Текст книги "The Naked Edge"

Автор книги: David Morrell

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"Yeah? And?"

"I can get to you before you shoot me."

Raoul snickered. "Yeah. Right."

"Believe me."

Raoul snickered again and turned to his friends.

At that point, Bowie could have taken them.

"And what'll I tell the cops when I put a bullet in your guts?" Raoul asked.

"Self-defense."

"You've been smokin' too much crack," one of the kids said. "A gun against fists ain't self-defense."

"Well, maybe if I had something that the police would agree was a threat."

"Like what?" Raoul asked.

"Oh, I don't know. A knife maybe."

"This is loco. " The kid with the knife sneered. "He wants me to give him my–"

"Wait. Shut up while I understand this," Raoul told him. "I stand thirty feet away."

"I said twenty."

"Thirty."

"That's the length of a good-sized room," Bowie pretended to object.

"And you stand over here with a knife."

"Yes."

"And you bet I can't shoot you before you get to me?"

Bowie nodded. "And if you do shoot me, it's self-defense because I've got a knife. You can tell the cops how I followed you. Stalked you."

"I'm telling you this guy is loco ," the kid with the knife said.

"How about it, Raoul? You've been away five years. Didn't you lie awake, dreaming of action? And now here you've got it. And it's perfectly legal. Your first day out."

Raoul studied him.

As the sun became more intense, Bowie waited.

"Forty feet," Raoul said.

"You're taking advantage. The bet I offered–"

"Was forty feet," Raoul said. He turned to his friends. "Right? Forty feet."

"Sure, Raoul. That's what he said."

"Okay, if you want to be tough about this," Bowie said.

Looking amused, Raoul took forty steps backward. Generous steps.

The kid with the knife said, "I ain't givin' him this."

"Then I'll need to use mine." Bowie still had his left arm folded across his chest, his right palm to his chin. With his left hand at his right armpit, he reached into the short sleeve of his loose shirt and brought out a five-inch folding knife that he had secured under his arm with Velcro on a hypoallergenic strap wound around his chest.

His handcrafted knife was different from the one with the polished ebony handle that he liked to play with. This knife was for business. Its action was butter-slick as he thumbed the button at the back of the blade, flipping it open. Anodized black, forged from 440 C steel, it was sharp enough to slip between the fibers of a Kevlar vest. Its handle was made from a grooved, laminated, almost indestructible plastic called Micarta. The grooves were important because they allowed Bowie to keep a tight grip, even if his fingers were slippery with blood.

"Where the hell did that come from?" a kid exclaimed.

Raoul raised his pistol.

"Take it easy," Bowie said. "I just need this for the bet. If you kill me, it needs to look as if you're defending yourself."

"If? There's no 'if' about it." Raoul's eyelids lowered. "The bet was fifty feet. Right?" He took another ten steps back.

"Aw, come on," Bowie complained. "You want this to be fair, don't you?"

"Fifty feet is fair."

"But you need to keep the gun at your side. You can't raise it until the bet starts," Bowie said.

"Sure." Across the vast distance, Raoul smirked. "At my side." He lowered the gun.

Bowie lowered his knife and braced himself without seeming to. "Who's going to do the counting?"

"Counting? Nobody said anything about–"

Screaming at the top of his voice, Bowie charged. " I'm going to rip your guts out, cocksucker! " he shouted. " Cocksucker! Cocksucker! " Reaching full speed almost immediately, he hurtled across the distance, his motion so violent, his face so contorted with fury, that Raoul flinched. Instead of raising the gun, aiming, and pulling the trigger, he lurched backward. Off-balance to begin with, he became more off-balance when his knees bent with a will of their own. His arms jerked protectively up toward his chest. The instinctive motion caused the gun to point upward instead of toward the target who rushed at him, screaming, " Killyoukillyoukillyou! "

