relayed it to the jumpers.

  "Break the chem lights," the jumpmaster instructed Johnson. He obliged by cracking the two chem light sticks taped to each Zodiac—one on the prow, one on the stern.

  "Six minutes." This time the routine changed. The jumpmaster stood and hooked his own static line hook to the right cable, just behind the hook for the right boat. He then turned to the men. "Six minutes!" he called out extending five fingers on one hand and one on the other.

  "Outboard personnel stand up!" he yelled, pointed to both sides of the aircraft, then gesturing up with his palms. Six men on his side of the aircraft and seven on the other stood, holding onto the side of the aircraft for support.

  "Hook up!"

  Each man unhooked his static line snaphook from where the jumpmaster had placed it on the carrying handle of the reserve parachute over his belly and attached it to the steel cable, open end facing out. The jumper then slid a slender metal safety through a small hole in the hook, insuring that the snaphook could not reopen.

  The jumpmaster curled his fingers, thumb to forefinger, and moved them back and forth. "Check static lines!"

  Each jumper rechecked his hookup to the cable, then traced the yellow web of the static line as far as he could until it disappeared over his shoulder, making sure that it was clear and free. He then checked the man's in front from where it appeared over his shoulder to where it disappeared into the pack closing tie of the parachute itself. The last man on each stick turned to face the front of the aircraft and had the next-to-last man check his. An improperly routed static line could cause the jumper great difficulties after exiting the aircraft and lead to him being hung up and battered against the aircraft.