Boomer took the card.
“Thanks, sergeant major, but I’m just here TDY for a couple of weeks to take it easy.”
“Uh-huh,” Skibicki, said, turning back to the equipment.
“Well, be careful taking it easy.”
CHAPTER 6
It was payday, a significant event for the military. Although most soldiers now had direct deposit twice a month, the last duty day of the month was still formerly known as payday. It was usually designated as a half day of work with the morning being given over to such vital military acts as a Class A (dress) uniform inspection.
Trace had forgotten that it was payday when she’d told Boomer what time she’d be home. Camp Smith, where she worked, was a small post run by the Marines nestled in the foothills of Halawa Heights. It was the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) and also housed Headquarters Fleet Marine Force Pacific.
USPACOM was the Unified Command for military forces in the Pacific.
When Trace had arrived in Hawaii and been assigned to USPACOM she’d been astounded at the clutter of commands and headquarters all camped on the island of Oahu. The command and control system for the armed forces of the United States was anything but simple, and Trace had spent several days simply studying the flow charts of organizations to get oriented to her new environment.
In the U.S. military there are six unified commands which cut across service boundaries: USEUCOM (European Command); USPACOM (Pacific Command); USLANTCOM (Atlantic Command) which is mainly a Navy show; USSOUTHCOM (Southern Command) which is primarily in Army hands, covering Central and South America; USCENTCOM (Central Command) which received fame and fortune under General Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War and ignominy for the embarrassments in Somalia; and USREDCOM (Readiness Command) in charge of forces in the continental United States.
While those commands sound very cut and dried and split the world up quite neatly in various areas, the actual practice of those commands was somewhat ludicrous as Trace had learned at USPACOM. During peace, the Unified Commanders controlled no troops (other than the staff-such as Trace — assigned to their headquarters). The separate services controlled their own forces during peacetime and jealously guarded that right.
Thus in Hawaii, the USPACOM commander could order a car to take him down to Pearl Harbor, but until the Joint Chiefs decided to give him operational control OP CON in time of crisis, he could only stare at the ships in the harbor and the jets at nearby Hickam Field which were, respectively, under the control of the admiral who commands the Pacific Fleet and the Air Force general who had the title of Commander of Pacific Air Forces. The Army troops at Schofield Barracks would salute the USPACOM Commander, but they answered to a three-star Army general at Fort Shafter who held the title of WEST COM (Western Command) Commander.
The various services on Hawaii — indeed throughout the US military establishment — only worked together at the very lowest or the very highest of levels. At the lowest level. Trace could get on the phone and call a buddy of hers at Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station and get some flight time in a Huey helicopter to keep her flight status current. At the highest level, joint exercises were scheduled — such as the annual Team Spirit in Korea — where the services grudgingly agreed to work together and the Air Force would actually allow Army troops inside their cargo planes and Navy pilots might acknowledge the presence of Air Force planes in the same sky. But in the middle levels it was as easy to coordinate a Navy ship into an Army exercise as it was to get Congress to agree on a new gun control bill.
Trace knew it was this intractable system-wide separation that the President was trying to address in the MRA. Because not only did the gulf between the services threaten their operational capabilities, it was devastating when it came to the world of weapons and equipment procurement.
Only under the greatest of stress — usually the threat of loss of funds — would the Air Force and Navy agree on, say, a jet fighter to be jointly developed and purchased. And in the process they usually ignored the bastard stepchild of military procurement, the Marine Corps, which was one of the major reasons the MRA Commission had recommended the Marines be integrated into the Army.
Trace had entered the military listening to horror stories of interservice incompatibility, such as the Navy SEAL teams in Grenada that were attacked by Navy planes because their radios didn’t work on the same frequencies. It was that same lack of communication in a different form that was sending her home at 1:30 in the afternoon rather than her usual 6:00 P.M.The senior Army officer on the USPACOM staff had announced the previous week that his troops would work the full day, but that directive had run counter to the. USPACOM Chief of Staff’s (a Navy officer) instruction that all service people were to be given the afternoon off. The brief squabble had been resolved in traditional military fashion: since the Chief of Staff was a one-star admiral and the senior Army man was a full colonel, the. troops went home after lunch.
Such weighty matters seemed to fill up the time for the USPACOM staff at Camp Smith, Trace thought as she swung her AMC Jeep onto H-l and headed west, happy to be missing the rush hour traffic out of Honolulu.
She was glad for the time off. It would give her some time to clean the house up before Boomer got there. She knew that Boomer would be working a full day. The only troops in the Army that ignored such things as payday were Special Operations troops.
Trace continued west past Waipahu and turned off on Kunia Road, then made an immediate left on Cane Haul Road, a small gravel road that ran through the sugarcane fields. She was renting her house from a Marine Lieutenant Colonel who was currently at sea for eight months. It was a good deal, and Trace enjoyed being away from the monotony of Army housing.
The colonel had bought the land years ago when Makakilo City was first being developed. It was a choice location, well up on the slope leading to Puu Makakilo, the hilltop from which the area received its name. It was a one story house, the edge of which was on stilts, hanging over the hillside, looking toward the ocean. In dry weather Trace liked going the “back way” as she called it, taking Cane Haul Road up between Puu Kapuai and Puu Makakilo. This brought her to the house from down the shoulder of the mountain, rather than up the tar road the other less adventurous residents used.
She stopped in the driveway and disengaged the four wheel drive before getting out. She slipped her key in the lock and stepped into the main foyer which opened onto the large living room facing the ocean.
Trace was shocked to see a man dressed in black standing over her computer, his figure frozen in mutual surprise at her unexpected entrance. A second man was on the balcony, looking down toward the main road, which explained why she had come upon them unannounced. They both wore black balaclavas over their faces and had small backpacks slung over their shoulders. The room was trashed.
The couch had been slashed apart, drawers emptied, picture frames shattered.
The first man swung up a large-bore pistol and pointed it directly at Trace.
“Don’t move and you won’t get hurt,” he hissed.
“How’d she get here?” the second man asked, coming into the room from the porch.
“That’s what I was going to ask you,” the first said.
“Cover her.” The second man produced a pistol as large as the first’s.
Trace froze but her eyes were searching the room, looking for anything she could use as a weapon. She could see a bat she used for softball, but it was too far to be practical.