Jack Coughlin - Running the Maze

Sybelle handed them plastic-covered maps. “You go in at zero-one, with this plateau at the end of the valley as your drop zone. Then you will be on the ground for twenty-four hours. Patrol up the valley and find a hide before dawn.” She pointed to a red circle on the map, then handed over a photograph of a field that seemed relatively flat. “See what you can see during the day, then finish up at dark and make your way to this landing zone. We’ll pick you up there at exactly oh one hundred. Two alternate LZs are marked. Got it?”

“How old is that download?” Kyle asked.

“About five hours,” Sybelle answered. “Our boy the Lizard back in Washington will be laying all kinds of havoc on the electromagnetic fields in the area, and he’s already throwing spoofs and flyovers throughout the region to draw attention away from the bridge. They may be defending, but they will not be expecting you, and even if they were, they probably would not be able to see your plane. You two just focus on the mission. Leave the rest to us.”

Beth Ledford realized that all three of the Marines were looking at her, as if she were going to break under the building pressure of going into a dangerous clandestine mission. She took a step to the table and picked up her pack, then pulled a Snickers candy bar from a jacket pocket and stuffed it in among the bullets. “Emergency chocolate ration,” she said. “Now I’m ready. Let’s go.”

THE THREE PRATT & WHITNEY Canada PW307A engines kicked the Dassault Falcon 7X off of the apron and into the night sky without a strain, although with enough power to push the three passengers against their seats. The plane seemed to climb almost straight up to thirty thousand feet before leveling off and settling into a gentle cruising speed of five hundred miles per hour. Up front in the cockpit, Major and Captain constantly monitored the Honeywell Primus EPIC avionics suite, but the fly-by-wire aircraft was basically running on its own.

Cousins of the smooth Falcon tri-jet were plying the skies over peaceful countries as fifty-million-dollar luxury long-range business jets, but this one had been converted for special operations, and creature comfort was low on the list of priorities. The six-foot-two cabin ceiling prevented Double-Oh from standing erect. He had to hunch over.

The ride to the target area seemed short to Beth, but then Double-Oh was shaking her shoulder. She had been asleep. He looked at her curiously, then tapped his round black bubble helmet. “Get ready, Coastie,” he said.

Swanson was already on his feet, rocking comfortably with the motion of the plane, his face hidden behind the clear plastic mask. A one-pound bottle of oxygen was beneath the right arm of his olive coveralls, with a hose feeding the cool air into the closed jump helmet. The parachute pack was on his back, a day pack around his waist, and the weapons were in a drop bag between his legs.

Looks like he’s done this before, thought Beth as she struggled with her own bulky equipment, sucking in the clean oxygen and huffing it out again. The plane was tilted, coming down to seven thousand feet and shaving off speed.

Double-Oh listened to a verbal radio message from the cockpit and held up a palm toward them, all fingers extended. Five minutes.

Beth waddled into place behind Kyle, using her hands to adjust the shoulder straps. She leaned around him to see Double-Oh squatting beside the door, motioning to his face to make certain they were on oxygen as the cabin depressurized. Two fingers were held up. Two minutes.

Normally, the hatch on the Dassault would fold outward and become a stairway. With the modifications, it would come inside. Double-Oh, secured by a safety harness, unlocked it, grabbed the rails with his beefy hands, and pulled it free, then stashed it behind him. He held up one finger. One minute. Both responded with a thumbs-up.

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.