The scenario was a worst-case nightmare for anyone who earned a living with a gun. Law-enforcement officers, special-operations personnel, protective agents–any professional knew that someone with a knife could scream and race across those fifty feet and kill you before you overcame your surprise and defended yourself. The only defense was to avoid the scenario and shoot that s.o.b. dead the moment you saw the knife. Then, if you were in law enforcement, you had to justify your actions to a review board and maybe a grand jury. Almost certainly the relatives of the dead piece of shit would complain tearfully, "It wasn't fair. A gun against a knife. The cop had the advantage. He didn't need to shoot." And you'd think, "I damned well did need to shoot. And if I needed to do it again, I'd nail that sucker just as dead as he is now." Because, in the popular imagination, the person with the knife stops running, gets set, and then jabs with the knife, wasting a valuable second or two in which time the person with the gun overcomes the startle reflex and starts blasting. But in reality, the person with the knife doesn't stop but keeps rushing, using all that raging momentum to slam into the person with the gun and send him or her flying backward, crashing against a wall or onto the ground, and then the assailant drops onto the victim and goes to work with the knife.

That was close to what happened now. Raoul gaped, knees bent, arms thrust uselessly upward, as Bowie seemed to cross the no-longer-vast distance in hardly any time at all. Using his shoulder, he rammed into Raoul with such power that Raoul's lungs emptied. His feet left the ground. His body arched backward. His head made a sickening crunching sound when he landed.

At that moment, Bowie could have used a curving downward motion to slice Raoul's throat. Instead, he yanked the gun from Raoul's hand and spun toward his gaping pals, ready with the knife and the pistol.

"Want to make a bet?" Bowie asked.

"Jesus, man, don't shoot me," the kid with the knife begged.

"Farthest thing from my mind." Bowie put the gun under his belt. "Raoul, are you watching this? I want to make sure you see it."

"Uh," Raoul murmured. "What?"

"Damn it, are you watching this?"

"Uh, yeah, uh."

Bowie folded his knife and clipped it onto a pants pocket.

"You," Bowie told the kid with the knife. "I asked you if you want to make a bet."

"Bet?"

"That the three of you can't take me."

The three kids kept gaping.

Bowie again assumed his absolutely non-threatening position, folding his left arm across his chest, raising his right palm and pressing it against the side of his face. "Come on, for God's sake, do something!"

The kid with the knife took his chance. As he lunged with the knife, Bowie whipped his right hand down and deflected the knife. At the same time, he turned his left hand so that his palm was outward and slapped the kid as hard as he could, the blow so powerful and covering so large a portion of the kid's face that his eyes rolled up.

In the same motion, Bowie spun so that the edge of one of his thick-soled shoes caught the side of the second kid's leg, hitting a nerve that temporarily disabled the leg and sent the kid screaming onto the dirt. Meanwhile, the kid with the knife sagged to his knees. Bowie thrust his right palm upward under the kid's chin, holding back just enough force that he didn't break the kid's neck when he struck. He kicked the third kid in the testicles, and when that kid pitched his head reflexively forward, Bowie jabbed a palm to his exposed chin also. Both dropped, unconscious.

That left the one whose leg was paralyzed, the pain so intense that he could barely make himself fumble for something in a pants pocket. As the kid pulled out a shitty, short-barreled .22 revolver, Bowie kicked him in the chin, taking care that he only broke the jaw and didn't kill him.

Raoul lay on the ground, struggling to catch his breath, blinking in disbelief.

"And what did you think of that ?" Bowie asked.

"Uh."

"How'd you like a job?"

"Uh."

"How'd you like to learn to do that? Be an operator. Win friends and cause a world of pain."

"Job? What kind of–"

"Working for me." Bowie pulled a money clip from his pocket. The steel clip, handcrafted by him, had a knife so skillfully concealed along the side that he never had trouble taking it through security checkpoints. "Two thousand dollars as a sign-up fee."

"Two thousand ?"

"You get room and board, free clothing and equipment."

"Two thousand ?"

"The sign-up fee. Then you get three thousand a month. You never got that much robbing liquor stores."

"What do I need to do?"

"Prove you can learn. And then . . ."

"Yes?"

"Do what you're told."

Chapter 17.

"A slap?" William asked, as if Cavanaugh were joking.

