Running the Maze

by Jack Coughlin

  “Do you have him under control?” the general asked.

  “Control? No, sir. That would be impossible. We do have him under constant observation, when he changes and becomes the fanatic. He leaves through what he believes is his own secret door in a bridge abutment. Three agents with night-vision goggles triangulate him but stay back unless he drifts too far afield. Then they capture and sedate him and haul him back to his apartment at the bridge. When he awakens, he does not remember that anything unusual has happened, because it happened to the Djinn, not to his dominant personality, the chief engineer.”

  The general nodded approval. “Very well, Major. We will let him continue with his hobby for the time being. His value to this project far outweighs the lives of a few unlucky people. Al-Attas is building a fortification that stands in the open but is almost invisible. When he completes this first one, we will have all of his plans and inventions to build more, and can do so without his help. After what happened with Osama bin Laden, creating this safe haven for Commander Kahn is a very high priority with us. For now, we must keep al-Attas working to complete this bridge.”

  “I have taken one more step, sir. I am assigning one of our best men to be his personal bodyguard, his keeper. The chief engineer has a huge, but fragile, ego and will willingly believe a cover story that a bodyguard is needed now that the infidels have issued a reward for his death because of his brilliance.”

  “Good. Keep him safe. Should his insanity increase beyond our ability to handle him, we will adjust to the situation. It would be good to have the bodyguard close by to do the job quietly, but I want to be the one to make the final decision.”

  “Yes, sir. I will make that clear to Hafiz.”

  “You are giving this to Hafiz? Excellent choice.”

  * * *

  MOHAMMAD AL-ATTAS PUT ON a pair of wraparound sunglasses when he emerged from the mouth of a shaft and stepped to the side of the busy roadway. The sunlight was brash and hard and made him squint. He flipped his blue Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap around so the long bill would provide some shade. A mix of bossa nova music pumped a Latin beat into the earbuds of his iPod. People on the road looked at him strangely but said nothing.

  Giant yellow Caterpillar bulldozers, Komatsu graders, and Firmengruppe Liebherr crawler cranes with long lattice booms roared and snarled as if in competition as they rearranged the earth. Heavy conveyor belts brought up dirt and stone that would be carted away by a convoy of waiting trucks, and a dome of dust covered the work area. Al-Attas made his way to the operations platform to confer with the shift foreman and gave him a few instructions after doing the numbers. Everything topside was going well. Every ton of dirt hauled away was one less ton of dirt below, steadily opening areas available for new tunnels, living quarters, work spaces, and the defensive positions. He told the foreman to check the steel bracing in tunnel four, which seemed to be out of plumb.

  Now he had some time, and he put his hands in his pockets and strolled away to visit the collection of huts and vendors who had set up merchandise beneath sagging canvas at the western end of the bridge, which was much closer to completion than the east end. Al-Attas waved to some workers gathered in a group, then strolled the narrow aisles of makeshift shops. Where would he find some vitamin D? The best source was fish, and there were none. All of that floodwater, but no fish. He couldn’t believe it. He eventually found a woman who had several boxes of medicines, and she said she could get some vitamin D tablets from the staff at the refugee camp. They bargained a little bit and struck a deal. He would return tomorrow to get the pills.

  He bought a pear and munched it as he headed back to the work zone, with plenty of time before the teleconference. His mind was on the reports he needed for supplies and equipment, and what progress had been made in the past twenty-four hours, those thoughts wrapped around the beat of the strange South American music. A strong shoulder rammed into him and Mohammad al-Attas was sent sprawling onto the hard ground and the pear he had been eating bounced away.

  A swarthy man with a long spade of tangled beard and wearing loose tribal garments stood over him, shouting insults about the way al-Attas was dressed, about how he was offending the Prophet. An AK-47 dangled from his shoulder. The engineer was startled and afraid. Taliban. The man raised his arm as if to strike the engineer, but suddenly another figure was there, kicking the Taliban fighter in the back of the knee and pulling his head backward, throwing him to the ground. The second man made a swift move and straddled the Taliban’s chest, with the gleaming point of a knife resting just below the right eye. Al-Attas could not hear what was being said in a harsh whisper, but the struggle was over in an instant; then the bigger man rose, helped the Talib to his feet, and sent him on his way.

