David Morrell - The naked edge

But contrary to the way it was depicted in movies, Carl didn't put the glowing knife in tip first. Rather, he set the knife in lengthwise so that the oil didn't touch the back of the blade. The oil hissed.

After a few moments, Carl lifted the knife slightly so that the oil cooled only the blade's edge. Vapor rose, the smell like a hot, oiled frying pan before a steak was added. After another few moments, Carl removed the knife and set it on the anvil.

"People who don't know anything about forging think the entire knife has to be plunged into the liquid," Carl explained. "That could destroy the blade, because sudden cooling has only one purpose-to produce hardness in the metal. A blade that's been hardened one hundred percent shatters if you strike it against something. Instead, the cooling needs to be done in stages. Here, at the edge of the blade, I cooled it the longest because I want the edge to be hard enough to retain its sharpness. I cooled the middle of the blade for less time because I want it somewhat pliant as well as hard. And as for the back of the blade, I didn't subject it to any sudden cooling because I want it even more pliant."

"Pliant?"

"Capable of bending under stress."

Carl paused, hoping Raoul would demonstrate his intelligence by asking the appropriate question.

At last, he did. "I can understand why the blade needs to be hard to be sharp, but why does the back need to bend?"

"In order to be certified a master, a knife maker must produce a blade that passes four tests. First, the blade must be sharp enough to cut through a one-inch free-hanging rope with a single stroke. Second, the blade must be hard and sharp enough to chop through a pair of two-by-fours. Third, it must still retain sufficient sharpness to shave hair off the knife maker's arm. Finally, it must be pliant enough to be placed in a vice and bent ninety degrees without snapping. The only way to meet all of these requirements is to cool different parts of the blade for different amounts of time. The hard edge supplies the sharpness. The pliant back supplies the give. Otherwise, the knife snaps."

Raoul thought about it and nodded.

"Can you be like this knife?" Carl asked.

"I'll be anything you want me to be."

The door to the shed banged open. Raoul flew backward through the opening and landed hard on the packed earth. Carl stormed after him and kicked his side, sending him rolling.

At the nearest firing range, students sensed the commotion and turned, seeing Carl kick Raoul again and roll him farther across the parade ground.

"Nobody talks to me like that! Pack your stuff!" Carl shouted.

Raoul came to a crouch, barely avoided another kick, and lurched toward one of the barracks.

Carl stalked toward the students at the firing range.

"Ferguson! You, too! I'm sick of your sloppiness! Get your stuff! I'm driving you and that other asshole out of here!"

"But-"

"Now!" Carl twisted Ferguson's pistol from his hand and shoved him away. "You said you wanted out? You're out!"

"Do I keep the clothes you gave me?"

"And the money! That was the deal, wasn't it? I honor my word, even if you don't honor yours! Move! You and that other prick have five minutes!"

As Ferguson ran toward the barracks, Carl turned in a fury toward a pickup truck in front of the administration building. He pulled keys from his pocket, started the truck, and made so fast a turn that dirt flew. He sped toward the barracks, made another sharp turn, and skidded to a stop, waiting for Ferguson and Raoul.

Raoul got there first, holding his knapsack.

"Get in the back, damn it!" Carl yelled.

As Raoul climbed into the uncovered cargo space, Ferguson arrived with a duffel bag, breathing heavily.

"Inside!" Carl commanded.

Before Ferguson could shut the door behind him, Carl sped away, tearing up more dirt.

"You're sure you got all your stuff?" Carl demanded. "I want to keep my part of the bargain!"

"Quit trying to make me feel like a piece-of-shit quitter," Ferguson said.

"Isn't that what you are?"

"Who wants to put up with the bugs and the heat and the fucking humidity?"

"Obviously not you."

"And the snakes and the spiders and the damned rain most afternoons, and trying to sleep while those jerk-offs play those stupid video games. Bang, bang, bang. My ears haven't stopped ringing since I came here."

"You knew from the get-go you were being paid to learn about guns."

"I know about guns."

"Yeah, right. I've seen the way you shoot."

"And you didn't tell me I'd have to clean the damned guns after I shot them. And you didn't tell me I'd be humping heavy packs and crawling through swamps and… I might as well have joined the stupid army. Everybody telling me what to do. This is worse than when I was in the joint."

"Not hardly." Carl stared at the scars on his hands.

"And where the hell are we anyhow? How close to the nearest city? I want to get back to Chicago. Hang around with the guys. Find some action. Get laid. Man, that would be different."

"Wanting sex too much is what got you in prison," Carl said. "Maybe you should stick with guns."

"Just answer the question. How close is the nearest city?" Ferguson demanded

"An hour. And it's not a city. It's a town."

"What? Why didn't we fly out of here? That's how you brought me into this mess."

"You're not worth the price of aviation fuel, buddy. You want to know a secret? You were part of a great experiment."

"Living in a swamp? Some experiment."

"About visualization."

"Whatever that means."

"First, I show you how to do something-shoot, use a knife, whatever. Then I make you close your eyes and repeatedly imagine doing what I showed you. I reinforce it by making you watch accurate movies of what I demonstrated, Hollywood stars doing things so smoothly you want to be those stars. Finally, I tell you to do what you imagined in the movie in your mind."

The truck hit a bump. Carl heard it jostle Raoul in back.

"The military discovered that, by using visualization, a four-week course could be reduced to three days," Carl said. "It's a form of self-hypnosis, reinforced by the video games."

"Yeah? Well, I've been here three weeks. How come it didn't work on me?"

"Nobody's perfect. You want to know another secret? A long time ago, this used to be a plantation."

"What's that got to do with anything? Drive faster."

"Then the plantation went bust, and the owners tried to keep the land in the family, and finally a private foundation bought it as a nature preserve."

"Tears, man. You're boring me to-"

"Then the CIA took over the foundation and all this land."

"Finally got your attention? Strictly speaking, not the CIA. It was a company that worked for a company that worked for the Company. They call it 'compartmentalizing the risk. Plausible deniability.'"

"I call it yawning, man."

"The whole point was to build a private airstrip that hardly anybody knew about. See, to fly what you'd call 'spies' into hot spots… in those days, Central America had a lot of those…"

"Yawn, man."

The truck hit another bump.

"The CIA couldn't just pop their people onto a United jet and fly them to El Salvador or Nicaragua. They'd leave what's called a 'paper trail.'"

"You know what I call it?" Ferguson made an obscene gesture.

"So this company that worked for the Company made up its own airline and flew its people out of here straight across the Gulf to where the action was."

"Gulf?"

"Of Mexico."

Ferguson looked interested. "We're near Mexico?"

"But then times changed, and the hot spots moved to other countries, and the company that worked for the Company didn't have any more use for this place. Besides, it had started to attract attention, so they sold it to some drug smugglers they'd been working with."