Cavanaugh felt subtle pressure in his stomach as the Gulfstream G-200 soared away from the airport in Casper, Wyoming. Jackson Hole's airport could have handled the jet, but there was too great a chance that the attack team would watch that airport. Better to use the helicopter to fly 240 miles east to Casper, where the Gulfstream had been instructed to land and wait for them. GLOBAL PROTECTIVE SERVICES was stenciled across the side. Club chairs, a conference table, living-room-style sitting for up to ten passengers, a spacious galley, a sophisticated entertainment system, a transcontinental fuel range, quiet engines, one hundred percent filtered air, plenty of natural light.

"You think a slap sounds like a sissy kind of thing?" Cavanaugh asked.

"Well, certainly," William said.

Jamie came from the bathroom, where she'd put on a white blouse, blue blazer, and gray slacks, clothes that William had instructed the pilots to bring. Turquoise earrings brought out the deep green in her eyes. She'd undone her ponytail, her brunette hair hanging to her shoulders.

"It's actually very serious," she told William.

"Fairbairn wanted his close-quarters combat techniques to be simple," Cavanaugh said. "Easily taught. Easily remembered. When condensed to essentials, there are only a few moves. But just as important, Fairbairn's system ensures that the person making those moves doesn't get injured in the process."

Mrs. Patterson stopped admiring the Gulfstream's appointments and listened.

"A punch, for example." Jamie made a fist and pretended to hit the wall. "I'm going to hurt that person, no question about it. But I'm probably also going to hurt my hand. At the least, my fist will swell and throb and become useless if I try to keep punching. At the worst, I'll break bones, incapacitating me with pain and shock. I don't care how tough you are–you can't will yourself not to experience shock."

Cavanaugh added, "So Fairbairn asked himself, 'What are the parts of the body that can administer force with little risk of injury?'"

"Since we're talking about slaps, I assume one of them is the palm of a hand," William said.

"Yes, but when we say a slap, we're not talking about anything dainty," Cavanaugh told him. "We're talking about a slap that's as hard and fast as you can make it. The full force of your body. Your palm covers a lot of area, almost the entire side of someone's face. If you don't knock the opponent out, you'll daze him enough so that when you slap the opposite side of his face, he'll go down."

"What are the other parts of the body that Fairbairn decided were the best to use?" William asked.

"The feet, if you wear thick-soled shoes. You can stomp down hard and break somebody's toes. Fairbairn recommended a variation in which you stomp the side of your shoe all the way down your opponent's shin before you hit the toes."

"Ouch," William said.

"The knee," Jamie said.

"To the groin?" William asked.

"Definitely."

Mrs. Patterson kept listening.

"The elbows," Cavanaugh said. "You can break ribs with them but not hurt yourself."

"You can chop the edge of your hand against someone's throat and not hurt yourself," Jamie said.

William winced, imagining the damage to the other person.

Mrs. Patterson leaned forward.

"And you can shove the palm of your hand up under someone's chin, gouging their eyes with your fingers while you thrust back your opponent's head and . . ."

William looked more uncomfortable.

"Why didn't my husband teach me any of this?" Mrs. Patterson demanded. "He never taught me about the guns he kept around the house, either. He was a good husband, but he always treated me as if I was weak."

"Now's your chance to make up for lost time." Jamie motioned for Cavanaugh to stand. "Fairbairn recommended combinations."

She crossed her left arm over her chest and raised her right palm to the side of her face.

"I'm defenseless?" she asked William and Mrs. Patterson.

"Pretty much," William said while Mrs. Patterson nodded.

"That's what you want the opponent to think. The idea is to make him feel overly confident and then to engage his startle reflex when you do something he isn't expecting."

Cavanaugh pretended to strike at her stomach.

Her right hand swept down to knock the blow away. Her left hand whipped, palm outward, in a pretended slap across Cavanaugh's face. She mimicked a kick to his groin, and when he bent forward in pretended pain, she delivered a slow-motion palm thrust to his chin, fingers near his eyes, pushing his chin back.

"The slap would have so stunned him that he couldn't defend himself," Jamie concluded. "Fairbairn wrote a book: Get Tough . We'll find a copy for you."

"Which reminds me, I have something for both of you ," William said.

They watched with interest as William opened a drawer in a storage compartment that resembled a side table.

