Running the Maze (26 page)

Swanson grunted assent. The control room of Task Force Trident was manned 24/7 when an operation was in progress, and Commander Benton Freedman would be plugged in, constantly trawling his electronic universe. Kyle shifted his gear so he could sit at the desk, pulled the keyboard close, and sent a quick note to [email protected]. “Liz?” He signed it “Bounty Hunter.”

There was a brief pause; then a pop-up window appeared in one corner of the screen to show the Lizard had created a point-to-point connection. “Yo,” came the response.

Kyle typed, “Launch extract.”

“Confirming extract, Bounty Hunter. Cords?”

Swanson referred to his map and typed two groups of numbers, and the Lizard confirmed.

“When?”

The engineer had been watching over Kyle’s shoulder, impressed by the knowledge being demonstrated at the other end of the conversation. Whoever it was had cracked his security wall with ease and put up a private window that no one else could control. For the first time, he entertained a doubt about the security of the entire project. There were other smart people in the world.

“How long will it take for us to get from where we are right now up to the top of the bridge?” Kyle asked the engineer.

“Maybe ten minutes,” al-Attas replied. “If we are not slowed down too much by fighting.”

Kyle knew that was unlikely. The battle had already begun and would only get worse. “T-minus-twenty,” he wrote. “Start time now. Hot LZ.”

“On the way. Lizard out.” The image of a green gecko scurried up the screen, ate the window and the words in it, then crawled off the screen, leaving it blank.

Swanson ripped out the hard drive and checked his weapon. Another problem solved. A pair of Boeing V-22 tilt-rotor Ospreys had been orbiting safely out of harm’s way and beyond radar range since Kyle and Beth had parachuted into the night. With in-flight refueling and relief crews aboard, the high-speed, long-range birds could remain on station almost indefinitely and were perfect as an exfiltration vehicle. They could take off and land like helicopters, and the large turbofan engines on each wing could rotate to provide conventional flight, which made them much faster than a chopper. The Lizard was even now alerting them to break out of orbit and head in. One would supply covering fire while the other did the pickup.

A new checklist was forming as he surveyed the room one last time. “What are the exits here? Just the two doors and the ledge? Is there an emergency way out?”

“Of course.” Al-Attas remembered the original instructions he had been given to design the living facility so that the resident would never be trapped, no matter what. “The easiest way is a long rope that can be snapped to that big ring secured into the rocks out on the balcony.”

“Too exposed.” Kyle did not like the idea of dangling from a rope over the side of a cliff with people shooting at him.

“Then there are hatchways in the floor and ceiling of the closet over there. The top one leads directly into a gun bunker, and the lower one is a service tunnel for wiring and maintenance. From either one, you can get into the tunnels and go anywhere, even beneath the river to reach the east tower, or out into the valley.”

Pounding was heard at the door to the infirmary as the NMO security men shook the handle and tried the locks. Kyle knew they would not stay there long, and the other door would soon be under attack. He had no idea how many enemy troops would be involved.

“Beth, listen to me. The Ospreys are inbound and will land on the helicopter LZ up top, beside the road, in exactly twenty minutes. You know the place?”

Ledford nodded. She had studied the bridge minutely during the recon, and Kyle had pointed out the large flat area. They were going to run into opposition on the way out, but she was confident that she and Kyle would be more than a match for whoever it was. “I’m ready.”

“We split up now. You take this guy and the maps and go through the lower hatch; get to the east tower and go up and out that way. I’m going to stick around and cause some diversions to draw them off.”

“Shouldn’t we stay together, Kyle, to increase our firepower?” She didn’t relish the idea of being on her own.

“Trust me, Coastie. In a few minutes, they will be coming after me with everything they’ve got. The main mission now is to get this guy and his information back to base. Now move. You have twenty minutes, and that’s all. Remember Quantico; don’t miss the pickup, and you go with or without me.”

“Kyle—” she started again, but he cut her off.

