The Naked Edge

by David Morrell

  “You mean my promotion?”

  ”Director of the FBI's counterterrorist unit. I'm proud of you.”

  “Sure, you are.”

  They ran past a homeless man asleep on a bench.

  “I hate to ask this. We're having such a great time so far,” Rutherford said. “How are you?”

  “Need a little help, John.”

  “Gosh, and here I thought you'd just happened to be in the neighborhood. You decided to drop by at the crack of dawn, say hello, and catch up on old times while you joined me for a little exercise.”

  “Exactly what we had in mind,” Cavanaugh said. “But as long as we're here . . .”

  “Let me guess. You want to talk about the Global Protective Service agents who've been killed.”

  “You know about that?” Cavanaugh looked at him in surprise.

  “They're not the only ones. Protectors in various government agencies are being killed also.”

  “What?” Cavanaugh slackened his pace and veered from the path, stopping next to bushes.

  Rutherford and Jamie followed him.

  “The Secret Service. The U.S. Marshals. The Diplomatic Security Service. Three days ago, agents from all of them suddenly became targets.” Rutherford took a towel from around his neck and wiped sweat from his forehead. “At first, it looked like they'd taken hits meant for the people they were protecting. But the casualties kept mounting, and most of the attacks happened when the agents were off-duty. We soon had to conclude—”

  “The protectors were the targets.”

  “On a hunch, we checked the civilian protection agencies. The small ones didn't know what we were talking about. But a major one like Global Protective Services . . .”

  “We took our share of hits,” Cavanaugh said.

  “‘We’?” Rutherford frowned. “I thought you'd left the business.”

  “What's that line from one of the Godfather movies? ‘Just when I thought I was out, they dragged me back in’? Now I'm not only back in the business. I own the damned thing.”

  Cavanaugh explained what had happened at the GPS office in Manhattan and later in Eddie's car.

  “Eddie Macintosh?” Rutherford looked appalled. “He's one of the best drivers I ever worked with.”

  “That's how he died. Behind a steering wheel.”

  A group of joggers sped by. Rutherford stepped farther toward the bushes, trying to get out of hearing range of anyone on the path.

  “Sharp weapons? Bladed ones?” Rutherford asked.

  “That's the pattern. Up close and intimate. Except for the attacks against Jamie and me.”

  “But at the time of the first one, you were retired. Out of the game. Why would anyone attack you?”

  “Maybe somebody found out who was set to inherit Global Protective Services,” Jamie said. “Maybe that couldn't be allowed to happen.”

  Cavanaugh looked around the park. “Aren't you nervous being out here in the open every morning?”

  “Protectors are the ones getting killed, not FBI agents. But now that you've paid a visit . . .”

  “We weren't followed.”

  “After last May, it's no secret we're friends.”

  “Hey, so far so good. Nobody's made a move against us while we've been talking,” Jamie said.

  “I'm not consoled.”

  “At first, I thought this was a client from my past, trying to keep me from revealing something incriminating that I happened to learn,” Cavanaugh said. “Then, when I realized how many top-rate GPS operators had been killed, I figured this was an attack directed at the company—to put it out of business, or to get even for an assassination or a kidnapping that we prevented. But now . . . Attacks this widespread. You're assuming this is . . .”

  “Who's got the money, the organization, and the determination?” Rutherford asked. “The Bureau believes it's a terrorist network taking out key security personnel and trying to intimidate the others so we're not prepared for another major assault. Protectors are trained to be shields, not targets. Presumably, the bad guys figure our protective divisions will be so busy looking over their shoulders that they won't be able to do their jobs.”

  “It's a hell of a distraction,” Cavanaugh agreed.

  “‘Hell’ might be appropriate in this case,” the Southern Baptist said.

  “Got any leads?”

  “Every extreme faction in every country who hates us. Take your pick. These days, there are plenty to choose from. And as for possible ultimate targets, plenty to choose from there, also. For starters, the president.”

  “We'd better keep moving.” Worried about directional microphones, Cavanaugh pointed toward a street next to the park, where traffic accumulated. “Over there. Next to the refreshing smell of automobile exhaust.”

