“That would be nice,” Boomer conceded, returning her hug.
Trace hesitated.
“The other night. That was like it was down in Texas, wasn’t it?”
Boomer hesitated, then answered slowly.
“I’m not sure what it was, but I don’t think it was like Texas.”
Trace smiled knowingly.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” She leaned forward and held him tight.
“Please don’t say anything, Boomer. Just hold me hard and know I need you.”
She let go just as suddenly and rapidly walked to the gate and disappeared.
Boomer stood there feeling the emptiness she had left.
“Please be safe, Benita,” he whispered.
On the far side of the boarding area. Sergeant Major Skibicki watched the embrace, the Calico hidden in his shoulder holster. He waited until Trace had entered the tunnel before approaching Boomer.
“Sergeant major,” Boomer said, surprised to see him.
“What’s up?”
“I thought I’d come by to make sure Major Trace got off all right,” Skibicki replied, walking out of the boarding area with Boomer.
“Vasquez wants us to meet her at the NCO Club at Shafter.”
“The NCO Club?” Boomer asked.
“I don’t trust the tunnel now,” Skibicki replied.
“Does she have anything?” Boomer asked.
“I guess she’ll tell us that,” Skibicki said.
The NCO Club at Fort Shafter was a round building with a central bar on the top level that had a beautiful view of the ocean. On a Friday evening it was packed with soldiers enjoying the end of another work week. Skibicki led Boomer through the throng until they spotted Vasquez at a table near the large windows. Two young soldiers were seated with her, vainly trying to get her attention.
“Get lost,” Skibicki growled placing a hand on the back of one of the men’s chair.
“Hey, screw off—” the soldier’s words froze in his mouth as he took in the grizzled old sergeant major and the officer standing behind him.
“Sorry, sergeant major, I was just trying to talk to the lady,” he tried explaining.
“The lady is a sergeant,” Skibicki said.
“And she’s my sergeant, and I need to talk to her, so hit the road.
“The two scattered and Skibicki and Boomer took their place.
“I didn’t need the help,” Vasquez said.
“They were amusing.” ‘
“No time for amusing,” Skibicki replied shortly.
“What have you got?”
Vasquez shifted her dark eyes to Boomer, then back to Skibicki.
“I checked on the KC-10 situation for tonight like you asked me.”
The young sergeant pulled out a notepad full of scribblings.
“Most tanker missions in this area of operation are flown by the Pacific Tanker Force of the 65th Strategic Squadron, which is located at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. That falls under the command of the Pacific Air Forces headquartered right here in sunny Oahu at Hickham.
I’ve got a friend at PACAF who owed me,” she said with a smile that made Boomer wonder about the debt.
“He checked and he found a KC-10 tanker departing Andersen at 0430 zulu on the first. It’s scheduled to do a mission at 0830 zulu, at coordinates 178 degrees, twelve minutes east longitude, and twenty-three degrees, fifteen minutes north latitude.”
“Which is where?” Skibicki asked.
She had an 8.5-by-11 Xeroxed map of the Pacific in her notebook and she unfolded it and placed it next to the paper.
She drew a small circle on it.
“Right here. Five hundred and fifty miles southeast of Midway.” She consulted her notes again.
“The KC-10 is to remain on station to do another mission at the same spot at 1530 zulu. It’s scheduled to return to Andersen at 1930 zulu.”
“A second mission?” Skibicki said.
“Two aircraft?”
Vasquez shook her head.
“No. Same aircraft. Once going in and once coming out. I checked, using what you gave me, that it might be a Combat Talon that’s getting the gas. A 0830 Z refuel at this spot,” she tapped the mark, “given the Talon’s mission speed at altitude of 260 knots, puts the Talon here at Oahu at 1200 Z. Given that they come in low level the last fifty miles or so to get under radar.”
Boomer nodded. Exactly the time for the drop on the message.
“You weren’t able to find out anything about where the four Talons of the tst SOS are?” Boomer asked, referring to the 1st Special Operations Squadron which was stationed at Kadena in Japan.
“No, sir. That stuff is tightly classified and my buddy doesn’t owe me time in Leavenworth.” Vasquez continued with what she had.
“My figuring, though, has the same thing for the return of the mission aircraft. The second top off at 1530 Z gets the Talon on its way back to Kadena or wherever. I think it’s coming out of Japan or Okie because the refuel makes sense at that point. It’s just about 3,000 miles from those islands, which is the safe operational range of the Talon. Then they got a thousand miles in to here, a thousand back, another top off, and the 3,000 miles back to home base.”
“Son of a bitch,” Boomermuttered looking at the map, impressed with Vasquez’s interpolations.
“She’s good, ain’t she?” Skibicki said proudly.
Boomer looked at his watch.
“That means they’re in the air now. Hell, they’ll be refueling in three hours.” He looked around at all the people in uniform drinking beers and laughing together. He was only three days removed from lying in ambush above a road in the Ukraine. He felt the hard plastic edge of Stubbs’ ID card pressing into flesh through his thigh pocket.
“We’re going to have to check out the jump. Get an idea of what they’re up to.”
“Already thought of that,” Skibicki said.
“I drew some gear out of the tunnel for us to use. We’ll get to that in a little bit.” He turned back to Vasquez.
“You find out anything else?”
Vasquez pocketed her papers and map.
“Not really.”
“Not really?” Skibicki repeated.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Vasquez shrugged, used to the sergeant major’s gruff manner.
“You told me to check for anything weird going on around the island, sergeant major. There’s some weird shit going on with SOS US and the imaging people over at Pearl.” She paused.
“If I knew what was going on with you two, I might know what’s important and what’s not,” she added.
SOS US Boomer asked.
“What’s that?”
Vasquez enjoyed showing off.
“The sound surveillance system the Navy uses to track submarines. The first SOS US systems were put together in the fifties and the sixties and laid along the Atlantic Coast. Then they put in Colossus, which is along the Pacific Coast. Then the Navy boys got real smart.
They moved it out to the Russians to catch their subs as they put to sea. The Navy put systems off the two major Russian sub ports at Polyamyy and Petropavlovsk.”
“What’s that got to do with Hawaii?” Skibicki asked impatiently.
“Those are over near Europe.”
“Slow down, sergeant major, I was getting to that.”
Vasquez leaned forward.
“The Navy’s been adding to SOS US all along. We got a line not far off the coast of the islands. It’s some pretty wild shit. The system consists of groups of hydrophones inside large tanks — and I mean large.
My buddy over at Naval Intel says each tank is as big as the oil storage tanks at Pearl. These things are sunk down to the bottom.
They’re all connected by cable and the cable is buried. That’s to prevent the Russians from trailing cable cutters off their ships or subs and severing the lines.” Vasquez shook her head.