Running the Maze (3 page)

“You are full of shit. Who the fuck do you think you are?” The raging Powell felt the touch of Rockhead on his elbow. “Who is this asshole, Senior Chief?”

“Somebody you would not want to meet in a dark alley, Powell. Let’s you and me go have a talk, son.”

*   *   *

R
OCKHEAD
S
HERIDAN MET
S
WANSON
back at the same watering hole that evening. This time they sat inside, at the bar. A news report was on the TV about the upcoming launch of the first mission that would eventually lead to a Mars landing. A cut of cool ocean air had moved in to drop the temperature, and rain was blowing onto the patio. Neither man was in a good mood.

“Had to be done,” Rockhead said. “Powell has already departed for a thirty-day leave to try to get his act together. Turns out he had some serious home problems and a set of new twins, both of them real sick, so he was at a personal crossroads. I told him to go home and do what was really important, take care of his family.”

“So he’s done with Team Six?” Kyle folded a wet napkin, just to be doing something. He had not enjoyed taking part in the collapse of Ryan Powell.

“Yep. If he wants to stay as a SEAL, we’ll rotate him into being an instructor in the BUD/S training. He’d be close to home and probably be pretty good at the job.” Rockhead shrugged. “Life sucks sometimes.”

They went silent for a little while. Then Kyle asked, “You gonna let me have another run at the Ghost House tomorrow? By myself?”

“That was the deal, Gunny Swanson. You should get two, three more chances to shoot some holograms before you go back to the Puzzle Palace in Washington.”

Their attention was drawn to a breaking news banner flashing on the television set that hung from the ceiling, a fragmented report about the slaughter of an international medical team in the northern part of Pakistan. Nine dead and no survivors.

“Tough,” observed Rockhead, signaling the bartender for another beer. “Bunch of tree-hugging do-gooders out hiking where they don’t belong.”

Kyle agreed. “Plenty of places in this screwy world where they could be helping, and they chose Pakistan. Not that the refugees don’t need all the help they can get. That flooding is a mess.”

“My only real beef is if those doctors and nurses start crossing over and give training in first aid and medical treatment to the terrorists. Maybe even treat their soldiers. Helping keep the enemy alive, no matter how noble, is bad karma. We want to kill them and some liberal medics want to patch them up? No way.”

Kyle thought for a moment as individual photographs of some of the medical team passed on the screen. He agreed with Rockhead. “Well, at least that one is over and done with. Doesn’t involve us.”

3

A
P
AKISTANI ARMY PATROL
had found the bodies but knew little more than that most of the victims were foreigners. Wallets and identification cards had been stolen, but the corpses had been scattered around a truck that wore the blue symbol of the United Nations painted on its doors.

The bare details were quickly passed along to a Doctors Without Borders outpost that the medical team had visited the night before it set out on its final journey. The unofficial grapevine that binds the various relief organizations soon got the news back to UN Refugee Camp Five, allowing Dr. Lin Yao, the director and chief administrator, to place a direct call to the UN Headquarters in New York and pass along the tragic news. A general press announcement was dispatched, but the identities of the murdered doctors and nurses were withheld pending the notification of family members, no small task since the victims had been an international group.

Dr. Yao, a small and precise man, needed an entire day to confirm who had volunteered to make the trek north. His eyes misted, and he had to remove his glasses to wipe them as he determined the names of the nine dedicated medical personnel who had been senselessly murdered. Their loss was going to be a significant blow to ongoing operations at Camp Five.

There had been only one American, the team leader, Dr. Joseph Ledford, the gentle and dedicated physician who had trained at the Mayo Clinic. Two Canadians, two Chinese, and one more each from Venezuela, Fiji, South Africa, and Jordan. Yao realized his mistakes: The group did not include enough Muslims to go out into the countryside on their own, and the Fijian nurse openly read her Christian Bible every day and protested the subservient position of women in this rigid society.
My fault,
thought Yao, blaming himself for a tragedy that could not have been predicted.
I should have paid more attention before giving permission.
There was just so much work.

