The Line Page 5

  Trace stopped thinking and reacted. She swung an elbow, catching the colonel on the side of the head, knocking him against the phone booth. He let go of the breast and groped for her crotch. She grabbed both his shoulders, steadying her target, then exploded her knee upward with all her strength.

  Warren gasped and immediately let go of her as he sunk to his knees now holding his own crotch. Trace turned and ran out the club, heading directly for her room where she locked the door and remained there all night, half afraid that someone would show up there pounding and demanding to be let in.

  The next day she was shocked when Warren walked by her at morning PT formation, acting as if nothing had happened. After physical training, Trace approached the battalion executive officer, Major Ford, in his office and told him of the previous evening's incident. His immediate response was not gratifying as a worried look settled in on his face.

  "Colonel Warren has a little drinking problem, Captain Trace." Ford offered a weak smile. "I'm sure he doesn't remember what happened."

  "What are we going to do about what he did, sir?" Trace asked.

  "We aren't going to do anything," Ford replied. "The colonel was drunk."

  "That doesn't excuse what he did! He assaulted me," Trace said, trying to control her anger. "What happens if he does it again?"

  "Just make sure you aren't around him when he's drinking and it won't happen again," Ford suggested sharply.

  Trace gestured around. "This post is only slightly bigger than the airfield. Am I supposed to hide in my room when I'm not on duty because the colonel has a drinking problem and likes to grope women?"

  "It's your word against his," Ford said.

  "You just said he had a drinking problem," Trace protested.

  "And if I had to testify, I would say he's the best battalion commander I've ever served under and I have no knowledge of a drinking problem." Ford leaned forward. "Listen, let it go. No one wants you here anyway. Make waves and they'll ship your ass out of here in a heartbeat."

  Trace felt curiously calm. She was at one of those life points where you know there's a fork and once you choose your direction, there's no going back. She'd put up with the sexual harassment from her first day at West Point until the present. She'd been exposed to some situations at West Point that made Warren's drunken gropings seem insignificant, but she expected more from a forty-year-old battalion commander, especially one she had to serve under for the next year at an isolated base. In fact, one of the reasons—in bitter retrospect the major reason—she'd married so quickly after graduation was for the protection a wedding band would give her among the wolves waiting in the ranks of the real Army. But it was obvious that her wedding band would be no protection here in Korea, especially with her husband thousands of miles away.

  "I want to lodge a formal complaint against Colonel Warren," she said, her voice totally flat.

  Ford looked like he had just swallowed a horse turd. "What?"

  "I am going to lodge a formal complaint against Colonel Warren. I will file an assault charge with the military police and a sexual harassment complaint through the chain of command and with the division equal opportunity officer at Camp Casey."

  "You're crazy," Ford said.

  Trace stood. "No, sir. I'm pissed." She turned and left his office.

  It had turned into a bloody mess that had gone all the way to the 8th Army Commander in Japan. Trace had been grounded during the investigation and that was used to move her out of the Apache Battalion. The reasoning was that a pilot should fly, not fight legal battles. So in the long run, she'd lost as far as the Army was concerned. Warren was allowed to finish his command if he attended the Army drug and alcohol rehabilitation program. The sexual harassment charge disappeared under volumes of legal whitewashing. In Army thinking it was better Warren be an alcoholic than a sexual harasser. Everyone remembered Tailhook and no one wanted to be associated with either the case or Trace.

  She'd returned to the States four months early, never having had a chance to fly the helicopter she'd been trained for. She'd been shipped to Fort Meade and given a job in public affairs. An assignment close to her husband, but one which kept her away from helicopters. Aviation branch saw her as a hot potato and a case of good riddance.

  Of course, when she had returned from Korea, her home was one of those places where she'd hoped she could get some unconditional support. But she'd heard the tone in her husband's voice during their long distance conversations and she saw the look in his eyes when they met at the airport. There was no going back from such a look.

