Running the Maze

by Jack Coughlin

  “Oh my God!” Ledford screamed and started to run toward the crash site.

  Swanson saw a glitter of sunlight flashing on glass, thought scope, and tackled her in midstride just as a bullet banged overhead. He pushed through the tackle, driving them both forward and down to the ground. “Ambush, Ledford. For real!” Kyle slithered forward on his stomach, with Beth at his heels. A cluster of boulders provided some temporary protection.

  “Let’s flank him,” Beth said. “Split up, circle around, and come in from the sides.” She was breathing hard, her mind still reeling from seeing the helicopter destroyed and then being shot at almost simultaneously. Her hands were raw from skidding through the gravel and dirt as she had broken her fall.

  “Negative. This is no coincidence, Beth. You were supposed to be on that helicopter, and the shooter was backup in case you were not. We’re unarmed out here, and we don’t know how many guys are after us. My job is to get you out of danger.” He grabbed his radio and tuned it to an emergency frequency as the crack of another rifle shot was followed by a whining ricochet of a bullet off the edge of the rocks. It showered them with splinters.

  “Quantico Tower. Quantico Tower. This is Gunnery Sergeant Kyle Swanson. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.” Kyle had his radio at his lips and fumbled his map open with the other hand.

  The calm voice of an air traffic controller responded immediately. “This is Marine Corps Air Facility Quantico Tower. I read you, Gunny. What is your emergency?”

  “A Coast Guard helicopter was just shot down by a SAM missile on a training exercise,” he said, reading off the coordinates. “Now my partner and I are under fire in an ambush by at least one individual and are evading. Send anything you have in the air to buzz this site to keep their heads down.”

  “Roger that, Gunny. Be advised we are diverting a fast-mover for a flyover, and it’s on the way. A Cobra should be right behind him. The Quick Reaction Force is being alerted.”

  Kyle responded, “We’re moving at one hundred ninety-eight magnetic azimuth. Swanson out.” He stuffed the radio into a pocket and turned to Ledford. “We’re heading for that clump of trees about fifty meters down the slope. It will take between six and seven seconds to get there, with minimal cover. I will go first, at an angle to draw his fire, then you run like your life depends on it, Beth. Somebody wants you dead real bad.” With that, Swanson broke from cover and headed downhill, dodging sharply to his left. Ledford raced out a moment later, her arms windmilling for balance on the treacherous slope.

  * * *

  MAJOR CHARLES MARSHALL JONES saw the spiraling black smoke from the downed helicopter, then the bald spot of the landing zone. He had been only a few miles away, approaching the air station in his Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning when the controller issued the emergency orders. Instead of setting up for a slow vertical landing, Jones peeled away and punched the Pratt & Whitney turbofan engine into afterburner. The stubby wings and the speedboat lines of the latest generation fighter jet had him climbing and turning at five hundred miles per hour in seconds.

  He had no idea what was going on down there. Incredibly, someone was attacking American troops inside Quantico, one of the nation’s premier military installations. The tower only wanted him to buzz the LZ, which was good because he had no missiles on the hard points, nor anything in his cannon. As a Marine aviator, he had been trained to fly low and fast in support of the ground troops, and he coaxed the Lightning down to two hundred feet above the deck as he sped into the area.

  Jones saw two figures running down the hillside on the same azimuth he had been given, scrambling away from the LZ. They had to be the people he was to cover, and he scooted lower as the terrain rose up higher. The Lightning passed with a sonic boom, and a concussive wave of displaced air churned the LZ into a noisy dust storm. The major hauled hard back the stick and bored a hole straight up into the sky, bent his plane into a 5-g turn, and came back in for another run from the opposite direction. Another sonic boom slammed the hillside.

  That ought to let whoever is fucking around down there know that we’re watching, he thought, as he listened to the radio calls. Jones carved high to fly tight circles around the LZ in plain view of anyone below as a Cobra helicopter came hurtling in from the west for an even lower sweep. The QRF was no more than five minutes out. Soon, the place would be crawling with combat-ready Marines.

