Текст книги "The Naked Edge"

Автор книги: David Morrell

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^{"Sniper rifles, remote-controlled bombs, car ambushes."}

^{"No bladed weapons?"}

^{"A few, but no pattern. Nothing like what happened to your GPS operators."}

^{"Then why was GPS singled out for that kind of weapon?" Jamie wondered.}

^{"Last night, when I was studying the printouts of my former missions–" Cavanaugh breathed quickly as he ran. "–I couldn't find any client who might want to kill me because of things I knew about him. But the idea of knives reminded me of somebody."}

^{"Who?" Rutherford asked.}

^{"A former GPS agent. Can you use your Bureau resources to get a profile of a man named Carl Duran? And while you're at it, do a deep background check on Gerald Brockman, Kim Lee, and Ali Karim."}

^{"But aren't they–"}

^{"The top officers in GPS. Something's wrong there. Maybe it's got nothing to do with what's going on, or maybe it's got everything to do with it. Either way, I need to find out."}

^{Chapter 10.}

^{"Who's Carl Duran?" Jamie asked, lying next to Cavanaugh on a motel bed.}

^{"Bad news." Preoccupied, Cavanaugh removed the magazine from his pistol and pulled back the slide, letting Jamie see that the firing chamber was empty. "Clear?"}

^"Clear."

^{He pressed the release lever, causing the slide to snap forward. Then, as was the habit of many operators, he practiced raising the pistol and lining up its sights. It was the equivalent of fingering worry beads. "Carl Duran and I went through Delta Force training together."}

^{Jamie was propped against pillows the same as Cavanaugh was. She removed the magazine from her handgun, then pulled back the slide. "Clear?"}

^"Clear."

^{She too practiced aiming. The pistol came with a wide-notched rear sight that had a white dot on either side to encourage focusing. The front post had a similar, easy-to-distinguish white dot that made sighting easy.}

^{"Some people have a misguided notion about special-operations personnel," Cavanaugh said. "They think we're beer-swilling bar-brawlers. They don't understand that what our trainers are looking for is discipline and control, and anybody who acts like a thug when he's off-duty doesn't meet those requirements. In fact, the best operators are amazingly well mannered. They've been conditioned to unleash massive amounts of violence. They've also been conditioned to have a mental on-off switch and to turn on that switch only when it's appropriate. When they're not working, it's essential to remain calm."}

^{"And Carl Duran didn't?"}

^{"He almost got kicked off Delta Force."}

^{"What was his problem?"}

^{"Special operators are attracted to the profession because they enjoy the rush of taking risks. You might even say they're addicted to it. They crave the satisfaction of knowing they were in danger and had the strength and determination to survive."}

^{Cavanaugh thought a moment, remembering Carl. "Special operators are also attracted to the profession because they like the reinforcement of belonging to an elite group. There's no place for a grandstander in a special-ops unit. As the old joke goes, there's no 'I' in 'team.' For most special operators, the bond they feel for their group is greater than what they feel for their family. They get a powerful satisfaction from knowing that they and their teammates survived unimaginable dangers, that they're among the most special human beings in the world, and that they can count on each other for support, even if it comes to dying for each other."}

^{"Carl Duran was a grandstander?"}

^{"He wanted to prove he was better than anybody else. For him, everything was a contest–not with himself, which is the way Delta wants it, but with everybody in his unit. He had to be superior. The best operator. The best gunfighter. And he had to make sure everybody knew it. Even when he was a kid, he acted that way."}

^{Jamie quit aiming her pistol and looked at him. "You make it sound like . . ."}

^{"I went to high school with him in Iowa."}

^{"But you told me you were raised in Oklahoma."}

^{"Until my dad beat my mom and me once too often, and she took me and left him. Eventually, we landed in Iowa City, where she got paralegal training, went to work for an attorney, and married him."}

^{"How is it we need to be running for our lives before you tell me about your past?"}

