Jack Coughlin - Running the Maze

Swanson had stepped forward and saw a large man bulked up in a poncho, unlimbering a weapon and staring straight at him. I see you, you see me, but I saw you first. He fired a three-round burst, then smashed shoulder-first into the big man and stepped over him to clear the rest of the room.

Sergeant Hafiz felt the impact of the bullets. The shock of the attack masked some of the pain; then his head collided with the floor and his face came to rest with his eyes staring directly into the fierce glow of the lantern. He tried to make his hands grab the rifle so he could fight back. His body would not answer his brain’s command.

Hafiz could detect the nearness of his attacker, but there was nothing he could do. There was a brilliant flash, but he did not hear the rifle fire when Beth Ledford pumped a final shot into his head.

BETH AND SWANSON EACH grabbed a wrist of the lifeless, heavy body of Sergeant Hafiz and hauled it outside to dump it in the soggy brush beside the trail. Returning through the gate that camouflaged the entrance, they swung it closed behind them and were in the tunnel and shut the inner door. Smeared blood streaked the smooth floor, and it was eerily still. Swanson pulled Ledford by the collar and put his mouth close to her ear.

“You stay on my six at all times, Coastie. Do what I do. No questions, and don’t hesitate,” he said. “We have to push forward as far as possible. If we get contact, follow my lead.”

She gave a quick nod but did not reply. That life-taking bullet she had fired point-blank into the big soldier’s head was something that she had watched Kyle do to the targets they had downed on the patrols, so she had copied the same move, pulling the trigger without emotion. Once it was done, the man was surely no longer a threat to them. It may have been standard operating procedure in special operations, and she had learned it in a violent way on the job, but she was not yet to the point that it would have no effect on her.

When she removed the night-vision goggles, Kyle saw tears welling in the blue eyes of his baby-faced assassin before she wiped them with her dirty sleeve. Because she had been going along so well, he had momentarily forgotten that she had not been trained for these gut-wrenching missions, that her surge of adrenaline had limits; she was running on fumes, and they had a long way to go. He pulled her into a hug, just as he would soothe a thoroughbred horse, or any first-timer getting a taste of close-up death. “You’re doing great, Beth,” he said. “As good as anybody, and better than most. Now let’s do this.”

The first steps were the hardest as they moved into unknown territory, but they had no choice. They were totally exposed in the hallway, which measured about six feet wide, big enough for a small tractor to pull a trailer of material or supplies. The ceiling was about seven feet high and supported by webs of metal girders. Neat clusters of pipes hid the electrical wiring, and long fluorescent bulbs glowed with a bluish tint. The low hum of electrical generators could be heard from elsewhere in the complex, and the constant vibration was transmitted through the stone walls.

Twenty feet down the hallway, on the right-hand side, was a closed door, and they crept toward it, stacking against each wall. Swanson saw it had no lock, just a knob, and he motioned for Beth to give it a slow turn. She opened the portal into a small room that was filled with neat stacks of cardboard and wooden boxes, routine supplies that probably serviced nearby facilities, including the entranceway. He motioned her inside, closed the door, and turned on the lights.

Mops and brooms stood around like spindly sentries, radios and flashlights were recharging on a long metal rack, and a pile of fresh towels lay on a shelf. The tangy odors from the jugs and bottles of various disinfectants and cleaning fluids assaulted their nostrils. A bin of dry rags occupied one corner. Kyle tossed a towel to Beth and used another to rub away the mud that was thick on his boots.

Beth took off the black beanie and shook her blond hair, then worked the towel into it hard and wiped her face. She tossed the hat aside, then also went to work on her boots. “I don’t think it matters any longer if they happen to notice I’m a woman,” she said. “I’m good to go, Gunny. Just some nerves.”

Kyle peeled off his own wet wool beanie and dried the top of his head and his face with a soft towel. It felt better. “This place is incredible. From the outside, it seemed like part of the mountain, but inside, it is something else entirely.”

“You think my brother got this far?”

“Probably. Even farther. Maybe the door had been left open to bring in supplies or something and they stumbled upon it and just came on in to explore, like kids on a holiday hike.”

Beth looked around the room. “There’s nothing here that would be worth killing them. That’s not it.”

They walked to the next room, and the next, working steadily until they cleared the lower corridor, but still found nothing of interest other than the sprawl of the subterranean labyrinth. Some areas were still under construction, with tools, wiring, and lumber strewn about.

An unexpected, high-pitched whine was barely audible in the silence. “We’ve got contact,” Beth said while Swanson was opening still another storage room. They both ducked into the darkness and closed the door, keeping their weapons ready. The whining came closer and passed them by, then stopped. A door opened down the hall; there were slow footsteps, and a grunt and a scrape as something was moved. Ledford flicked on her flashlight and shone the beam around. Boxes were everywhere, and she knelt to read the black printing. She took a quick, sharp breath, then snapped off the light when the whine resumed, suddenly closer and louder.

It passed by again, heading the other way, and Swanson eased the door open and spotted the disappearing rear end of a blue golf cart with a couple of boxes stacked in the rear. The driver wore brown coveralls, but there was no weapon visible. Some civilian worker who had not been looking for anything unusual in this netherworld and had paid no heed to the mixture of grime and blood at the entrance. That sort of luck would not last.

“We’re clear here. Ready?”

“Wait, Kyle. Take a look at this first. Boxes of ammo.” She flashed her light toward the door, found the light switch, and clicked it on, flooding the room with fluorescent brightness. Swanson immediately saw a box with stenciled markings that identified it as a case of 7.62 × 39 mm ammunition. The room was filled almost to the ceiling with ordnance of various kinds, not just the 7.62 bullets common to the AK-47 but canisters of machine-gun belts, rockets for grenade launchers, and heavy weapons shells.

He took off his pack and placed it on the floor. “This is more like it, Coastie. Your brother and his friends at least discovered storage rooms crammed with ammo and weapons. That alone would prove that this bridge is not just some benign structure built to hurry traffic along the road. If word got back to the U.S., then Washington would start asking uncomfortable questions that Pakistan would not want to answer.”

“Would that really be worth killing them for? Maybe just shoo them away with some cover story, like being a storage area for ammo needed to fight the warlords.”

“Whatever. It’s too good for us to pass up,” he said. “You keep watch while I bury some C-4 in this pile. We can command detonate it later on if we need a diversion.”

While he planted a brick of explosive and readied the detonator, Ledford stood facing the door, and her eyes came to rest on a square metal frame around a piece of paper encased in plastic. She stepped closer. It was a computer-created image that looked like the layout for a subway. “Here’s some kind of map,” she said.