“What the hell are you doing here anyway? I’ve never seen you here before and I come through here pretty often.”
“I just got in today for some special work.” Boomer replied vaguely, knowing that Wilkerson was trying to make sense of his non-regulation hair and the Special Operations patch on his shoulder.
“Beefing up for the President’s visit?” Wilkerson asked, almost to himself.
“Everyone’s running scared after the incident in Turkey with the nuke.”
He looked up, his thoughts returning to his own situation.
“Well, I guess I won’t even be able to stay in the Reserves after this.
My fucking career is over.”
“What happened?” Boomer asked.
Wilkerson glanced around, making sure no one else was in earshot.
“It was bullshit, man. Pure bullshit. I was set up.”
“Set up?”
“I was assigned to take part in a command post exercise in Korea back in October. I got in-country, and they gave me my copies of the operations orders and play book and all that other classified stuff. I had it in a briefcase. Well, I was on South Post Yongsan and I stopped at the Burger King there to get something to eat before heading down to Taegu. I wasn’t in the place more than two minutes, and someone popped out the lock on the trunk and took the briefcase. Turns out it was CID. It was all a set-up. They nailed my ass for a security violation.”
Boomer found it hard to generate sympathy. Being a courier for classified material meant never letting it out of your sight.
“It was probably some sort of counterintelligence thing, Wilk. They do that stuff a lot in Korea.
It’s a hot zone.”
“I know it’s a hot zone,” Wilkerson hissed.
“And I know that I fucked up by leaving the shit in the car, but I’m telling you it was deliberately set up to get me relieved.
I was deliberately sent on that CPX to get me out of the way in the first place.”
“Who would have done that?”
“I don’t know, but there’s some weird shit going on.
I’ve had unusually high turnover in my company and the sergeant major and battalion commander have been stacking two of my teams — assigning people directly to ODAS while I was deployed. When I complained, they sent me on the mission to Korea.” Wilkerson took another look around, then leaned forward.
“You know what my company is?”
Boomer frowned.
“What do you mean’ what it is?” It’s a Special Forces company.”
“Yeah, but do you know what our primary mission is?”
Boomer shrugged, pretending to be uncertain about what his old comrade was talking about.
“I don’t know. You guys out of Okie are targeted for Southeast Asia right?”
“B and C Companies are.” Wilkerson’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“A Company is the regional counter-terrorist reaction force. Just like Det A in Berlin was over in Europe.
We work with Delta all the time. We’re the first response guys for half the fucking world if any high-speed shit goes down. And somebody wanted my ass out of that command.”
Boomer had known exactly what A Company, 1st Battalion was. Part of the “secret” game, though, was to never let on that you knew anything.
Boomer preferred to play at being stupid and to profess ignorance rather than try to do half-truths and explain what couldn’t be talked about. He’d never worked with A-l/1, but he knew other’s in his squadron of Delta had. A-ll’s job was to stabilize a threat situation in the Pacific until Delta could arrive on scene to deal with it. The five teams in the company were specially trained and equipped for the mission.
Wilkerson leaned forward.
“You should see the guy that took over for me. They’ve got two or three promotable captains in the battalion that they could have given the company to. Hell, my senior team leader is on the promotion list.
Or even moved someone in from Japan or Korea.
But instead they bring some guy straight from Benning.”
“Who’s that?” Boomer asked, glancing over at the door Falk had disappeared through, hoping the XO would come back soon and get him out of this awkward conversation.
“Some fellow named Keyes. Major Geoffrey Keyes. I checked with some of my buddies at Bragg and they don’t even think this guy is S-F-qualified.”
That caught Boomer’s attention. Keyes was a classmate of his from West Point. Boomer remembered him well-Keyes had been ranked number one in Infantry Branch and number three overall in the class at graduation. At Ranger school Keyes had been in Boomer’s platoon and had earned a reputation as a dick. Boomer had watched Keyes skate his way through, putting out effort whenever he was in charge of a patrol and being evaluated, but slacking off whenever he wasn’t. Despite that, Keyes had been one of those glad handers that walked on water and received maximum ratings. Someone who looked good but lacked substance.
Boomer had not heard of Keyes going to the Special Forces Qualification Course. Last he had heard, Keyes was in the Ranger Battalion at Fort Benning, punching his regular Army career ticket in the elite infantry unit.
“Does he have an S-F Tab?” Boomer asked, referring to the cloth tab awarded to graduates of the S-F School.
“Yeah, he’s got one. But hell. Boomer, you can buy one of those at clothing sales and sew it on. No one I know of ever saw him in a group. He’s coming right from the 3rd Ranger Battalion at Benning.
That doesn’t make any sense.”
Boomer commiserated with Wilkerson while he waited for Colonel Falk to return, half his mind marveling at the tremendous capability of people to deny reality. First, Wilkerson had screwed up by leaving the classified material in his car unattended. Second, why would anyone want Wilkerson removed from command? Third, why would someone send a non-S-F-qualified officer to take command of a Special Forces company?
Sounded like Army politics to Boomer, but the bottom line was that Wilkerson had been wrong to leave the classified material in the trunk.
Boomer was relieved when Colonel Palk returned and Major Wilkerson wandered off to nurse his bitterness elsewhere.
Falk scratched his scant hair and peered at his desk, lost in thought for a few seconds.
“So what have I told you so far?” he asked.
“You said I could call you sir, sir.”
“That’s it?” Falk sat down.
“I got forty-five balls in the air right now and I’m dropping half of them so don’t take it too seriously when I start ranting and raving.
OK, Boomer, here’s the deal. Everybody’s jumping through their butt over the President’s upcoming visit. JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command, got tagged to pick up some of the security out at Pearl since that’s the military’s turf.
There’s some other training operations going on, which you don’t have a need to know about,” he continued vaguely, “that’s eating up all our time.
“So I need someone to take care of our normal message traffic and screen it for hand grenades with short fuses. Go through our incoming message traffic every morning when it comes in and see if there’s anything that looks like it needs immediate attention and let me know.
That shouldn’t be too hard. To fill up the rest of your time, I also need our classified files purged.”
“I’ve got a top secret Q clearance, sir,” Boomer said, a bit surprised at the comment about training missions he wasn’t cleared for.
“I know. That’s why I’m having you look at the message traffic.” Falk popped to his feet, and Boomer followed him into a side tunnel which opened onto a parallel tunnel, identical to the first one. Locked four-drawer filing cabinets lined one of the sides, while desks lined the other. A few officers and senior NCOS were at work there.
Falk pointed at the cabinets.