Running the Maze

by Jack Coughlin

  CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA

  Test pilot Buck Gardener and his astrophysicist wife, red-headed Erin Tyne-Gardener, had a wedding made in heaven and a marriage made in hell. The two attractive young people, who had met after they had been selected for astronaut training, had somehow found time for romance among the rockets. The wedding, which was widely publicized by the NASA public relations department, took place within a year, and the couple walked beneath crossed swords and into the cameras. Four years later, they hated each other but endured living together rather than ignite a divorce scandal that might jeopardize both careers. It had worked, to a point. Erin had been picked for the first Mars program shot, but Buck had been left behind in the wake of his superstar bitch wife. He wasn’t going to Mars, or to the moon, or even back to the rattletrap space station. Buck, once a hot jet jock, wasn’t going anywhere.

  His current assignment was as a member of the support crew for the Mars shot, which was the backup for the backup crew and did the scut work for the real astronauts who were assigned to fly. This was his third time on a support crew, and would be his last, for three strikes meant you had been passed over, for reasons that were never explained. Worse, Buck knew that his wife was screwing around with Colonel Dan Merrill, the mission commander. During their continuing domestic arguments, Erin had recently told Buck she would file for divorce as soon as she got back to earth. He thought about pulling out the .38 revolver and shooting her right there and then, then driving over to Colonel Merrill’s house and blowing him away, too, but that would just send Buck to prison for the rest of his life. There had to be a better way.

  Maybe he had gotten drunk one time too many, complained in public once too often, and gone too far outside the program for sympathy and understanding, because his sour attitude had drawn attention. NASA told him to get his shit together, or he would be canned. There was a mission to fly, he was told.

  The United States space program had always been a target for intelligence agencies from other nations, because of the technical innovations that were constantly being developed. Even during the International Space Station years, spies hung around the Cape and Houston as thick as flies at a cookout. A nice-looking woman named Linda had found him and become very friendly, and they pillow-talked long into the nights.

  In turn, she introduced Buck to another new friend, a man who said he had gone through something similar. He was from the Middle East, where women were not allowed to treat a man so shabbily; his own wife had an affair, and he had killed them both, and nothing was done about it, for it was proper. Just because Erin Tyne-Gardener was now a celebrity, she should not be allowed to make a fool of Buck. Suppose, the man said, just suppose that you could get rid of her and her lover without leaving a trace, get away with it, have the sympathy of a grateful nation—and earn five million dollars, to boot?

  Buck thought it over for a couple of days and decided, why not? A rich future was much better than having to spend another minute with Erin.

  5

  ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

  THEY WERE LATE, AND she was early. After making her telephone call, Beth Ledford had ducked into a Washington Metro station, swiped her card through the turnstile, descended the smooth escalator, and reached the platform just as a Blue Line train whooshed to a stop. The doors slid open; a crowd got out, a sea of determined faces, important people hurrying to government offices. Another crowd with faces set with equal firmness got on, and the train eased forward and accelerated. No one spoke; a long tube filled with VIP strangers. In minutes, Beth got off at the Crystal City stop in Arlington.

  She linked to Google on her iPhone, typed in the restaurant name, and received explicit directions through the busy and stylish underground grid of shops that lay below the glassy towers of government offices, apartment buildings, and private corporate headquarters. The pub was about half filled with customers, since it was after the lunch hour rush, so there was no waiting. The rusty decorations gave it the look of a working-class saloon in Pittsburgh rather than a trendy spot in the power orbits of Washington. She took a stool at the far end of the bar, facing the frosted glass door, and ordered an iced tea. A Washington Post had been left on the next chair, so she paged through it. The flooding and relief work in Pakistan had already fallen off the front page, and there was no mention of the murdered international relief workers. She sighed with sorrow and bit her lip in silent anger.