^{"Why should I talk about what I want to forget?"}

^{"Your stepfather wasn't kind to you, either?"}

^{"He didn't know how to react to a child. He was a better husband than he was a father. Let's put it this way, he disapproved of mistakes, and in his eyes, I made a lot of mistakes. But he didn't raise his voice. He didn't beat me. He didn't beat my mother or the daughter my mom and he had. By comparison with what we'd been through, he was a saint. I was grateful that he gave us a home. Still am. Even so, I did my best to stay out of his way. When it came to sternness, though, nothing could equal Carl's father. That guy was a pusher. In his youth, Carl's father played football for the University of Iowa. In Iowa, few things are as important as college sports. Carl's father had ambitions to be a pro quarterback. Might have done it, too. To hear him tell it, he was a fantastic athlete. But he broke his leg in a game in his junior year. It crippled him, and he never got over the bitterness. So the old man decided that Carl , by God, was going to be the pro quarterback in the family. He pushed Carl, and pushed him, until Carl was so determined to please his father that he needed to prove he was better than anybody else on the West High team. Needed to prove he knew more than the coach. Needed to prove he was smarter and tougher than anybody, and proved it so well that the coach kicked him off the team. So Carl's father beat the hell out of him and sued the school and–"}

^{"What a mess," Jamie said.}

^{"It got worse. Carl's father was a stockbroker. He was also a secret drinker. Finally, he got better at one than the other, and his company fired him. The drinking problem got so bad that the family was forced to sell their house. They moved to an apartment. Then they moved out of state, trying for a new start."}

^{"And was it successful?"}

^{"Eventually, word came back that Carl's father died from liver disease. Carl never went to college. He certainly never had a chance for that pro-football career. But while we went to high school together, he and I were friends."}

^{"I don't understand why you thought about him in connection with what's happening," Jamie said.}

^{"Carl had a thing about knives."}

^{Chapter 11.}

^{Jamie looked at him. "Knives?"}

^{"This was before those two kids shot up that high school in Colorado and suddenly every school had a zero-tolerance policy about bringing anything that might be a weapon onto campus. Carl was obsessed about knives. He carried one in his pocket every day he went to school. Or under his sweater. Or in his knapsack. He showed them to me when nobody was looking. Once, he even hid one under his uniform when he was playing football."}

^{"And this was your friend ?"}

^{"It's hard to explain. We lived on the same street." Cavanaugh's memory was painful. "Hafor Drive. He was the first kid I met when my mother and I moved to my stepfather's house. There was a soccer field at the end of the street. Woods. A creek. Carl and I used to play in those woods a lot. He didn't like to go home. Neither did I. The thing about a friendship is, once it's formed, you get used to how your friend behaves. No matter how strange he acts, you think it's normal."}

^{"You mean the knives."}

^{"Folders. Fixed blades. Utility knives. Tactical knives. Fishing knives. Skinning knives. Carl and I had jobs delivering for one of the local morning newspapers, the Gazette . This was before newspapers decided it was safer and cheaper to have adults deliver them by throwing them from cars. My stepfather insisted I put the money I earned in a bank account. But Carl's father–at the time, I thought this was cool–let Carl spend his money however he wanted. I didn't think the knives themselves were cool. The truth is, they made me nervous. But Carl's father was really pleased with the knives, as if they proved Carl was macho enough to have a chance at being a pro-football player. So Carl played with knives, and because he was my friend, I joined him. We had contests to see how fast we could pull them from our pockets and open them. We practiced throwing them. We imagined scenarios in which we saved somebody's life with one. Then Carl discovered in a knife magazine that a top knife maker lived right outside town, on a farm near a place called West Liberty."}

