“Take them!” Decker yelled as he dove behind a desk.
Boomer fired once then hit the deck as the pair of men who had followed Decker opened fire with submachine guns. The glass that had separated Colonel Coulder’s office from the rest of the tunnel exploded inward.
Boomer stuck his hand up over the three-feet-high wall and fired blindly. He heard the roar of Skibicki’s gun a few feet to the other side and glanced over. The sergeant major was hunched behind the wall also, firing blindly to keep them from getting closer.
“You OK, Vasquez?” Skibicki yelled out.
“Yeah, but I wish I was smaller,” her voice came from under the colonel’s desk.
Chips splattered off the wall as the intruders fired again.
“They aren’t asking us to surrender,” Boomer hissed to Skibicki.
“I noticed,” Skibicki replied.
“What now?” Boomer asked as he fired another couple of rounds.
“We know the tunnels. They don’t,” Skibicki said.
“So?”
“Remember the locker where I was inventorying the scuba gear?”
“Yeah?”
“We go there.” Skibicki raised his voice.
“Vasquez, on three we head for the scuba locker.”
“Roger that, sergeant major.”
“Uh,” Boomer said, “what about the bad guys?”
“One,” Skibicki yelled.
“Two.” He rolled over, put his back to the low wall and fired at the antiquated fuse box in the corner of Coulder’s office. With an explosion of sparks the tunnel went dark.
“Three.”
Boomer stood and vaulted the wall, keeping low. He didn’t fire, nor did Skibicki.
The men with Decker fired blindly, bullets scattering all over the room. Their muzzles made bright flashes and Boomer took the opportunity to fire right at one of the stuttering lights. A startled yell of pain rewarded his effort and the firing stopped on both sides.
To the best of Boomer’s recollection the side tunnel was only about ten feet to his right. He duck-walked, bumping into a desk, recoiling, pushing right, breathing hard. He hit the wall, then felt it give way to open space. Someone brushed by him, moving quicker. He was in the side tunnel.
He stood up and moved quicker. He could hear light footsteps in front of him and followed.
“Damn!” Boomer hissed as he ran into a wall with his forehead leading.
“This way,” he heard Vasquez whisper. Boomer headed in the direction of the voice and a pair of hands grabbed him and pulled him into the scuba locker. They could hear Decker’s voice echoing through the tunnel they had left.
“You won’t get out! We have the front door covered.”
Boomer heard a screech of metal, then Skibicki’s voice explaining what was going on.
“There’s an air duct back here. It’ll be a tight fit. I know it comes out on the back side of the lava flow. I went up there one day and checked.”
“You ever been in the duct?” Boomer asked, tucking his High Power back in the holster, then feeling his forehead.
His hand came away wet with blood.
“No,” Skibicki grunted and there was the sound of something metal hitting the floor.
“So how do you know it’s a tight fit?”
“I’m hoping it’s a tight fit rather than no fit,” Skibicki said.
“I’m going in. Follow me.”
Boomer helped Vasquez up after the sergeant major.
Then he climbed up himself. He was in a four-foot-diameter ridged steel tube that angled up at almost sixty degrees.
Boomer began climbing, bracing his boots against the ridges. After what he estimated to be about twenty feet he bumped into Vasquez’s sneakers., “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“It’s getting tighter,” Vasquez’s voice was strained.
Boomer soon found out what she meant. The tube halved in size and jigged to the left before resuming its climb.
Boomer got stuck halfway into the jig-His hips were stuck.
He felt cloth and skin tear as he popped free.
Boomer blinked. Although Vasquez filled almost the entire width of the pipe, he could see a faint light seeping through around her. The light suddenly grew much brighter as Skibicki punched off the cap on the. air duct.
Boomer made the last few feet. Vasquez’s hands came down, grabbed his collar and pulled him out faster than he could move his feet. Boomer looked around. They were on the far side of the lava ridge from the tunnel just as Skibicki had promised.
“Let’s get to my jeep,” Skibicki said.
“This way.”
CHAPTER 17
The sun had raced around and come up again, bathing the east coast of the United States with light. Trace had spent an uneasy night in the motel. She’d wanted to call Hawaii again, but there was nothing more to say and it was the middle of the night there. She’d relayed the important information in her phone call to Maggie. Maybe she could talk to Boomer later today.
Through the leafless branches of the trees lining the highway, Trace could see New York City off to her right. She’d entered the Palisades Parkway at its start point, near the George Washington Bridge and that had brought back memories of Boomer. She remembered his telling her that he’d grown up in the shadow of that bridge on the other side of the river.
As she drove, the route paralleled the river. The Hudson flowed in its glacial bed past her toward the Atlantic and on the Jersey side, high cliffs — named the Palisades by Henry Hudson when he’d first sailed up the river — looked down upon the dark water.
Trace felt a familiar feeling ignite in the pit of her stomach, overshadowing even the present crisis she was in. She was returning to the Point. Like Pavlov’s dog hearing the bell, her body responded to four years of psychological and emotional strain and terror. Every West Pointer going up the Hudson felt it, no matter what the occasion for their return. Trace often imagined that even an old graduate being assigned to take over the Academy as superintendent felt it. There was no getting over the memories of Beast Barracks and four years inside the gray walls of the Academy.
It didn’t matter how far along on the Army chain of evolution a graduate was. The Point kept him or her in its grip. Even first-class cadets nearing graduation would aimlessly wander the barracks halls on Sunday nights in their tattered gray bathrobes or sweats, feeling the oppression of another week looming. In the Academy’s perverse way there was even an official ditty for the mood listed in the issued Bugle Notes (the cadet bible) called the Sunday night poop:
Six bells and all is well.
Another weekend shot to hell. Another week in my little gray cell.
Another week in which to excel.
Oh, hell.
The last two words were uttered with all the anguish and exasperation only a cadet could muster.
As she crossed the state line from New Jersey to New York, the Palisades Parkway veered away from the river and moved inland, crossing under the New York State Thruway. The terrain grew more hilly, and Trace passed the turnoffs for New City and Harriman State Park. The closer she got, the greater her anxiety.
Looping around the bulk of Bear Mountain, the parkway came to an end at a traffic circle. The first right led to Bear Mountain State Park. The second to Bear Mountain Bridge and Anthony’s Nose on the far side of the river. The last exit, before looping back on oneself, was Route 9W. The sign pointed the way to Fort Montgomery, Highland Falls, and, ultimately. West Point.
Trace took the turn, going by the Revolutionary War sites of Fort Clinton and Fort Montgomery. For a young country like the United States, West Point was about as old and venerable a site as could be found to place a military academy. It was geography that fixed the name, and it was geography that dictated the early military significance of the site.