The Naked Edge

by David Morrell

  Carl continued his banter, making the men grin and feel part of a cherished team. Sometimes he shook hands or gave a man a good-natured slap on the back. But as he scanned the line, concealing his calculated assessment, he noticed that a half-dozen men hung back.

  They waited while the majority pocketed their money and drifted back to cleaning guns, playing video games, watching action movies, and eating the best buffet in New Orleans.

  “Mr. Bowie,” one of them said.

  Knowing where this was headed, Carl replied, “Yes?”

  “We, uh . . . We've been wondering . . .”

  Another man said, “Did you mean it that, if we didn't think we were up to this, we didn't have to do it?”

  “This isn't a dictatorship, Mr. Todd. I believe that the best team is one that's totally voluntary.”

  “Then . . . ,” another man said.

  “Yes, Mr. Weaver?”

  “I think I've got myself in enough trouble for one lifetime. I don't need any more.”

  “It's not as if you're going to kill anybody,” Carl said. “All you need to do is activate the smoke canister and shoot into the air.”

  “I guess I was more comfortable holding up gas stations, but I don't even want to do that now.”

  “Totally voluntary,” Carl said. “I won't pretend I'm not disappointed. A lot of effort went into training you. But if you can't commit to the mission, you're doing everybody a favor by admitting it. You're sure you won't change your mind?”

  They didn't respond.

  “Okay then.” Carl sighed. “Naturally, you won't get next month's wages. And naturally, you can't stay with the team any longer. But I can't let you stay in New Orleans, either. If you get drunk, you might stagger into some bar in the French Quarter and say more than you should.”

  “We wouldn't do that, Mr. Bowie. You know you can count on us.”

  “All the same, Mr. Weaver, you have an alcohol problem that made you do things that put you in prison. You also, Mr. Todd. I'll arrange for the six of you to stay in a motel for a couple of days. Outside town. Stock it with booze. Get take-in food. I don't want you out in public.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Two days from now, you can leave the motel, and it won't matter what you tell anybody after that.”

  Todd looked relieved. “Thanks, Mr. Bowie.”

  Bowie told Raoul, “Bring the van.”

  Ten minutes later, Raoul was driving them through dense traffic west on Interstate 10. The setting sun hurt his eyes. As they left the city, he said, “Mr. Bowie says the motel can't be fancy. Nothing where you need to show a credit card and leave a trail. You've got plenty of cash you haven't been able to spend. Use it. That place'll do.” He pointed toward something called the Escort Inn.

  “As long as it's near a liquor store,” Todd said. “I haven't had a drink since an hour after I got out of prison. Then Bowie convinced me to go to his damned camp, and that was the end of that.”

  “Hey,” Weaver said. “There's a liquor store across the street.”

  They stocked up with beer, bourbon, scotch, vodka, gin, soft drinks, potato chips, onion dip, beef jerky, and a deck of cards, then drove to a parking lot at the side of the motel.

  “I'll wait here while you register,” Raoul said. “In case the mission turns to merde, you don't want to be seen with me.”

  “Right. Good idea. We don't want to be linked to what goes on in town.”

  “Ask for rooms in back. Less chance of anybody noticing me park back there while you unload this stuff.”

  “Yeah, we'll tell the clerk we want to be away from the noise of traffic.”

  Five minutes later, the six men returned from the motel's lobby. Raoul drove them to their rooms in back.

  “Ground floor,” Todd said proudly. “We won't be seen carrying all this stuff up the stairs.”

  Raoul watched them take the booze and food into one of the rooms. “Everybody set?” he asked from the doorway. “Need anything more?”

  “A couple of hookers,” Todd said, smirking.

  “Mr. Bowie doesn't want you talking to anybody,” Raoul warned.

  “Yeah, okay, don't get bent out of shape. I was just making a joke.”

  One of the men twisted the cap off a Jim Beam bottle. Another popped the tab on a Budweiser can while a third turned on the television.

  “See if they get the History Channel,” Weaver said. “Maybe they'll have a program about machine guns or something else that's neat.”