  They came in like a pair of cats, haughty and unapproachable, totally aware of their surroundings but not seeming to care. Beth had not even realized they were inside until the door closed behind them and they were walking her way. She immediately recognized Sybelle Summers: dark hair styled collar-length short, faded jeans over low-heeled soft black boots, and a dark blue summer top, with minimal makeup because she did not need much. Summers had made it big in the men’s club of special operations but retained her femininity. Beth Ledford raised her hand and gave a little wave. That’s what I want to be when I grow up. If she can do it, so can I.

  She did not recognize the man only a step behind Summers. He moved with athletic smoothness, but was not really very big, about five foot ten and 175. The clothes looked expensive, a lightweight linen jacket over dark trousers with sharp creases. He was clean-shaven, with sun-bleached brown hair worn slightly long. A frown pulled at the corners of his mouth for no apparent reason. As they approached, she could see him better and was gripped by the greenish, no-nonsense eyes. She judged Summers’s bodyguard to be a stone killer. Sundown eyes: the last thing an enemy would see as life blacked out. Those eyes would seldom laugh or hold joy for more than a few seconds.

  “Beth! Hello, girl!” Sybelle increased her pace over the last few steps and put her hands on Beth Ledford’s shoulders, pulling her close for an air kiss. She whispered, “Make this look normal.” Then she pushed away with a big smile and slid onto the stool between Beth and the paneled wall.

  “Sybelle! I’m so glad you could make it. I didn’t want to leave Washington without saying hello.” She had turned to face Summers, and when she turned back, the man was already seated to her left, elbows on the bar, looking at her. “Who is this?”

  “A guy who specializes in the kind of thing you mentioned, so I brought him along to pay the taxi fare.” Summers kept the smile playing on her face.

  Beth studied the man for a moment. “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

  He shook his head. “No.” A silent, one-word conversation.

  The bartender came down and rolled her eyes when they ordered only a tonic with a slice of lime, and a glass of water. “Can you afford all that?” she joked. “I mean, along with this lady’s iced tea, the bill is going to be horrendous. Maybe four bucks.”

  Sybelle reacted first. One sure way to draw attention is to be too cheap. Bartenders remember slights. “Bring us a couple of menus, too. We just want to catch up on some things before we order.” The bartender drifted away, happier.

  “Really,” Beth continued. “You look familiar.”

  The man cleared his throat. “Get to business. Why are we here?”

  Beth Ledford looked over at Sybelle. “Is this Kyle Swanson?”

  “Damn,” said Swanson.

  “Told you she was sharp,” said Summers. “Pay up.”

  Swanson laid a hundred-dollar bill on the bar.

  “Wow,” Beth said. “Summers and Swanson both. The A-List. Pleased to meet you, Gunny. You’re a legend in the community. I’ve seen your picture several times, including when you got the Medal of Honor.” As she shook his hand, the drinks and menus arrived.

  Summers spoke, the voice dropping to a lower tone that would not go beyond the three of them. “Beth, I heard about what happened to your brother. It was horrible. I’m very sorry.”

  “Thank you. My mom is all torn up about it. Joey was special to all of us, and the closed-coffin funeral was difficult. I’ve seen what bullets can do to a human body, and my imagination ran wild.” Softer, she said, “He was my brother!
”

  Kyle Swanson leaned closer. “I’m sorry he got killed, too, Ledford. But just to be clear, he should not have been running around a war zone with just a box of Band-Aids.”

  Beth Ledford felt as if she had just been slapped. In the three weeks since Joey had been killed, nobody had said such a thing to her, although it had been implied. Anger surged through her, and she turned to Swanson, their faces no more than eighteen inches apart. “You can go to hell, Swanson. I don’t care who you are.”

  Sybelle placed a hand on Beth’s forearm. “Ignore him, Beth. Kyle is as subtle as an Abrams tank. Apologize, Kyle.”

  “Right.” He took a sip of water and scanned the mirror that spread across the wall behind the bar.

  Beth crossed her arms and leaned back, doing a slow exhale to keep her temper. Asshole. “Joey discovered something important, and that’s why he was killed. I can prove it.” Her eyes drifted away from them. “I may have made a mistake here. I thought you might help, but nobody in Washington listens to me. I’ll just leave.”

