She felt something on her arm, then the prick of a needle.
“You’ll be all right. You’re going back to sleep now.”
“The diary,” she managed to rasp out.
“I’ve got it. As soon as you’re better, we’ll be able to call Hawaii again. Sleep tonight. Tomorrow’s soon enough.”
With those encouraging words, Trace gave up the fight.
She lapsed into a deep sleep, her body sinking into the comfort of a large bed.
Leaving the room. Harry went into the living room. He glanced at the memorabilia on the wall — all Colonel Rison’s — a legacy of years of service. Harry picked up the phone and dialed long distance.
“She’s out again.”
He listened to the voice on the other end.
“She’s in no shape right now to do anything. She’s got two broken ribs, she was hypothermic when I found her and severely dehydrated.”
A pause.
“Sometime tomorrow. Probably late morning.” Harry looked about.
“I’m going to need help with transportation.”
He nodded.
“All right.” He hung up the phone, then glanced at a picture of Colonel Rison in camouflage fatigues and nodded.
“I’ll see it through, sir.”
“Senator Jordan, General Maxwell, this is Major Watson.”
Boomer noted that Jordan didn’t shake hands, although Maxwell did. He stood at attention as the senator moved directly to the desk dominating the room. He gestured for the others in the room to be seated.
“I wish I could be more cordial but I’m afraid I have neither the time nor the inclination. From what I have been told, you could well be facing charges for your recent actions.”
Boomer sat motionless, waiting.
Jordan continued.
“I must also tell you that I am not predisposed to believe that there is a coup or assassination plot in the works.”
Now Boomer reacted, but the senator held up a hand, forestalling any spoken response.
“However, I am predisposed to believe that there are actions taking place that are prejudicial to the welfare of this country. Actions that may be initiated by some members of the military. Perhaps they are being organized by such a group as this Line you have briefed Agent Stewart about. Perhaps it is simply members of the Joint Chiefs acting in what they believe to be the best interests of the country. But it appears those actions may be crossing the line into areas, that while not. directly illegal, are harmful.”
Jordan paused and Boomer jumped into the gap.
“Senator, with all due respect, I firmly believe that this is more than just the Joint Chiefs making a political play. There are military forces at this minute maneuvering in a manner that are clearly a threat to the President’s welfare.”
“We have only your word on that,” Senator Jordan said.
“You can check on it,” Boomer said.
“I can assure you that we are,” Jordan replied.
Boomer tried to keep the initiative, something he’d been trained to do.
“There is something I have not told Agent Stewart. I thought it was best to present it personally.”
Boomer reached into his pocket and pulled out Colonel Stubbs’s ID card.
He placed it on the desk. Jordan picked it and glanced at it curiously.
“And this is?”
“That is the ID card of one of the members of the NATO inspection team killed in the Ukraine.”
“And how did you get a hold of it?” Jordan asked.
“A team of Delta Force soldiers under my command conducted that ambush.”
Senator Jordan sat up straight.
“You’d better hold on one minute, young man. Do you realize what you’re saying?”
General Maxwell was nodding slightly, as if his suspicions were confirmed.
Boomer kept his eyes on the senator.
“I know exactly what I am saying. I was sent on a military mission into the Ukraine on the night of the twenty-eighth of November. At the time we were told the target was a group of the radical Ukrainian parliament. The same group that was behind the shipment of that intercepted nuclear weapon.”
Boomer told the story of the mission from planning through the confrontation with Colonel Decker and his banishment to Hawaii.
General Maxwell spoke for the first time, summing up Boomer’s account.
“So you believe that the mission was not a mistake but deliberately planned to embarrass this administration?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“That’s a pretty strong statement,” Senator Jordan said.
“You’re accusing people of murder, including yourself.”
“I was misled—” Boomer began.
“That didn’t work for the Nazis,” Jordan countered.
“Those who worked for the Nazis knew what they were doing. They knew they were following illegal orders,” Boomer replied.
“I was following orders, but they were not illegal orders as far as I knew. And what actually happened was not at all what I was ordered to do. I would never have gone on that mission if I had known what it really was.
Once I realized what was happening I did everything in my power to stop it. The blood on that ID card is the blood of a friend.”
Boomer fixed the senator with his eyes.
“Sir, there’s dirty work out there needing to be done all the time and somebody does it for this country. I’m one of those people.
During Desert Storm I went into Iraq with three other men several weeks before the start of the ground war to try and get a shot at Saddam Hussein on direct orders from the National Command Authority. And if I’d gotten the shot, I would have taken it, regardless of the fact that there’s a law against that in this country. I figure that one shot would have saved hundreds of Americans, and thousands of Iraqis.
But beyond what I figured, those were my orders.”
Senator Jordan wasn’t swayed and met Boomer’s gaze.
“Following orders?” So if the other guy is dirty, we get dirty too?
Then who is right? We? Because we believe right is on our side? But doesn’t the other guy think right is on his side? And if we use the same tactics and techniques, then don’t we intrinsically sabotage the rightness of our cause by the wrongness of our methods?”
“I don’t know,” Boomer said.
“I don’t have the leisure of philosophical discourse before I act.
Because of the nature of covert operations, I often don’t have the opportunity to find out all the information I would like to have in order to make an informed decision. I trust that the orders I am given are legitimate. That’s the way it works.
“But I do know the’ same man in Turkey who ordered me on the mission into the Ukraine, Colonel Decker, was involved in the parachute drop off the north shore of this island. And that same Colonel Decker is somewhere on this island right now. And I believe those same people are involved in the movement of a Special Operations submarine, first toward the site of the C&C exercise, and now toward Pearl Harbor.”
“The sub has changed course?” Maxwell interupted.
“Last report I received — yes, sir,” Boomer replied.
“That’s strange,” Maxwell said.
“All right,” Jordan said in a flat voice, cutting through the discussion.
“I think we all understand the ethics involved here, but the major does have a point — all the ethics and moral arguing in the world are not going to do us a damn bit of good if what he says is true. The problem is, Major Watson, that even with this”—he held up the ID card—“you really have no proof.
“I just find it hard to believe that a secret military organization has been in existence for what — seventy years yet we’ve never heard of it.
That’s stretching my credibility quite a bit.”