He paired up bodyguards with each specialist. The structural engineer was ordered to secure an overall detailed map of the maze of tunnels, and the tactical officer was instructed to inspect some gun positions. Al-Masri took the information technician under his own wing. “We are going to find that defense system control room and try to get it back online. If we can get those computers running, they may help us solve the mystery. Hafiz was supposed to do that, but I think he went outside the bridge first and has not returned.”
The team’s physician was instructed to go to the infirmary and make an independent examination of the chief engineer to see if the lunatic might be of any use at all.
Al-Masri’s mood grew more sour with every passing minute that there was no word from beyond the facility. Hafiz might have stammered a bit in their meetings, but there was no doubt of the man’s capabilities; he was one of the best operatives in the ISI, a trained and ruthless fighter with years of experience. So why had he not put this right? The only conclusion was that things must have somehow slipped beyond his control. Some external force was pushing events.
He steered the battery-powered cart, questioning the IT specialist sitting stiffly at his side as they rode along. “I don’t know if I can bring the facility fully online immediately,” the man admitted. “I suspect there are difficult security passwords and firewalls. That biometric scanner means there will even be a problem just getting into the room. It would help if I had access to the chief engineer’s journals and logbooks, for then we could hope that he has written them down. If everything is in his head, as I suspect, we will have serious problems.”
They scooted onto a freight elevator and went down one level to the third floor. The wide doors slid apart, and al-Masri thought he recognized the color codes. “Do you remember how to get to the control room? Isn’t it off to the right from here?”
“Yes, sir. Down at the end of the blue hall.”
The cart accelerated again, but it was still slow. “So instead of getting the entire complicated machine running, I want you to concentrate on the controls needed to shut this place down, just as if it were under attack. I want some way to lock this place up tight.”
The IT man rode silently for a moment. “That also will take some time. Why not just signal that there is a fire, sir? That would not seal off the facility, but it would empty it of all civilian workers.”
Al-Masri smiled. A brilliant idea. He yanked his foot from the accelerator and slammed the brake so hard that the IT man was almost thrown overboard. The cart stopped beside a red box on the wall, clearly marked as a fire alarm. He jumped out and yanked the handle.
* * *
S
WANSON AND
L
EDFORD WERE
barely at the top of the stairwell when the fire alarm screeched, and the shrieking startled them both. Kyle ran to the first door he saw and burst through it, quickly quartering the area with his weapon although he could see nothing but darkness. Beth came in fast behind and shut the door, breathing hard. The smell of gun oil hung thick in the small space.
In the corridor outside, people ran past their hideout, shouting in various languages. Boots thumped in the stairwell as workers bolted for the exits.
“Did you smell any smoke before the alarm?” Kyle asked.
“No.” She leaned against the wall in the darkness, catching her breath.
“Exactly. Neither did I, so there’s no telling where the fire may be, or even if there is one. Maybe on the far side of the bridge.” He made the decision. “We stay on track.”
He unhooked his flashlight, flicked it on, and pointed it at the wall by door. “Hit the switch, Coastie. Nobody will be looking in here for a while.”
Beth flipped the switch, and bright light immediately bathed the room. “Holy cow,” she stammered, looking past Swanson’s shoulder. “What is
that
doing here?”
Swanson spun, almost tripping over an Mk-19 grenade launcher mounted on an adjustable platform that was locked in place on a short set of rails. Affixed to the weapon was a forty-eight-round can of 40 mm high-explosive grenades, and the weapon appeared ready to fire. He gave a low whistle of surprise and ran his hand over the familiar shape. Kyle had run thousands of rounds through similar Mk-19s, the reliable American-made grenade launcher that was a staple of the U.S. arsenal because of its heavy firepower and adaptability to various platforms. “This baby can do some damage,” he said. “One of those grenades can punch through two inches of armor, and it’s an infantry platoon’s worst nightmare.”
Beth had to raise her voice to be heard over the alarm. “Yeah. I read the manual, too. But what is it doing in here?”
Instead of answering, Kyle unloaded the launcher and emptied the chamber, then stood in front of the muzzle, facing away from it. The firing slit was closed but parted easily with the press of a nearby knob. Fresh air rushed in, and Swanson leaned closer to the opening. From this vantage point, he had a clear view of a broad section of the long valley. “This could have blown us apart on approach,” he observed with a voice as dry as that of a scientist reciting an unpleasant fact.
“So why didn’t it?” Beth moved closer to also get a look from the opening. Dawn was approaching, and the darkness was fading fast.
“I don’t know, and don’t really care right now,” he said. “Let’s think about this, Coastie: We overcame a lot of heavily armed guards, then found the motion sensors and the cameras, and then once we broke into this rock castle, we found crates of stored ammunition.” He tapped the big gun. “Now this: a straight-out-of-the-box Mk-19 that has been turned into a robo-warrior. Open this little slot, slide it out on those rails, shoot for a while, slide it back, close the door, reload, and do it again—and it looks from the wiring that most of it can be done by remote control.”
“Then that’s what my brother and his team came on, something like this. I remember how Dad drew pictures for us of the Cu Chi tunnels and how gun positions were so cleverly hidden that Americans would walk right over them and not even know they were there. It was a nightmare to root them out. This looks just like that; this one looks ready for a war all by itself.”
“Yep. I agree.” A cold feeling washed over him. How many rooms like this were there? How many weapons? What kind? Why? It was a honeycombed defensive position built into solid rock, but with an offensive purpose. All Marines remembered Iwo Jima and the deadly bunkers of the Pacific islands of World War II, and this bridge might be covering the granddaddy of them all. “This could be more than enough reason to kill some curious foreigner intruders. And it means that I was wrong.”
“About what?”