Once his list was complete, Yao found their personnel folders and sent the names to New York, where workers set about contacting proper authorities around the world to carry the worst news possible to the affected families. The U.S. delegate to the United Nations was given the name of Dr. Joseph Ledford, whose home address was in the state of Iowa, and the State Department sped the information along to the office of the governor of Iowa in Des Moines, which steered it over to the state police, which passed it along to the Kossuth County Sheriff’s Office in Algona.

Towns and villages dot the farmland in the middle of Iowa, and many miles separate them. As a result of a shrinking tax base, road patrol units covering the 974 square miles of the largest county in the state are spread thin. The dispatch officer checked his computer, saw that the nearest deputy was about thirty miles east of the Ledford Dairy Products spread, and assigned him to personally go to the farm. The call was made on a cell phone to keep it off the police scanner frequencies that were monitored by the media.

Margaret Ledford was sweating in the August heat as she helped a hired hand fit a repaired chain to the screw of a broken conveyor belt, and she stepped away from the job when the sheriff’s car pulled in behind a tractor parked near the barn. She lifted the broad brim of her straw hat and wiped her forehead, recognizing Deputy Bill Turner, who had once attended the combined junior-senior high school with both of her kids, Joey and Beth. Everybody knew everybody out here. He seemed slow to get out of the car as a dust cloud settled about it, giving Margaret a moment to wonder what in the world he was doing out here in the middle of a Thursday afternoon. She waved.

Turner gave a nod and reluctantly stepped onto the dirt, looking like a cop, not an old friend. Mrs. Ledford was not someone with whom he could postpone getting to the point. Best to get it done professionally but kindly. Turner had great respect for her. Her husband, Stephen, had died of a heart attack three years ago, their son, Joey, had left long before that to become a doctor, and their daughter, Beth, was overseas somewhere with the Coast Guard. Margaret refused to move and had continued to run the big farm with hired help, losing her grief in the grind of pulling a living out of the rich Iowa dirt. Against the odds, and with a pair of full-time hands, she successfully ran about four hundred acres of corn, wheat, and soybeans, and at least a hundred and fifty head of cattle and a dozen horses. The fog of working from dawn to dark every day had slowly eased the burden of her husband’s passing; she would never forget him but had accepted things as they were. The kids came back to visit now and then, and that’s just the way life was. Her hair was going gray, but Deputy Turner knew that Maggie Ledford was one tough lady, and that she would need that strength now.

“Hey, Bill,” she called, walking over to him. “You wearing sunscreen today?”

“Yeah, Maggie.” He did not engage her in the banter, and his face was serious. “Can I get a glass of water?”

“You tell me what you’re doing here. Then you can have water, milk, or a beer of your choice.” She put the hat back on but stripped off the heavy gloves and crossed her arms, looking up at the tall deputy.

He hooked his thumbs in his belt and bit his lip, then sighed. “No way to make this easy, Maggie, so I’ll just say it: Joey’s dead. He was killed with his entire medical team by the Taliban over there in Pakistan.” The deputy looked straight up, unwilling to make eye contact, and when he glanced back down, he saw that the color had drained from Maggie Ledford’s face and she was collapsing. He caught her. “God damn them,” Bill Turner whispered to himself, taking the weight of the woman before she fell. “Damn ’em all straight to hell.”

Inside the cool house, once Mrs. Ledford recovered from the initial shock, she asked Deputy Turner if her daughter had been notified. He didn’t know. Maggie went to her little desk in the kitchen, pulled open a drawer, and found a special telephone number that she was to call in case of a personal emergency; the American Red Cross would contact Beth, who was on classified duty somewhere overseas.

*   *   *

“P
REPARE TO TAKE THE
shot, Gunner.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Think you can hold this flying machine steady for a moment? You’re bouncing around so much I might not be able to even hit the dang ocean.” The voice in his headset was totally calm.

