Running the Maze (6 page)

He sipped his water and chatted aimlessly with the bartender for a minute so the woman left the restaurant first. By the time he left a minute later, she was already lost in the crowd, and Mr. Green Cap was also gone.
This is no mom-and-pop operation,
he thought.
It’s being run by an alphabet agency like the CIA or FBI, or maybe Homeland Security
.

Swanson headed back to the Pentagon. Ledford had not mentioned pestering the CIA or the Department of Homeland Security, but she had talked to the FBI. It did not matter how many people the Feebs had on her, because Sybelle was taking her to the Pentagon, into the secret offices where the watchers could not follow. Kyle decided that it would be good for Ledford to drop totally off the grid for a while.

THE BRIDGE PAKISTAN

T
HE TWO BOYS
,
NOT
yet in their teens, were skinny from the food shortages but had sinewy muscles from hard work just like almost everyone they knew. Ahmad and Ali were the best of friends, and late at night they liked to leave the familiar streets of their village and get out from beneath the eyes of the adults who were always watching them. They were always back home before morning, sleepy but able to work.

As all boys of that age do, they thrived on tales of great adventure. In the mountains of Pakistan lived clans of fighters who had battled invaders like the Russians and the Americans and other soldiers from other countries over hundreds of years. There were Taliban fighters, and Pakistani army troops, and fierce troops loyal to warlords, and all had exciting tales that fascinated impressionable boys. Ali and Ahmad could not wait to grow up and join the ranks of some fighting corps. They did not understand, or care, about politics or the religious aspects woven into it. They just wanted adventure.

So, not for the first time, they had slipped into the forbidden territory to explore at night, each daring the other to go a step deeper into the shadows. At the destroyed bridge, they decided to rest a while before heading home and made themselves comfortable in amid the angles of the steel girders on the fallen span. They ate some nuts and a few dates and kicked with bare, callused feet at the water flowing beneath them.

From where they sat, the boys could easily see the bright bubble of light at the new bridge a mile upriver, where trucks and construction equipment were always on the move, building the biggest thing the boys had ever seen. The new bridge, seeming to be a mountain itself, was already allowing some traffic to cross, but the construction never slackened. The boys heard the clanking of metal machines and the faint shouts of the crews.

“They are doing more work tonight on the left column,” Ali noted, chewing. “I hope they will use explosives.”

From the woods along the riverbank came the growl of a dog, followed by an angry bark, a brief burst of snarls and snaps, a cry of agony, then sudden silence. The dog had caught whatever it had been chasing.

“We could go and find it.” It was another dare from Ahmad to box his friend into a corner. Both knew they had to leave in the next few minutes to be back home on time. Even bravery has its limits, and they understood that in the early morning hours, this area was said to belong to the Djinn. Too many strange things had happened in this low valley beyond the bridge for the boys not to at least pay attention to the stories that an evil spirit roamed the area. That made their daring adventures even more frightening and fun. As they talked and splashed, they never noticed that danger was approaching.

Ahmad was knocked senseless when a club smashed into his head, and then he was toppling off the bridge and into the water below, his right arm cracking on a big rock before he was swept downstream. He heard a distant cry from Ali, then just the rush of the water. His right arm would not work, but he flailed and kicked as he gasped for air. He managed to get out of the main flow of the river, and a whirling eddy pushed him to calmer water, where he dragged himself ashore. He struggled to turn over, coughed up some water, and flopped onto his back to catch his breath.

Ahmad struggled to his feet, cradling his hurting arm, knowing it was broken. He had been taken down the river, but not too far. As his thoughts cleared, he called, “Ali?” Steered by the lights on the new bridge, he saw the tilted beams of the collapsed old one and broke into a run.

He could not find Ali at first and thought that maybe he also had been thrown into the river. He stepped onto the span and edged forward, feeling the rusty steel beneath his feet and reaching for handholds. Something was at the far end. “Ali?”

