David Morrell - The naked edge

"Like the one that was around your neck," Russell told Cavanaugh. "Are you guys making some kind of fashion statement?"

"And what's this? Another fashion statement?" Using forceps, the attendant probed the man's left ear and removed a flesh-colored object.

"An earbud radio receiver," Cavanaugh said. "If he's got one of those, he's also got a miniature microphone." Cavanaugh studied the man's blood-spotted turtleneck. "Probably pinned to the front of his collar. A mike the size of a dime."

"Damned if there isn't," the attendant said.

Lt. Russell yelled down the stairs, "Does the wounded guy down there have a microphone on his collar? And something in his ear?"

"Just a second, Lieutenant, while I…Yeah!"

"Same with this guy!" someone shouted from the upper stairs, where the third gunman lay dead.

Russell inspected the microphone and pried off its back. Just before he pulled out a tiny battery, he asked Cavanaugh, "Who the hell did you take on? The CIA?"

"The CIA?"

Sprawled on a dark rooftop across the street, Carl listened to the radio transmission crackle and die. Like the men in the apartment building, he had an earbud and a miniature microphone. Unlike them, he had a small black box the size of a pack of cigarettes. This box, a radio receiver and transmitter, had a switch that allowed him to communicate with each man separately. For the past fifteen minutes, until the microphone had failed, he'd been able to eavesdrop on the conversation.

He hadn't heard Aaron's voice in several years. It filled him with a welter of emotions: anger, regret, bitterness, a fond need to be able to return to that long-ago summer when they pretended to be soldiers caught behind enemy lines and hid among bushes, watching men and women holding hands as they strolled through the woods.

Concealing himself behind a chimney, Carl raised an AR-15, sighted through its holographic scope, and waited.

The cell-phone numbers Cavanaugh pressed were for the landline at William's safe site. As the phone buzzed on the other end, he heard more sirens outside. Red and blue lights flashed beyond the window.

"Hello."

"This is Cavanaugh. Put William on."

"Maybe he'll talk nicer to you than he does to us."

The phone made a bumping sound. Then William's voice said, "I hope this means everything's back to normal and I can get out of here."

"Afraid not," Cavanaugh said. "There's been some shooting and-"

"Some shooting?" the lieutenant said in the background. "I was with the Marines in the first Iraq war. I think we used less ammunition."

"Why don't I let Lt. Russell explain it to you so I don't say anything I shouldn't."

"Name, rank, and serial number," William's voice cautioned. "Nothing else. Put him on the phone."

Cavanaugh handed the phone to the lieutenant, then looked at Jamie and Kim against the wall. Jamie impressed him with her composure, as if she'd been an operator all her life.

But Kim was another matter. The pupils of her eyes resembled pencil points. Her brow was beaded with sweat, her withdrawal symptoms accelerating.

Cavanaugh gave her a firm nod of assurance.

"At the precinct in half an hour," Russell said to the phone, then gave it back to Cavanaugh.

"Yes, William?" Cavanaugh asked into it.

"Name, rank, and serial number. No exceptions."

"I want you to call somebody." Cavanaugh gave William a name and a phone number. "Tell him I need help."

When William heard the name, his response was, "He'll get their attention."

"Okay, we're ready to move this guy," the ambulance attendant said.

The attendant and his partner lifted the semiconscious man onto a Gurney and wheeled him from the apartment. Below, a clatter of equipment indicated that the gunman Jamie had wounded was being lifted onto a similar Gurney.

"Hands behind your back," Russell told Cavanaugh

The lieutenant clicked handcuffs onto him.

The policewoman did the same to Jamie and Kim.

"Is the van here?" Russell asked a policeman.

Cavanaugh managed to stand.

Preceded and followed by police officers, he, Jamie, and Kim left the apartment. On the stairs, a camera flashed, a medical examiner and his team inspecting the other gunman Jamie had shot.

Cavanaugh descended. The smell of burnt gunpowder widened his nostrils. He stepped over empty ammunition casings and left the building, confronted by the chaos of flashing lights, police cars, ambulances, and several hundred onlookers.

As Aaron emerged from the building into the kaleidoscope of lights, Carl almost pulled the trigger. Aaron had his hands cuffed behind him. He had policemen ahead of him, policemen behind him, and two women next to him. One of the women, Chinese, was the GPS computer expert whose apartment Carl had ordered watched. The other woman was the one he'd seen in Jackson Hole. Aaron's wife.

Carl studied her. Tall, wearing slacks, with legs that drew his gaze from her ankles to her inviting hips. Athletically trim, with upward-tilted breasts that made him imagine standing behind her, cupping his hands over them. Glossy brunette hair that he wanted to stroke. Eyes so intense Carl felt their power even on the roof across the street. Aaron, you and I always had the same great taste.

Do it, Carl told himself. Shoot. But no matter how much he wanted to, he mustered the discipline that he had not possessed while he and Aaron had been in Delta Force and later when they'd worked for Global Protective Services. No "I" in "team"? I understand that now, he thought.

No self-control? Not then. Not when I took out that sentry with a knife instead of obeying the order to kill him with a sound-suppressed pistol. Not when I stabbed that crazy fan when he pulled out a knife and attacked that rock-star babe. No, I learned my lesson, Aaron. You and Duncan taught me that lesson. I spent a lot of time on shit jobs learning that lesson. Stay cool. Keep the mission in mind. Don't get distracted. Don't screw things up for a moment's satisfaction. I learned that lesson so well, I could teach you. But if I shoot, I'll never get off this rooftop and make it to where Raoul's waiting with the car. Right now, there's only one thing more important than killing you, and I'm so cool, so disciplined, so in control, that's what I'm going to do.

Carl pulled a transmitter from his pocket. When he pressed a button, a green light flashed. Then he pressed a second button.

Uneasy, Cavanaugh stood at the entrance to the building. Partially blinded by the flashing lights, he watched attendants wheel the injured gunmen toward two ambulances. We got what we need, he thought. When they're conscious, we can question them. We can find out where Carl trains his men.

"I want an officer in each ambulance," Lt. Russell said.

Two policemen stepped toward the vehicles as the attendants shut the doors, and suddenly the ambulances heaved, explosions shattering their windows, blasting their rear doors open. The shockwaves knocked the ambulance attendants and the policemen to the pavement. Others stumbled back. Bystanders ran. Many screamed.

"Bombs?" Russell spun toward Cavanaugh. "What the hell's going on? How did-"

"Wyoming," Cavanaugh said, trying to recover from his shock. His skin itching from wariness, he nudged Jamie back with him into the cover of the building's vestibule. Kim noticed and retreated with them as Cavanaugh scanned the roof on the opposite side of the street. He lowered his gaze toward the windows and the entrances to the brownstones, but the emergency vehicles and the flashing lights made it difficult to see much of anything at street level.

"Wyoming? What are you talking about?" Russell demanded.