“I have my own problems, Gunner,” Lieutenant Commander Arvis Taylor replied. “You thinking maybe you can pilot this extremely complex MH-68H helicopter better than me?”

“You think you can shoot better than me?”

“No, Gunner. I do not. So stand by to slam a round into that boat, if you please. He didn’t get the message from your warning shots. I’m steadying up now. If you see anybody with an RPG, take ’em down without waiting for my order.” Taylor studied his instruments closely as he worked to bring the bright white Coast Guard helo with the bold orange stripe to a midair standstill.

“Ab-so-lute-ly, sir.” At the open side door behind Taylor, the sniper also was running through mental geometry to sight in on the engine compartment of the speedboat below—relative speed, angle of attack, bullet drop over distance, the effect of the powerful downdraft on the shot. Adjustments were made. These pirates had met their match but didn’t understand that yet. The sniper had ripped a few warning bursts from the M-240 machine gun around their boat with no effect. Now that weapon was pushed aside, and a thirty-seven-pound M-82 Barrett .50 caliber rifle was in position instead, dummy-corded with a D-ring to the harness. The powerful scope brought the engine compartment at the rear of the target boat into a tight, clear view.

The Coast Guard helo was flying the unfriendly skies of coastal Somalia as part of the international naval effort to interdict the prowling seaborne pirates who preyed on merchant shipping. The target vessel, long and wide and slow, had attacked a freighter, but it swerved away when the helo, which had been returning from another mission, heard the distress call from just forty miles away and heeled into a smooth turn. It was overhead in minutes. Luck is always an advantage in combat.

The sniper saw that the boat was hauling the combined weight of ten men, who stared up at the helicopter. One had an AK-47 at his shoulder, pinging away ineffectively, far out of range. “I’m ready, Skipper.”

The pilot and the sniper had worked together for a long time as members of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) and were experienced in taking down much tougher targets, such as the go-fast boats of drug smugglers in the Gulf of Mexico. Lieutenant Commander Taylor had seen the sniper shoot those quick, dancing speedboats with such precision that often only one shot was needed, because the bullet would penetrate the engine and blow it apart. Without power, the go-fasts became wallowing hulks that would stay where they were until a ship arrived to arrest the crew and seize the cargo of marijuana or cocaine. Taylor was confident that his sniper was as good as they come.

He settled the helicopter into position, and the dials were right where they should be. The big problem in flying over water was not to be fooled by a smooth, mirrorlike surface and fly right into it. “Commence firing,” he said.

The sniper shot on the command, and the web of straps bracing the Barrett took the recoil. There were two big Mercury outboards on the rear of the pirate boat, and the one on the left exploded in a shower of metal shards that wounded several pirates. With practiced ease, another bullet was chambered and fired, and the second motor was torn from the stern. The impact of the powerful shots sent the long boat into a lazy, powerless turn.

“You finished yet, Gunner?” asked Taylor.

“Yes, sir,” replied the sniper, pulling the Barrett back into the helo and securing it. As Taylor radioed the results to a French navy frigate that was heading to the scene, the sniper pushed the goggles up, took off the helmet and ran both hands through her blond hair, then pulled on a blue baseball cap with gold lettering. Beth Ledford took a drink of water and waved to the drifting Somali pirates, who began to shout and shake their fists in futile anger when they realized that they had been attacked, and thoroughly beaten, by a woman.

Once the French warship was in sight and heading for the disabled vessel, the helicopter spun out of its holding pattern and was soon making its final approach to the landing area on the broad stern of the National Security Cutter
Stratton,
a 418-foot-long white vessel that looked friendly to allied maritime units but overwhelmingly threatening to potential enemies. Petty Officer Ledford was looking forward to a quick debriefing, cleaning her weapons, then some hot chow and a shower, clean sheets, and sleep.

“Oh-oh.” Taylor’s voice cut into her daydreaming. “Hey, Ledford. You still awake back there?”

“Yep. Sir.”

“Look at that welcoming committee just beyond the platform. You got better eyes. Who is it?”