“Rison was arrested?” Boomer asked.
“For what?”
“Remember that double agent I mentioned earlier?” Skibicki paused and seemed to consider what he was saying and then changed his mind.
“You don’t want to get into all that.” Skibicki waved a hand.
“Forget what I said all right? I’ve heard so much bullshit in twenty-nine years in the service that I can’t remember what’s real and what’s not. Forget it.”
Despite Boomer’s attempts at rekindling the subject, Skibicki refused to talk and Boomer reluctantly went with him back to the tunnel. He spent the rest of the morning going through the classified files, destroying out of date folders and inventorying what was left.
His mind was only half on his job, and just before lunch he cornered Skibicki, who was in the very rear of the tunnel, pulling maintenance on scuba equipment.
“Sergeant major, do you know someone at Bragg in the schoolhouse who can check records?”
“What kind of records?” Skibicki asked, carefully leaning a scuba tank against a wall locker.
“Q Course graduates. Or, more specifically, eighteen qualified officers.”
Skibicki nodded.
“Sure.” He glanced at the large dive watch on his wrist.
“Only problem is that it’s 1200 here.
That makes it 1700 on a Thursday afternoon on the east coast. They’ll all be at the Green Beret club at Bragg sucking down brews.”
“Can you do it first thing tomorrow?”
“Who do you want me to check on?”
“A major named Keyes.”
“The new CO for Alpha, 1st of the 1st?”
Boomer nodded.
Skibicki’s heavily tanned’ arms rippled as he hoisted the air tank and settled it in place in the wall locker.
“That battalion in Okinawa has been fucked up for twenty years, sir.
Never could quite figure out what was going on out there. They had that big shit storm eight years ago about running demo into Thailand and selling it on the black market.
Hell, 60 Minutes did a special on it. Then they had that plot to kill one of the company sergeant majors.”
Boomer had heard about some of that. It had been a bad blemish on the name of Special Forces in the media. Every so often there was an article about some Green Beret doing something stupid, and it tainted the entire Special Operations community. One of the most aggravating things for Boomer was when he walked into a bookstore and saw the book Fatal Vision with the green beret with the old 5th Group flash and the medical corps insignia on the cover.
The subject of the book, McDonald, had not even been Special Forces-qualified, yet he had always been referred to as the “Green Beret Doctor.”
There was no doubt that some Special Forces people went over the edge occasionally. When an organization attracted highly qualified people as S-F did, it invariably attracted its own share of highly qualified wackos. When Boomer had gone through selection for Delta Force, he had to go through severe physical and mental challenges that had knocked out over ninety-five percent of his classmates.
Then the survivors had undergone a rigorous psychological screening to find out if they could handle the stress of the job and were mentally stable.
In retrospect. Boomer found the psych screening amusing, although at the time it had been very serious — several otherwise highly qualified individuals who had passed all other tests had been washed out on the rd of the psych panel. Boomer had to wonder what kind of stable personality they were looking for: one that was capable of performing brutal tasks, yet not enough of a sociopath to ignore orders.
All those thoughts brought Boomer’s mind back to the matter of 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group.
“Lheard the battalion commander out there got relieved over that black market stuff.”
Skibicki took out talcum powder and began sprinkling it on the rubber cuffs of a dry suit.
“Nope. He finished his tour and got his little command box checked off. They said he wasn’t responsible. That he didn’t know what was going on in his own unit.”
“You heard anything about strange personnel procedures out there?” Boomer asked.
Skibicki put the talcum powder down.
“We don’t use this scuba gear too much here, but we’re authorized four dive slots. I pull one. Colonel Falk has one, and we got two open.”
He looked at the patch on Boomer’s chest.
“You definitely want to get some diving in while you’re here. We got some great water. I’ll sign you out a complete set.”
“I’d like that,” Boomer said.
Skibicki leaned back against the wall locker and folded his massive arms. He spoke slowly.
“Yeah, there’s some weird shit going on in 1st Battalion. I’ll check on that name for you.”
The scuba gear reminded Boomer of the message in his pocket.
“One other thing, sergeant major. Do you know of a jump scheduled for early morning on the second?”
“Saturday morning? No.”
“Ever heard of a Task Force Reaper?”
“No.”
“Ever heard of a water DZ named Gumbo?”
“Yeah. That’s off the northeast corner of the island: We use it once in a while for water jumps.”
Boomer pulled the message out of his pocket and silently handed it over. Skibicki scanned it.
“If someone’s jumping Gumbo Saturday morning, I sure as shit should have heard about it because there ain’t too many people that can be drop zone safety officer for a water jump on this island other than me.
I should have been tasked for bodies to pull drop zone safety.
According to safety regs you have to have one boat per jumper. It’s a damn nightmare. I don’t know why the colonel hasn’t told me about this.”
“Maybe they aren’t having any safety boats,” Boomer said.
“Maybe the colonel doesn’t want you to know about these people coming in. He got kind of pissed when he saw that I had broken the message out.”
Skibicki’s eyes widened slightly.
“If they ain’t using safety boats, then they’re violating about twenty fucking regulations. And that means they’re planning on drowning their chutes and not recovering them. You know how much a chute costs?
Sounds to me like someone’s planning a real world operation.”
“Any idea where these people are from?” Boomer asked.
“Not a clue, and I don’t think I’ll be going to ask the colonel either.
He don’t want me to know, I don’t fucking know.” Skibicki answered, handing back the message.
Boomer pocketed the piece of paper and hesitated. He had one last question, triggered by Skibicki’s comments.
“Sergeant major, have you ever heard of an organization called The Line?”
Skibicki paused ever so briefly, then answered almost inaudibly, his eyes locked on the scuba locker.
“No.”
“You sure?” Boomer pressed, picking up the hesitation.
“The reason I’m asking is cause you said my dad’s death was caused by West Pointers and I’ve heard that there was this group of West—”
“I said no,” Skibicki snapped, glaring at Boomer. He turned and looked away for a few seconds, regaining his composure. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card and handed it to Boomer. A green beret with a knife across it was embossed on it. Along the top it said PARATROOPER, RANGER, SPECIAL FORCES, WORLD TRAVELER, SINGER, SALESMAN, BULLSHIT ARTIST. Skibicki’s home and work address and phone numbers were listed in the center. At the bottom the rest of Skibicki’s qualifications were listed: revolutions started; orgies organized; ASSASSINATIONS PLOTTED; BARS EMPTIED; ALLIGATORS CASTRATED; TIGERS TAMED; VIRGINS CONVERTED; OTHERS SATISFIED.
“I only did that shit in my younger days,” Skibicki said, noting Boomer reading it. “you need anything, you give me a call, OK? I don’t know why you’re here, but it sounds like you might be needing some help.”