David Morrell - The naked edge

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.

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.

"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 explain 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.

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.