Running the Maze Read Free

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