  “And the noise of car engines?” Jamie asked.

  “Hey, what's the harm in a few precautions?”

  “You're going to ruin this place for me,” Rutherford complained.

  They increased speed toward the street.

  “How did the government protectors die?” Cavanaugh asked.

  “Sniper rifles, remote-controlled bombs, car ambushes.”

  “No bladed weapons?”

  “A few, but no pattern. Nothing like what happened to your GPS operators.”

  “Then why was GPS singled out for that kind of weapon?” Jamie wondered.

  “Last night, when I was studying the printouts of my former missions—” Cavanaugh breathed quickly as he ran. “—I couldn't find any client who might want to kill me because of things I knew about him. But the idea of knives reminded me of somebody.”

  “Who?” Rutherford asked.

  “A former GPS agent. Can you use your Bureau resources to get a profile of a man named Carl Duran? And while you're at it, do a deep background check on Gerald Brockman, Kim Lee, and Ali Karim.”

  “But aren't they—”

  “The top officers in GPS. Something's wrong there. Maybe it's got nothing to do with what's going on, or maybe it's got everything to do with it. Either way, I need to find out.”

  10

  “Who's Carl Duran?” Jamie asked, lying next to Cavanaugh on a motel bed.

  “Bad news.” Preoccupied, Cavanaugh removed the magazine from his pistol and pulled back the slide, letting Jamie see that the firing chamber was empty. “Clear?”

  “Clear.”

  He pressed the release lever, causing the slide to snap forward. Then, as was the habit of many operators, he practiced raising the pistol and lining up its sights. It was the equivalent of fingering worry beads. “Carl Duran and I went through Delta Force training together.”

  Jamie was propped against pillows the same as Cavanaugh was. She removed the magazine from her handgun, then pulled back the slide. “Clear?”

  “Clear.”

  She too practiced aiming. The pistol came with a wide-notched rear sight that had a white dot on either side to encourage focusing. The front post had a similar, easy-to-distinguish white dot that made sighting easy.

  “Some people have a misguided notion about special-operations personnel,” Cavanaugh said. “They think we're beer-swilling bar-brawlers. They don't understand that what our trainers are looking for is discipline and control, and anybody who acts like a thug when he's off-duty doesn't meet those requirements. In fact, the best operators are amazingly well mannered. They've been conditioned to unleash massive amounts of violence. They've also been conditioned to have a mental on-off switch and to turn on that switch only when it's appropriate. When they're not working, it's essential to remain calm.”

  “And Carl Duran didn't?”

  “He almost got kicked off Delta Force.”

  “What was his problem?”

  “Special operators are attracted to the profession because they enjoy the rush of taking risks. You might even say they're addicted to it. They crave the satisfaction of knowing they were in danger and had the strength and determination to survive.”

&nb
sp; Cavanaugh thought a moment, remembering Carl. “Special operators are also attracted to the profession because they like the reinforcement of belonging to an elite group. There's no place for a grandstander in a special-ops unit. As the old joke goes, there's no ‘I’ in ‘team.’ For most special operators, the bond they feel for their group is greater than what they feel for their family. They get a powerful satisfaction from knowing that they and their teammates survived unimaginable dangers, that they're among the most special human beings in the world, and that they can count on each other for support, even if it comes to dying for each other.”

  “Carl Duran was a grandstander?”

  “He wanted to prove he was better than anybody else. For him, everything was a contest—not with himself, which is the way Delta wants it, but with everybody in his unit. He had to be superior. The best operator. The best gunfighter. And he had to make sure everybody knew it. Even when he was a kid, he acted that way.”

  Jamie quit aiming her pistol and looked at him. “You make it sound like . . .”

  “I went to high school with him in Iowa.”

  “But you told me you were raised in Oklahoma.”

  “Until my dad beat my mom and me once too often, and she took me and left him. Eventually, we landed in Iowa City, where she got paralegal training, went to work for an attorney, and married him.”

  “How is it we need to be running for our lives before you tell me about your past?”

  “Why should I talk about what I want to forget?”

  “Your stepfather wasn't kind to you, either?”