  Then the man extended his hand to al-Attas and easily pulled him up from the dirt. “Are you all right, sir?”

  “Yes.” The chief engineer brushed at his shirt and jeans. “Thank you.”

  The big man laughed. “He did not know who you were, sir, and apologized for his action. That will not happen again.”

  The chief engineer adjusted his cap. His new friend was over six feet tall, rippled with muscles, and wore a trim military uniform of some sort. Al-Attas did not see a rank insignia, but he did not care much about military things. A holstered pistol rode on the man’s hip, almost like a toy. “Who are you?”

  “Sergeant Hafiz of the ISI at your service, Chief Engineer. Come, let us walk and find some privacy. I will explain.”

  “What is going on?” The engineer felt strangely safe in the presence of the large sergeant as they walked along the road.

  “I have been sent here by Islamabad, sir, and bring the compliments of General Gul. Our intelligence service has picked up reports, information the general believes is valid, that the Americans and Jews want to assassinate you. We are worried about your safety, and I have been sent to protect you.”

  The engineer shook his head. “I cannot do my work with a bodyguard underfoot.”

  The big laugh came again, accompanied by a smile. “I have done this sort of thing before, sir. I know how to stay out of the way. I will be nearby when you come aboveground to prevent unexpected incidents such as the one that just happened, but down below, I will be able to organize effective security so that you will soon forget that I am even around.”

  They reached the main shaft heading down, and the conveyor belt on one side continued to rumble. The chief engineer took off the sunglasses and again flipped the baseball cap backward. “They want to kill me? Do they know about the Commander?”

  “We don’t think so. What they do know, sir, is that you are one of the brightest thinkers in the world today. It would definitely be in the interests of the infidels to snuff out such a great mind of our religion and culture.”

  They were deeper in the shaft, nearing a solid door that branched off into another brightly lit tunnel. The explanation was startlingly clear; the enemy was afraid of his ideas and abilities. “You can stop them?”

  “Yes, sir. I can. Be at peace about that.”

  “Well, Sergeant Hafiz, I would like for you to join me tonight for dinner. I wish to know more about you.”

  “With pleasure.” Hafiz stopped, and the chief engineer walked on, immediately lost in other thoughts. Soon he was gone. This was the Djinn? Incredible. Hafiz had been an operative for more than twenty years, spoke four languages, was expert with numerous firearms and demolitions, and had killed men with his bare hands. Surely there were missions that would be more of a match for his skills. However, General Gul and Major Umair had made it clear that guarding the preoccupied young man was only part of his overall assignment; he also had to assess the overall project, which not only would anchor a high-tech defensive line but would house and protect the most important treasure in modern Islam, Commander Kahn, a person of utmost and growing importance.

  So Hafiz would be content to be a sergeant for a while and keep an eye on things. It would be interesting to s
ee if the little engineer really did transform into a monster after dark, and he was eager to explore the fascinating maze below the earth. Hafiz went back up top to call Islamabad and report that he had made contact, and to pay the rest of the fee to the Talib soldier hired to stage the bumping incident.

  9

  THE DAY HAD GROWN hotter, and there was little relief in the shade of the steamy, humid forest that surrounded Beth Ledford and Kyle Swanson in the map and endurance exercise. Both were in camouflaged battle utilities, with light packs, and carried no weapons other than Kyle’s Ka-Bar knife. They paused on a thirty-degree hillside while Beth took another map reading and matched the heading with her compass. “We’re at grid coordinates six-two-one-two, four-two-one-two, Gunny. The third point.”

  She sucked in a deep breath, exhausted. From the first step, this exercise of reaching a precise point by an exact time had been like climbing a wall. She reached for her canteen.

  “No,” Swanson said. “This is a forest, Beth. There’s plenty of water around. We have to hydrate, but save the good stuff for emergencies. Just over to your right, see that rock ledge? There may be some water pooled there. It rained last night, remember? Watch everything. Listen to everything. Remember everything.”