  “Gotta use the bathroom,” Raoul said.

  He went in, closed the door, urinated, and flushed the toilet. He pulled two Beretta fifteen-round handguns from under his baggy shirt. He attached sound suppressors that he took from pouches on his belt. When he opened the door, he heard a TV announcer describing the invention of the AK-47 assault rifle. Stepping from the bathroom, he emptied both pistols into the six men. The suppressors made sounds as if a pillow fight were taking place. The nine-millimeter ammunition had fragmentation tips that disintegrated in their targets instead of passing through and piercing walls, alerting someone outside or in a neighboring room.

  Raoul searched for and picked up every expelled cartridge, a few of them taking longer to find than he intended. Even if somehow he didn't locate every one, it wouldn't have been calamitous—he'd worn gloves when he loaded the weapons, taking care that he didn't leave fingerprints on the shells. But without empty cartridges, the investigators wouldn't have firing-pin marks and extraction scratches that could provide ballistics evidence linking Raoul's pistols to the crime scene. For certain, the bullets were so mangled and fragmented that they wouldn't provide ballistics evidence. In addition, Raoul planned to wipe his fingerprints from the pistols and abandon the weapons the moment it was safe to do so. As Mr. Bowie had taught him, survival depended on details.

  He removed cash from the bodies. Then he cleaned his prints off the toilet lever and the few other things he'd touched. Leaving the unit, about to lock the door behind him, he heard the History Channel announcer explain that the Communist-era inventor of the AK-47 never received royalties from it.

  4

  Hearing a barge chug past on the Mississippi, Carl pressed buttons on his cell phone and yet again got a recording that told him to leave a message. He pressed a different set of buttons and got a similar message. He interrupted the transmission and brooded. It had been twenty-four hours since he and Brockman had been in touch. Brockman was supposed to have flown to New Orleans the previous evening. This morning, he was supposed to have reported to the Global Protective Services base here and evaluated the security preparations for the World Trade Organization conference. He would then have spoken with his counterparts in the various government protective services. When he knew the schedules and the routes that various agents would use to escort their clients to the convention center, he was under orders to get in touch with Carl and inform him of the details.

  Had Brockman decided that he could no longer tolerate being part of this? Had he fled? Was he being detained for questioning? Because the latter had the more serious implications, Carl was forced to give weight to it. In the worst-case scenario, how long would Brockman resist interrogation? Would he be weak enough to confess his involvement in the deaths of so many operators? Would he tell the authorities that Carl manipulated them into sending as many agents as possible to New Orleans?

  Disloyalty was the worst sin.

  For a final time, Carl angrily pressed Brockman's numbers on his cell phone.

  5

  “You're lucky I'm on retainer to Global Protective Services.” The doctor was a spectacled fifty-year-old, who'd once been a nurse in a mobile military hospital. She nodded toward Brockman, who lay in his bed, groggy from pain relievers.

  “He'll need physical therapy on his knees and his torn rotator cuffs,” she told Ali. “Considering all the damage you inflicted, another doctor would have phoned the police.”

  “Talk to Cavanaugh,” Ali said. “He'll ex
plain why it needed to be done this way.”

  Down the hall, in the exercise room, Brockman's cell phone rang. It wasn't the first time. Several times throughout the interrogation, calls had been attempted, none of which Ali had answered. Most callers had left messages, all of them related to GPS business, wondering why Brockman hadn't reported for work in New Orleans.

  Only one caller had not left a message. The phone's display had shown the name William Scagel and a telephone number.

  Now, as the phone rang again, Ali left the bedroom and walked to the exercise room.

  After six rings, the phone stopped. Ali went to a table, where the cell phone sat next to Brockman's pistol and claw knife. Its display again showed the name William Scagel.

  Troubled, he unclipped his own phone from his belt and pressed numbers.

  Two rings later, Cavanaugh answered. “I hope this is good news.”

  “Just a question. Does the name William Scagel mean anything to you?”

