Running the Maze

by Jack Coughlin

  They shuffled closer and hooked their twenty-foot-long static lines to a special ring welded above the hatch. Kyle stood in the open doorway, grabbed each side, and stared down at Double-Oh, who was listening to the reports from the cockpit and held up three fingers: thirty seconds.

  Beth looked past Kyle and saw nothing, just blackness beyond the door. The wind tugged at her coveralls and helmet, and the deck seemed to dance beneath her feet as the plane slowed almost to stall speed. She gulped.

  Double-Oh had made a fist and pumped it ten times to signal the final seconds. On the last movement he thrust it toward Kyle, and Swanson was out the door. Beth immediately moved forward, saw the big fist thrust out toward her, and dove into the night of howling wind and nothingness.

  Swanson steadied up quickly and worked the risers of his parachute so he could look around. He could not see Coastie, who should be floating above and off to his right, and he didn’t bother looking for the airplane, which was already out of sight, gaining speed and altitude. It was good to work in the dark, because if he could not see much, neither could anyone who might happen to be looking up. Silence meant safety.

  Ribbons of light marked the far end of the valley where the bridge work was under way, and a cluster of illumination showed the location of the village to the northeast. Those were his two biggest markers and were right where they should be. He mentally estimated the vector. There was little wind to shove him off course, so he should be near the unseen drop zone. Down he came, starting to feel the pull of the ground as a little bit of moonlight coming through the low clouds reflected dully off the water, as if bouncing back from a dirty mirror. He adjusted his descent angle, and the flat plateau came up fast. Swanson bent his knees slightly and hit standing up, with a near-perfect parachute landing fall.

  Working to release the harness as the canopy collapsed softly on the ground, he looked over in time to see Coastie come to earth about a hundred meters away, hitting hard and doing a rough roll. Welcome to our world.

  She must have been tracking him all the way, watching the top of his chute and steering to his position, and had done a good job for someone with her skill set. She continued to impress him, although he would never tell her that, for while standing in the doorway of the plane, he had wondered whether she would jump or choke and rated the odds at fifty-fifty. Now here she was, already scrambling to her feet.

  He rolled up his chute and went to her. Last thing he wanted was for her to break an ankle on landing. “You hurt?”

  “Just my ego,” she said quietly, reeling her own canopy together into a tight ball of silk. “That was a rush, dude.” She took off the jump helmet and oxygen mask, shook out her hair, and put on a soft, black wool beanie.

  When they had their weapons out, chutes off, and packs on, Kyle said, “Follow me, and stay quiet.” He headed uphill, into the moonscape left behind by the receding floodwaters, a treacherous jungle of rough terrain and jumbles of debris, downed trees, and boulders that had been brought downriver. The area had dried well, but a swampy pit of sticky mud thick as molasses was just below the surface.

  A ten-foot piece of rough concrete slag was mostly buried in the muck, with a low hole created beneath the tilted side where the water had washed around it. Kyle dumped his parachute and helmet into the depression, and Beth added hers as he set a demolition charge that would explode in thirty-six hours to erase that evidence of their landing. They stacked stones to cover the hole, then headed higher up the hillside, neither slow nor fast, blending with the shadows, disappearing.

  * * *

  IN THE CONTROL ROOM at the bridge, two red dots began to blink on a map of the valley, displayed on a flat-screen monitor, where motion sensors had detected movement on the wide southeastern end of the funnel-shaped terrain. The computer slaved to the map automatically registered the coordinates of the intruders and marched the positions across the bottom of the screen. The round cover of a pipe set vertically into the ground popped open, and the long-range video camera nearest to the target automatically hissed up from its nest and swung toward the correct azimuth. Two figures were portrayed on a portion of the screen in the control room, heat signatures of glowing green, yellow, and red blobs. A narrow rectangular lid hidden in the hillside slowly opened, and the barrel of a machine gun nosed out, gyros guiding it to face the threat.

