Running the Maze s-5

by Jack Coughlin

  Curtis removed his coat and tie and folded them carefully while he waited for the powerful BMW V6 engine to cool the interior down to a comfortable level. In another minute, he was motoring away from the BAIA, enduring the rush hour traffic northwest around the Beltway to McLean, where he peeled off onto State Route 267, the Dulles International toll road. Once on the long straightaway, it was almost impossible to get off of that road until you hit the airport exit, and Curtis had to fight the urge to let his machine really run, to set free the 414 horsepower as he passed the Leesburg Pike and Wolf Trap, and the pavement unrolled ahead. Instead, he stayed in the slow lane, moving in behind a small hotel bus. He would get the chance to open her up on the return trip.

  Once settled into the pack, he activated the automated built-in cell phone and instructed it to dial a number in New York. The big ears of the National Security Agency constantly swept international conversations in the D.C. area, but Dulles was almost a dead zone; there were so many calls going on between thousands of passengers and their homelands that even the NSA system was overwhelmed. A carefully conducted call to a foreign mission at the United Nations would hardly be noticed if the words “terrorism” and “bomb” were not mentioned.

  Cultural attaché Mohammed Javid Bhatti had been expecting the call and he answered on the third ring. They chatted aimlessly for a full minute. Was it hotter in New York or Washington. How the traffic was. How the UN was empty in August, and how they were both looking forward to the weekend. The attaché confirmed that he would be attending a reception the following week.

  “Will you be bringing your guest?” Curtis asked.

  There as a pause. Javid Bhatti deliberately gave the response that he had memorized. “No, I will arrive alone. I have communicated with my home office, and the guest will not be able to make it. There will be no one sent to replace him.” He meant that the Pakistani ISI had decided not to risk having one of their trained assassins being captured while operating on American soil.

  Now there was a longer pause. When William Lloyd Curtis asked a favor, he normally got it. He swallowed his disappointment and kept his voice even. “That’s fine, then. So I will see you at the reception.”

  “I’ll be there. You furnish the blondes.”

  Curtis laughed and closed the call. The attaché loved to party, and getting women and booze for him had been a good investment. No need to be angry at him. Javid was just a messenger boy. Curtis was peeved, however, at having his request rejected by General Gul at the ISI. With so much at stake, and the days counting down toward a major attack, was the ISI getting cold feet, playing him?

  Curtis no longer had to paddle along the Dulles road like some grandma in a used Honda. He cut out from behind the passenger van and into faster traffic, ignoring the horn blowing and finger waving of other drivers as he stomped the accelerator and the BMW responded with a burst of blurry speed that catapulted him to ninety miles per hour. The speed limit was sixty-five, but Curtis had not spent sixty-five thousand dollars on a luxury muscle car to do the speed limit.

  18

  THE VALLEY

  KYLE SWANSON LET THE night speak to him. He was fully alert, all of his senses constantly bringing in and updating information, but those people down below, except for the one guy who had stayed up and was walking around, were at the low point of their entire day: bored, tired, and hard asleep. The darkness felt heavy, and the steady grinding of big equipment up on the bridge was almost like white noise, lulling the brain into restfulness, assuring everyone that things were normal.

  “OK,” he said, giving an easy shake to Beth Ledford’s arm. “Time to move out. Police up your trash. Leave no target indicator. No one should ever know that we were here.”

  Beth sat up and arched her back to work out the kinks. The hump of a thick tree root had been digging into her shoulder while she slept, but there had been little room to shift positions. “Anything going on?” Half of the Snickers bar was still uneaten, so she wrapped it tightly and put it into the pack.

  “Same old, same old. Most of them seem to be getting a good night’s sleep. They’re not professionals, that’s for sure. Hopefully, they won’t bother us, and we won’t bother them.”

  Beth checked her CAR-15, made sure the flash suppressor had not been plugged by dirt, then slid down the night-vision goggles. “Ready. Are we coming back here?”