  He'd stayed for six months until finally Trace had been forced to make him face the fact that he was only there out of some perverse sense of duty and pity. He was worried about his own career now, married to a woman who had gained an unfavorable reputation with the powers-that-be in the green machine. Ultimately, she knew that he had not agreed with her decision to press charges and that knowledge disgusted her. That he would rather her keep quiet about her being groped by another man, rather than possibly upset their career track, was beyond what she could take. Her husband moved out the next day, relieved to be able to put it totally on her shoulders and get on with punching his tickets up the rank structure. The divorce followed as soon as legally possible.

  With her nothing job at Fort Meade and her husband gone, she'd been lost and confused. The injustice of what had happened to her in Korea and the stone wall of Army brass she'd run into had left her empty and alone.

  That was when Boomer Watson had saved her life. She'd never told anyone that, not even Boomer. But she knew it was true. He'd made a special trip from Fort Bragg in between one of his constant deployments to visit her. And he'd kept in touch on the phone, calling whenever he got back from a deployment—sometimes in the middle of the night.

  Then, two weeks after John had moved out, Boomer had appeared at Trace's office, wearing civilian clothes and sporting non-regulation hair with a beard. He was in for two weeks temporary duty. Something to do with an upcoming exercise. He never told her why he was at Fort Meade, but she suspected it had something to do with the National Security Agency which was also headquartered on post.

  For two weeks they spent every minute off duty together.

  On the third night, as he was getting ready to leave to go back to his BOQ room, she'd asked him to stay. He looked at her, grinned, and joined her on the couch. Two hours later, when he had taken her in his arms, she'd pried herself loose and turned all the lights out, before taking her clothes off, going to the bed, and sliding under the covers, unseen.

  The next morning she slipped out, getting into the shower while Boomer still slept. She was pleased when the curtain was pulled aside and he stepped in. He grabbed the soap and did the favors.

  Later, over breakfast, she asked him how he felt about being with her. Boomer raised his eyebrows: "What about being with you?"

  "Come on, don't mess with me. You know I'm a marked woman."

  "Hey, I'm not messing with you. All I saw—and see—is a beautiful person and a beautiful woman—that I just made love to. The sex wasn't bad either. And you know me better than to think I give a shit about my so-called Army career. I'm just having fun down at Bragg. I don't care if they keep me a major the rest of my career. Sounds good to me."

  He'd gone back to Bragg, and though they'd seen each other over the years, they'd never slept together again. It was as if they'd crossed a line for a reason, then put the line back in place and gone back to the strength of their friendship. Trace had read somewhere that if old lovers stayed in your life they were the truest friends and that was how she felt about Boomer. And now he was coming back into her life.

  Trace shook herself out of her reverie and glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to nine. Time to be going. She shrugged on her BDU shirt, feeling the stiffness of the starched material. She saved what she'd written, shut the computer down, and the words faded from the screen as she left the house perched on the mountain side overlooki
ng Barbers Point Naval Air Station.

  She decided to take the fastest route to work, turning her Jeep Cherokee toward Makakilo Drive and H1. Even if her thoughts had not been on the pending arrival of Boomer Watson, there was no chance she could have spotted the two men dressed in black fatigues hidden 600 meters away on the heavily vegetated slope of Puu Makakilo.

  The man with the rifle shifted the red illuminated laser aiming circle in the center of the scope reticle and tracked the Jeep as it moved toward the highway. The scope was mounted on a Remington Model 700, .308 caliber, single shot, bolt-action rifle on top of a tripod behind which the man sat crosslegged. A thin black cord led from the side of the large scope to a small black box on the ground. The box was a computer that combined the location of the rifle and distance and elevation to the target—determined by ground-positioning radar and the laser range and direction finder in the scope itself, along with weather data, particularly current wind direction and speed (calculated by a small anemometer which popped up on the top of the computer box), to automatically adjust the aiming circle in the scope. Except for the ability to keep the aiming point on target while pulling the trigger smoothly, the computer and scope made an expert marksman out of the most ordinary of shooters. The will to pull the trigger on a human target was, of course, assumed.