  “Hell, yes. Scagel was a famous knife maker. Where did his name come up?”

  “He's been calling Brockman's cell phone and his home phone. But he doesn't leave a message.”

  The transmission was silent for a moment. “It's Carl.”

  “Hang on. Let's find out if he left a message this time.” Ali pressed buttons on Brockman's cell phone.

  “What's the telephone number on the display?” Cavanaugh's voice asked.

  Ali dictated the numbers to him, then listened for a message on Brockman's phone. An electronic hiss indicated that something had in fact been recorded. Leaning against the table, shifting Brockman's weapons aside, Ali waited, hopeful. The hiss was interrupted by an electronic shriek.

  The exercise room blew apart.

  6

  Carl clipped his cell phone onto his belt and put his small radio transmitter into a camera bag he carried. He strolled along the riverfront, nodding to tourists, pretending to admire boats on the Mississippi, although what attracted his attention were more police officers than usual and numerous barricades stacked to the side in preparation for tomorrow's demonstrations. He imagined Brockman—more likely an interrogator—listening to Brockman's phone, hoping to hear a message. But the only message was the trigger signal from Carl's radio transmitter. He reasoned that the claw knife he'd given Brockman wouldn't be far. He imagined the radio signal reaching the miniature detonator in the knife's sheath. The blast from the powerful explosive molded into the sheath would have destroyed everything around it.

  7

  One instant, the transmission Cavanaugh listened to was alive. The next, it was dead. That word came involuntarily to Cavanaugh's mind. Dead. En route to New Orleans aboard GPS's jet, he felt something inside him drop. Reminding himself that phone communication on an aircraft wasn't reliable, that an electronic glitch might have interrupted the transmission, he stifled his premonition and called Ali's cell phone again, but the only response he got was a computerized voice that told him the number he had called was unavailable.

  “Is something wrong?” Jamie asked.

  “I'm afraid there is.” Cavanaugh hurriedly called GPS headquarters in Manhattan.

  The duty officer had already heard from two GPS agents outside Brockman's apartment.

  “An explosion?” Tightness took Cavanaugh's breath away. He lowered the phone. “God damn you, Carl.”

  8

  When the Gulfstream landed in New Orleans, a row of emergency vehicles waited, the lights on their roof racks flashing in the darkness. Somber officials with handguns under their jackets formed a protective square as Cavanaugh, Jamie, and Rutherford stepped from the jet into Louisiana's humid air.

  “The phone number your man read to you before he was killed has a local area code,” a Secret Service agent told Cavanaugh. “William Scagel bought the phone yesterday in St. Charles twenty miles from here.”

  “Carl probably didn't do it in person. Someone working for him did the honors so the clerk couldn't provide an accurate description.”

  “The address the buyer gave was bogus.”

  “What a surprise.”

  “I'll bet several other phones got purchased in various other stores—by the same person using more fake names and IDs,” Rutherford said.

  Police officers flanked a van. Accompanied by FBI agents, Cavanaugh, Jamie, and Rutherford scrambled inside. The moment the side door was secured, the driver headed toward an exit gate, cruisers to the front and back.

  “We can't assume Carl will keep that phone much longer,” Cavanaugh said as they sped onto a freeway. “Is the satellite in position?”

  “Ready and willing,” an agent answered. “The eyes and ears of the sky are aimed at New Orleans.”

  “Then do it. “

  The agent spoke into a walkie-talkie. “Baker to Butcher, do you copy?”

  “Affirmative,” a voice replied.

  “Commence tracking.”

  “Tracking engaged.”

  The agent nodded to Cavanaugh, who pulled out his cell phone and pressed the numbers Ali had dictated to him seconds before he was killed.

  The group watched intently, but Cavanaugh was conscious only of the phone pressed against his ear and the sound of ringing at the other end.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  “He got rid of the phone,” Rutherford said. “If anybody does answer, it'll probably be a junkie.”

  Cavanaugh's heart sped as Carl's voice said, “Hello, Aaron.”

  The van swayed, veering around car lights on the freeway.