^{"You're talking about a hammer and anvil and forge?" Jamie asked.}

^{"The old-time real deal. One day, Carl showed up at my house to say that he'd phoned this knife maker and convinced the old guy to teach us how to forge blades. He was more excited than I'd ever seen him, so I thought, 'What the hell, I'll go along and see what it's like.' My mom wound up driving us every Sunday afternoon. It turned out that the old knife maker belonged to something called the American Bladesmith Society. He had the rank of 'master,' a big deal when you realize there are only about ninety masters in the world. Making knives was the old man's life. His name was Lance Sawyer. The first time I heard it, I thought that name was hilarious. A knife expert whose name was Lance. He was seventy-five years old. He wore bib overalls. He was stooped and scrawny and bald and had brown tobacco juice on his white beard, but his arms were as muscular and strong as anybody's I've ever seen. For a year and a half, until Carl's father moved the family out of state, Carl and I learned how to stoke a forge, how to use a hammer and an anvil to shape a blade, how to cool the metal and then do the reverse, heat-tempering it. The old man made us use leaf springs from old pickup trucks as our rough material. It was hard, heavy work. My arms used to ache all week. But I must say we turned out some awfully fine-looking knives."}

^{"Did you continue the lessons after Carl moved away?"}

^{"For a while. But it wasn't the same without Carl's enthusiasm, and then the old man died. I wasn't there, but I heard he keeled over in the middle of hammering a blade. Went out happy, doing what he liked." Cavanaugh smiled wistfully to himself. "After that, I went to the University of Iowa. I'm pretty sure my stepfather wanted me to be what he was: an attorney. But I surprised him and my mom by leaving school before my first year ended and joining the military. That hatred-of-bullies thing I told you about. Eventually, I got into Delta Force." Cavanaugh paused. "And not long after, Carl showed up."}

^{Jamie, who'd resumed aiming her pistol, now stopped and looked at him again. "Seems a hell of a coincidence, don't you think?"}

^{"Except it wasn't a coincidence. From bits and pieces of what Carl told me, I eventually realized what happened. As his father's alcoholism got worse and the family's fortunes disintegrated, Carl kept looking back on Iowa City and his friendship with me and the lessons with the old knife maker as the best time of his life. He never went to college as his father planned. He never played football. He never had a chance for the big career his father wanted for him. He used to phone me a lot. The calls always felt as if they came from a ghost. I didn't talk long. Then one day he phoned, and my mother told him I was in the Army. As near as I can figure, he joined the Army shortly afterward. I realize now that he was hoping to get stationed with me and continue the ideal friendship he imagined we had. He kept following my career, taking special-ops training, eventually trying to get into Delta Force as he knew I had. Suddenly one day, there he was at the Fort Bragg Delta compound. I turned from completing a training exercise and saw him grinning at me. That was one of the few times in my life when somebody took me totally by surprise."}

^{"Creepy," Jamie said. "It's like he was stalking you."}

^{"Yeah. And it didn't help that the other Delta operators associated him with me. When he got too competitive, I could sense they wanted me to tell him to cool it. But Carl was in competition with me more than anyone. He wasn't about to let me give him advice. He knew enough to be a team player when it came to our missions. One time, in Iraq, in the first Gulf War, he saved my life. I made up for that by saving his life in Bosnia. The knives, though. He couldn't stop his fixation on the knives. In an effort to buy the team's friendship, he even went to the trouble of making tactical folders for everybody. But then he sabotaged any good will he created. Our team went on a mission to the Philippines to retrieve an American diplomat who'd been kidnapped by terrorists. Carl was supposed to take out an enemy sentry, using a sound-suppressed pistol. Instead, he crawled up to the guy and killed him with a knife. Almost jeopardized the assignment. Later, after we extracted the diplomat, our CO was furious. Carl claimed his pistol malfunctioned. He said his only option was to take out the sentry hand-to-hand. The CO seemed to accept his explanation. But Carl never got sent on another mission, and three months later, he was dismissed from the unit."}

