Jack Coughlin - Running the Maze

Now he was in front of the crowd, and Kyle knew the rest of them would start shooting at him. He dodged into a zigzag to create a moving target and flung a green smoke grenade back over his shoulder. Not far away, the Osprey was still hanging there, waiting for him, against orders and operational practice.

He saw someone leap from the rear of the plane, go to a knee, bring up a rifle, and start firing. A man to his right keeled over into the spreading emerald smoke, his face a mask of blood, and then a second man rolled forward in a somersault, hands grabbing at the bullet wound in his stomach.

He had only thirty more yards to go when he recognized that it was Coastie covering his approach with methodical bursts, and he couldn’t think of anyone he would rather have doing the job. She fired, and another man fell, then he ran past her, patting her shoulder to signal that it was time to leave.

Swanson jumped into the Osprey and pulled Beth up right behind him. Both had big smiles on their dirty faces.

“Everybody’s aboard,” the gunner called to the pilot, who had been balancing the Osprey in a delicate position as he watched the show from the cockpit. The swirling cloud of yellow and green smoke had covered the enemy, but he had seen at least four of them fall, and the only person who had been shooting was the girl who had threatened him. They could talk about that later. He fed the Osprey power, and the machine lifted off in a typhoon of wind, climbed rapidly on the rotors, which were already moving back to airplane mode, and banked away from the bridge.

SWANSON AND LEDFORD DROPPED into canvas-strap seats, side by side, as the Osprey curved away from the bridge that could have been a death trap for both of them. They were filthy and stained, streaked with sweat, but their eyes still glowed with excitement from the action. Beth had a fresh purpling mouse beneath her left eye, and her lower lip was split, seeping blood. Kyle was bruised and scraped from being slammed about by explosions. They smiled, then broke into peals of laughter and slapped their palms together in a high five. They had made it.

“What’s with the kid?” Swanson asked, shedding the now useless combat gear and taking a long drink of water.

Across the aisle, Mohammad al-Attas had been lashed into a seat, his hair matted and tangled, his eyes rolling wide, and his head twisting all around. His nose was bloody, a big bruise colored his left forehead, and his pants were around his knees. Plastic flex-cuffs bound his wrists, and when he kicked at the gunner who fastened the seat harness around him, the gunner spun a few turns of duct tape around the ankles. The belt was still looped around his neck. He tried to bite the gunner and was put to sleep with a strong sedative injected with a syringe in the medical kit.

“He went weird about ten minutes after we left you. We were running along just fine, and the next thing I knew, he was snarling and snapping like a dog, punching and knocking me to the ground. It was like he was flying on some super coke high. I had to slap him about a little bit and hogtie him.”

“Shoulda just shot him.” Kyle shrugged.

“Yeah,” she agreed, “but you said bring him back alive, and his intel might be worth trying to save. Maybe the shrinks can straighten him out.”

“Whatever. Just glad you made it out with the extra luggage.”

Kyle waved to the gunner, who was seated near the engineer, facing them. “Hey, dude, thanks for waiting for me.”

The big man looked out beneath his olive drab helmet and pointed at Beth. “Didn’t have much of a choice,” he yelled over the noise of the churning propellers. “We were ready to haul ass until your friend pulled a gun on Major Jameson, the pilot. He ain’t none too happy about that, neither. You ought to have heard him cussin’.”

Beth leaned back and closed her eyes, lacing her hands behind her head. “Won’t leave my BFF behind.”

“What?”

“Girl talk. Best Friend Forever. I’m probably going to get court-martialed, huh?”

“Naw. They’ll make you stand at attention and gnaw on you for a while, but if you don’t laugh in their faces, you’ll walk away OK. General Middleton protects the Tridents, and you done good. We’re bringing back a hell of a lot of information. We tend to piss off some people, time to time.” Swanson looked at her face. Ten minutes after coming through a major action, she was damned near asleep.

“I’m not in Trident,” she said, somewhat wistfully, lifting her chin in defiance of the fates.

“I am, and I would have been in a world of hurt back there if this bird had left without me. Then you jump back out there and do your Little Sure Shot routine on the guys chasing me? Outstanding, Beth. What was that you just said? BFF?”

“Yeah.”

“BFF it is, then.” He reached over and playfully mussed her dirty hair. “I owe you. Go to sleep.”

LIEUTENANT COLONEL SYBELLE SUMMERS and Master Gunnery Sergeant O. O. Dawkins led the debriefing of Swanson and Ledford, with a half-dozen specialists from various intelligence agencies making notes and asking questions. The Lizard was patched in from Washington on a secure video link. A large screen on a wall of the room glowed with a map of the region, with the grid location of the bridge painted in red.

Kyle was hydrating with a cold fruit juice, while Beth sat quietly with a fresh bottle of water. Her tongue felt glued to the top of her mouth. “We never did determine exactly who was fighting us, but one of the guys that we brought down was wearing the uniform of a Pakistani army sergeant.”

“That doesn’t really prove anything,” observed one of the nameless men at the table.

“I’m not here to prove shit to you, Suit. Just telling you what I saw and showing you the pictures we took. The bridge is in Pakistan. That proof enough that they are involved, or at least knew about it? Of course they will deny it. No different from their denials of hiding Osama bin Laden in a mansion by an army camp.”

“What about you, Petty Officer Ledford?” the man asked. “Did you see anything that could be incontrovertible proof that the Pakis were in on it?”

She shook her head, and her voice was soft. “No. Just the guy the gunny mentioned, and a whole bunch of guys with a lot of guns. We didn’t exchange business cards.”

Sybelle steepled her fingers. “Side issue. The prisoner confirmed the ISI, the secret police, was involved, and as Swanson said, the thing is inside Pakistan. There is absolutely no way they weren’t in on it.”

For an hour, the questioners picked the brains of the two tired warriors, and Summers let the topic ramble but always brought it back to the bridge. The maps and papers the team had gathered, the computer hard drive, plus their personal on-site observations, photographs, and sketches, gave the situation a tight focus. “So as high-tech as this place is, the purpose was simply to be the new, protected lair for Commander Kahn. It was created for the New Muslim Order. Are we agreed?”

“Looks that way from back here in Washington,” said the Lizard. “I will pull some intercept logs to see what the boys in Islamabad have been talking about. It would be a big help if that captured engineer could give us details on the bridge itself, the weaponry, and that array of sensors and cameras in the valley.”

“Don’t count on that, Liz,” said Kyle. “The man has definitely slipped into his own scrambled little world. The shrinks will have a hard time separating fact from fiction with him, because he apparently believes everything he says is real.”

Freedman chewed on a thumbnail. “General Middleton wants to get that guy down to Guantánamo as soon as possible and turn the experts loose on him. Chemistry can do wonders.”