David Morrell - The naked edge

The last of the gunmen aimed from the bottom of the stairs. Cavanaugh lurched back as bullets disintegrated what remained of the railing. At once, a metallic scrape indicated he was reloading. Jamie leaned into the stairwell and fired repeatedly. The man groaned, slumping.

"There might be others! Get into the apartment!" Cavanaugh yelled, continuing to restrain the first gunman. As Jamie and Kim hurried toward the dark kitchen, Cavanaugh forced the man across the shadowy living room.

He winced when the man slammed a thick-soled shoe onto his right foot. Holding him from behind, Cavanaugh applied a strangle grip, feeling him squirm, hearing his labored breathing.

The man tried to reach behind him and grab Cavanaugh's testicles. Cavanaugh strengthened his grip and stomped the man's left foot.

The man grunted, lurched backward, walloped Cavanaugh against a wall, and rammed an elbow into his ribs. As Cavanaugh's grip loosened, the man charged free and suddenly had a knife in his hand. Cavanaugh blocked the exit from the apartment. The man pivoted toward the kitchen, where Jamie aimed her pistol toward him.

"No!" Cavanaugh said. "We need him alive!"

"I don't care!" Jamie told the man, "Take one step toward me, and I'll-"

The man swung toward Cavanaugh, jabbing with his knife. Cavanaugh leapt back and threw a lamp. While the man avoided it, Cavanaugh unclipped his knife from his pocket. By design, the hook on the back of the blade snagged against the edge of the pocket, the motion causing the blade to open as Cavanaugh yanked the knife out.

Kim jabbed the light switch. Cavanaugh saw her doing it, but the man did not. Surprised by the light and by how quickly Cavanaugh had produced his knife, the man thrust again. Cavanaugh parried, slicing the back of the man's hand, and now the crucial element was who acted faster. No staring at one another. No assessing. No calculating a clever move. Most knife fights took less than five seconds. Flick, flick, flick. Now you're bleeding. Now you're dying. Overwhelming primordial power would win. Cavanaugh believed that the term "martial arts" was a self-contradiction. When it came to combat, there was nothing artistic, nothing smooth and graceful about it.

As adrenaline dumped into Cavanaugh's system, his blood vessels expanded. His heart sped. Martial arts students claimed to be able to use Zen techniques to control their pulse during combat. But in Cavanaugh's experience, his adrenaline took charge, and as sure as death followed life, his heartbeat went ballistic. Fine motor skills, which use dexterity and hand/eye coordination to perform precise movements (accurate shooting, for example) disintegrate at 115 heartbeats per minute. Complex motor skills, which help muscle groups perform a series of blunt movements (kicks and punches, for example) disintegrate at 145 heartbeats per minute. But most hand-to-hand combat causes the heart to surge to 200 beats per minute. In that frenzy of adrenaline, the combatant becomes one of two large furious deadly animals charging one another.

Along with burnt gunpowder, the smell of testosterone filled the living room. Musk. A man smell of fierce power. Everything seemed fast and yet terribly slow. Sounds faded. Vision narrowed. All of this happened in an instant as Cavanaugh screamed, flicked his knife back and forth and up and down with a violent speed that the eye couldn't follow, and charged his opponent, using a buzz-saw technique against which his enemy couldn't defend unless he too used his knife as a buzz saw. But it was all happening so fast, so overwhelmingly that the opponent jerked back, screaming-not as Cavanaugh screamed, in massive aggression, but instead in abject terrified surrender. As blood flew from the man's arms and his chest, as the man tripped and fell backward, Cavanaugh was on him, kicking.

"No!" Jamie yelled.

But Cavanaugh couldn't stop kicking.

"You'll kill him!" Jamie shouted. "You said we need him alive!"

Cavanaugh's frenzy snapped, Jamie's urgency reaching him. He stopped. He stood over the unconscious man, breathing frantically. His clothes were soaked with sweat.

He was suddenly aware of sirens.

A voice yelled, "I told you to drop the knife and put your hands up! Lady, drop the gun! Don't make me shoot! Everybody, hands up!"

Chest heaving, Cavanaugh turned slowly and saw two policemen in the living room, their pistols aimed at him, Jamie, and Kim. In the open doorway, an intense man in a suit aimed a pistol also. Outside, more sirens joined the commotion as the man in the suit yelled, "For the last time, drop your weapons!"

Cavanaugh let go of his knife. It clattered onto the floor.

"My gun might go off if I drop it," Jamie told the man.

"Gently," the man said, aiming, "set it down."

Jamie obeyed, then carefully straightened, both hands in the air. Kim raised her hands, also.

"Get the paramedics up here," the man told someone behind him. "You three," he said to Cavanaugh, Jamie, and Kim. "Over against this wall! Lean forward! Spread your legs! Get a police woman up here!" he shouted down the stairs.

"We were defending ourselves," Cavanaugh maintained as he leaned forward with his hands against the wall.

"Sure you were."

"They attacked us in my apartment," Kim said. "The third floor."

"Check that," the man told a policeman. He studied Kim. "So if you live up there, how did you get down here?"

"Lieutenant," an officer said, peering into the kitchen. "We've got a broken window."

"I think we're going to be a long time sorting this out," the lieutenant said. "Just so we don't have any misunderstandings with a judge and a jury, you have the right to remain silent. You know the drill?"

"Yes."

"Do you want an attorney?"

"Seems like I don't have a choice."

"You got that right." The lieutenant searched him from behind, lifted Cavanaugh's jacket, and found his empty holster. "Where's the gun that goes with this?"

Cavanaugh nodded toward where it had fallen. "Near the door."

"You better have a permit for this."

"I do."

"Why do you need it?"

"I'm in the security business. Global Protective Services."

"Yeah, I saw how you were protecting this guy on the floor, leaving impressions of your shoes on his kidneys. Global Protective Services, huh? I'm impressed all to hell."

Cavanaugh decided the conversation had just about come to an end. "How do I contact my attorney?"

"Unless you've got a supply of carrier pigeons, I suggest using this." The man pulled Cavanaugh's phone from his jacket.

"Now?"

"When I'm finished." The man patted Cavanaugh's chest and found his claw-shaped knife in a plastic sheath suspended by a break-away chain around Cavanaugh's neck.

Meanwhile, a policewoman arrived and searched Jamie, removing her knife from her hip.

The man glanced from it toward the pistol and the knives on the floor. "Between these and the automatic rifles on the stairs, we've got enough weapons to outfit the military of a Caribbean country."

"Lieutenant," a policeman said at the door. "The apartment upstairs is shot to pieces."

"Just your normal Saturday night in Greenwich Village," the lieutenant said. "Sit on the floor," he told Cavanaugh.

Cavanaugh obeyed.

"Cross your legs."

Cavanaugh did.

"Here's your cell phone. Tell your attorney to be quick. Tell him Lt. Russell can't wait to talk to him."

Ambulance attendants crouched next to the man Cavanaugh had subdued.

"Is he going to live?" Russell asked.

"He'll be able to answer your questions. My, my, he's got a pistol under his jacket."

"And there'll be another knife somewhere," Cavanaugh said.

"Yeah," the ambulance attendant said, "on a chain around his neck." The attendant pulled it from under his shirt. "Looks like a claw."