  “Good guess, Carl.”

  “No guessing involved. I know you, old buddy. I can predict what you'll do.”

  “Same here.” Cavanaugh noted that there was something odd about the sound. He heard music and laughter in the background. Carl's voice was muffled and distant. “You were sure I'd call?”

  “Unless you were interrogating Gerald Brockman, in which case you'd be a smear across a wall right now.”

  Acid burned Cavanaugh's throat. He wished he could reach through the phone and—

  With effort, he kept his voice steady. “You also blew apart Ali Karim, plus two protectors and a doctor.”

  “Karim. Good man to work with. Knew his stuff. Sorry to hear he's gone.”

  “Try to sound more sincere.”

  “Who were the other . . .” Carl's voice faded, although the music and voices strangely persisted.

  “I can barely hear you,” Cavanaugh said.

  The voice strengthened. “Who were the other protectors?”

  Cavanaugh gave their names.

  “Didn't know them. They must have been brought aboard after I was fired,” Carl's voice said pointedly.

  “I told you, I had nothing to do with getting you fired.”

  Headlights blazing, the van veered down an exit ramp, forcing Cavanaugh to grip the wall for balance.

  “But you didn't do anything to prevent it, buddy,” Carl said, “and deep in your heart, you know you could have.”

  “You kept exceeding orders. You were out of control. When Duncan fired you, it was the right thing to do.”

  “Ah, so finally I'm getting some truth. You admit you could have stuck up for me, but instead you went along with firing me.”

  “The incident outside the Plaza Hotel wasn't the only time you lost control. Blame me? How about blaming yourself?”

  “Take some personal responsibility, is that what you're suggesting?”

  “Stop what you're doing, that's what I'm suggesting.”

  “How long did you figure you could keep me talking?” Carl's voice asked.

  “As long as it takes to persuade you to stop this.”

  “Are you triangulating the signal from my cell phone, old pal? Figuring out which microwave stations are relaying my voice?”

  “Needs to be done. You know the procedures in a situation like this. Nothing personal.”

  “That's a laugh. You certainly proved, as far as you're concerned,
nothing is ever personal. Cold, Aaron. I never realized how cold you are.”

  “And you're not? Listen to me, Carl. Stop whatever you're doing.”

  The van veered around a corner and stopped abruptly, forcing Cavanaugh to grip the wall again. Even before the vehicle was motionless, the agent in charge yanked the side door open, revealing men with rifles silhouetted by lights flashing on emergency vehicles.

  “Now why would I want to stop something that took so long to set up?” Carl's voice asked.

  Pressing the phone to his ear, Cavanaugh jumped to the pavement and followed agents toward a one-story brick building. The pungent smell of the nearby Mississippi filled his nostrils. “Carl, if it's me you're getting even with, name the place and the time. I'll give you all the security you want. No tricks. One on one. You can show me how much you hate me.”

  An agent opened a metal door. Bright light spilled out. A huge room was filled with radio equipment, computers, video and audio recorders, and closed-circuit monitors. The screens depicted hundreds of views of the streets around the New Orleans conference center, busloads of police arriving, barricades being set up.

  At least two dozen technicians worked the equipment, but as one, they became silent, turning toward Cavanaugh as he entered.

  “Hate you, Aaron?” Carl's voice came from speakers next to a monitor.

  A technician turned down the volume.

  “The reason I'm so pissed at you is I love you, man. Not like I want to bang you. Not that kind of love. But you were the only person I felt close to, and you walked away like I had the plague. Getting even with you? No way. What I'm doing is making a point. I'm proving I'm not out of control anymore. And now that your satellite technicians had their chance to try to find where I am, adios.”

  “Carl, wait.”

  The only sound was the music and the voices.

  “Carl, how do we stop this? Tell me what you want.”

  No answer.

  “Carl!” As the music and voices persisted, Cavanaugh lowered his phone. He had to leave the transmission open in case Carl said anything else. But by leaving it open, he allowed Carl the opportunity to overhear what was being said in the room.