  The overhead lights were off in the control room, but tiny lights shone on the servers and computers to confirm they were receiving power. The place was empty of humans, off-limits until another qualified chief engineer could take over. No one was seated at the console to monitor movement in the field. This electronics wonderworld was the lair of the Djinn, who was again lashed down in the infirmary, and he had trained no deputies to sit in his chair, so his lethal hardware sat forgotten and useless for the time being. It was stiflingly warm, and the hum of the cooling fans was the only noise, other than a low but insistent beep-beep-beep coming from one control panel.

  The door was closed and locked.

  * * *

  TWENTY MINUTES SINCE THEY had jumped at one o’clock. Good time. No hitches. Kyle checked to be sure Coastie was right behind him, and she was on his heels, step for step, as if on an invisible leash. Dark shapes were all around, and it looked more like a junkyard than a lush forest after a flood. Trees had been torn out by their roots, limbs chipped into sharp splinters, gullies and hillocks gouged by the force of water and boulders that scoured the floor of the floodplain. It reeked of damp and rot, but the area was strangely dry since the sun had baked the mudflats left behind by the river’s rampage.

  He found a hide beneath a large tree that had been partially uprooted and slanted to one side at about a thirty-degree angle. Ropes of big roots thick with dried mud hung from it like a heavy curtain, and brush had caught against it as the water passed. Kyle stuck his head inside and turned on his flashlight for two seconds, shielding the light with his hand. About six feet wide and five feet long, low overhead. Invisible from outside. Safe. He wiggled in. “Come on in, Coastie. We’re home.”

  17

  SWANSON SETTLED ONTO HIS belly and pawed between the roots to clear a line of sight. Coastie was another set of eyes and was responsible for watching their six, the way they had come in, to be sure no one was following. While rear security was necessary, the real unknowns lay ahead, in the places he had not yet seen. He did not even need his night-vision gear to see the fire below. It flared brightly in the darkness about a thousand meters down from their hide. “Check this out,” he said, rolling away so Ledford could look through the opening. “There’s your little bridge, Coastie, and what looks like an enemy patrol is camped at the high end.”

  Ledford scrunched closer. “I can’t see much from up here. My brother was down a lot lower when he took that picture. Down by the riverbank.”

  “Yeah. What do you make of that campsite?”

  “I see what looks like some guys sleeping near the little fire. One of them is standing, drinking from a cup, and looking around. Weapons on the ground. ”

  “Right. So two questions: Why are they out here at all? And why aren’t they patrolling instead of catching z’s?” Kyle had his binos focused. “They’re just hanging out there like a bunch of clowns.”

  “Isn’t that good?” she asked. “Since they aren’t looking for us, our insertion wasn’t compromised.”

  Swanson slowly examined the entire area. Something about it seemed wrong, like a framed picture hanging at an angle. “Nobody is moving anywhere down there. Kind of weird. They should be roaming around, but the campsite is as far out as they go.”

  “So do you think it would be OK for us to go down closer? Get a better angle?”

  Swanson did not reply. He moved his glasses up to scan the larger, newer bridge two thousand meters away. That canopy of bright work lights gave it the look of a carnival, and he could see workmen and vehicles moving about. Sheets of dust blew in the night wind, and the rumble of heavy equipment could be heard in the
distance. Seeing it from the ground was totally different than viewing it from an overhead satellite picture. It rose like an old-fashioned castle of stone, dominating the upper end of the valley. “That’s a big damned bridge,” he said.

  “So let’s go look around. We have tons of time. Go check it out and be back up here before dawn.”

  “Take it easy, Coastie. We have to be very careful, or else we can stumble into an ambush or a mine field. This ain’t no walk in the park. Overconfidence can get you killed. We will go soon, but we move quietly and slowly.”

  Ledford chewed on her lower lip. She knew she was anxious, while Swanson had done this kind of thing before. “I know that,” she said.

  “Then shut the hell up,” Swanson told her. “We go when I’m ready.” He looked at his wristwatch. Less than an hour ago, they had still been in the plane, and now she wanted to sprint down into bad-guy country. Rookie nerves. He went back to combing the area with his night-vision binos, checking the map and making notes with a ballpoint pen in his pocket notebook.