He took out a briefcase. "You told me to arrange to have a bug-out bag delivered from GPS headquarters and put on the plane, but I confess I haven't the faintest idea what a bug-out bag is."

"It's something you need when you bug-out," Cavanaugh said.

"What?"

"An emergency kit for when you expect you'll be on the run. Most operators have a bug-out bag stashed somewhere."

Cavanaugh opened the case and revealed knives, nine millimeter ammunition, an extra magazine, an easy-to-conceal SIG Sauer 229 pistol, lock picks, a miniature flashlight, an ample supply of twenty-dollar bills, fake ID, small rolls of duct tape, and assorted seemingly non-tactical items such as safety pins and zip ties, the thin, supple plastic strips that were used to bundle wires or close garbage bags.

"What are they for?" William asked.

"Pinning things and tying things."

William gave him an unamused look. "Right. And I suppose the duct tape is for sealing leaky pipes."

"Or veins."

"Some day, you'll need to teach me about that ." William turned to Jamie. "This is for you ." He handed her a black plastic case the size of a laptop computer. SIGARMS was stenciled on it.

"How thoughtful," Jamie said. "Everybody wants to give me firearms."

"You'll also need this ." William handed her a holster.

"No," Cavanaugh said.

Jamie looked at him.

"You're not in danger if you're not with me," he said.

"You're suggesting . . ."

"Stay with Mrs. Patterson. Keep away from me."

"The attack team might still try to find where I am and use me to get at you," Jamie said.

"You'll be well guarded."

"See this ring on my finger," Jamie said. "I'm in this as much as you are, babe. There's no way I'm going to hide while you're out making yourself a target."

"It's the safest thing for you."

"I don't give a damn about what's safe for me. If this were reversed, if I were the target, would you hide?"

"Of course not. But that would be–"

"Different? How? Because I'm a woman and you're a man?"

"You know I don't think that way. It's just . . . if we do this together, if things go wrong and something happens to you . . . I couldn't bear losing you."

"You think I could bear losing you ? You won't get a better, more motivated protector than me."

"I know."

"And I'm good at it, as you often told me. Together?"

Cavanaugh's emotions made it difficult for him to speak. "Yes. Together."

*

PART THREE:

"DO YOU LIKE TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES, RAOUL?"

Chapter 1.

Oaxaca, Mexico.

The movie star surprised Dominic by being polite and compliant, not at all what he was used to when protecting celebrities. Her name was Shana Lane. Twenty-one, with a knock-'em-dead figure, she'd had five hit movies, one of them good enough to earn her an Oscar nomination. But then she disappeared for a long, hot summer. After police, private investigators, and the media looked everywhere, she finally turned up drugged out of her mind, staggering down the main drag of a small town in Nova Scotia, Canada, where she was on her way, she thought, to buy a race horse. Nobody, including herself, was ever able to figure that out. The authorities did some investigative backtracking and found the cottage where she was staying with her boyfriend.

A possessive boyfriend, who was also a crack addict. They returned to Los Angeles after paying fines and listening to a judge's lecture about the pointlessness of wasting a talented life. But despite Shana's determination to clean up her life and sever their relationship, the boyfriend persisted in wanting to see her. He showed his love and determination by burning her BMW and strangling her cat, then vanished and waited until the police became weary of guarding her.

That was where Dominic came in. For an enormous fee paid by a movie studio desperate to protect its investment, Dominic and five other protectors went to Shana's film location in Mexico. Working in shifts of two, they made sure the boyfriend didn't show up. They made sure of something else–that, in keeping with the plot line of a movie about drug smugglers, Shana didn't get tempted to go back to sampling the real stuff.

To Dominic's amazement, Shana behaved in an exemplary fashion, following instructions, arriving at the set on time, with her lines prepared, never once complaining about the twelve-hour shooting schedule and the rigid control of her time off the set. Sundays were her only free days, and she used them (accompanied by Dominic and another protector) to buy rugs, pottery, and carved animals from nearby towns or to visit Oaxaca's baroque cathedral, the vaulted interior of which had dazzling gold ornaments.

On this, his second-last evening of the assignment, Dominic and another protector stood separately at the shadowy sides of the Hotel Victoria's patio restaurant, watching the various approaches to it as Shana and the film's director ate dinner together. On a lower level, cast members splashed in a swimming pool.

