Jack Coughlin - Running the Maze

“What is your status?” he asked.

“We are inside the infirmary,” said the bodyguard. “No one is here, but we found a hatch that leads to the floor above, where the shooting is.”

“Pursue them. I am sending help immediately.”

“Yes, sir. We’re going up.”

Al-Masri’s palms felt wet with perspiration, and he wiped them on his robe. This might be over quickly if they could lock the commando team into that one space. Al-Masri could make up for their lack of training by using the advantage of sheer numbers. He gave a quick order to everyone. “All teams converge to the third level of the east tower. There are probably not more than three or four Zionists to fight. We will have them trapped there. Use your combined firepower to keep their heads down, then wipe them out.”

Men who had just entered the west tower responded and came back out in a rush to cross the broad bridge and descend into the east-side tunnel. More would advance through the access corridors just below the roadway.

The bodyguard who lifted the hatch cover above the infirmary had to push hard against the unexpected weight, and the grenade booby trap detonated in the gun room bunker with a harsh craaack that covered his agonizing scream as he caught the full force of the explosion in his head and chest. A coil of thick smoke oozed through the open door into the third-level hallway, and single rounds of machine-gun ammunition ignited with a clatter in the intense heat.

Swanson heard men running down the main stairwell and entering the hall, and he shoved himself back deeper into his door frame. Four went past his corridor without glancing at it, firing blindly into the smoke ahead. When they were beyond his position, he came out and lit them up from behind with short bursts, using more bullets than actually needed for the job, but wanting to use the surprise effect of a noisy firefight on the oncoming force.

The next batch paused and slowed their advance; then Kyle triggered a burst that chipped the lower steps, and drew a barrage of automatic fire in return. He bellowed as if he had been hit and ran back into the churning smoke, dropping flat at the corner of two corridors to watch them come down. They shot wildly around the first intersection until they discovered no one was there, and the easy capture of that little bit of territory gave them a false feeling of victory, emboldening them while at the same time making them more careless.

Kyle held his fire, using the time to rig another grenade booby trap and string a tripwire low across the hallway. The group moved closer down the main hallway, laying waste to the next intersection of corridors, gaining even more confidence when no fire was returned. They had captured two intersections without incident and stepped up the advance, talking loudly and with confidence. He leaned out and buzzed them, then ducked back after the single long burst and took off for the nearest spiral stairwell.

He paused halfway up to fire again as the more aggressive pursuers came charging around the corner. He wanted them to have their eyes locked on him, rather than where they were going. The lead man cleared the tripline without even seeing it, but the toe of the fighter behind him hit the taut wire, which yanked out the pin, and the grenade exploded, filling the hallway with flying shrapnel, confusion, blood, and terror. Swanson dashed the rest of the way up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

THE OPENING STEPS OF his violent choreography to reach the top of the bridge had gone as smoothly as a waltz on Dancing with the Stars , a series of well-drilled maneuvers so common and practiced that they even had names. He had opened with Excessive Force, to lure the curious enemy into a kill zone, and followed that with a Flash Attack to stun them. Now he was falling back in a controlled Australian Peel.

The Peel was a sniper’s protective game of leapfrog on defense. After an attack against a larger force, the sniper would stay put and lay down suppressive fire while his spotter fell back twenty meters, hit the ground, and took up the firing to allow the sniper to bound back another twenty meters, then repeat the process. The difference today at the bridge was that Swanson had to perform both roles: fire, then give up some ground to his pursuers to make them think they were making progress, with no idea that it was being given to them. Kyle did not want to break contact, and so far, it had worked. He was picking apart the opposing force.

He found no one waiting when he emerged up on the second level, so he ran to another doorway and squeezed in tight again, thinking of what to do next. He was uninjured and still had plenty of ammo if he was careful, some C-4, several hand grenades, and a bandolier of five grenades for the launcher that hung beneath the barrel of his CAR-15. There were plenty of moves left, although he was feeling the press of time. Eleven minutes.

He could hear the pursuers milling around below, an indication of a lack of discipline, training, experience, and leadership. He fired a single shot back down the stairs to focus their attention again, and the bullet struck metal stairs and zinged away like the clanging of a bell. The enemy fighters realized their quarry was waiting for them up on the next level, still ready to fight.

Kyle intended to make the most of his clear advantage in this small underground city of channels and burrows. Rooting out a skilled defender required patience, determination, luck, and skill, and the butcher’s bill was usually high. An untrained force such as he was facing today had little choice other than to pour in a lot of bodies.

“AHLO?” A STRANGE VOICE from the radio was tinged with despair, even as the caller said a universal form of “Hello.”

Ayman al-Masri of the New Muslim Order responded without introduction. “Who is this? Where are you?”

“We are on the third level, mister,” said the nervous voice. “There has been a horrible battle down here. The casualties have been heavy.”

“How many of the Zionist raiders have been killed?”

“None that I have seen, sir.”

“Well, how many are there?”

A pause. “About six?”

“Can you actually see the enemy from your position?”

A long pause. “No, mister.”

“Then how do you know there are six?”

“Ummh. That is just my estimate, mister. So much damage. So many men are down and badly hurt. Please send medical help.”

Al-Masri knew the pleading coward on the radio was hiding, not advancing.

“What is your name?” The demand was almost a snarl.

The radio went silent. Bonte Ibara had no intention of giving his name to the terrorist leader and possibly being singled out later for blame, or worse, to be appointed leader of the other men down in this hellish battle. The fifty-one-year-old Congolese man, with weathered dark skin and sprinkles of white in his black hair. was a month from the end of a one-year contract as an electrician subcontractor with a Saudi construction firm. Bonte looked over at his friend Guychel Mouko, a heavy equipment operator who had come north with Ibara as a contract worker. They had lived for months on meager rations, sending almost everything they earned back to their families. Both had come to work on a bridge, not to fight soldiers. They were not even Muslim.

Having survived civil wars in Africa, both had seen many times what bullets and explosions could do to the human body. Let the young hotheads who had never tasted a real fight do whatever they wanted, like that boy who had run forward without looking and stepped on the booby trap. The blast had torn the torso in half, painted the walls with blood and purple intestines, and clouded the corridor with smoke. Only a fool would want to be the first to go into that kind of death trap against an Israeli raiding party. Bonte and Guychel had lagged far behind coming down the stairs and were the only members of their small group still standing.