Running the Maze (2 page)

He rode the I-395 southwest and gradually put the District of Columbia in his rearview mirrors. Across the Beltway, traffic thinned out around Springfield. Things weren’t as bad when the highway turned into I-95, and he was able to speed up, although he had plenty of time. His destination was Virginia Beach, where the Naval Special Warfare Development Group was headquartered, and the shoot with SEAL Team Six was scheduled for 0700 tomorrow morning. The only hitch was that Senior Chief Richard Sheridan had asked him to come down early for a private talk over a pitcher of beer. The Navy senior chief and the Marine gunnery sergeant had known each other for fifteen years and had worked together in some unfriendly places that had funny names. If Rockhead wanted to chat, that was cool.

Sheridan was waiting in a waterfront bar that specialized in serving military personnel. The whole Tidewater area was a huge sprawl of current and former military men and women and their families, from all branches of the service, but predominantly Navy. Kyle thought the squids could probably dig up a crew for a battleship just by posting a note at the nearest 7-Eleven. They sat at a table on the deck away from the crowd, beside a wooden rail that had been split by the sun and rain. A huge anchor jutted from the sand of a little garden, as if dropped off by a passing ship. Nets and old buoys and military memorabilia passed for decoration, and bare bulbs hanging overhead painted the place with light.

After trading insult greetings and catching up on old friends while the server brought beer for Rockhead and ice water with a slice of lime for Kyle, then took their orders for steaks, Rockhead got to the problem. “You still got security clearances all the way up to God, right?”

Kyle nodded. He was the key operator for the deep black unit known as Task Force Trident and answered directly to the president of the United States. “What’s up, Senior Chief?”

“I need your professional assessment on one of my guys. Not a damn thing wrong with his performances; in fact, he’s top of the heap in Team Six.”

Swanson raised an eyebrow. Six was the elite of the elite, the guys who finally nailed Osama bin Laden. Nobody got into that secretive, handpicked bunch without exceptional skills.

“Petty Officer First Class Ryan Powell is maybe the best shooter we’ve got. He can punch holes in the ten-ring with either hand, and even while holding a weapon upside down. We picked him for the Special Warfare Development Group a few years ago because of exceptional performance. He is still sort of young, twenty-seven, but is just the kind of pup we love to groom for better things. He’s got all the skills: powerful, can swim forever, and has the reflexes of a cat after a bug. His teammates call him Captain America.”

“Sounds like your typical Team Six Superman. What’s the problem?” Kyle sipped the water.

Rockhead ran a palm across the bristly hair on his tanned scalp as ropy muscles worked in his forearms. “My gut is the problem, Gunny. You know how Superman has problems with that kryptonite shit? Well, I’m looking past the fitness reports. There’s something missing with Powell, and I can’t put my finger on it. I want you to work out in the Ghost House with him tomorrow, get up close and personal, put him under pressure, and give me a personal reading.”

“What will I be looking for, Rock?”

“I’m thinking Superman has turned coward.”

Kyle let that comment sit undisturbed for a while, but it was if a small elephant had just taken the third chair at the table. Swanson considered SEALs to be among the best fighters on the planet, so the Rock worrying that one of his best boys might be cracking up came as a shock. Some electric country music filtered out to the deck from the bar inside. “So, why me?”

“I want an outsider’s unofficial viewpoint that can be kept between the two of us. If you think he’s fine, he stays. I don’t want to ruin his reputation and career and usefulness, but not everyone is cut out for this work, and I can’t put other lives in jeopardy because this guppy has lost his nerve.”

“So how do we go about this … unofficial … examination?”

“I’ve paired you up to go into the Ghost House with him tomorrow morning. Put him into some unexpected pressure situations that go beyond the fixed scenario and parameters. He will be expecting it just to be another training exercise that he can coast through on sheer physical ability. You make it something else. Force him. Press him hard.”

Swanson thought a bit, then nodded. “You can dial up any scenario you want in the Ghost House, right?”

Rockhead smiled. “Almost any exterior or interior except your sister’s bedroom, and they may have that, too.”

