“Maxwell was there when they took me away to kill me,” Boomer said.
Boomer laid out the events of the past twenty-four hours starting with meeting Stewart in the lobby through killing the two men at the abandoned ammo depot.
“I don’t think Maxwell’s with them,” Skibicki said.
“I don’t think so either,” Boomer said, “but that doesn’t mean Trace is safe.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Skibicki said.
“So what now?” Boomer asked, looking from Skibicki to Harry.
Skibicki pointed down to the harbor.
“My guess is that they’ll sneak into the harbor probably around four or five in the morning,” Skibicki said.
“Hooker’s on the island,” he added.
“He’s staying at the V.I.P quarters at Pearl.”
“How do you know that?” Boomer asked.
“I have sources,” Skibicki answered as he sat down in the passenger seat of the jeep. Harry sat on the hood.
“What sources?” Boomer asked.
“Listen,” Skibicki said.
“You opened this can of worms. I’m doing the best I can to deal with it.”
“What’s the plan?” Boomer asked.
“Can you at least tell me that — our plan, that is.”
Skibicki had a long, double-edged knife out and was sharpening it on a whetstone. Skibicki checked the edge against the hair on his forearm.
“We go down to the channel entrance around midnight. I’ve got a sonar device that can listen for them coming in on their SDV. We hear them, we go into the water and meet’em.” The hair curled up as the blade slid up his arm.
“Winner walks away. Loser’s shark bait.”
“Did Trace tell you anything about the contents of the diary?” Boomer asked Harry.
Harry shook his head, but then suddenly remembered something. He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out some pages.
“She said to give you this — it’s part of the diary.”
Boomer took the pages and looked down at them. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the note in Trace’s handwriting on the first page.
Boomer: The “fist” doesn’t sound right Trace.
Boomer remembered telling Trace the story of the radio operators jumping into France and how they were betrayed.
Boomer looked over at Skibicki who was still sharpening his knife.
Boomer could clearly see the depression on the side of Skibicki’s head — from the wound he had received serving with Boomer’s dad.
“What about the Vice President?” Boomer asked suddenly.
“It’s taken care of,” Skibicki said shortly, without lifting his eyes.
“It’s taken care of?” Boomer repeated.
“How?”
“Trace got the diary to Maxwell, who will get it to the President,”
Skibicki said.
Boomer wasn’t so sure about that given what had just happened to him.
“Then why are we here?” Boomer asked.
“Why not let the Secret Service take care of everything.”
“Insurance,” Skibicki said.
“I don’t think the Secret Service could handle what’s happening. As you say, these fake DIA guys are all over the place. For all we know Major Trace won’t get the diary to the President.”
Boomer glanced at Harry, then back at Skibicki.
“What’s going on?”
Skibicki kept sharpening the knife.
“Something’s not right with all of this,” Boomer said, tucking the pages into the breast pocket of his fatigues. He leaned forward, looking Skibicki directly in the eyes.
“I want your word, as someone whose life my dad saved, that you’re being straight with me.”
Skibicki’s eyes flickered away for the shortest of moments, then came back to lock into Boomer’s. He pointed down at the harbor.
“To the best of my knowledge there’s going to be an attempt to kill the President tomorrow morning We’re going to stop that attempt. I give you my word on that.”
Boomer was not satisfied at all. The answer was well short of what he had hoped for. He thought again of Trace’s short message, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it right now except ride this thing out.
Jordan stared at the diary as, if it were a rattlesnake someone had placed on his desk. He looked at General Maxwell.
Trace was seated in the corner of the room in a wheelchair, forgotten once she’d briefed the senator on her experiences of the past several days.
“If one-tenth of what’s in here is true, we have a crisis of unprecedented magnitude on our hands,” Jordan said.
“This, this…” He shook his head at a loss for words.
“My God, if any of this is true, we…”
“People tried to kill me to keep you from getting that,” Trace said.
“It all fits with what—” She halted as Jordan held up a hand.
He tapped the diary.
“But some of the things here are just unbelievable. These people are crazy.” Jordan leaned back in his chair.
“This could all be an elaborate plot designed to embarrass the President into going public with this and then looking very stupid.”
Jordan rubbed his forehead.
“This diary ends in 1968.
We have no idea if this Line still exists and if they have anything plotted for tomorrow. We’ve canceled the C&C exercise aboard the SHARCC, which was the most likely place and time for them to try something. This document gives me nothing the President can use on General Martin or any of the service chiefs.”
General Maxwell cleared his throat.
“Senator, I believe you are still underestimating the situation here.
In the military we always try to worst-case things. All the evidence we have points to the fact that The Line exists and that there is a plot. We alerted General Martin to that yesterday and they’ve had time to deal with the cancellation of the C&C exercise. If they did have a plot you can be sure that they had backup plans. This is more than just a political situation.”
“But I’m a politician, general,” Jordan replied.
“I’m not being facetious,” he explained.
“I’m being realistic. I can not move to their playing field and expect to compete. I have to deal with them on my playing field, and that is the field of politics.”
Trace twisted in her seat and caught General Maxwell’s eye. He raised his eyebrows as if to say he understood what she was thinking but that he had made the best case he could. She was very confused. She’d asked about Boomer, and Maxwell had told her that he was in custody, although he couldn’t tell her where he was in custody.
Jordan caught the look.
“Let me ask you two something.
In the over 200 years this country has been in existence, we have never had a military coup or even come close to having had one. Why are you both so willing to believe that one is occurring now?”
“We have had one, senator,” Trace replied. She felt curiously calm, cast adrift from all known anchors, all her old allegiances gone, but now that she was here, it didn’t bother her. She would worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
“If you believe that diary, the military, in the form of The Line, has been acting against the elected officials of this country for over fifty years. If that’s not a coup, I don’t know the definition of the word very well then. Just because they don’t pull up to the front of the White House in tanks with guns pointed at the front door, doesn’t mean they haven’t been controlling things. Hell, Eisenhower himself warned us against the military-industrial complex when he left office.
“I find it very disturbing that all entries for the last three months of 1963 are missing. That was when President Kennedy was assassinated and—”
“Let’s not get into that,” Senator Jordan cut in.