Ahmad took one final step, then stopped in shock and horror. The body of his best friend hung from a steel beam, hoisted like a goat for butchering. A rope was looped over the brace and tied around Ali’s ankles, with the arms hanging straight down, as if pointing toward the pool of blood on the deck below the body. There was no head.

Ahmad gripped a big girder with all his might as his aching head reeled, and he heard a man shouting from the darkness on the far side of the river.

“Go home! Tell everyone what you have seen tonight. Tell them what the Djinn does to those who intrude in his valley.”

Ahmad ran.

6

THE PENTAGON

“
W
HAT ARE WE LOOKING
at?” Major General Brad Middleton had unfolded two blurry photographs and spread them flat on his desk with his palms.

Beth Ledford fought her anxiety at being in the general’s presence, and at the whole operation in which she had become so unexpectedly involved. “Those are blown-up versions of the last two pictures that my brother sent to me from his cell phone. They lost quality when I downloaded and made those prints. Sorry. I don’t have the technology to get better pictures.”

Middleton arched his heavy left eyebrow. “I know they are photographs, Petty Officer. But of what?”

“Sir, the one on your left is of an old steel bridge that has fallen into a river in Pakistan, maybe washed away by the floods, or even earlier. Joey attached it to a text message that asked, ‘Remember this?’”

“Why would he think that? Were you ever in northwest Pakistan?” The general reached into his desk drawer and scuffled around until he found a large magnifying glass. He bent closer to the photo, studying it.

“No, sir. My brother was referring to an old abandoned bridge near our family’s farm in Iowa. It once was part of a spur rail line, but that closed in the fifties, and eventually, the bridge fell down. We played on it when we were kids. The skeletons of the two bridges are remarkably alike.”

Middleton grunted. He saw nothing of interest. He pushed it aside and ran the magnifying glass above the second picture. A huge new bridge was under construction, a colossus that looked more like a dam. “And this one?”

Ledford shifted, and her hands drew into fists on the arms of the chair. “I think that’s why he was killed.”

Middleton lifted his eyes to meet her gaze. “Tell me.”

“Here’s what the text message on this said.” She helped herself to a pen and a yellow legal pad from the gerneral’s desk and wrote
N TRBBL RUNNING CC.
He passed it around without comment. “That was the last contact anyone had with the team. Since I never take my phone or personal effects off base during a mission, I didn’t receive these until we finished a multiday patrol in Somalia. By then, it was too late.”

The general grunted and slid the pictures aside. The photos had already been examined by Summers and the Lizard, and they would not have passed them up the chain of command to him unless they thought the information was worthwhile. “I still don’t see anything.”

“You probably won’t, sir, not in the picture at least.” Ledford was more certain of her ground now. At least the members of Task Force Trident, including its commanding general, were listening to her. “It’s in the message itself, sir, not only the photographs. The ‘CC’ initials. Our father was an Army infantryman in Vietnam, and since he was small, he sometimes was assigned as a tunnel rat. He used to tell us stories about being underground with a flashlight and crawling through these amazing networks of tunnels, like an anthill. One place he worked was around the town of Cu Chi, not far from Saigon. Joey and I were too young to take it all in, but when we would find some exciting place to explore, we would call it Cu Chi. Then we shortened the name to just CC.”

“Your conclusion, then, is what, Petty Officer Ledford?” Middleton pushed back in his chair and was watching her for signs that she might be lying, or making it up as she went along.

“Sir, I think—I know—that my brother’s medical team stumbled into somewhere they were not supposed to be and discovered something that reminded him of Cu Chi. Somehow he figured out they were tunnels, and probably for military use. The Taliban chased them down and killed them to keep it secret.”

“You informed your superiors and people in here in Washington of everything you just explained to us?” The other four members of Trident had sat by without comment as the general addressed Ledford.

“Yes, sir. Nobody listened.” She hesitated. “Nobody cared.”

