Boomer pulled it out. A topographic map of Oahu.
He beard the elevator open. Boomer stood and checked the hallway. Two men were approaching and when they saw him they broke into a run.
Boomer slammed the door shut and threw the bolt. Thuds rained down on the door as Boomer spotted his only option. He ran out onto the small balcony. There was a small concrete extension surrounded by a chest-high railing. Boomer climbed onto the railing, steadying himself with his hands on the bottom of the balcony above. Carefully he slipped his hands over the edge of the concrete lip. He avoided looking at the ground forty feet below. As the door splintered open.
Boomer swung a leg up, then the other. Standing up, he hopped over the railing and got out of sight.
He heard feet clatter onto the balcony below.
“Where’d he go?” a man’s voice asked.
“Either up or down,” another voice replied.
“He’s going to have to go down to get out. Let’s move.”
Boomer hoped the room was empty. He opened the sliding door and went through the room into the hallway. The elevator was in the center, the fire stairs to the right. No choice really. There was no way Boomer would want to fight his way out of the close confines of a small box.
He took the stairs two at a time until he hit the second floor, then he slowed down, his sneakers making no noise as he carefully took the next corner. Boomer drew his Browning. He made the last turn, muzzle leading and the first thing he saw was another muzzle pointing at him.
“Freeze!” the DIA agent yelled.
Boomer didn’t stop moving, taking the last couple of stairs, weapon pointed directly between the man’s eyes. The agent backed up to the outside door.
“I said freeze, asshole!”
Boomer continued until the muzzle of his gun pushed up against the man’s forehead, pressing the back of his skull against the steel door.
The agent’s gun was correspondingly against Boomer’s face, but the man’s hand was shaking and his eyes were wide open trying to focus on the metal tube pressing into his skin. This was not at all something he expected or had been trained on. With his free hand, Boomer effortlessly snatched the man’s gun and tossed it away.
“Good night,” Boomer said, rapping the cold steel of the barrel against the agent’s head. He slid to the floor unconscious. Boomer leaned over and checked the man’s hands, then he pushed the outside door open and squinted in the bright sunlight.
CHAPTER 8
“Major Keyes isn’t Q course-qualified,” Skibicki said to Boomer as the letter entered the tunnel.
Boomer replied by tossing the ID card and map onto the sergeant major’s desk.
“What’s this?” Skibicki asked.
Boomer quickly related going to the motel and his encounters there.
When he was done, Skibicki picked up the card.
“Let me see if I can find out what’s going on.”
“How?” Boomer asked.
Skibicki took an old spiral notebook out of a drawer.
“NCO network.” He flipped through until he found what he was looking for. He grabbed the phone and began dialing.
While he was doing, that. Boomer unfolded the map and studied it.
There were pencil marks in the upper left corner, on the blue next to the land. Boomer remembered something, but before he had a chance to take the thought further, Skibicki slammed the phone.
“He ain’t DIA.”
“What?”
Skibicki flipped the card to him.
“Your buddy there, John Regan, if that’s his real name. He isn’t DIA.”
“But he had this on him,” Boomer said, looking over the ID.
Skibicki gave Boomer a look normally reserved for idiot privates.
“Yeah, and the two guys we blew away had these too and they were doing some breaking and entering earlier in the day. These cards are their cover so they can go about their business. I talked to a sergeant major buddy of mine over at DIA headquarters and he checked their open and classified records. This guy isn’t listed in either.”
“Then who the fuck is Major John Regan?”
“It’ll take a while for me to check around,” Skibicki said. “We also have to consider the possibility that this guy might not be military at all. I think we’ve stepped in some deep and dark shit here.”
Boomer tapped the map sheet.
“Remember that water jump I told you about?”
“Yes?”
Boomer pointed at the pencil marks off the northwest coast of Oahu.
“Is that Gumbo Shark DZ?”
“Yes.”
“And those guys had scuba gear,” Boomer said.
Skibicki put those two pieces of information together.
“DZ coverage.”
“That’s the way I figure it,” Boomer said.
“Which means there’s a hell of a lot more going on here than someone simply wanting Trace’s manuscript.” Boomer sat on the edge of Skibicki’s desk.
“Let’s go back. You said Keyes isn’t Special Forces-qualified?”
“Right. His orders for command of A Company, 1st Battalion, were cut in DC — right at Department of the Army personnel — not at Special Ops Headquarters at Bragg. That explains how they can slot someone who isn’t qualified into that slot.”
“How the hell can they do that?” Boomer asked.
“Well, it’s like this. Someone with a lot of rank orders someone in personnel to sit down at a typewriter and type the fucking orders, then put them in an envelope and mail them. Whoever gets them salutes and says’yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full,” because the signature on the bottom has a few stars behind it.” Skibicki’s voice dripped sarcasm.
“This is the only job in the world where you wake up in the morning and they tell you, “Well, hey, bud, we want you to go and get your ass shot off,” and the only option in your bag of retorts is to salute and say ‘yes, fucking-A, sir.”
“Skibicki leaned forward.
“You still don’t get it, do you, Boomer? When the system says it will happen, then it will happen. They could have cut orders assigning an orangutan to be commander out there at Alpha company and the fucking battalion commander would have handed the guidon to a monkey.”
“I get it,” Boomer snapped back.
“I’ve played the game.”
But Skibicki wasn’t done.
“Those guys we killed could be Company. Sooner or later they’re going to backtrack to us, if they haven’t already. Our names are on that damn police report.”
“But what’s the CIA doing operating inside the States?” Boomer asked.
“I just said they might be CIA,” Skibicki said.
“There’s so many damn private armies running around sanctioned by the government it could be anybody. Hell, you guys in Delta are just the tip of the iceberg.”
Boomer leaned toward Skibicki and spoke in a low, measured tone.
“Do you think’ there’s a connection between these guys here on the island and 1st of the 1st.”
“If those are Keyes’ guys making the jump,” Skibicki answered.
Boomer pulled out the copy of the JAVIS report from his breast pocket.
“What about the plane for this water jump? If we can find out about that, then maybe we can get an idea what’s going on. We need to know if it’s coming from Okinawa.”
Skibicki started turning pages in his spiral notebook.
“That will take a little while.”
“I’ll give Trace a call and fill her in on what’s going on,” Boomer said. He went to the desk across from Skibicki and dialed Trace’s work number. When she came on the line, he related what had happened at the hotel and their discoveries so far. As Skibicki hung up. Boomer told her to come to the tunnel.
“The plane isn’t from the island,” Skibicki said.