  * * *

  BETH LEDFORD AND KYLE Swanson hustled downhill on parallel courses through the pine trees, their boots crunching the carpet of brown fallen needles, twigs, and cones. Her lungs were on fire, and her legs were barely under control.

  Swanson ran closer and called, “Twenty meters straight ahead. Into that ditch.” He watched as she jumped into the depression feet first; then he did the same and immediately rolled back over to see if anyone was chasing them. At least, they were no longer alone. The F-35’s two passes, plus the Cobra that was now nibbling around the LZ, had been more than enough to warn off the attackers, but he would not take that chance. Whoever had been smart enough to penetrate deep into a Marine base might still be lurking around up there, or worse, still following them.

  There was a roaring growl behind him, and a Humvee came bursting up a nearby dirt road. Kyle ducked down again. Good guys or bad? Probably good, but maybe not. The powerful vehicle continued charging toward the LZ.

  He clicked his radio and raised the tower again, which acknowledged the call and transferred it to the commander of the Quick Reaction Force. The QRF was only a minute out, and Kyle could hear the rotors of their helicopter. Beth Ledford raised her head, and he shoved her back. “Stay put,” he ordered.

  After receiving the new coordinates, the helo changed course and slowed until it was directly overhead. Then it came to a hover and Marines were coming out of the bird, sliding down thick ropes, landing on the narrow road. Weapons ready, they automatically formed a perimeter, and a sergeant major was barking orders. A captain in full battle gear walked over to the ditch in which Kyle and Beth had taken shelter, his pistol drawn.

  “You Gunny Swanson?”

  “Yes, sir,” he replied, panting and out of breath. “This is Petty Officer Ledford.”

  “Sir,” she said. Beth struggled upright. Her face and hands were bleeding from scratches from the dash through the pine forest.

  “What the hell is going on?” asked the captain.

  “Don’t know, sir. It’s a complicated national security matter that I’ll explain later, but we need to get Petty Officer Ledford to a secure location ASAP. Alert your people that this is no drill. A helicopter has been blown out of the sky by a SAM, there is a terrorist shooter running loose around here, and she’s the target.”

  “OK. Both of you stay in that ditch until we get a medevac chopper in here and a gunship to fly cover.” The captain sent ten men up to comb the LZ and pulled the rest of his force into a tight circle around Swanson and Ledford. He looked over at Swanson. “Terrorists? At Quantico? They’ll never make it off the base alive.”

  Kyle said, “They made it in okay. They have some plan for egress, and a Humvee just went tearing past us, heading up the road. My guess is it was their ride. Your QRF is dealing with professionals.”

  10

  OBSERVATORY CIRCLE WASHINGTON, D.C.

  THE BUREAU OF AMERICAN-ISLAMIC Affairs was less than two years old, a new bureaucracy within the U.S. Department of State, with the onerous portfolio of trying to chart a stable diplomatic course in the fractious Muslim world. Career workers who were specialists in the field had been culled from other sections to take up duties in a heavily guarded and secure office complex outside of the Washington Beltway, but the heartbeat of the bureau was a remodeled three-story Victorian building at Thirty-fourth Street and Massachusetts Avenue NW, on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory. In that ornate building, Arab princes and Persian potentates and the bewildering array of leaders in the volatile Muslim world were welcomed and entertained almost on a daily basis. In its short
existence, the mansion had become an important back door to power.

  From his lavish office on the third floor, Undersecretary William Lloyd Curtis could look over the treetops and see the groomed front of One Observatory Circle, the stately official home of the vice president of the United States. While the White House was the most visible point of government in Washington, hardly anyone even knew where the vice president lived. It was therefore easy to arrange private sessions between Muslim leaders and U.S. government officials without drawing undue attention. The American representatives would say they were visiting the home of the vice president; the Muslim representatives would declare they were in private meetings with Undersecretary Curtis. In reality, they could all be in a secure conference room on the second floor of the BAIA.