^{"So how did he get hired by Global Protective Services?"}

^{Cavanaugh hesitated. "After Duncan retired from Delta Force and set up his business, Carl came to me, asking if I'd put in a good word. Even if it was sometimes strained, the friendship was there. He'd never done anything against me. To the contrary, he'd kept me from coming home in a body bag. Maybe his pistol had malfunctioned on that extraction assignment. For sure, his courage was never in doubt. Duncan and I talked about it. Duncan tried him on some low-level assignments. No problem. Some mid-level assignments. Again, no problem. Then Carl and I got assigned to protect a teenage female rock star who was getting death threats from a fan. The rock star was dating a sports celebrity, and the fan got jealous."}

^{"I notice you haven't told me her name."}

^{When Cavanaugh mentioned who she was, Jamie nodded. "Yeah, a knockout. The kind that flashes a lot of skin but claims to be a virgin."}

^{"You can see how this nut-case fan felt conflicted. The singer had the money for a full-scale nine-operator team, including two female agents made up to look like her."}

^{"Which is really twenty-seven operators, divided in shifts of three." Jamie did some rapid arithmetic. "That's a budget for some Third World countries."}

^{"Then the police caught a man they were sure was the stalker. He even confessed."}

^{"To get attention," Jamie said, anticipating where Cavanaugh was going. "But the real stalker–"}

^{"Came at her after she'd reduced the protection detail to five operators. It happened outside her hotel. I was the agent in charge. I tried to convince her to use a hotel that had an underground parking garage so she could get into her limousine where there weren't any crowds."}

^{"No anonymous car for her ," Jamie said.}

^{"Exactly. She needed to see her fans, she told me, and they needed to see her . It was great publicity, she said. Entertainment Tonight wanted to show her interacting bravely with her admirers. So we came out of the hotel, trying to part the crowd. I never would have agreed to the set-up if I hadn't believed what the police told me–that they had the stalker. We moved in a standard square formation: two agents in back, two in front. The singer was in the middle with me next to her. The deal was, if somebody came at her, I was to shield her with my body and get her into the hotel or into the limo, whichever was closer. Meanwhile, the rest of the team was to surround us, to provide a barrier between her and the stalker and make sure he wasn't acting alone. The idea was to protect the client first and disable the attacker second. So when this man charged out of the crowd, thrusting a knife at her, I went into my covering mode. The rest of the team formed a ring as we backed toward the hotel. And that son of a bitch Carl broke ranks to have a knife fight with the guy."}

^"What?"

^{"Yeah, there they were in front of the Plaza hotel, a couple of thousand fans, a ton of TV cameras, everybody screaming as the team and I hurried the singer back into the hotel, and Carl's out there, showing the guy how the business end of a knife works. Flash, flash, slash. Before the stalker died, I bet he was astonished by the enormous quantity of blood he lost. Carl was standing over the trembling corpse. Meanwhile, the crowd's in a panic, and the TV cameras are taking it all in, getting Carl's face in close-up. A little too much recognition factor for someone in the protection business. The grand jury called it a justified killing. Carl claimed that the guy was coming at him , to drop him and get through to the client. 'No choice,' Carl said. Privately, the members of the team knew that was bullshit. We knew Carl was so highly trained, he could have disarmed and disabled the guy before the situation got lethal. He killed the guy because–"}

^{"He wanted to have a knife fight," Jamie said.}

^{Cavanaugh nodded. "Not that it was much of a knife fight, but yeah, I'm sure that was half his motive. And the other half? We're trained not to look at our clients when we're protecting them. The idea is to watch away from them, to see if there's a threat coming. But I noticed Carl giving the singer glances, checking her out, enjoying the view. I think the knife fight was Carl's way of trying to impress her, to earn a permanent gig protecting her."}