Then dusk thickened. Dominic and his fellow protector escorted Shana to her room, one of a series in a long low building next to the restaurant. Pleasant-smelling flowers lined the softly lit walkway. While his partner watched the approaches to the building, Dominic unlocked and entered Shana's room, making certain that it was safe for her.

Only when they heard Shana secure the numerous locks on her door did the two protectors relax.

"After we escort her back to the States, do you have another assignment?" Dominic asked his partner.

"No. I'm thinking about coming back here with my wife. What are your plans?"

"New Orleans. I'm scheduled to be part of the security at the World Trade Organization conference. After the devastation from Hurricane Katrina, the WTO wants to show support for the New Orleans recovery effort by meeting there."

"The last time I worked at a World Trade conference, the protestors rioted and shut down the city. Talk about an elevated threat level. I was on Condition Orange for a week. Then I slept for a week."

They pulled out their room keys and unlocked the units that flanked Shana's. From there, they could easily get to her if she pressed a button linked to alarms in their rooms. When they opened their separate doors, they encountered the embodiment of a local proverb, You won't find a doctor to cure a bite from this snake , as a machete hissed toward each of them, slicing off their heads.

Chapter 2.

The fourth major airport in the New York City area (after Kennedy, La Guardia, and Newark International) was Teterboro, a so-called "reliever" airstrip that catered to charter, corporate, and private jets, relieving congestion from the larger airports. From there, a twelve-mile drive via the George Washington Bridge could have taken Cavanaugh to Global Protective Services' corporate offices in midtown Manhattan. But because the attack team might have anticipated that he was headed in that direction and might have put Teterboro under surveillance, he decided against the risk of using an automobile and instead took a helicopter.

Manhattan had three heliports. Cavanaugh chose the one farthest from GPS headquarters, reasoning that it was the least likely to be under surveillance. An armored van drove him and the others through sparse midnight traffic to the secure garage under the Madison Avenue building in which GPS had its fortieth-floor offices. A team was expecting the van's arrival. They escorted Cavanaugh and his group into the elevator and through the upper security checkpoints.

The view from the conference room was spectacular, lights gleaming throughout the city. But even though the windows had bullet-resistant glass, Cavanaugh pressed a button that closed the draperies the moment he and the group entered the room, the draperies so thick that silhouettes couldn't be seen through them. He glanced at the plush carpeting and oak-paneled walls. Every chair at the long conference table had its own computer terminal and phone console, one of which he used to summon three GPS officers who'd been alerted to remain after business hours.

"Looks like you're settling into authority nicely," William said.

"How do we make it official? Don't you have documents for me to sign?"

"I instructed my assistant to go to my office and bring them," William answered. "He ought to arrive shortly."

"It can't happen soon enough."

"Mrs. Patterson, if you want to get some sleep, we can find an empty office that has a couch," Jamie offered.

"Thanks, but I napped on the plane." Mrs. Patterson clearly didn't want to miss anything.

But Cavanaugh couldn't allow it. "This is where you need to step out of the loop. The less you know, the better it is for you."

She looked crestfallen.

"Think of it this way," Jamie said. "You had an interesting ride while it lasted."

"Interesting? I'm having trouble understanding why, as frightened as I was, it was just about the most exciting time of my life."

"Winston Churchill once said, 'There's nothing more exciting than to be shot at and to survive.' The thing is," Cavanaugh added, "we don't want to get excited like that too often. William, when did Duncan put me in his will?"

"A month before he died. Why do you ask?"

Three people entered the office.

The first was from East Indian parentage, born in Akron, Ohio. Late-thirties. Short, thick, black hair. Compact build. Strong, square face. Steady, dark eyes. Muscular shoulders. His name was Ali Karim, and when he'd served on a Special Forces team, his specialties were languages, medicine, and explosives, as well as the ability to blend into an Asian environment. He was currently in charge of recruiting, training, and monitoring GPS's protective agents.

