Skibicki stretched out his massive arms and glanced at the other two occupants of the room. The only sound was the wind blowing off the porch moving a chime back and forth.
“We took Chon back to the FOB. Then me and another guy, we shot Chon up with morphine, took him out into the bay, cut a vein so that the sharks would find him, and I popped him twice in the head with my High Standard .22.
We weighed the body down with chains, and dumped him overboard.” Skibicki said it all flatly, like he was describing a trip to the laundromat.
“It was all said and done by the time Rison got back to the FOB from a MACV command and staff meeting in Saigon. I went in with Killebrew and briefed Rison on what had happened. I think he knew right away that something stunk about the way the CIA spook had reacted, but fuck the body was already a body. Couldn’t resurrect the son of a bitch. We made up a cover story to explain Chon disappearing.
We said we sent him on a cross-border op and we never heard from him again. And that wasn’t that far out because, like I said, we were losing lots of people over the fence.
“The shit hit the fan the next day. Somebody, and to this day I swear it was the CIA, even though they produced some low ranking, non-S-F Intel clink to go public, blew the whistle.
“That’s all the general in Saigon needed. He called Rison up and asked him what happened. Rison gave him the cover story. The general blew a gasket, since he already had heard the true story and had Rison arrested. In the middle of a war, our own people arrested a full bull colonel in the U.S. Army!
They also picked up Killebrew, me, and the other fellow who helped me, a guy named Harry Franks. We were charged with murder.” Skibicki shook his head, still incredulous after all these years.
“Here we were, in the middle of the most fucked-up war you’ve ever seen, and we’re getting charged with murder for wasting a double agent.
It was enough to make you cry.
“Well, even the general couldn’t keep a lid on it. The press got a hold of the story and it hit the headlines all over back in the states.
There was a big public outcry over Americans getting jailed, even if we did kill someone. Hell, John Wayne had made a movie about the Green Berets, people liked us. And by then most everyone was sick of the war and it looked like we were just being set up, which we were, except no one in the public knew the real reason.
“So it didn’t work out quite like the general wanted. He didn’t get to see Colonel Rison and the rest of us go to jail, but he did at least get the colonel out of the way. Rison’s career was over. Never mind the murder, there was still the fact that he had lied to the general when he gave him the cover story. After all,” Skibicki’s voice dripped sarcasm, “we were only supposed-to kill people, not lie about it.
“The real thing that got us off, though, was what had started it in the first place — the CIA. They wouldn’t allow their people to testify, so that sort of stalled the whole thing out. After all, my defense was that I’d been told to waste the little motherfucker by the spook. There was no way the Company was going to put one of their own on the stand under oath.
“The general didn’t waste any time in trying to get Special Forces in-country under his control, though. Rison was still in the brig down in Saigon when the general appointed some leg colonel from his staff to take over the FOB. The son of a bitch tried to put on a green beret and not only was he not S-F-qualified, he wasn’t even jump-qualified.
The FOB sergeant major, old Terry Hollihan, a good man, had a fucking fit. He told the sorry SOB to take the goddamn jump wings and beret off.
The colonel then tried to get around S-F by going down to the LLDB jump school and getting airborne-qualified by doing a few chopper blasts. It was a real shame when he broke his leg on the third jump.”
Skibicki grinned a wicked smile.
“Of course that might have had something to do with Hollihan’s jumpmaster inspecting the colonel’s gear just prior to the jump. I guess the man was lucky he was alive. I’d have cut his damn static line.”
Skibicki’s face turned serious.
“But all that’s a roundabout way to get you to what you really want to know. We got off. They dropped the charges. But Rison knew that he had to do something or The Line would kill Special Forces.
“So he came to me and Harry and Lieutenant Colonel Killibrew and we talked about it. We needed something on them. Something to act as a countermeasure. There wasn’t much the officers could do. Rison had to go back to the States. His career was over. Killibrew was reassigned in e country. But before he left, Rison pulled a few strings and Harry and I disappeared into the Studies and Observation Group under deep cover with one last mission assigned to us by our former commander: get something on The Line.
“We went after the only lead we had, the assistant division commander of the Americal who had come to Rison in the beginning of the whole mess. We went down to the Americal AO and followed that officer everywhere. Hell, that unit was so screwed up, we could have wasted the man and the rest of the Division staff and it would have taken them a couple of days to realize it. We just put on regular fatigues, sewed an Americal patch on the shoulder and meandered around the big shit pile they called Division headquarters.
They had so many ash and trash men there, it was amazing they could put a squad in the field. Everyone just figured we belonged and no one questioned us.
“It took us five weeks before we got what we were looking for. Some V.I.P from the States flew in to Saigon and then came up to the Americal. He went straight to the ADC — didn’t even talk to the Division Commander, who spent most of his time drilling holes into the sky in his command and control helicopter, getting his rocks off listening on the radio to people dying five thousand feet below.
“We knew this V.I.P was something special. He wore unmarked fatigues and he was old. And he wore a big-ass ring on his left hand. Ain’t no mistaking one of those Hudson High rings. So I left Harry with the ADC and followed this guy back to Saigon. He was staying at the MACV compound in V.I.P quarters. I did some checking and found out his name: retired Brigadier General Benjamin Hooker on special assignment from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I told you about meeting him in’nam,” Skibicki added defensively as Boomer glared at him.
“Officially, he was retired and working for the Joint Chiefs. But in reality he was checking up on The Line’s little war.”
Boomer stood up and walked over to the window, then came back, his mind churning.
“What happened?”
“I waited until Hooker was at a meeting at the MACV compound and I broke into his room. I was looking for anything. I still didn’t even really know about The Line or who Hooker was. I hit paydirt. Right there in his locked briefcase.”
“What did you get?” Boomer asked, unconsciously leaning forward.
“His diary. Starting from 1926, the year he entered the Academy through 1969.”
Boomer whistled.
“What did it say?” Maggie asked.
Skibicki held up a hand.
“Whoa, slow down. I only glanced at it to make sure it was something we could use.
I didn’t have much time. I got out of the BOQ and went over to a friend of mine who worked in an office there at one of the MACV buildings. I made a copy of the diary page by page, but I didn’t read it. I checked a few pages here and there and what I saw scared the shit out of me.
You won’t believe some of the stuff this guy was involved in.
“Anyway, that same day I packed the original in a secure pouch and gave it to a S-F guy I trusted who was rotating back to the States with orders to hand deliver it to Rison.
I sent the copy by FOB’ courier to Killebrew. Then I went back to the Americal headquarters, gathered Harry in, and we went back to CCN to our job fighting the real enemy.”