  Curtis was a tall and broad-chested man who wore tailored suits that were obviously cut from cloth rich enough to denote private wealth, as did the patrician Massachusetts accent. Deep gray eyes matched the thick brows and carefully barbered hair that was thinning but was still full for a sixty-year-old. A closer look at the calm face would show hard lines that had been etched at the corners of his eyes from staring into the desert sun too much. His scarred hands also gave away his true past, for although the nails were manicured, the fingers were gnarled and the palms hardened from decades of working in oil patches and construction projects all over the world. His nose had been broken several times, leaving it with a curious bent shape that added to his look of experience. Bill Curtis had grown from being a mining engineer to becoming a one-man equipment hauler and eventually to creating Curtis Construction, a multinational corporation.

  By the time Bill Curtis decided to retire from the business, he had contacts all over the globe and was friends with most of the powerful men in the Middle East. Those contacts, and his easy ability to juggle business, political, and personal favors, had led to him becoming the American ambassador to Kuwait, and then he was given the plum prize of Egypt.

  Curtis was there to steer U.S. interests when Egypt fell apart under the tidal wave of revolutionary upheaval that was beginning to sweep through the Muslim world, and the old regimes toppled and fell so rapidly that it was often difficult to determine which side the American government should support. There were no good options in some of the uprisings.

  The overwhelmed State Department decided to bring the entire troubled region beneath one tent, so it created the BAIA, and Big Bill Curtis was deemed uniquely qualified to be its leader. The paint was hardly dry on the walls of the new offices when the American SEALs staged the assault in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden and created a leadership vacuum in the terrorist world. The charming and tough Curtis was the man who would have to ride the tiger of Arab revolution, and he was more than happy to do so, for he had spent several years pushing the idea that bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization had become obsolete.

  For more than a decade, since the attacks of 9/11, there had been the feeling that bin Laden and al Qaeda were in charge of the entire Muslim revolution, for he had struck the biggest blow ever against the Great Satan. The Saudi was revered for that, but almost before American sailors wrapped his body in a white sheet and dumped him overboard from an aircraft carrier, internal bickering erupted within the terrorist community over who would carry that violent legacy forward. Bin Laden’s old friend Mullah Omar was too worried about being the next on the list for Seal Team Six to step forward. The egocentric Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq spoke loudly, but no one listened to him. Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri from Egypt inherited the official role as head of al Qaeda but could not control it. Even an American Muslim cleric in Yemen derisively known as the “big-headed little man” due to his likeness to the cartoon character Charlie Brown made a pathetic attempt to be seen as the ultimate leader. The Palestinians were never even in the game.

  Curtis felt that Osama bin Laden’s death marked the passing of the flag. Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the inevitable lone wolf terrorists were scrambling for wider pieces of the pie and their own agendas, but none was succeeding, and he blocked them all whenever possible. Iran bankrolled revolution but cared only for itself. The only real success was being shown by the New Muslim Order and its leader, Commander Kahn. Bill Curtis had long ago decided that Kahn was to be the one and used his position as undersecretary to nudge things in the proper direction. He had a dog in the fight. The Commander was no stupid outlaw but a friend and ally from years gone by.

  Which was why Curtis was angry as he stood beside the big office window. In his hands was a handwritten note that had been delivered by a private courier, folded and sealed in two envelopes. His lips had drawn into thin lines when he read it, and the eyes darkened. Failure! The girl still lived!

  The undersecretary sighed and fed the note and envelopes edge-on into the office shredder, which cross-chipped the paper into microscopic pieces that would be impossible to ever reassemble. At the end of the day, they would go into the burn bag and be incinerated. During the Iranian revolution that toppled the shah from power back in the 1970s, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran had shredded all of its important documents. Those thousands of strips had been reassembled and pasted back together by Iranian students and today could be read verbatim. The WikiLeaks scandal made security even chancier. William Curtis preferred for his secrets to remain secrets.