  Beth moved to the outcropping and found a bubbling little stream of fresh water dripping over the sharp edge of the rock, pushing by a pool about four inches deep that was gathered from the downhill movement of the water in the hill. Gravity at work. She lowered her mouth, but Swanson stopped her again. “Examine the source first. Is it murky or stagnant? Does it smell rancid? Is there a dead animal in it?” She looked it over and then gave it a tentative taste. The water was cold and delicious, and Beth drank her fill.

  Before setting out from the Humvee, Swanson had given her a plastic laminated one-to-one-hundred map and marked the place they were standing, and she copied a half-dozen more grid points that he read from his own map, each with eight numerals. “In Pakistan, we will be using a GPS, but a computer in the field is always liable to break at the worst possible time. So today, I want you to use only the basics. You should be able to navigate to within ten meters of your objective.” He pointed uphill. “Go that way.”

  Beth pointed her compass and shot an azimuth from magnetic north, then followed the map key to convert it, plus or minus, onto the chart. A little thin plastic protractor no larger than a postcard was used to draw straight lines between points, and she stretched a piece of string to mark the distance between the locations, pinching the exact point between her fingers. The length of string, placed on the measuring bar on the bottom of the map, gave her the distance. So far, she had been accurate.

  “I’m not used to the physical labor part of the job,” she admitted, massaging her thighs in hopes of easing the burning muscles.

  “I understand. I don’t expect you to be. But you have to put in your own time over the next few days doing PT, things like running, pull-ups, and sit-ups. Hell, just walk for distance. Any cardio exercises will help. The more it hurts today, the less it will hurt when we go into Taliban country. For now, just get up this hill to that next set of coordinates. And don’t make so damned much noise breaking through the brush. Up and at it, Ledford. Push.”

  He had been given less than a week to get her through some rudimentary training. She could shoot but would need as much knowledge about working in the wild as he could cram into her during that short time. He had decided on using a basic escape and evasion exercise today to help her at least to recognize some of the possibilities, both good and bad.

  As they climbed, he wondered if General Middleton was having any progress in his meetings with the politicians and diplomats. The State Department had promised to stop the surveillance, but refused to explain why the CT/DSS had been following Ledford in the first place. You don’t put a full-scale tight net over somebody without a good reason. For Middleton, the State plea that they were just following orders wasn’t good enough. Orders from whom, and why?

  Then Commander Freedman had pulled a series of overhead satellite shots of the bridge area in Pakistan and pointed out that the heavy equipment clustered at the site was far out of proportion for simply building and improving a road. Nothing much was visible beyond a giant construction site, and the extensive flat surface of the bridge and its side apron. There was a village a mile away to the east, a bazaar to the west. Middleton was uncomfortable with the whole thing, and when the general was uncomfortable, he made sure everyone else was, too.

  After Swanson completed Ledford’s workouts, they were to get over to London immediately, with next stop Islamabad. Kyle had the familiar feeling of some unseen hand increasing the tempo of events, speeding things up ever so slightly, pulling him forward.

  Another quarter mile of struggling up the incline, and he gave Beth a three-minute break. She flopped down on her back, breathing hard. “I’m glad I joined the Coast Guard,” she said. “This marching and climbing sucks.”

  “Well, when you finish with this little hill, you get a treat. Sybelle has arranged for a Coast Guard helicopter to pick us up. So we’ll go out over the water and I can watch you shoot from the bird, see you operate in familiar surroundings.”

  “Really? Great. Do you know what kind?”

  “She says it is your usual ride, an MH-68H, piloted by your buddy Lieutenant Commander Taylor, who got chopped from regular duty down in Jacksonville just to come up here and taxi you around.”

  “Wow. You guys can do that sort of thing?”

  “Yep. Here’s the catch. Taylor is to do a touch-and-go at the landing zone, just the kind of situation we may face in extracting from Pakistan. He will not wait. You have to have us at that landing zone, the map mark, at exactly fifteen hundred hours, or we miss our ride.”