  “Who’s the ‘nobody’ in your ‘nobody will listen’ scenario?” Kyle had changed neither his voice nor the set of his face.

  Ledford answered, “I’ve been in D.C. for the past week, trying to get somebody to take me seriously. First, my own people, the Coast Guard, turned me down. Then the State Department, and the FBI. Even my own congressman. Nobody will touch it.” She brought her cell phone out of her purse. “I’ve got the pictures right here.”

  Swanson’s frown lifted slightly. He did not want her to show any cell phone photos in a public place. “Put that away and settle down,” he ordered. “If you’re claiming a matter of national security, this is not the place to discuss it.”

  Summers leaned in. “When does your emergency leave end?”

  “I have to be back in Jacksonville in six days.”

  “Not anymore. As of right now, you are now on temporary duty as my special assistant. You and I are going directly back to our offices in the Pentagon and do the paperwork, get you a higher security classification, and have you sign an unbreakable national security secrecy oath. Kyle will join us a little later.” She flicked a glance at Swanson, who nodded.

  “I got it.”

  “What?” Beth asked as she slid off the chair. “Got what?”

  “Keep smiling. You’re being followed.”

  Swanson remained at the bar, and when the bartender wandered over, he apologized for skipping out on the lunch order but handed over a big tip. He kept his eyes over her shoulder on the long mirror, where rows of liquor bottles sat on shelves. As he spoke, he watched the reflection of a woman at a table near the door. Her auburn hair had been swept back in a tight bun, but she was shaking it free so that it reached her shoulders. From her purse, she took out a pair of dark-rimmed Sarah Palin glasses and put them on. A white plastic shopping bag with the logo of a shoe store also had been folded inside the purse, and she shook it open. The wide-knit lightweight pink sweater around her shoulders was whipped off and stuffed into the shopping bag, along with the purse. In less than thirty seconds, her hair, eyes, and expression had all been changed, resulting in a brand-new look that someone as unaware as Beth Ledford would never have picked up.

  Sybelle and Swanson had noticed her because it was their business to look for anything strange and out of place. Across from the restaurant’s front door, they had seen a young guy in old jeans, worn-out Nikes, and a green baseball cap loitering outside, reading a newspaper. A guy like that should have been busy playing a video game on his cell phone, not reading about current events, and the two Marines immediately recognized that he was doing surveillance.

  Then the woman came in alone, out of breath, took the empty table beside the door, and buried her nose in a glossy big magazine about weddings and brides, studiously avoiding looking at Ledford at the bar.

  Swanson admired her swift disguise change. Whoever she was, she was a pro. The guy with the green hat was also a watcher, waiting just outside to tail Ledford upon leaving. This woman was now able to switch back into the rotation. Kyle estimated there would be at least four of them to keep the subject in a visual box at all times. Make that six, because someone would have been stationed to cover the rear door of the restaurant, and a spare would be roaming in the area. Plus there would be cars waiting upstairs in case the target had wheels. Then there also would be a couple of people running the show. That added up to a lot of assets to deploy to watch Beth Ledford, who believed nobody was paying any attention to her.

  He sipped his water and chatted aimlessly with the bartender for a minute so the woman left the restaurant first. By the time he left a minute later, she was already lost in the crowd, and Mr. Green Cap was also gone. This is no mom-and-pop operation, he thought. It’s being run by an alphabet agency like the CIA or FBI, or maybe Homeland Security.

  Swanson headed back to the Pentagon. Ledford had not mentioned pestering the CIA or the Department of Homeland Security, but she had talked to the FBI. It did not matter how many people the Feebs had on her, because Sybelle was taking her to the Pentagon, into the secret offices where the watchers could not follow. Kyle decided that it would be good for Ledford to drop totally off the grid for a while.

  THE BRIDGE PAKISTAN

  THE TWO BOYS, NOT yet in their teens, were skinny from the food shortages but had sinewy muscles from hard work just like almost everyone they knew. Ahmad and Ali were the best of friends, and late at night they liked to leave the familiar streets of their village and get out from beneath the eyes of the adults who were always watching them. They were always back home before morning, sleepy but able to work.