  The man centered the small pointing circle on Trace's head and his right forefinger caressed the trigger. "Pow," he muttered. "One dead bitch." As Trace's Jeep entered H1, he pulled his eye away from the rubber cup on the scope. "Why are we just sitting here? Why don't we do it?"

  "We wait for orders," the second man said, noting Trace's departure time and direction in a small notebook. "We aren't the only ones waiting for orders. There are other actions to be coordinated," he added vaguely. "We need to get everything and we need to know how she got the information."

  He put the notebook away in his breast pocket and smoothly slid a double-edged commando knife out of a boot sheath. With a flip of his wrist, he threw the knife into the trunk of a tree ten meters away, the razor-sharp blade sinking four inches into the wood. "We have to go in and get the stuff first. Then grab her. Someone else says when."

  CHAPTER 3

  AIRSPACE. HAWAIIAN ISLANDS

  29 NOVEMBER

  9:30 A.M. LOCAL/1930 ZULU

  The muted crackle of the plane's public address system woke Boomer from an uneasy slumber, and he cracked an eye. He peered out the window to take in the sights below as the pilot's voice described them: "On the left side of the aircraft, you have an excellent view of Pearl Harbor. The white structure just off the island in the center is the USS Arizona Memorial. We will be touching down shortly. Attendants, please prepare for landing."

  The water below glistened. The bright green hills in the near distance were lush with vegetation. When Boomer craned his neck, he could see the urban sprawl of Honolulu to the east, poised between the mountains and the sea with the large silhouette of Diamond Head backdropped beyond the city. It seemed like more than twenty-four hours since the horror of events in the Ukraine and the hectic departure from Turkey.

  The plane touched down. Boomer kept his seat, watching with detached interest as the aisles rapidly filled even as the plane taxied to the terminal. He was in no rush—he got paid whether he sat here or scrambled off the plane as quickly as possible. He waited until the crowd dissipated to slide into the aisle, the briefcase containing his orders in hand.

  He smiled at the stewardess who was rotely bidding the departing passengers to have a nice stay in Hawaii. The stewardess's plastic smile became genuine for just the slightest moment and then he was gone, past her into the tunnel leading to the terminal.

  Boomer rode the shuttle to the main terminal to claim his baggage. Beyond the meaning of the acronym, Boomer knew little about the 4th TASOSC, his new unit. From vague memories from his days in the 10th Special Forces Group, he knew 4th TASOSC stood for 4th Theater Army Special Operations Support Command. Its mission was to plan and coordinate the support and sustainment of all Army Special Operations Forces operating in the Pacific region. To Boomer's experienced mind, that translated to a lot of paperwork and time on the telephone talking to support people. Clerk and jerk stuff, nothing very exciting.

  Boomer hoped that the locale of Hawaii would make up for the boring work. He was still concerned with the events occurring at Delta Headquarters at Fort Bragg. He wasn't concerned about making general someday, but he did enjoy his job in Delta Force and didn't want to lose it. He didn't like being out of the loop, but Colonel Forster hadn't left him much choice. He knew his commander had picked Hawaii as the cooling-off place for Boomer because Forster knew the executive officer of the 4th TASOSC and was collecting an old debt. Forster felt it was far enough away from both Turkey and Fort Bragg for Boomer to ride out whatever storm Colonel Decker tried to raise, if any, over recent events. Forster had been of the opinion that the less said all around, the better. He hoped that was the way Decker would see it. "Take a couple of weeks in the sun, Boomer," Forster had said. "Enjoy yourself and get out of the rat race for a while. I'll cover for you."

  Boomer located the correct baggage carousel and waited for his duffle bag and rucksack to appear. He spotted a young, female, Hispanic soldier wearing camouflage fatigues and jauntily sporting a red beret—indicating she was in an airborne unit—enter at the far side of the terminal. She was only about five feet, four inches tall, but she carried herself with a swagger, her slender form bopping about as she restlessly scanned the terminal.