  Kyle shook his head. “All hides are temporary, Coastie. We go down and look at the fallen bridge, then find another place. There will be plenty of opportunities in this junkyard. Remember what I told you earlier. With the cover of the night, we don’t have to crawl. Step with your toe down first, then ease your weight onto your heel. Toe-heel-toe. There is no hurry. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Got it?”

  “I remember that lecture from the first time,” she griped. “Quit treating me like a baby. Let’s get out of here and take care of business.” She squirmed onto her knees, facing outward.

  He left the hide without another word; one step, then another, then stood upright. The direct available light from the campfire was amplified further in his goggles by the faraway illumination at the big bridge, and Kyle took his time to do a 360-degree scan. Nothing was moving. Bizarre shapes and shadows were cast by rocks and brush and trees. Two more steps and he stopped again to wait for Ledford to emerge. When she stood, he held up his right hand and waved four fingers, motioning her to follow him downhill.

  He covered the first ten meters in just a few moments and heard her moving behind him, trying to be quiet but sounding to him like a marauding buffalo. Remembering that she had a smaller stride, he shortened his own step. Yeah. That was better. They settled into a tandem glide.

  The first hundred meters went by quickly on the gently sloping ground, and they worked around a couple of minor obstacles without incident. The dirt was hardened mud, and the flood had sluiced away most of the usual scree of little pebbles that would coat a riverbank. Swanson held up his fist and took a knee. Coastie did the same. They had a clear view of the old bridge, and he saw her lips tighten as she studied it.

  The stubby old truss span was still firmly anchored at the end where the campsite was, but it buckled sharply downward about fifteen feet from shore, pulled by the weight of the steel after the far supports had given way years ago. The other end rested beneath the surface of the sluggish water. Most of the flooring was missing, and the bumpy rivets stood out clearly. It was a bridge that went nowhere, useless.

  It was also an uncanny replica of the bridge from Beth’s childhood, the place from which she and Joey and their parents had gone fishing and swimming on hot summer days. She tried to visualize something she was overlooking, but there was nothing unusual about it at all. Not a thing other than its eerie familiarity.

  “Is that it?” Kyle had kept his own eyes on the unstirring camp and was whispering into his throat microphone.

  She nodded her head. “That’s exactly it, just as in Joey’s picture. He must have been standing about right here. I don’t see anything else. Can I move a little closer?”

  “Low-crawl down another fifteen meters while I stay here and cover. No farther than that. No noise.” He put his rifle to his shoulder, pointing toward the sleeping patrol that dozed on unperturbed.

  Beth eased into a prone position, cradled her weapon in her arms, and then propelled herself carefully forward on knees and elbows.

  Kyle heard her breathing harder. No movement in the camp. Then his peripheral vision caught something changing. Coastie stiffened and froze, burying her face into the ground.

  As Kyle watched in astonishment, a dark metal tube rose from the ground only a few feet to her right, a pipe of some sort that emerged ghostlike in the gloom with a soft, hydraulic hum. He quickly went flat, as still as a rock. The cylinder came up higher, the top covering slid back, and Swanson saw the reflection of light on glass. It looked like a submarine periscope, and it mechanically rotated twice to scan the entire area, then stopped and automatically close
d its lid and slid back into its hiding place with a hiss.

  The device had to be a remotely controlled camera, Kyle thought, which meant he had to assume their mission had been compromised. The idea of a soft infiltration had just changed. Not knowing precisely what had happened, he called for Beth to return, and she came back, low but fast.

  “What the hell was that?” she whispered.

  “Camera,” he said. “Must have been triggered by a motion detecting sensor around here. Just be glad it wasn’t a mine.”

  “A camera? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Some kind of high-tech perimeter security system, but it doesn’t matter to us. We have to assume that we’ve been spotted, and that changes everything. We probably don’t have much time before an alert is sent out and wakes up those dudes on the patrol. Our mission plan changes.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Get ready to fight, Coastie. We’re ninety-seven meters from that group right now, no wind, downward angle, but I want to close to about thirty to make it point-blank. If the guy with the radio gets a call, we put them down right then. You take the two on the left, and I’ll do the two on the right and the guy in the middle. One center mass shot each.”