  As all boys of that age do, they thrived on tales of great adventure. In the mountains of Pakistan lived clans of fighters who had battled invaders like the Russians and the Americans and other soldiers from other countries over hundreds of years. There were Taliban fighters, and Pakistani army troops, and fierce troops loyal to warlords, and all had exciting tales that fascinated impressionable boys. Ali and Ahmad could not wait to grow up and join the ranks of some fighting corps. They did not understand, or care, about politics or the religious aspects woven into it. They just wanted adventure.

  So, not for the first time, they had slipped into the forbidden territory to explore at night, each daring the other to go a step deeper into the shadows. At the destroyed bridge, they decided to rest a while before heading home and made themselves comfortable in amid the angles of the steel girders on the fallen span. They ate some nuts and a few dates and kicked with bare, callused feet at the water flowing beneath them.

  From where they sat, the boys could easily see the bright bubble of light at the new bridge a mile upriver, where trucks and construction equipment were always on the move, building the biggest thing the boys had ever seen. The new bridge, seeming to be a mountain itself, was already allowing some traffic to cross, but the construction never slackened. The boys heard the clanking of metal machines and the faint shouts of the crews.

  “They are doing more work tonight on the left column,” Ali noted, chewing. “I hope they will use explosives.”

  From the woods along the riverbank came the growl of a dog, followed by an angry bark, a brief burst of snarls and snaps, a cry of agony, then sudden silence. The dog had caught whatever it had been chasing.

  “We could go and find it.” It was another dare from Ahmad to box his friend into a corner. Both knew they had to leave in the next few minutes to be back home on time. Even bravery has its limits, and they understood that in the early morning hours, this area was said to belong to the Djinn. Too many strange things had happened in this low valley beyond the bridge for the boys not to at least pay attention to the stories that an evil spirit roamed the area. That made their daring adventures even more frightening and fun. As they talked and splashed, they never noticed that danger was approaching.

  Ahmad was knocked senseless when a club smashed into his head, and then he was toppling off the bridge and int
o the water below, his right arm cracking on a big rock before he was swept downstream. He heard a distant cry from Ali, then just the rush of the water. His right arm would not work, but he flailed and kicked as he gasped for air. He managed to get out of the main flow of the river, and a whirling eddy pushed him to calmer water, where he dragged himself ashore. He struggled to turn over, coughed up some water, and flopped onto his back to catch his breath.

  Ahmad struggled to his feet, cradling his hurting arm, knowing it was broken. He had been taken down the river, but not too far. As his thoughts cleared, he called, “Ali?” Steered by the lights on the new bridge, he saw the tilted beams of the collapsed old one and broke into a run.

  He could not find Ali at first and thought that maybe he also had been thrown into the river. He stepped onto the span and edged forward, feeling the rusty steel beneath his feet and reaching for handholds. Something was at the far end. “Ali?”

  Ahmad took one final step, then stopped in shock and horror. The body of his best friend hung from a steel beam, hoisted like a goat for butchering. A rope was looped over the brace and tied around Ali’s ankles, with the arms hanging straight down, as if pointing toward the pool of blood on the deck below the body. There was no head.

  Ahmad gripped a big girder with all his might as his aching head reeled, and he heard a man shouting from the darkness on the far side of the river.

  “Go home! Tell everyone what you have seen tonight. Tell them what the Djinn does to those who intrude in his valley.”

  Ahmad ran.

  6

  THE PENTAGON

  “WHAT ARE WE LOOKING at?” Major General Brad Middleton had unfolded two blurry photographs and spread them flat on his desk with his palms.

  Beth Ledford fought her anxiety at being in the general’s presence, and at the whole operation in which she had become so unexpectedly involved. “Those are blown-up versions of the last two pictures that my brother sent to me from his cell phone. They lost quality when I downloaded and made those prints. Sorry. I don’t have the technology to get better pictures.”