  There had been no mention of the Quantico action in his morning briefing, which was gratifying. The Marine Corps was keeping it bottled up while its investigators tried to determine exactly how the breach happened and who was involved. Curtis was confident that they never would. The mission that day to which the girl had been assigned was a simple training exercise, and all preparatory communications were handled through normal open channels. The people at Task Force Trident had contacted the Department of Defense with a request for technical support, and DoD went through the Treasury Department to get a particular helicopter and its Coast Guard crew. Orders were cut from departmental operations to base ops and squadron ops, specifying exact times and coordinates. It had all been available in various military mailboxes, easily monitored by outsiders.

  Curtis had had a rogue private security company monitoring the system for information ever since the CT/DSS terminated surveillance of Petty Officer Ledford, declaring that she was no threat. That depended, the undersecretary thought, on who, or what, was being threatened. The target wasn’t even in the United States but in Pakistan, where the huge new bridge project was under way, with funding flowing in from the oil fields. Front companies of Curtis Construction, in partnership with similar Muslim businesses, were lost in the organizational maze. He could not afford to have that link exposed.

  When Beth Ledford had first begun making inquiries, Curtis managed to blunt her requests and employ State Department resources to track her under the guise of a potential terrorist threat. When the DSS pulled out, he had resorted to his very expensive friends in the private sector who specialized in unusual assignments, professionals that he had used before.

  For them, infiltrating the Quantico base had been easy. Distant fences that were bare of infrared sensors or cameras could have been scaled easily, since guards were posted only at the choke points of entrances and exits. That would have made getting away more difficult, however, so two uniformed Marines in a Humvee bearing the proper stickers on the windshield drove up to the gate and merited no more than a wave from the guard who allowed them in. They drove to the landing zone coordinates, where one had taken his long rifle and found a comfortable hide on the side of a hill overlooking the LZ. The driver hid the Humvee nearby and took up position with a reliable Stinger ground-to-air missile. Afterward, they simply drove off the base, right before security was heightened.

  It should have worked. Now the message stated the mission had failed, the hundred-thousand-dollar fee was nonrefundable, and the girl had dropped out of sight. The only good news was that his team had acquired the name of the Marine who had been her training escort. A second operation was
being assembled to snatch him and squeeze out the information on the whereabouts of prime target Beth Ledford.

  THE FRANCIS SCOTT KEY BRIDGE WASHINGTON, D.C.

  SLEEP DID NOT COME easily that night for Kyle Swanson in his apartment near Georgetown University, so after midnight, he went out to walk and think. There were few people around, except those lingering at the doorways of bars and pubs to smoke their cigarettes before going back inside to the beer and laughter. Some were students, but most of them were government workers and young lawyers and lobbyists pawing through the bureaucratic victories and defeats of their day on Capitol Hill like witches divining a purpose from a scattering of bones.

  The unexpected catastrophe at the landing zone had left everyone in Trident, including him, also searching for meaning. There were no answers, and General Middleton was pissed, shaking the trees hard. The counterterrorism people at the State Department were equally bewildered and adamant that they had nothing to do with what had happened. For Kyle, how the daring ambush was done was less important than why it was even attempted. What did Beth Ledford have that was so damned important?

  He meandered down M Street, heading east. The buildings all around were relatively small by the standards of other major urban areas, because skyscrapers did not exist in Washington. Nothing was taller than the Washington Monument; buildings were instead spread out, or excavated to create space underground. Swanson paused. Just ahead, M terminated as it crossed the Potomac River into Rosslyn on the Virginia side. With the heat of the day finally gone, a slight mist was rising from the water. A well-used pathway led to the boathouses clustered under the Francis Scott Key Bridge, named in honor of the writer of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” He followed it down to the water’s edge, giving plenty of space to a young couple making out in the shadows.