“Shut up and do what I just fucking told you. Get him and the intel out of here. If an attack on America is imminent, we’ve got to get him back safely. I’ll run interference. I trust you.”

She looked at him with steady blue eyes, wanting to stay in his zone, while knowing it was inevitable that she had to go out on her own. She wasn’t afraid but had to push down the troublesome question of what she was doing here in the first place.
Three weeks ago I worked for the dang Coast Guard, but now Kyle Swanson trusts me!
That changed everything. “Come on, Mohammad,” she finally said. “Into that service tunnel.”

Al-Attas bristled and turned to Kyle. “I do not take orders from women,” he said.

“In that case, I will just shoot you right now and make our egress a lot easier. We will settle for the information that we already have, that hard drive, and the maps. Don’t think for a moment that you are indispensible. If you give my friend any macho shit on the way out, she has my permission to blow your head off. She never misses.”

“Very well, but I intend to report this rudeness to your superiors.”

“You do that. If any of us live that long.”

*   *   *

A
YMAN AL
-M
ASRI LEFT HIS
doctor at the infirmary door and sent the bodyguard around to the second entrance, returning to the elevator alone and rising back to the surface. His eyes glowered like burning stones as he looked out at the vastness of the construction area. It was all such a sham, such a waste. The Pakistanis and the Taliban had both promised that it was a fortress for the new age, a place in which Commander Kahn would be totally safe, because no enemy force could possibly breach the bridge and its mighty array of techno-weapons. Those promises were worthless. They had planned on methods to turn away massive assaults, yet a small special operations team had breached all of the security devices and snatched the man who had put it all together. That chief engineer should have been disposed of immediately, for disaster seemed to follow in his footsteps. Now he and his secrets were in the hands of the infidels.

All of the workers were called together again, a mob of shuffling construction men who were physically fit, although most of them were militarily untrained. To motivate them, he announced that the enemy had penetrated deep into the bridge, intending to destroy it and then kill everyone on the site. The suddenly excited men were divided into teams and provided with weapons and radios. There were upwards of forty of them, which should be enough, so he culled out a few European technicians, who were bound and left under guard because they could not be trusted. The rest surged into the tunnels, starting the search at the top of the bridge, then flooding down through the stone passageways. They were already familiar with the maze, not least because they had helped build it. They did not need maps, only leadership.

Al-Masri organized his command post topside, then drank an entire bottle of water while considering his next move.
Play this backward,
he thought;
start at the end, not the beginning.
The ultimate goal of the raiders, now that they had been uncovered, would be to escape, and that probably would involve a helicopter. By studying a topographical map and walking the area to peer down the valley, he was able to identify several likely landing sites within a two-kilometer radius of the bridge. He gave a quiet curse. With the morning light growing brighter, it would be an easy thing to shoot them down with the proper weapons. However, the antiaircraft cannons he needed were located deep down within the bridge, anchored on mounts in the gun rooms, useless, unless his tech specialist could get things running again. Men would be required to cover each potential landing zone, and he would send one to scrounge for some rocket-propelled grenades in the storerooms.

Once his teams were on the move, and with the likely landing zones pinpointed, al-Masri finally went to his secure radio link to report back to the New Muslim Order headquarters. The conversation was short, and he was firm. Commander Kahn was not to be brought to this bridge, no matter what promises were made. The bridge, he declared, was not a safe digital fortress but little more than a sand castle.

24

K
YLE
S
WANSON WAS FINALLY
alone, and his chances of living beyond the next nineteen minutes rested solely on his own shoulders. All he had to do was master a varying formula of time, space, the number of tangos, distance, and direction. The time could be pinpointed, and the opposition force would be adjusted as he went along. Space and distance were unknown factors, because of the labyrinth of confusing corridors and pathways, but he did not need any special talent, not even a compass, to keep going in the right direction; up was always up.

He had total freedom of action and would consider anyone he encountered to be a hostile. Although he knew little about his enemy, they knew less about him, and they would be in his free-fire zone.