One thing that Kyle Swanson really enjoyed about training with SEAL Team Six was its seemingly limitless budget. The squids always got first crack at the experimental stuff that was way out on the edge of the combat curve, and they burned money faster than a Wall Street banker figuring his annual bonus. Trying to determine how best to fight tomorrow’s wars was what the Special Warfare Development Group was all about.

The Ghost House represented a quantum leap in close quarters battle training. Usually, CQB houses were crude mockups in a desolate environment so the SEALs could regularly blow them apart with bullets to practice moving through a tight, hostile environment. Those were static environments, except for pop-up targets. The Ghost House, by contrast, was almost alive. It sat inside a weathered airplane hangar in an area generally used for storage, out of sight to everyone but those directly involved with it, and it bloomed with electronics and computerized graphics.

Stacks of tires and other retardants were still used to soak up the spent rounds, but instead of just plywood, the interior walls were green screens on which different worlds were projected. Automobiles and taxis and buses moved, smoke hindered vision, people were shopping in stores, and sounds and motion were constant. Or the setting might be the interior of a quiet suburban American home, or the cars of a train, or the bowels of a ship or an oil platform or a nuclear power plant. Foam cutouts were used to represent furniture and obstacles, also colored by the computers. The jackpot was the unknown opposition force, which was no longer merely stiff pop-ups but full-sized, three-dimensional holograms that responded to the moves of the trainees. Their weapons would blink to fire simulated bursts, and the updated MILES gear worn by the attacking good guys would shriek if the computers scored a hit. The holograms did not necessarily die with the first hit, unless the computer judged it as a kill shot. The controllers guided the fight from racks of computers in a safe blockhouse outside of the hangar.

“Then let’s start by using that
Mayberry R.F.D.
innocent street scene. There’s no information on it about who the tangos might be. I want Powell concentrating on having to make careful decisions so that he doesn’t shoot Floyd the Barber by mistake because he steps outside the shop carrying a razor.”

“Everybody hates the
Mayberry
set,” Rockhead said with a laugh that sounded more like a growl. “That old TV show has a built-in wild card with Deputy Barney Fife running around with an unloaded gun. What about weapons tomorrow? Normally, they armor up and use MP-5s for these scenarios.”

“No. In my line of work, there is seldom a submachine gun around when you need one. I want this guy stripped down to get him out of the protective bubble and make him feel more vulnerable, almost naked, from the start. Jeans and T-shirts and sneakers. One pistol of his choice, no silencers. The story line is that we are on a fishing trip near Mayberry and the closest responders when Sheriff Andy calls for help because his police station is under attack. Terrorist on Main Street and lots of women and kids.”

“What about comms?”

“Standard headsets, but I want the controllers to jam the frequency just after we go in to help throw him off balance. And send word to him tonight not to wear a jockstrap.”

“Why? We don’t wear jocks anyway.”

“Part of the mind game. I just want him thinking about his groin. Vulnerability.”

“Put him under some real stress, Kyle.”

“All right.”

“So what are you going to do?” Rockhead finished off his beer and wiped a plash on the table.

“Scare the shit out of him.”

“How?’

“I have all night to plan it.”

*   *   *

B
OATSWAIN
’
S
M
ATE
F
IRST
C
LASS
Ryan Powell readied his weapon and growled at the man who would be going with him into the Ghost House. “Don’t get in my way, old man. We’re using live ammo today.” Powell was somewhat pissed at being paired with this over-the-hill Marine. Dude had to be way into his thirties, about ten years older than Powell, which meant he was going to be slow. Some kind of hotshot sniper, back in the day.

Swanson said nothing as he studied the rangy SEAL: less than six feet tall, shaggy brown hair, wide shoulders, and corded muscles that flexed through the strong forearms like ropes. Even in jeans, he had the stiff look of a Transformer robot, as if he were about to turn into a pickup truck. Swanson looked beyond the taut, healthy body. The weight was evenly distributed but back on his heels, and the eyes were black dots, twitchy. The fingers drummed lightly on the Heckler & Koch SOCOM pistol in the belt holster.
Anxious, or just normal jitters in facing the unknown?