Middleton glanced at Swanson. “Now she is being followed by the FBI?”

“Best as I can tell, although I didn’t ask to see their badges. It’s a total surveillance package.”

“But the FBI did not confiscate your cell phone when you spoke to them?”

“No, General. The two agents showed no interest in me, or my story. They listened politely and told me how sorry they were that my brother had been murdered by jihadist fanatics.” The memory of the brush-off made Ledford’s lips tighten. “I don’t understand it.”

The general examined her quietly for a few moments, and the room fell silent. “Well, Petty Officer, I frankly don’t understand it either, and I don’t like it.” He unfolded from his chair and walked to the window, looked out, then turned back, having made his decision. “Lieutenant Colonel Summers, I want you to set up Petty Officer Ledford with a lawyer and take a sworn statement, and get a polygraph so we can start a file on this. Names, dates, and places of the people she talked with. Lizard, take her cell phone and go do some of your electronic magic. See if it has been hacked, get the call history, and enlarge those two photographs, as clear as you can get them. Gunnery Sergeant Swanson, you find out what’s going on with our friends at the FBI. Everybody be back here at six o’clock for a briefing.”

Master Gunny Dawkins cleared his throat loudly to get the general’s attention. “Sir, we already have a Green Light project under way.”

“I am aware of that,” Middleton said. “We just have to juggle two balls with one hand for a little while. Dismissed. Get out of here.”

THE MALL WASHINGTON, D.C.

S
PECIAL
A
GENT
D
AVID
H
UNT
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation met Kyle Swanson in a Starbucks near the National Archives, where they each bought a coffee and walked the two blocks to the Mall. The tourists were not as thick in August, with schools around the nation getting ready to start and vacation time drawing to a close. Hunt had been with the Bureau for almost twenty-five years, and somewhere along the way, the burly special agent had become a bureaucrat. He didn’t even remember when it happened. He thought more and more about life after the Bureau, retirement, slowing down and rebuilding the family time that had suffered for his job for so long. Maybe even learn how to fish. No, not that. Fishing was worse than playing golf.

“Here,” he said and handed a plain manila file folder to Swanson. “Didn’t need any private face time for this, Kyle. I could have sent it by bike messenger. Nothing to it. We offered to help the Pakistani ISI investigate the ambush, give them access to Bureau forensic resources, and they almost laughed out loud. These raggedy-ass pictures of the scene are already on the Internet, and it’s all we’ve got.”

Swanson led them to a park bench beneath the shade of a big tree that broke the heat. “Pretty thin stuff, Dave,” he said, studying the half-dozen photographs. Nude bodies on the ground, swelling due to the heat. An empty truck. Just a normal slaughter of innocents. He had seen similar atrocities in different places all around the world.

“Well, after we got slapped around by our pals at the ISI, the State Department also decided to shut us out. I got a memo that the Pakistani government had taken appropriate action, found and disposed of the murderers, and that it was officially all over but for the burying. It was all very terse, very convenient. Since WikiLeaks, they’re scared shitless over there at State about writing anything down.”

Swanson drank his coffee. “I thought we were all supposed to be working together these days. The War on Terror ring a bell?”

“Yeah. Well, it ain’t happening. Why are you guys interested in this little scrape, anyway?”

Swanson handed the folder back to Hunt. “Some Coast Guard chick that knows Sybelle Summers came to town to shake some bushes because her doctor brother was among the victims. She’s got a lame story that he saw something that is possibly militarily important over there in Mudville, and that’s what got him shot. When she took her story up the chain, including to your FBI shop, she was ignored.”

Hunt shook his head. “I didn’t hear anything about any inquiry from a relative, but it’s a pretty routine situation. Some family members always see conspiracy in the violent death of a loved one. Did she have any proof?”

Kyle said, “A couple of messed-up cell phone photos that her brother had sent, along with a cryptic text message that she claims refers to the Viet Cong tunnels in Vietnam, back in the day.”