There was noise and movement on the far side of the infirmary door, indicating an assault was being prepared. They would probably blow the door and rush into the room. Kyle intended to be long gone by then, although he would leave a clear trail to be followed. He dragged a chair into the closet, pushed open the ceiling hatch, grabbed the edge, did a chin-up, and chicken-winged his elbow into the opening to gain more leverage. He climbed up and out, leaving the chair standing in place over the lower hatch through which Ledford and the engineer had gone. The natural choice for the chasers would be to follow him.

Swanson came up in the dim light of a bunker, beside another fully loaded heavy machine gun affixed to the usual mechanical arms and anchors. He closed the hatch, unsnapped the box of ammunition from the big weapon, and rested it carefully on a fragmentation grenade the size of a baseball. With the box holding down the safety spoon, he pulled out the pin to arm the grenade. Moving the hatch would jar the box, which would detonate the booby trap.

He touched his throat microphone. “Coastie. Can you read me?”

“Barely,” came her huffing reply. “We’re on hands and knees, but the opening to a corridor is just ahead. Mohammad says it will take us under the river. No opposition so far.”

“Eighteen minutes.”

“We’ll be there,” she said and then lowered her voice. “Kyle? He is starting to growl.”

Swanson walked to the exit hatch of the gun bunker, suppressing his natural sniper instincts and training. On any ordinary mission, stealth and hiding were the keys to success, so he would have remained invisible. This time, he not only had to expose his own position but also initiate a running gunfight. That meant sending an invitation that could not be ignored.

The usual laminated map on the door revealed the layout for this section. Elevators were at one end of the main corridor, and the broad main staircase at the other, about a hundred meters away. Five hallways branched off at irregular distances, and each terminated at a set of steel spiral stairs. At first he had worried that he might be cornered like a rat in a trap, but in reality, his situation was much better. The ten spirals, two elevators, and main stairway connecting each level were all designed to ensure easy movement of men and materiel within the bridge, to resupply and help shift forces during a battle against a force attacking from outside. The whole thing was built to keep people out, not to keep someone inside. From Kyle’s perspective, that system presented the defending force with a significant problem, for they could not possibly cover all of the choke points. Time to go hunting.

He slowly opened the gun pit exit and peered into the hallway. It was empty, so he stepped outside and kicked down the doorstop to hold it open when he left. Swanson moved like a shadow to the far corridor beside the main stairs and into the intersecting hall, where he backed into a doorway. The frame was only about seven inches deep, but it also was the only available cover, so he wedged in tight, happy that he was only five foot nine and slim instead of six foot plus and bulky. Anyone rushing down the main hall from either the elevator or the staircase would run right past his hiding place.

His muscles were rigid, so he commanded his body to relax, and the heart rate immediately obeyed; he breathed steadily, his eyes cleared to razor sharpness, and both the world and time began to slow down, as they always did before he let all hell break loose.

He removed the remote control detonator from his pack, clicked off the safety, and pressed the button. In an instant, the brick of C-4 he had placed in the ammunition storage room at the lower entrance to the tunnels exploded with a booming, furious crash that challenged the thick rock. The walls channeled the concussion along like a flood of water surging through giant pipes, and only two floors above, Swanson pulled his head down into his shoulders and braced in the door frame as his entire world twisted and groaned.
That should get their attention,
he thought. Secondary explosions cooked off and added to the bedlam.

The heavy stone was part of an entire mountain range and soon ate the blast effects. The lights that had blinked off sparkled back to life, and only a mist of dirt seeped from the ceiling. Swanson stepped into the empty main hallway and laid down a long and loud burst of automatic fire that rippled and ricocheted, and the bullets tore at doors and walls, pocked the elevator, and smashed the lights. The doorway to the gun pit remained yawning open, and he put a few rounds in there for good measure before ducking back into his narrow hide and reloading. He looked at his watch: seventeen minutes before pickup.