  “We’re going to shoot them while they’re asleep?”

  “No. We’re going to kill them while they’re asleep. Don’t wuss out on me now, Coastie. Remember what these assholes did to your brother. They are no longer human beings. They are targets, and they have guns.” He gave his magazine one final tug to make sure it was secure, then rose to his feet.

  Beth Ledford did the same. “What did he see, Kyle? What did Joey see?”

  Swanson exhaled and sucked in a deep breath, ready to move. “He didn’t see anything at all at this bridge, other than it being a curious reminder of when you were kids, Coastie. So he went deeper up the valley toward the new bridge before they stumbled into trouble. His team probably did not even realize they were tripping hidden sensors as they went. Someone was watching.”

  THE INFIRMARY

  SERGEANT HAFIZ ESCORTED THE New Muslim Order—the NMO—team into the sick bay area, their footsteps hushed by soundproofing. The place was clean, with pure filtered air, the room temperature kept low by a thermostat on the central air and heating system. The almost sterile environment bore no resemblance to the outside world. Ayman al-Masri walked directly to the narrow bed where Chief Engineer Mohammad al-Attas lay tied like a goat, dirty and bloody, his eyes closed. “What happened?” he asked Hafiz.

  “This little man escaped last night and killed some of our people before being captured. He was once very important, but something happened in his head.”

  Al-Masri bent over to put his face near that of the engineer. “That is a shame. From everything we had heard, the man was brilliant.” He tapped the chief engineer on the skull. “Can you hear me in there? You did some wonderful work. Even the Commander knew about you, and sends his compliments.”

  The dark eyes of al-Attas flew open, so wide that the NMO inspector stepped back in surprise. The whites shone bright around the pupils, which darted everywhere, taking in his surroundings. “I’m thirsty,” he said weakly.

  Hafiz moved closer. “Don’t be fooled by this mild manner. He is a heartless murderer when the other personality, the one he calls the Djinn, seizes him. Then he is uncontrollable.”

  “Sergeant Hafiz! My friend!” The grating voice of al-Attas grew stronger. “Why am I still a prisoner?”

  “See?” Hafiz said. “He remembers nothing of his murderous actions.”

  The inspectors gathered around, examining the engineer as if he were a specimen on a laboratory table. “So he cannot be used at all?”

  “No. The breaks in memory and behavior have become too erratic and sharp and are increasing in frequency. In addition to the danger he poses to anyone around him, his work would be suspect, too.”

  “What a shame,” said al-Masri. “Insh’Allah. God’s will.”

  “Insh’Allah,” Hafiz agreed.

  The inspectors, having seen enough, moved away at Hafiz’s suggestion that the infirmary staff guide them around the elaborately equipped medical clinic. Wounded fighters might receive attention on the operating tables, but the infirmary had been specifically built to serve the special needs of Commander Kahn.

  Hafiz glanced back and saw the hot eyes of the Djinn boring into him. He filled a cup with water and helped the bound man sip the liquid. Then he laid the head back down, pulled a cloth screen around the bed, and returned to the tour.

  “When you’ve seen enough here, we can go to the control room, and then the communications suite, so you can see the heart of this place,” he suggested. “Then we can do the tunnels, the living quarters, and the individual defense systems.”

  The inspectors moved to their carts, none giving a second thought back at the screened-off chief engineer. He was already dead to them. The infirmary was deemed more than adequate for the needs of the Commander and his senior staff.

  THE VALLEY

  BETH LEDFORD’S HEART WAS pounding so hard it seemed that everyone around could hear the thumps. She kept her eyes glued on Swanson’s back, not the targets, and he moved like a panther through the half-buried boulders and over tree stumps, silent and swift and determined, as they closed on the campsite. Her CAR-15 was pressed against her shoulder, the safety off. Coming up on sleeping men who were about to die was a lot different than shooting a boat from a helicopter. It didn’t seem right. Maybe they should just capture them instead. She instantly banished those thoughts. Fairness has nothing to do with it, Kyle had told her during their brief training. Stay focused, girl. Follow the Gunny. Don’t think about Joey or helicopters or anything else. The greenish images in the goggles grew in size. The man standing by the fire had not heard a thing. They are targets, not people.