  “He didn't know how to react to a child. He was a better husband than he was a father. Let's put it this way, he disapproved of mistakes, and in his eyes, I made a lot of mistakes. But he didn't raise his voice. He didn't beat me. He didn't beat my mother or the daughter my mom and he had. By comparison with what we'd been through, he was a saint. I was grateful that he gave us a home. Still am. Even so, I did my best to stay out of his way. When it came to sternness, though, nothing could equal Carl's father. That guy was a pusher. In his youth, Carl's father played football for the University of Iowa. In Iowa, few things are as important as college sports. Carl's father had ambitions to be a pro quarterback. Might have done it, too. To hear him tell it, he was a fantastic athlete. But he broke his leg in a game in his junior year. It crippled him, and he never got over the bitterness. So the old man decided that Carl, by God, was going to be the pro quarterback in the family. He pushed Carl, and pushed him, until Carl was so determined to please his father that he needed to prove he was better than anybody else on the West High team. Needed to prove he knew more than the coach. Needed to prove he was smarter and tougher than anybody, and proved it so well that the coach kicked him off the team. So Carl's father beat the hell out of him and sued the school and—”

  “What a mess,” Jamie said.

  “It got worse. Carl's father was a stockbroker. He was also a secret drinker. Finally, he got better at one than the other, and his company fired him. The drinking problem got so bad that the family was forced to sell their house. They moved to an apartment. Then they moved out of state, trying for a new start.”

  “And was it successful?”

  “Eventually, word came back that Carl's father died from liver disease. Carl never went to college. He certainly never had a chance for that pro-football career. But while we went to high school together, he and I were friends.”

  “I don't understand why you thought about him in connection with what's happening,” Jamie said.

  “Carl had a thing about knives.”

  11

  Jamie looked at him. “Knives?”

  “This was before those two kids shot up that high school in Colorado and suddenly every school had a zero-tolerance policy about bringing anything that might be a weapon onto campus. Carl was obsessed about knives. He carried one in his pocket every day he went to school. Or under his sweater. Or in his knapsack. He showed them to me when nobody was looking. Once, he even hid one under his uniform when he was playing football.”

  “And this was your friend?”

  “It's hard to explain. We lived on the same street.” Cavanaugh's memory was painful. “Hafor Drive. He was the first kid I met when my mother and I moved to my stepfather's house. There was a soccer field at the end of the street. Woods. A creek. Carl and I used to play in those woods a lot. He didn't like to go home. Neither did I. The thing about a friendship is, once it's formed, you get used to how your friend behaves. No matter how strange he acts, you think it's normal.”

  “You mean the knives.”

  “Folders. Fixed blades. Utility knives. Tactical knives. Fishing knives. Skinning knives. Carl and I had jobs delivering for one of the local morning newspapers, the Gazette. This was before newspapers decided it was safer and cheaper to have adults deliver them by throwing them from cars. My stepfather insisted I put the money I earned in a bank account. But Carl's father—at the time, I thought this was cool—let Carl spend his money however he wanted. I didn't think the knives themselves were cool. The truth is, they made me nervous. But Carl's father was really pleased with the knives, as if they proved Carl was macho enough to have a chance at being a pro-football player. So Carl played with knives, and because he was my friend, I joined him. We had contests to see how fast we could pull them from our pockets and open them. We practiced throwing them. We imagined scenarios in which we saved somebody's life with one. Then Carl discovered in a knife magazine that a top knife maker lived right outside town, on a farm near a place called West Liberty.”

  “You're talking about a hammer and anvil and forge?” Jamie asked.