  “That’s less than forty-five minutes from now!” She was already on her feet, ignoring her aching legs and back. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “Welcome to the world of special ops, Ledford. You’ll be told what you need to know, when you need to know it. Just follow the map and keep going. You can do this.”

  * * *

  “FIVE MINUTES, LEDFORD. THE LZ is straight ahead. You can see it from here. Go!” Swanson barked in a drill sergeant voice.

  The toes of Beth Ledford’s boots were at the edge of a sharp gully that bisected the path, and stones crumbled down a thirty-foot drop. She hesitated, knowing she could never get all the way down there and climb up the other side in time for the pickup. “What do I do, Gunny?” Her question was urgent.

  “You will never know exactly what is on the ground from reading a map,” Swanson said carefully, now in a quieter, instructive tone. “If you hit an impassable obstacle like this, don’t come to a complete halt. Do a ninety-degree offset, left or right, for about one hundred meters, counting your steps for distance, and bypass the problem. Then turn back to your original line and keep going. Now, go!”

  She spun to the right and made her way along the edge of the gully. After counting one hundred and seventy-eight steps, she found a narrow point that was only about eight feet wide. Backing away, she got a running start and jumped the gap, yelping when her blistered feet hit the hard dirt on the far side, and she lost her balance and tumbled into the brush, face-first.

  The thudding sound of an incoming helicopter did not allow time to catch her breath. She jumped up, but instead of going back the way she had come, she decided to cut off some distance by angling up the hill, as if drawing the hypotenuse of a triangle. In the sky, to the east, she could see the white and orange helicopter coming on fast and shedding altitude.

  Swanson was on her heels and did not correct her, because she was already realizing her mistake. A thick tangle of thorny growth blocked her path, and it only got thicker as she fought through it. She looked up and saw Arvis Taylor smiling down at her. He shook his head, and Beth knew that she was not going to make it.

  The helicopter landed with the engine at full throttle, but the bird neve
r stopped. Had Beth been there, she could have just flopped through the open hatch. She wasn’t, though, and Taylor’s orders were to make it a touch-and-go, never coming to a full halt. Just as Ledford fought her way free of the clinging thorns, he finished the touchdown less than a hundred feet away and was lifting off, unwilling to wait an instant longer than ordered, even for one of his closest friends.

  Beth Ledford’s shoulders sagged in disappointment, and she sat down hard on the dirt. Unscrewing the canteen, she drank some water while she listened to Swanson on his radio, reporting failure. The blades of the bird overhead were beating retreat.

  “Ferrybird One. Ferrybird One. This is Swanson, over.”

  “Swanson, this is Ferrybird. Send your traffic.”

  “Roger. Looks like our girl missed the pickup. Divert to LZ Two.”

  “Roger that. Ferrybird out.”

  She bristled at hearing him call her a girl and was about to say something when Kyle was in her face. Drill sergeant time again. “You’ve blown the LZ, Ledford. Now the enemy knows where you are, so you just added three kilometers to the day and are in escape and recovery time. Get off your ass and read your map. You’ve got ten minutes to cover three klicks to the alternate LZ. This time don’t go wandering off course.”

  Beth pushed herself erect, checked the map, blew out puffed cheeks in determination, and set out for the listed grid coordinates of the new LZ. The blades of the departing helicopter were still loud in the air.

  Swanson did not let up but stayed right in her ear, yelling. “Move out, Petty Officer. It pays to be a winner, Ledford. Because you screwed up, now we may have to walk back. I wanted to eat some Greek food in Q-Town tonight, but if you mess up getting to the alternate LZ, I will be stuck on this damn little hill with you walking around lost in the dark.”

  A bright flash drew their attention, and the smoky white trail of a surface-to-air missile lanced upward from the far treeline and drove straight for the low-flying helicopter. There was the shaking clap of a loud explosion as the missile struck the brightly colored helicopter, blowing off the tail rotor section. The front of the bird hung momentarily motionless in the air, then was engulfed in a massive fireball as another explosion ruptured the fuel tanks. It crashed to the ground, burning.