The second person was Chinese, female, early thirties. Kim Lee. Raised in Seattle. Her lustrous black hair hung to her waist. Five feet four, slender, with thin, delicate but attractive features, she looked too vulnerable to work for a security corporation. But anyone who acted on the foolish assumption that she was defenseless quickly discovered that she was a black-belt instructor of aikido and jeet kune do. She was one of the few employees of GPS who had not been in special operations, but her expertise didn't require military training. Duncan had hired her because she was once a notorious computer hacker and virus designer, skills highly desirable in a company that defended against electronic assaults as well as physical ones. Cavanaugh wondered how Kim and Jamie would get along inasmuch as Jamie, too, was a computer specialist.

The third person was white. Gerald Brockman. Early forties. A handsome, solidly built Afrikaner who once belonged to South Africa's Reconnaissance Commandos: experts in working behind enemy lines in the most hostile outdoor environment. One of the unit's endurance tests involved surviving for five days among the lions, elephants, and fires of Africa's bush country with no food except a tin of condensed milk, half a day's ration pack, and twelve biscuits, the bulk of which students discovered to their dismay had been soaked in petrol by their instructors. In addition to his elite military background, Brockman had superior administration skills that qualified him to be the interim CEO of the company.

All three paused. Special operators were trained to control their emotions. Even so, it was clear that they were surprised.

"Cavanaugh?" Brockman stared.

When William had contacted Global Protective Services, he'd followed Cavanaugh's instructions and told Brockman only that William would be arriving with the new owner.

Brockman looked at Jamie and Mrs. Patterson, eliminated them from the possibilities, and said, " You're the new CEO?"

"But . . ." Kim turned her attention to the attorney. "William, for the past five months, you've been asking me to search our computer records for someone named Aaron Stoddard. I got the impression he was the person Duncan willed the company to."

"That's true," William replied. "Now that I have my client's permission, I can finally tell you–Aaron Stoddard inherited GPS."

" I'm Aaron Stoddard," Cavanaugh said.

The room became silent.

"I had a theory that a protector would be vulnerable if the bad guys learned about his private life," he explained. "Pressure could be put on his family and friends in order to put pressure on him . So I decided to use a pseudonym."

"But how could the bad guys get that information?" Ali asked. "Between Kim and me, those records are absolutely secure."

"Wrong," Cavanaugh told him. "Yesterday, a hit team attacked my home."

" What? "

"My home , for God's sake. The deed's in Aaron Stoddard's name. The people where I live know me only as Aaron Stoddard." Anger forced Cavanaugh to work to control his breathing. "But somehow the hit team found me. The only way that could have happened is through GPS's search for somebody with that name."

"What about William's office?" Ali suggested. "William's the one who started the search."

"I assure you I informed no one, other than the three of you, that it was essential to find a man named Aaron Stoddard." William turned toward Cavanaugh. "For reasons of confidentiality, I couldn't mention the terms of Duncan's will. But they quickly made the connection."

"What the hell are you implying?" Brockman demanded. "That we sent the hit team to keep you from inheriting the company? To give us a chance to gain control of it?"

"Until now, the thought hadn't even occurred to me," Cavanaugh lied.

"This is bullshit." Ali's perfect American idiom contrasted with his East Indian features. "As if we don't have enough problems, now we've got a guy who told us he doesn't want to be in the business any longer who decides he does want to be in the business and comes back to tell us we're all working for the other side."

"Time out," Cavanaugh said.

"It really is bullshit," Ali insisted.

"Honestly, time out. Did Duncan keep any whiskey around here?"

"You've become a drinker ?" Kim asked in astonishment.

"No," Cavanaugh said, "but maybe if we hit each other over the head with the bottle long enough, we'll start talking sense. Duncan trusted the three of you absolutely. I trust you absolutely. But that doesn't change the security breach we need to find, and it doesn't change the problem I've got. Somebody's hunting me, somebody with a lot of money and resources. Just because the first attempt failed doesn't mean the threat's over. I've got to believe there'll be another attack, bigger and better organized."

Brockman ran a hand across his shaved head. Ali exhaled slowly.

"Sorry," Kim said. "I guess we're all reacting to stress."

After a knock on the door, a security guard brought in a package. "Mr. Faraday's assistant delivered this."