  “The old-time real deal. One day, Carl showed up at my house to say that he'd phoned this knife maker and convinced the old guy to teach us how to forge blades. He was more excited than I'd ever seen him, so I thought, ‘What the hell, I'll go along and see what it's like.’ My mom wound up driving us every Sunday afternoon. It turned out that the old knife maker belonged to something called the American Bladesmith Society. He had the rank of ‘master,’ a big deal when you realize there are only about ninety masters in the world. Making knives was the old man's life. His name was Lance Sawyer. The first time I heard it, I thought that name was hilarious. A knife expert whose name was Lance. He was seventy-five years old. He wore bib overalls. He was stooped and scrawny and bald and had brown tobacco juice on his white beard, but his arms were as muscular and strong as anybody's I've ever seen. For a year and a half, until Carl's father moved the family out of state, Carl and I learned how to stoke a forge, how to use a hammer and an anvil to shape a blade, how to cool the metal and then do the reverse, heat-tempering it. The old man made us use leaf springs from old pickup trucks as our rough material. It was hard, heavy work. My arms used to ache all week. But I must say we turned out some awfully fine-looking knives.”

  “Did you continue the lessons after Carl moved away?”

  “For a while. But it wasn't the same without Carl's enthusiasm, and then the old man died. I wasn't there, but I heard he keeled over in the middle of hammering a blade. Went out happy, doing what he liked.” Cavanaugh smiled wistfully to himself. “After that, I went to the University of Iowa. I'm pretty sure my stepfather wanted me to be what he was: an attorney. But I surprised him and my mom by leaving school before my first year ended and joining the military. That hatred-of-bullies thing I told you about. Eventually, I got into Delta Force.” Cavanaugh paused. “And not long after, Carl showed up.”

  Jamie, who'd resumed aiming her pistol, now stopped and looked at him again. “Seems a hell of a coincidence, don't you think?”

  “Except it wasn't a coincidence. From bits and pieces of what Carl told me, I eventually realized what happened. As his father's alcoholism got worse and the family's fortunes disintegrated, Carl kept looking back on Iowa City and his friendship with me and the lessons with the old knife maker as the best time of his life. He never went to college as his father planned. He
never played football. He never had a chance for the big career his father wanted for him. He used to phone me a lot. The calls always felt as if they came from a ghost. I didn't talk long. Then one day he phoned, and my mother told him I was in the Army. As near as I can figure, he joined the Army shortly afterward. I realize now that he was hoping to get stationed with me and continue the ideal friendship he imagined we had. He kept following my career, taking special-ops training, eventually trying to get into Delta Force as he knew I had. Suddenly one day, there he was at the Fort Bragg Delta compound. I turned from completing a training exercise and saw him grinning at me. That was one of the few times in my life when somebody took me totally by surprise.”

  “Creepy,” Jamie said. “It's like he was stalking you.”

  “Yeah. And it didn't help that the other Delta operators associated him with me. When he got too competitive, I could sense they wanted me to tell him to cool it. But Carl was in competition with me more than anyone. He wasn't about to let me give him advice. He knew enough to be a team player when it came to our missions. One time, in Iraq, in the first Gulf War, he saved my life. I made up for that by saving his life in Bosnia. The knives, though. He couldn't stop his fixation on the knives. In an effort to buy the team's friendship, he even went to the trouble of making tactical folders for everybody. But then he sabotaged any good will he created. Our team went on a mission to the Philippines to retrieve an American diplomat who'd been kidnapped by terrorists. Carl was supposed to take out an enemy sentry, using a sound-suppressed pistol. Instead, he crawled up to the guy and killed him with a knife. Almost jeopardized the assignment. Later, after we extracted the diplomat, our CO was furious. Carl claimed his pistol malfunctioned. He said his only option was to take out the sentry hand-to-hand. The CO seemed to accept his explanation. But Carl never got sent on another mission, and three months later, he was dismissed from the unit.”

  “So how did he get hired by Global Protective Services?”

  Cavanaugh hesitated. “After Duncan retired from Delta Force and set up his business, Carl came to me, asking if I'd put in a good word. Even if it was sometimes strained, the friendship was there. He'd never done anything against me. To the contrary, he'd kept me from coming home in a body bag. Maybe his pistol had malfunctioned on that extraction assignment. For sure, his courage was never in doubt. Duncan and I talked about it. Duncan tried him on some low-level assignments. No problem. Some mid-level assignments. Again, no problem. Then Carl and I got assigned to protect a teenage female rock star who was getting death threats from a fan. The rock star was dating a sports celebrity, and the fan got jealous.”