David Morrell - The naked edge

Cavanaugh forced himself to continue. "Delta looks after its own. Within twenty-four hours, a full extraction team arrived from Fort Bragg. Twelve hours before the deadline expired, we got a lucky break, some excellent intelligence reports along with aerial surveillance photos that showed the mountain camp where Carl was being held. At night, we parachuted into a clearing about three miles away and converged on the target. The infra-red satellite images we'd studied gave us a pretty good idea of where the prisoners, eight of them including Carl, were being held. About twenty revolutionaries were guarding the camp. We used night-vision binoculars to confirm what was on the satellite images. I was with the men assigned to get to the prisoners and protect them once the attack started. Basically, the tactic was coordinated sniper shots followed by overwhelming automatic fire and a hail of fragmentation grenades. It was a textbook assault, and it went perfectly. No casualties among the prisoners or the attack force. The revolutionaries were utterly outclassed."

"You killed some of them? That was your first time?" Jamie asked.

"I laid down covering fire, three thirty-round magazines, but I have no idea if any of my bullets connected. I need to assume I did damage, but it was as if I was destroying objects. I had no sense that I was actually killing people. My primary emotion was relief that Carl was safe and that I'd survived the mission."

"Then I don't understand. It doesn't sound like your first time."

"We radioed for evac choppers and set up a perimeter in case other revolutionaries heard the shots and came to investigate. When I found cover and waited, I had a sense that something was terribly wrong, a feeling that I was being watched, that something awful was about to happen. By then, it was dawn. I glanced to my left and saw a face in the bushes. A kid. He was maybe sixteen, raising a pistol. Before I realized what I was doing, I swung my rifle and emptied the magazine into him. Total reflex. Thirty rounds. Just about blew him apart. Even if I'd probably killed before, that was my first time. Up close and personal. The moment was so intense, I could see into the kid's eyes, past his fear-dilated pupils into his brain. Into his soul. I remember thinking, You stupid kid, why didn't you hide? Why did you need to try to be a hero? It was so pointless, so damned unnecessary."

"What happened then?"

"I threw up," Cavanaugh said.

"That's what I felt like doing."

"I had a lot of nightmares about that kid," Cavanaugh continued. "His chin had a wart. He had scruffy hair and a scar on his forehead. His clothes were filthy and ragged. He was so thin, he probably hadn't eaten a decent meal in weeks. The revolution was one of those 'share the wealth' deals: millions of poor people against a handful of rich landlords and financiers trying to control them. I'm sure the kid had been exploited all his life. He was probably consumed with hate. I bet he went to sleep every night longing for a decent future. A lot to sympathize with. But if I had the chance to do it again, I'd shoot him just as dead as I shot him the first time. Otherwise, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation."

Jamie's hand touched his. "And if I had to do it again, I'd shoot that man as dead as he now is, just to make sure you and I could be lying here like this."

"It's one way to decide if something was justified-whether you'd do it again," Cavanaugh agreed.

"But I hate that it needed to happen."

"Yes. I measured my life from that moment… before I killed and after."

"Rescuing Carl Duran," Jamie said.

His eyes feeling raw, Cavanaugh peered toward painful sunlight seeping past the draperies. With effort, he got out of bed. He opened the door a crack and saw a different pair of armed agents in the living room. With the attentiveness of their predecessors, they watched the numerous surveillance monitors.

Cavanaugh shifted his gaze toward a different area in the living room and saw Jamie seated at a table, tapping on a computer. Rutherford stood behind her, watching her fingers work magic. Jamie's fresh jeans and turtleneck were part of the safe-site resources.

He took the longest, hottest shower of his life, but tension insisted. He couldn't keep his mind off everything that had happened. Damn it, what was Carl's objective?

Khaki slacks and a brown shirt were on a bureau, along with fresh underwear and socks. Motivated by a sudden idea, he dressed so hurriedly that he continued to button his shirt as he walked into the living room.

"Morning, sleepy head." Jamie kept her gaze on the computer screen.

"Did I miss anything?"

"Breakfast."

"We left you a doughnut," Rutherford said.

"Haven't you heard of Dr. Atkins?" Cavanaugh picked up the phone and pressed the numbers for information. "Cincinnati, Ohio," he told a computerized voice. "F and W Publications."

Jamie and Rutherford looked at him.

"F and W Publications," a cheery voice said.

"Blade magazine. Steve Shackleford," Cavanaugh said.

"One moment please."

Cavanaugh said a silent prayer that Steve wouldn't be out of his office on an assignment. Blade was a favorite magazine of knife enthusiasts, but it was a mistake to imagine a redneck, good-old-boy reader with biker's boots, a beer gut, and a chain leading from his thick wallet to his belt. Instead, most of Blade's 40,000 subscribers were attorneys, physicians, computer experts, and other white-collar professionals, their average income in six figures: a subscription base that many magazines envied. The magazine's avid readers had knife collections they'd assembled with the care of sophisticated art collectors.

Some of the knives were treasured antique Bucks, evoking pleasant memories of trusty jackknives from a happy childhood. Others were pocket knives crafted so painstakingly and with such elegance, those by Michael Vagnino, for example, that collectors who'd paid $2,000 for one of his folders felt lucky to have gotten a bargain now that he'd risen to the top of his field.

Some knives were valued because of the life-experience they symbolized, Vietnam veterans treasuring the rugged Ka-Bar combat knife that, in many instances, had meant the difference between death and survival. Other knives were valued because of their current reputation as a dependable tactical knife, those by Ernest Emerson, for instance, who in 1991 handcrafted tactical knives for soldier friends departing to the Gulf War. These soldiers bragged to their comrades about how well designed the knives were. Eventually, Emerson received so many orders that he shifted from making knives by hand to manufacturing them in a factory, with the goal of proving that, with proper diligence, a factory-made knife could have the quality of a forged one. He followed the example of Al Mar, a former Green Beret who in the late 1970s pioneered the modern tactical folder and became known as the father of specialty knives. An original Al Mar or Ernest Emerson knife had an auction price of several thousand dollars.

Still other knives were prized because of their place in popular culture. The prop knives for the film The Iron Mistress were diligently acquired by Hollywood production-artist Joseph Musso: a wooden version, a rubber version, an unfinished steel version used in a forging scene, and the magnificent fully realized knife. Musso's unique collection traveled to various museums, including one in San Antonio, Texas, the site of the Alamo, where Jim Bowie had died. Musso's love for the Iron Mistress prompted him to allow skilled bladesmiths to study the knife and its studio blueprints. Copies by George Cooper, Joe Keeslar, and Gil Hibben were better made than the original and highly prized. This was the world that Cavanaugh needed to tap into as he listened to the other phone ring.