  The young sergeant looked uncertainly at the milling group of people. Boomer appreciated her predicament. It used to be easy to spot male military types by their haircut when he first came on active duty in 1981. He remembered when soldiers in his first unit, an infantry platoon at Fort Riley, Kansas, wore wigs when they went into town off-duty, anything to hide the distinctive short hair of the military. Nowadays though, short was in and the sergeant was uncertain who to approach, her eyes flitting from man to man. She in turn was getting a few appreciative glances from some of the men.

  Boomer let her wait until his OD green bags came up the chute and he grabbed them. The sergeant took that as a cue and ambled over.

  "Major Watson?" she asked, taking in the longer-than-regulation hair and civilian clothes.

  "Yep," Boomer said, shouldering his ruck and getting a closer look at her shining dark eyes.

  To Boomer's surprise, the sergeant grabbed the duffle bag, easily chucking the heavy bag over one shoulder. "This way, sir. I got my car parked in the red zone. Colonel Falk took us on a long run this morning, and I didn't get done at the gym and everything until real late so I didn't catch your plane coming in."

  "No problem," Boomer said. "I wasn't going anywhere."

  "The XO—that's Colonel Falk—got you a room at the guest house," the sergeant added as she led the way out of the building. "It's good till tomorrow, then you're probably going to have to go out on the economy or maybe Tripler might have something."

  A fire-red Camaro was parked illegally and the sergeant popped the trunk and deposited the duffle bag, filling the trunk. "Put that in the back seat," she instructed.

  Boomer complied and settled into the passenger seat. As the woman started the engine, he leaned over and stuck his hand out. "Major Boomer Watson."

  The sergeant was briefly startled, then smiled, a smooth row of white teeth showing up against her dark skin. "Shit, sir, I'm sorry. Sergeant Vasquez. Everybody's jumping through their ass in the tunnel and I guess my head's kind of out of it."

  "The tunnel?" Boomer inquired as Vasquez peeled away from the curb and roared into traffic, ignoring the bleating of horns.

  "Yes, sir. That's where we work. A system of tunnels built at the beginning of World War II. They cut right into one of the old lava flows. It's pretty neat. Actually there's three tunnels altogether that make up our place. They're all connected."

  "What's everyone jumping about?"

  Vasquez looked a
t Boomer as if he had just come from the Australian outback. "The President's visit. The whole Pearl Harbor gig. Security's going to be tighter than a frog's asshole. Especially now that the Iraqis are making a stink again, and all that crap with the Ukrainians. It's just a big mess. Hell, for all we know the sons-of-a-bitches have got a bomb now. There's speculation in the paper about what would happen if one went off here in Oahu while the President was here."

  Boomer had forgotten much of that, not that the isolated launch base in Turkey had offered much in the way of current news. The President was due to arrive in Hawaii the following week to commemorate the fifty-fourth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The word in the media was that he would use the occasion to make a speech concerning the MRA—Military Reform Act—that his party had just squeaked through Congress and which was awaiting debate in the Senate. Boomer had barely followed the heated coverage, although even a casual observer knew that the military as a whole was violently opposed to the act. He'd had more pressing problems on his mind the last six months, like staying alive and keeping his men alive.

  Vasquez pointed to a massive building on the hillside far above the highway. "That's Tripler Army Hospital. Fort Shafter's just ahead." She jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "I guess you saw Pearl and Hickam Airfield on the way in."

  "Yeah," Boomer acknowledged. "What do you do at the TASOSC?"

  "I'm in Intelligence. I interpret imagery and do target folders. I did the folders on the radar sites that got hit by the Apache helicopters on the first day of the air war during Desert Storm," she added proudly. "The first shots of the war were fired using my stuff."

  Boomer smiled to himself. He couldn't tell her that he'd been in Iraq on the ground long before those Apaches from the 1st Battalion of the 101st Airborne let loose their Hellfire missiles, officially beginning the war. One thing he had learned about the military: the need to feel like an important piece of the overall machine. Boomer recognized the reality that the military, by being the largest "corporation" in America, had so many pieces that almost everyone was a minor and relatively insignificant cog. And now that organization was facing major restructuring.