  “Are you ready yet?” Fifteen minutes had passed, and Ledford was impatient. There was nobody down there but those few guys at the fire.

  “Keep your voice down. Sound carries,” he said.

  “We can’t just stay here. What do you want to do?” She was exasperated. The answer to what Joey had seen was right down the hill.

  Swanson switched off his flashlight, put away the notebook and binos, took a sip of water, and rolled onto his back. “I’m going to sleep for an hour. Stay awake and don’t say another fucking word.”

  * * *

  TWO THIRTY IN THE morning. Sergeant Hafiz stifled a yawn as the need for sleep pulled at his eyes. The radio on his belt buzzed, and he acknowledged the incoming call, listened carefully, and terminated it. The convoy of visitors was only two miles away now, paused on the roadway, ready to come in. Before giving the signal, Hafiz made a quick call to the replacement patrol that was now down in the valley. “What’s going on?” he asked the leader.

  “Nothing. Very quiet.” The voice was calm, which was good. Hafiz did not want anything else unexpected happening.

  “Keep it that way. We’re going dark up here for a few minutes. Keep those people alert and spread out. No errors, not now.”

  “Yes, Sergeant. I’m at the old bridge if you need me.”

  “Very well. Base out.” Hafiz changed channels on the portable radio and inhaled deeply to steady himself. The vehicles, carrying the party of Ayman al-Masri from the New Muslim Order, were waiting nearby, ready to come in. At the sergeant’s order, sirens along the bridge whined to life. All engines shut down, every light was turned off, and when the sirens stopped thirty seconds later, the area was enveloped by total silence.

  At the campfire beside the old bridge, the patrol leader sipped his tea and stared back toward the massive bridge that had just vanished before his eyes, as if it had been sucked into a hole in the night. The wail of the sirens bounced off the sides of the valley, bringing curses from the Taliban fighters trying to sleep on the ground. They were hard men but had refused to go any farther than this point. He was going to accuse them of being afraid of the Djinn, hiding like scared children, but they probably would have killed him on the spot for insulting their manhood. Better to leave them alone. A relief patrol would come down at dawn. Maybe the Taliban would be braver in the daylight.

  Up top, three sports utility vehicles sped onto the bridge with their lights off and were guided into the underground garage by men carrying soft red lights. When large doors to the outside slid closed, all of the lights came on again, work resumed, and Sergeant Hafiz approached the middle vehicle. Guards with machine guns pounced out of the lead and trail SUVs and formed a perimeter; then the door of the middle Ford Excursion opened, and a slender, bearded man in the rugged clothes of a mountain dweller stepped nimbly onto the concrete. His dark eyes rapidly swept his surroundings, and then he exchanged greetings with Hafiz. Ayman al-Masri, the head of personal security for Commander Kahn, did not smile. He seldom did.

  * * *

  WHEN THE FIRST SIREN began to turn over with its slow growl, Beth Ledford jumped in surprise. Instantly, there was a hand resting softly on her back. “Steady, Coastie. Keep sharp while we see what’s happening.”

  “All of the lights on the big bridge just went out,” she said. Her voice was as tight as a piano wire, as was the rest of her body.

  Swanson grunted in acknowledgment. He could see that, and therefore no words were needed. “Get into your sniper mode. Loosen up so that if you have to take a shot, you can make it count. Alert, but don’t engage. Scoot around so you’re still covering our six, and have your weapon safety off and ready.”

  The sirens grew to a full howl, the volume at earsplitting decibels as it echoed through the long valley. Swanson propped his CAR-15 beside him and checked the load, then went to the night-vision goggles. The only available light was the campfire, which was still flickering merrily down below, and it did not seem that any of the men around it had even changed position. So whatever was happening at the top of the valley had not disturbed them: It was expected. The alarm sirens were turned off, and the shrill whine spun back to silence; then the lights came back on.

  “No movement here. You got anything?”