“I thought they might be hiding a nuke in here, but that would not explain all of this fancy hardware and the engineering. With a nuke, they could just drill a hole and hide it. But why put a nuke underground at all, because you would want to inflict maximum damage, not to confine the blast. I don’t know the reason for this secret place, but our intel people have not picked it up, and Washington cannot allow it to exist.”
The alarm ground down from its hellish howl, and stillness settled in the room. Kyle took out his knife and sliced through a handful of wires. “They can repair this, but I don’t want to leave it working, in case we have to come back this way.”
Beth Ledford turned out the light and gently opened the door.
22
W
ILLIAM
L
LOYD
C
URTIS SPED
back to Washington with the windows down, letting the wind drum hard into the car. His head still felt cottony, the sluggishness that usually resulted when he drank too much beer, but the howling wind and an espresso macchiato from a Starbucks drive-through had helped cut through the mental fog. He was not drunk, not even tipsy. He licked some of the steamed milk foam from his upper lip.
The chance to let his frustrations run free and bullshit with strangers in a bar where he was unknown had been cathartic, a needed winding-down from the unexpected ISI setback. The roughneck part of his own life, when he had built his construction empire, was truly in the past. For a moment in the bar, he wondered if he could recapture the flavor of those exciting years when he wore dirty jeans and Grateful Dead T-shirts and could use his fists as well as his brain. All the while, he knew that was only a fantasy for a middle-aged man who now wore expensive suits and was an undersecretary in the U.S. State Department, the man who ran the U.S. Bureau of American-Islamic Affairs.
Ah, Raneen. I miss you so much. I have never stopped loving you, and soon your death will be avenged. America will long remember the evil day you were murdered.
By the time the Beemer M3 hit the Beltway after the drive from Williamsburg, Bill Curtis had regained control of his emotions. Everything was still on track. The sprawling intelligence network within the countries of the BAIA was intact, and he really could harbor no lasting resentment against General Gul for not wanting to send a professional ISI killer onto American soil; the general was simply protecting his own agenda, and Curtis never burned such a valuable source over any single decision. They could work together on other projects.
Still, it was clear that he was on his own in containing the nosy Coast Guard woman and her Marine protector. He did not know where they had hidden, but his wide web of contacts was alert, and when they surfaced, he would be waiting.
By the time he drove over the Lion Bridge, he had rolled up the windows and turned on the air-conditioning, and the interior of the luxury automobile had become a comfortable cocoon in which he was shielded from the noise and the smell of the traffic. Washington was still alive with activity, and the streets were busy with pedestrians, from tour groups to workers. Men in running shorts ran laps on the Mall, and young women spoke urgently into their cell phones.
Women, Curtis thought. They always had to stay in contact with their girlfriends and their mothers and their distant cousins and friends from the second grade, as if they were all stuck together by verbal glue. They all had to know what each other was doing at every moment. A woman might hate her mother, but that did not mean they would not talk on the phone for hours. That was why cell telephone companies were part of his financial portfolio.
Then it hit him. The obituary of the slain American doctor from the bridge incident had included the names of his only two relatives: the Coast Guard sniper and their mother. He had been from somewhere out west, some farm state: Indiana? Iowa? Yes, Iowa. If it was a fact of life that daughters stay in touch with moms, then it would logically follow that this Ledford woman out in the land of alfalfa and cows might have some information that Bill Curtis needed. He suddenly smiled and honked his horn once in celebration. He would go and see her.
* * *
“D
O WE GET PIECES
of cheese when we get out of this maze?” Beth Ledford was only half kidding. The long corridors, side hallways, and vacant rooms still under construction seemed endless, like a high school science experiment to train mice. The fire alarm had emptied the structure, allowing them more freedom of movement, and they had taken advantage of the opportunity to uncover and clear more gun positions, storage areas, support centers, even a mess hall and living quarters. The place seemed endless.
Kyle admitted, “We’re just seeing more of the same shit. It must have a purpose, but I don’t see it.”
“It’s just a big bridge.”
“With a ton of remote control armament. It burns me that we can’t find what they think they are defending in this pile of rocks. There’s nothing of real value here. Nada.”
“So we can go home now?”
They were in a yellow hallway, before a bright red cross with the word
INFIRMARY
printed neatly in several languages. “Let’s duck in here while I call the extract team.”
The solid door to the medical facility was unlocked, and when they stepped inside, it automatically closed behind them. Swanson momentarily felt claustrophobic, as if trapped underground, but six feet away stood another secure door, and he realized they were in an airlock chamber. Blasts of cool, filtered air were pushed in by fans near the floor and slid along their clothing before being sucked out through vents in the ceiling. After ten seconds of the high-pressure sweep, the fans stopped, and the second door swung open silently on its oiled hinges.
They moved into a room that looked in every way like a modern medical clinic, with spotless floors and furnishings. Equipment was neatly stored in cabinets. At the rear of the long room were two empty metal-framed beds covered in white sheets with tight hospital corners, and on each was a blanket folded in half. A frame on rollers supported a head-high curtain that partitioned off the far side of the beds.
Kyle motioned Beth to cover him as he moved forward, pistol drawn.
* * *
A
YMAN AL
-M
ASRI CLIMBED ONTO
a spool of wire cable beside the road topside and spoke to the approximately fifty workmen who had evacuated the facility. When he identified himself as representing the NMO, there was a shifting of feet in the crowd, and an averting of the eyes. “There is no fire,” he said to calm them. “It was necessary to sound the alarm because there has been a serious breakdown in security here. The entire guard force has either been killed or is missing. You, too, may be in danger.”
Now they were paying attention to the bearded man. “I do not yet know the extent of the problem, so my team will go back to determine what has happened. I need a few volunteers to stay out here, men who have had military experience to act as guards at the entryways, and let no one in or out until I say differently. Who will help us fight the infidels?”