“It is our duty to give back to our country that which West Point teaches us. In a world that sorely lacks those moral tenets, it is our responsibility to stand up to the rest of the country as a guiding light, a way out of the troubled forest of moral decay.
“Duty, honor, country,” the Chief of Staff intoned the Academy motto, evoking in all the cadets present the speech by Douglas MacArthur in front of the Corps in 1962 that every cadet had to memorize as plebes.
“Never has our country needed our sense of duty and honor more.
“In the upcoming years, as you spread out around the world to serve in the active Army, I call upon each of you to remember your duty to your country. I call upon you to pursue a more active role in our society — even beyond that demanded by your role as officers. That is no longer sufficient, as the recent debacle in Southeast Asia clearly shows. Men who walked the long gray line before you served honorably there, but they were let down by a lack of moral fiber in our very society. We cannot keep our heads in the sand and simply look outward for our enemies. We must also search within the borders of our country and fight them in the way the Academy has taught you: with perseverance and courage in what you have been taught here!”
Trace remembered that the Corps had given the Chief of Staff a standing ovation” more for not taking up the full hour allocated, allowing them to get back to the barracks earlier for study or rack time, than for the content. But if one considered the existence of The Line, Trace began to understand how such speeches were allowed at an institution funded by the very society it so often lambasted. She had done some research and learned that the Chief of Staff’s comments were by no means isolated. West Point existed in a timeless vacuum that only occasionally noted the changes of the outside world, and then only to contemplate what effect West Point could have on the outside world, rather than the more natural opposite.
As the airport slowly came alive. Trace wondered what experience, if any. Colonel Rison had had with The Line, and what a man who had been relieved of his command in a combat zone would have to say about West Point and The Line. She had a feeling it would be very different from the Chief of Staff’s speech.
CHAPTER 12
Boomer slid the magazine on top of the housing and chambered a round.
He and Skibicki were at the end of the paved road that wound its way up the west coast of Oahu.
A sign indicated that the rest of the way was off limits to vehicles.
And, as if to reinforce the message on the sign, the road turned into a potholed dirt trail.
“Switch for the laser sight is here,” Skibicki added, tapping the side of the gun. “He handed Boomer his night vision goggles.
“Ready to go for a walk?”
“How far is it?” Boomer asked, shouldering the weapon and stepping out with Skibicki onto the dirt road.
“About three and a half klicks. We should make it in plenty of time.”
Skibicki pointed landward, toward the steep slopes that towered up.
“See those lights up there?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the Kaena Point satellite tracking station. All that land on the high ground is military reservation.” He pointed down.
“Maps show this road going around the point and continuing on the north side, but as you can see, you can’t drive it. It’s washed out at some points. Hardly anyone ever comes up here other than some fishermen during the daytime. Coast Guard’s got a lighthouse on the point itself but it’s unmanned.”
Boomer remembered that detail from the DZ message.
“Sounds like they picked the one place off-shore of Oahu where you could do a water drop and not have civilians on the beach,” he continued.
“Roger that,” Skibicki said.
Boomer felt the warm night breeze, and reflected how different the coastal breeze was than the bitter arctic air he’d felt in the Ukraine.
He wasn’t quite sure what to expect this evening. His hope was that they would at least confirm that it was a jump and maybe find where the jumpers came ashore and camped out. It was still five, days before Pearl Harbor Day, and Boomer hoped that Trace would come up with something concrete so that the information he discovered tonight could be given to the proper authorities whoever they were.
The interior of the Combat Talon was illuminated by red light so that everyone inside could maintain their night vision.
The airframe was a modified C-130 Hercules transport, an aircraft that had served as the workhorse of the Air Force for four decades and was still going strong. The interior was large enough to hold five cars end to end, but the front half of the Talon cargo bay was blocked off by thick, black curtains, separating the flight crew from the jumpers in the back.
The Air Force men in the forward portion of the cargo body were button-pushers and screen-watchers. It was their job to defeat electronic threats to the aircraft, allowing it to perform its stated mission of penetrating deep inside enemy airspace without being detected. This mission was considered a milk run by both the screen-watchers and the pilots up front. There were no mountain valleys to be negotiated at low level, where they could look up and see trees and the slopes above them; no electronic threat from enemy anti-aircraft systems to be thwarted; no special navigating problems as — unlike electronic silent missions — they were linked into the Navy’s FLTSATCOM network and their computers could locate their position on the move to within five meters every one one-thousandth of a second.
The inflight refueling had been the most exciting event and it had gone off without a hitch.
As load master Master Technical Sergeant Johnson was the man who worked both sides of the curtain. He was a member of the aircrew, but his job was to ensure that whatever cargo or personnel was loaded into the rear half of the Talon got to its departure point intact. For him, this was no milk run. He had fourteen personnel packed into the cargo bay along with two Zodiac rubber boats and other gear.
The men’s parachutes and rucksacks were strapped down on the back ramp and they had mostly slept for the ten hours they’d been in the air.
“We’ve got a TOT of sixty minutes,” the pilot’s voice sounded in the portable headset Johnson wore.
“Roger that, sir. I’ll wake up our sleeping beauties.”
Johnson walked over and tapped the man who had identified himself as the leader of these men when they’d on loaded The men wore no insignia or rank or organization patch — just black wet suits — and they had not identified themselves or their organization when they’d boarded the aircraft in Okinawa. Johnson didn’t find that surprising. The Talon often flew missions for hard-eyed men with no indication of who they were or what their mission was. Johnson’s job was to get them out of the plane intact at the right place and time, not to ask questions. In fact, he knew if he asked questions, he’d be looking for a new job as soon as they landed, if he was not locked in the brig.
“One hour out,” Johnson yelled over the roar of the engines.
The man cracked an eye and nodded, immediately nudging the man next to him, passing the signal down. Johnson was always impressed that men who were about to jump out of a perfectly good airplane could sleep so easily.
Johnson went to the back ramp and began unfastening the cargo straps holding down the parachutes. The men in the wet suits paired off into buddy teams and began rigging their parachutes. The dimly lit interior didn’t affect the men’s efficiency. Johnson had seen inflight rigs on routes through rough terrain where the constant jerking of the aircraft had thrown the men around like rag dolls, and the floor of the plane had been coated with slippery vomit from airsickness. He was glad for the smooth and level flight two hundred feet above the wavetops.