^{"Did he get what he wanted?"}

^{"What he got was fired, and this time, when he begged me to put in a good word, to persuade Duncan to rehire him, I told him to go to hell. The friendship had been strained for a long time. That broke it. I wanted nothing to do with him, even on a professional basis, because as far as I was concerned, he'd stopped being dependable. I wasn't the only operator who felt that way. No reputable protection agency would hire him. The last I heard, he was working for a Colombian drug lord."}

^{"But now you think he's back?"}

^{"Whoever arranged for all those protective agents to be killed with sharp weapons couldn't have done it without a thorough knowledge of how the protection business works. Combine that with a knife obsession–"}

^{"And you get Carl Duran," Jamie said. "Maybe it wasn't the female rock singer he was trying to impress with the knife fight."}

^{"Not her? Who else would he–"}

^{"You. He has to assume you've made the connection between him and the blade attacks. He'll hunt you as hard as he can."}

^*

^{PART FIVE:}

^{THE IRON MISTRESS}

^{Chapter 1.}

^{Rutherford almost drove past the place before he noticed it. It was in a seedy section of Alexandria, Virginia, a locale so unexpected that he was sure he'd misunderstood the address he'd been given. But then he looked harder and spotted the Hideaway Motel between a massage parlor and a porn-video shop. Shaking his head at what he hoped wasn't a practical joke, he turned left at the next intersection. He went up and down several streets at random and watched his rearview mirror to check if he was being followed. Finally, he headed back to the motel and steered into its lot, where he parked next to a Dumpster and knocked on a door.}

^{Winos, drug dealers, and gang members watched as it opened and Jamie smiled.}

^{Stepping in, Rutherford surveyed the grimy floor, cracked mirror, and sunken mattress. Years of cigarette smoke permeated the walls. He nodded to Cavanaugh, who stood behind the door, ready with his pistol in case Rutherford had unfriendly escorts.}

^{"Homey," Rutherford said.}

^{"Nobody here thinks it's strange if we pay with cash instead of a credit card," Jamie said, locking the door.}

^{"They probably think you're a hooker."}

^{"As long as we don't leave a paper trail, I don't even care if they think I'm a lobbyist." Jamie pointed toward a thick manila envelope Rutherford held. "What did you learn?"}

^{"Gerald Brockman made several disastrous investments. He borrowed money to buy on margin. When the market collapsed, he needed to pay off the loans. Basically, he's broke."}

^{"So, when Duncan was killed, Brockman might have hoped he'd inherit Global Protective Services," Cavanaugh said. "Except, he had reason to suspect someone named Aaron Stoddard was set to inherit. Maybe he decided that getting rid of Stoddard would move him to the front of the line."}

^{"Who's Aaron Stoddard?"}

^{"Me," Cavanaugh said. "That's my real name. Word's getting around fast enough, you might as well be in on the secret."}

^{" Your real name? "}

^{"From time to time, it does a person good to be somebody else."}

^{"Not me. I'm still trying to figure out how to be John Rutherford."}

^{"What did you learn about Kim Lee?" Jamie asked.}

^{"She has a drug problem."}

^"What?"

^{"Two years ago, she fractured a spinal disc during a martial-arts competition. Now she's addicted to big-time painkillers like OxyContin, so many pills a day that she needs a black-market supply."}

^{"But she never gave the slightest indication."}

^{"Some don't. If her stash runs out, though, she'll give you plenty of indication when she climbs the walls during withdrawal. It's as bad as trying to withdraw from heroin. Someone wanting information about Global Protective Services could blackmail her to supply it."}

^{"What about Ali Karim?"}

^{"So far, he appears to be squeaky clean."}

^{"For a change, good news," Cavanaugh said. "And what about Carl Duran?"}

^{"As you mentioned, after he got fired from GPS, he worked as the director of security for a Colombian drug lord." Rutherford paused for emphasis. "Until two years ago."}

^{"What happened then?"}

^{"He disappeared."}

^{Cavanaugh frowned. "You mean his boss suddenly mistrusted him and had him killed?"}

