Jack Coughlin - Running the Maze

So Hafiz would be content to be a sergeant for a while and keep an eye on things. It would be interesting to see 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.

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.