Jack Coughlin - Running the Maze

“Can you hear me?” The radio squawked, the New Muslim Order man obviously angry. “Give me your name!”

Guychel shook his head. “No.” He gently removed the radio from the hand of his friend and hurled it far down the corridor, where it smashed into pieces as it bounced and slid along the rock floor.

Bonte pushed open a door and went inside, and Guychel followed, closing it behind him, then turning the lock on the supply room. They put their AK-47s aside, sat on the boxes, and lit cigarettes. “It will be over soon. Fights this intense never last too long,” Bonte said. “What do you hear from home?”

Elsewhere in the complex, other workers were making similar decisions to let sudden, deadly violence pass them by.

TEN MINUTES REMAINED BEFORE the inbound extraction birds were due topside. Kyle Swanson could not waste time hanging around in the second level of this subterranean maze. Nothing of value would be gained by forcing another firefight, but he had to do some damage before leaving.

The pursuing force was already in disarray, and their firing had momentarily ceased, so Swanson intended to make his next move as horrific as possible before they could shake off the feeling that certain death lurked around every corner. Mobility and his pitiless attacks had tilted things in his favor, and he needed to capitalize on that. His brain told him to be patient, to work it through step by step. Slow is smooth; smooth is fast.

He pressed the latch of the grenade launcher slung beneath his rifle, slid its barrel forward, put the weapon on safe, and removed a stubby, low-velocity 40 mm high-explosive, dual-purpose grenade from his bandolier. The golden dome and olive green body slid easily into the chamber, and Swanson pulled the barrel toward the rear to lock it. Then he broke cover and ran to the corner where his latest corridor intersected with the main hallway. Leaning around, he saw it was clear, and he moved his finger to squeeze the launcher’s separate trigger.

The weapon bucked with a firm bhoomp as the M-433 HEDP grenade fired, and Kyle spun to the floor behind the concrete wall, curled into the fetal position, closed his eyes, and covered his ears as the grenade hit the stone steps with a stunning explosion and a blinding flash. The earsplitting blast tore a deep gouge into the stairs, spraying out a thick circle of shrapnel and debris that would have killed anyone within fifteen feet. With that echo still vibrating and smoke boiling, Swanson loaded a second HEDP round, moved to the other side of the auxiliary corridor, and took aim through the leaf sight in the opposite direction down the main hallway. When he was sighted on the midpoint of the big doors of one of the elevators, he fired, then again dove to the floor against the near wall as the grenade penetrated the thin-skinned door. A long tongue of red and yellow flame jetted out of the elevator shaft, the aluminum doors blew off, and heavy shards of rock and shrapnel ripped and tore at the cables supporting the elevator. The high-pitched squeal of tortured metal pulling against metal rose above the din of the explosion, and the heavy elevator was twisted and pushed with ever-increasing force against the braided steel cables that had been chipped and sliced. It did not fall but was jammed so hard between the walls and the support girders that it could not move.

The concussion slammed through the corridor like a broadside from a battleship and bounced Swanson like a ball. Even after the wave passed beyond him, he remained curled up, disoriented, certain that he had been deafened and blinded by his own doing. I was too close! Acrid smoke made him cough, and that automatic physical response brought the rest of his senses back online. The eyes blinked, but his ears were popping like little firecrackers. Nature of the business; part of the game. Spitting out dirt, he shook himself free of layers of debris, and junk fell from his clothing and gear. Using the wall for support, Kyle pulled himself back to his feet, peeled away from his position, and moved out. It had taken three minutes.

IN THE EAST TOWER, Beth Ledford had made good progress, towing the young engineer along behind as she advanced through the levels. In fact, the prisoner—she no longer thought of him as an ally—had been the only real opposition since she had separated from Swanson. She was almost to the top now, in the first basement level, and the main entrance was less than fifty meters away, framing a bright square of light outside. She could smell the fresher air. With less than seven minutes remaining before extraction, she had never felt so totally alert and sharp. There was no sense of panic.

An unattended line of little golf carts was parked along one wall, with slack cables plugged into power sources to charge the batteries. The corridor seemed clear, and distant explosions told her that Swanson still was going strong over in the other tower; it sounded like a war. She felt she probably could have walked out of this corridor in a miniskirt and high heels and nobody would have paid any attention, because everyone was at the party next door.

A silhouette crossed at the entrance, and Beth ducked out of sight between the carts and the wall, pulling her prisoner to his knees. He grunted, and she held a finger to her lips to shush him. They were long past the time where he might have anything to say that would be of interest to her.

The figure at the entrance passed through the cone of light and vanished again. Beth assumed it was a guard who had been left behind to secure that tunnel mouth while the hard fighting raged elsewhere. She could easily shoot him from this angle, but the retort of a rifle would be amplified enough in the tight confines of the corridor and might be enough to draw unwanted attention. She could not expect to just walk the next two hundred feet unobserved while pulling a man along on a leash.

“Get in this cart. Left side,” she whispered. “Call out or try to escape and I’ll shoot you.” Mohammad al-Attas nodded that he understood, and she dropped the end of the leash but unholstered her pistol. There was a rag on the floor, and she tied it like a kerchief over her blond hair.

She yanked the cable on the cart from the power strip and climbed in. It was just an ordinary golf cart with a light blue fiberglass body, no more complicated to drive than a child’s wagon. When Beth pressed the accelerator, the vehicle moved forward on a battery-powered engine that was virtually silent. She steered with her left hand, with the pistol in her right, resting out of sight in her lap.

The guard might have been curious had he seen two people walking out, but he hardly noticed the approach of one of the buglike carts that constantly roamed the bridge and tunnels. Beth shot him with two point-blank taps to the head without even taking her foot from the accelerator.

IT WAS NIGHT IN Manhattan. The neon signs around Times Square took on a bright life of their own, the tourists flocked to the theaters, the Royal Shakespeare Company was doing Julius Caesar at Lincoln Center, the Rockettes were stretching out prior to another high-kicking show at Radio City Music Hall, and Jimmy Buffett was jamming with Neil Young in a Village bar. After another workday in the canyons of office buildings, millions of people were on the move again, hungry for entertainment and personal contact, going to restaurants or to their apartments or to the saloons. In midtown, a few blocks from the United Nations tower, three men were seated around a table in a luxury hotel suite that was protected by bodyguards with small machine guns. They all wore serious game faces. “I think we’ve got a Fish,” said one. “Not just a Fish, but fuckin’ Moby Dick.”