^{"No. There's not even a hint of that. We've got an informant who says Carl was considered irreplaceable. He was so furious about the way legitimate protectors turned against him that he went in the opposite direction and made the drug lord's security the best in the business. He even got his pilot's license so he could handle the drug lord's private jet in an emergency. Then one day, he was gone."}

^{"Did your informant say if anything unusual happened before Carl disappeared?"}

^{"As a matter of fact, he said the compound had a visitor. The newcomer was so important that the cartel's leader went out to meet the helicopter."}

^{"Any idea who he was?"}

^{"Not by name. But even after two years, the informant remembers what he looked like."}

^{"Hard to believe," Jamie said.}

^{"Not when you hear the description. The guy was in his forties. With a mustache. Solidly built. Intense eyes. Dark complexion. Serious expression."}

^{"Doesn't help us."}

^{"He came from Iraq," Rutherford said.}

^{"Iraq," Cavanaugh repeated in surprise.}

^{"Yeah, they don't see a lot of guys from that part of the world paying visits to drug-cartel compounds in South America," Rutherford said.}

^{"At least, they didn't before nine eleven."}

^{Jamie looked mystified.}

^{Rutherford explained. "After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we started the in-depth investigation we should have been doing all along. Extreme religious terrorist groups figure that because we're corrupt, depraved infidels, they'll attack us through our corruption. A lot of terrorist funding comes through proceeds from prostitution and drugs."}

^{"Drugs. A reason to pay attention to Kim," Jamie said.}

^{"The stranger spent a lot of time talking to Carl," Rutherford continued. "The next morning, Carl and the newcomer were gone."}

^{"So Carl was recruited because of his deep understanding of how the legitimate security community works," Cavanaugh said. "But he can't be doing this on his own. Too many agents have died. He can't be everywhere. He needs help. Trained help. Like the team who attacked us in Jackson Hole."}

^{"Jackson Hole? You'd better bring me up to speed on that."}

^{Cavanaugh told Rutherford about the incident.}

^{"The men I shot turned out to have been released from prison, all within the past six weeks. They were each in a different prison, and it doesn't seem they'd ever met before they were convicted."}

^{"So what brought them together after they were released?" Rutherford wanted to know.}

^{"Maybe the right word is who brought them together," Cavanaugh answered. "And how did Carl change them so rapidly that in six weeks they became operators instead of thugs?"}

^{Chapter 2.}

^{Shots echoed through the swamp. Explosions rumbled. Even wearing ear protectors, Raoul heard the concussions as Bowie shook him, yelled obscenities, and spun him three times one way, then the other. Raoul wanted to push back, to shout at Bowie and knock him to the ground. But he didn't act on the impulse because he knew the purpose was to disorient him and get his adrenaline flowing.}

^{Bowie shoved his face close to Raoul's, screaming, "Four bad guys ran into this building! They have automatic weapons! They have hostages! No time to negotiate! There's a bomb set to explode in thirty seconds! It'll level the block! Get in there, kill the bad guys, save the hostages, and shut off the bomb! Move!"}

^{With a force that snapped Raoul's teeth together, Bowie pushed him into the building. It was actually a maze of walls without a roof, but Raoul's emotions were so engaged, he imagined it was a building. He was vaguely aware of Bowie rushing behind him, but all Raoul paid attention to was the pistol he drew from his holster, a target popping up, a man with a gun, shooting him, crouching, peering around a corner, another target, a man with a gun, an elderly woman next to him, shooting the man, pivoting, another target popping up, a woman holding a baby, Bowie yelling, "She's got a gun in the blanket! Shoot her!," ignoring the voice, rushing forward, a guy with an assault rifle popping up, shooting him, the fourth guy, where was the fourth guy, where was the bomb, peering around another corner, a kid popping up, a priest popping up, pivoting in search of the fourth guy, realizing the priest had a gun, ducking, turning, shooting him, seeing a metal box on the ground, rushing over, flipping the "off" switch, and suddenly noticing how fast his heart was pounding, how sweat-soaked his clothes were.}