  Suddenly, she was totally in the moment, and nothing else existed in her life. Back a few steps, confidence had replaced nervousness, and her training kicked in. She knew she could depend on the gunny to do his job, and she was as good with a rifle as he: Annie Oakley in combat boots. In the zone. Can’t miss. You bastards are going to die.

  Kyle slowed and stopped, and she came up beside him. “On my count,” he said quietly into the mike. Both had their guns up, and the flames of the fire glowed on the sleeping faces. “Three… two… one…”

  They fired simultaneously, with no more sound than a pair of cricket chirps, and two bodies on the ground twitched under the impact. By then, they had tracked to their second targets and squeezed off another pair of silenced shots, and they both hit the standing man at the same time, and he bucked backward and fell away from the fire. Five men lay dead in less than three seconds.

  Swanson moved forward, dropping his rifle, which dangled from a D-ring on his harness, while drawing his silenced Colt .45 from its holster. He stalked into the semicircle of downed men and fired one shot into each head. The center mass hits had all been accurate, but the head shots provided total insurance. He put the pistol away, then unsnapped his canteen and took a long drink of water.

  Beth stepped near the fire and felt its warmth. She had been so wrapped up in the mission that she had not noticed the night had gotten chilly. She wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing to get warm.

  “Grab one of these blankets if you’re cold,” Swanson said. “Matter of fact, let’s take several of them to throw over any more cameras that pop up.” He knelt and rolled a body over, snatching out the bloodstained blanket beneath it.

  Beth balked at the idea, and Swanson threw the blanket at her. “Use it!” he snapped. “It’s too late for second thoughts, Coastie. We are in a fight now, and the bad guys know where we are. The blankets can also cut down on our heat signatures if they are using thermal sights. Get down here and check them for anything else we can use. We’ve got no more than a few minutes, then we head up the trail, so get your ass in gear.”

  THE CONTROL ROOM

  HAFIZ DEFT
LY STEERED THE cart down the broad light blue hallway that was lined on each upper corner with fluorescent lights. Color-coded arrows and signs were painted on the walls at every intersection and branch to guide traffic, and he followed a wide green line that led to the control room. The guard at the sealed door snapped to attention.

  So far, Hafiz had no doubt that Ayman al-Masri of the NMO was impressed with the tunnel complex, and he had yet to show him the weapons, the mess facilities, the troop barracks, the repair shops, and the private living quarters. “After this stop, we’ll take a break and go to the dining hall. I’m certain you and your men could use some hot tea and some food after your long journey.”

  “How much more time will the official tour take?” asked the al Qaeda man.

  “Another hour or so. Then I’ll just leave the carts with you, along with a guide, and you go anywhere you want, ask questions of anyone. There is no time limit and no restrictions as far as I am concerned.” Hafiz swung the cart into a tight little circle and stopped. The three other carts, two men in each, followed his example.

  Hafiz stepped into a white square painted on the floor outside the control room and pushed a button to activate the entrance sequence. A shimmering bright white halo appeared overhead and slowly descended all the way to the floor, taking biometric and facial recognition data, running it through the computer, confirming the findings, and changing to green before snapping off. The door unlocked automatically, and Hafiz pulled it open.

  Al-Masri was astonished when he stepped inside, and absently reached out and touched one of the many racks of equipment. His team members came in behind him and gaped like children. The room had the look of an empty financial brokerage, with large screens on the walls, desktop computers, indirect overhead lighting, and several chairs in low cubicles filled with electronic displays. One bigger chair was perched on risers near the back, with a pair of screens right in front of it, a joystick on each arm, and a keyboard beside a panel of switches and knobs. The air-conditioning hummed in its ongoing fight to control the heat churned out by the electronics within the enclosed space.