“The fuck you staring at, Pops!” Powell barked. He was confident that he would master the Ghost House again and put the old Marine to shame while doing so. Then he would ride the jarhead mercilessly, and try to pick a fight just to have the pleasure of whipping his butt. Youth, strength, ability, determination, and pride were all on his side. It still bothered Powell that he had not been part of the bin Laden hit. The Marine had nothing. Powell gave Swanson a mean grin, like a pit bull eyeing a kitten. “I’m gonna kick your jarhead ass.”

“Ready on the range?” called the range safety officer.

Swanson racked a round into the chamber of his reliable Marine Corps .45 ACP pistol and clicked off the safety. “Ready,” he said.

“Ready,” echoed Powell, bringing out his pistol and getting into his stance.

“Stand by,” ordered the range safety officer. A double door swung apart to let the shooters enter the target zone and closed behind them. “The range is hot.”

Swanson and Powell were alone on Main Street, guns up. Aunt Bee was looking at them from a window, her eyes wide with fear. The bodies of two children lay dead in the street, and people were running into houses for safety, away from the rattle of automatic weapons down the street at the sheriff’s office. Smoke poured from the windows. Powell stepped forward, pistol grasped in two hands while his eyes probed the surroundings and the shadows. Swanson was five feet away on his right, matching his advance. There was a crackle in their earbuds; then the radios went silent.

“Control?” said Powell, and heard no reply. He pushed the microphone closer to his mouth. “Control?” He glanced at Swanson and tapped his ear. Something was wrong. The Marine ignored him and took another step forward, ducking into cover behind a foam block that looked like a Dumpster. Powell got his eyes back on the street scene. Part of the scenario assumed that the area behind them was already cleared. A little girl in a doorway stared at them as if they were interplanetary aliens, and a dirty pickup truck suddenly sped out of an alley and dashed across the street into the grocery store parking lot, where the driver bailed out and ran inside. Civilian. A misty smoke snaked along the ground.

Powell was tense, beginning to sweat. First the radio glitch, and now he had almost pulled the trigger on the dude in the pickup. He slowed down to ease his breathing. Where was the damned tango?

Then came a thunderclap of two fast shots almost in his right ear as Swanson fired twice right over Powell’s head, missing him by no more than six inches. Powell flinched, took a knee, and yelled, “Cease fire!
Cease fire!
What the fuck are you doing?” He safed his weapon and put it away, but nothing changed. The rules were that anybody on a range could stop an exercise if he saw something going wrong. The Marine bounded across a sidewalk and into a doorway, heading for the sheriff’s office. A flicker of computerized tracers shot out of the target zone, slashing past Powell, who hit the deck hard, prone and with his hands over his head.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING? CONTROL! CEASE FIRE! STOP IT!”
The Marine fired three times at a hologram that appeared in the street with a gun, putting two in the chest and one in the head. The pictured man crumbled to the ground.

A loud horn honked inside the Ghost House, and the images dissolved and the doors opened, letting in the sunlight as the smoke poured out. Ryan Powell jumped to his feet as the Marine ambled back toward him, his weapon on safe and hanging loosely from his hand. Powell was furious. “You almost killed me,” he yelled, balling up a big fist. “This was a live-fire training drill, and you deliberately shot right over my head. I’m going to have them write you up, then I’m going to kick your scrawny ass.”

Swanson looked calmly at the warrior and saw worry painted on the young face. Death had come near. “I was part of the test today, Bos’n Powell. It was negative training to snatch you out of your comfort zone and not let your muscle memory and practice kick in. You froze at the critical moment. As soon as things started south, you shut down. Your job was to finish the mission, not pussy out.” Kyle returned his own pistol to the holster in the back of his belt and lowered his voice. “You can’t call cease fire in real combat, Powell. You just can’t. There are no second chances out there, buddy, and my opinion is that you don’t want to be here, not really. Something has taken the heart out of you and has left only your natural talent. It’s time for you to get on with your life.”