^{Trembling, he looked up from the box, seeing Bowie and a couple of students grin at him.}

^{"Three seconds before the bomb would have blown," Bowie said. "Every bad guy down. No hostages lost. You spotted the trick with the priest. Very good, Mr. Ramirez."}

^{"Thanks." Raoul's voice was unsteady, remembering to add "sir." The emotional involvement in navigating a shooting house amazed him.}

^{Outside, as more shots and explosions rumbled from the swamp, he watched Bowie approach more students. "Mr. Ferguson, you're next."}

^{The tall, red-haired twenty-year-old didn't look enthusiastic.}

^{"Let's go, Mr. Ferguson." Bowie pushed him, beginning the disorientation process. He shook him, cursed, spun him, yelled orders, and shoved him into the shooting house so hard that Ferguson nearly fell.}

^{Raoul and the students who'd passed the exercise followed Bowie.}

^{Ferguson shot the first bad guy and the second, ignored the old woman, shot the third gunman, saw the woman holding the infant, pivoted in search of another target, and heard Bowie yell, "She's got a gun in the blanket!" He fired three times into the target. "You missed!" Bowie yelled. "Shoot her! Shoot her! " Ferguson emptied the rest of his magazine into the target. He did a rapid reload, hurried on, ignored the priest, and ran to the metal box, flicking the "off" switch.}

^{Looking up in triumph, he frowned when he didn't receive the approving looks he expected.}

^{"Mr. Ferguson, it appears you're a menace to society," Bowie said.}

^{"What are you talking about? I shut off the bomb, didn't I?"}

^{"You'd have been dead before you reached it. That guy in the white collar would have dropped you."}

^{"The priest? Give me a break."}

^{"He's not a priest."}

^{"How the hell do you know that?"}

^{"The gun in his hand."}

^{" What gun?" Ferguson groaned when he took a closer look.}

^{"Even if you had shot him and disabled the bomb, it wouldn't have been any consolation to the woman and baby you killed."}

^{"That wasn't a baby! The woman had a gun in the blanket!"}

^"No."

^{"But you told me–"}

^{"I made a mistake."}

^{"You lied to me."}

^{"I tested you."}

^{"This is bullshit."}

^{"No, Mr. Ferguson. It's an exercise in discipline and control, qualities you apparently lack."}

^{Ferguson seemed about to raise his gun. Bowie drew his knife from his pocket.}

^{Ferguson stared at the knife and took his hand off his pistol. "I didn't come here to get bossed like I was still in the joint."}

^{"No, you came here for a two-thousand-dollar signing fee and three thousand a month, plus room, board, and training."}

^{"What good is the cash if I can't spend it anywhere?"}

^{"Would you prefer to leave, Mr. Ferguson?"}

^{"Does it show? All these damned mosquitoes. If I stay any longer, I'll get malaria or some fucking thing."}

^{Bowie turned from Ferguson and faced Raoul, his tone hard. "Mr. Ramirez."}

^{Raoul was taken by surprise. "Yes, sir?"}

^{"After your next class, report to my office."}

^{Chapter 3.}

^{As Raoul crossed the packed earth of the compound's parade ground, he tried not to gaze around in continuing wonder at the sun-drenched encampment. Dense bushes and trees formed the perimeter. To his left were two wooden barracks mounted on stilts. Beyond, students shot at moving vehicles or learned to storm a building. Others practiced hand-to-hand combat, while still others learned how to handle knives. Raoul had no idea where all this was headed, but he knew that he couldn't be happier. Guns, movies, video games. The only thing missing was booze and women. Almost heaven. And he was getting paid for it. The weight of the pistol on his waist, the sense that he was doing something important and doing it well–these brought a straightness to his posture, a fullness to his chest.}