  “No. Just darkness back this way.” Beth kept her eyes on the hillside. “That was all kind of spooky. You think an electrical failure?”

  “More likely, they were doing something they didn’t want anybody to see.” Kyle smiled at her. “It doesn’t matter to our mission. These things always have unexpected wrinkles. Stay cool.”

  “I am cool, Gunny.” She shuffled back away from the entrance.

  “OK. Your turn to catch some sleep. We’ll pull out in about another hour. At around four in the morning, the biorhythms of those guards will be dragging them down like anchors. Their heart rates and blood pressure will be so low they might as well be offline. Even whoever is standing watch will be about to fall over with sleep. That’s when we go. You take a combat nap now, so you can be fresh.”

  “I don’t think I can sleep,” she said, lying back. “Too darned tensed up.”

  “Coastie, you sleep when you’re told. So rack out.” He turned away and watched the empty valley, wondering about the momentary blackout.

  * * *

  AYMAN AL-MASRI WALKED WITH Hafiz to a row of brightly painted golf carts. “The last time we met, Hafiz, I believe you held the rank of colonel. You have been severely demoted.”

  “I wear whatever rank my orders tell me to wear, although I prefer no official rank at all.” Hafiz motioned to the lead cart. “I need to show just enough to get the job done.”

  “And is the job done here? Is this place safe for the Commander?”

  “That’s for you to decide, not me. All I can tell you is that I like what I have seen. It is a virtually impenetrable place with an automatic defense umbrella the likes of which you have never encountered. Even most bombs would just bounce off. When fully online, it would take a long, all-out assault by a determined enemy to defeat it.”

  Al-Masri got into the cart and settled his robes. “Frankly, I find such claims hard to believe. I saw what the Americans did to the caves of Tora Bora with their devil bombs, and believe they can do the same here. I will not put the Commander in jeopardy.”

  “I had a lot of doubts, too, when I arrived. Now, after studying it, I cannot think of any better place to ride out a storm. There were no defense systems at Tora Bora, just caves. Surely this place could eventually be taken down—history has shown that no defensive position can hold out forever—but to do so would extract an enormous cost, and become a gagging bone in the throat of any attacker.” He pushed the accelerator, and the battery-powered cart jerked forward. “This is only the prototype, the first of many, each to be stronger than the one before it. We are drawing a line which the Americans and their allies will think twice about attempting to cross. They are not used to fighting a
gainst technology and modern defenses that match or surpass their own, and the sort of little Special Forces raid that took the life of Osama bin Laden could simply never happen here, my friend. However, before dazzling you with the missiles and guns and electronic wonders of it all, I want to get some bad news out of the way. The genius who created this has gone totally insane. I have him secured in the infirmary, and I’m waiting for final orders from the ISI about what to do with him. You should see him first.”

  “To the infirmary, then, Hafiz. I need to inspect it anyway.” The string of carts buzzed down the wide main tunnel.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  IT WAS FIVE IN the afternoon in Washington, nine hours behind the time at the bridge in Pakistan, and the small staff that worked at the Bureau of American-Islamic Affairs building on Observatory Circle was shutting down for the day. Undersecretary Curtis tidied up his own desk and left with them, courteously calling the clerks by name as everyone headed for their cars, joking that thankfully there would be no receptions or official dinners tonight. Everybody deserves a night off now and then.

  The day in Washington had been a scorcher, with high humidity adding to the misery of being outside, even for a little while. Only tourists braved the heat. Curtis’s personal automobile, an elegant metallic red BMW M3, was parked beneath cover in a reserved space, but even so, a blast of roasted air rushed out when he opened the door. He opened the passenger door to let the furnace heat dissipate with a cross-draft. Out in the parking lot, others were doing the same. No true Washington resident would get straight into a car on an afternoon like this. Let the trapped hot air escape, then jump in just long enough to turn on the engine and get the air conditioner pumping on high, then get back out. It took at least two minutes before even the most anxious commuter would slide onto the hot seat and grip a steering wheel that had been baking for hours.