The Naked Edge (8 page)

“But their records indicate they
were
street criminals. So how, all of a sudden, did they get to be . . . ‘Operators’ you called them? Unusual word. I don't often hear it. That car of yours. When I got a close look at what was left of it, I found bullet-resistant windows, armor plating, tires within tires . . . Tell me again what you used to do for a living.”

“I was in the security business.”

“The bodyguards I see around here—”

Cavanaugh hated the word.

“—are usually hired by entertainers and sports stars on vacation. Mostly for show in a quiet community like this. To remind us how important they are. But you never fit the profile of the thugs some of those celebrities use for bodyguards.”

“I'm an unassuming guy.”

“Obviously, you don't like being called a ‘bodyguard’.”

No answer.

“Are you holding back anything I need to know?”

Cavanaugh hesitated. “Yes. I was what's called a protector. I worked for an international security firm called Global Protective Services. I used the professional alias of ‘Cavanaugh’.”

“Professional alias?”

“I saved the lives of people who show up on CNN and the front pages of the
Washington Post
and
Wall Street Journal
. These are the kind of people who need the reassurance of knowing they can absolutely trust me with sensitive information, that nobody'll come around later and persuade me to answer questions about them.”

“You mean like the
police
asking questions?”

“My former clients will stonewall you.”

“It's been tried.”

“And they'll never trust me again.”

“Again? I got the impression you'd retired.”

“My retirement just ended.”

“Is that another way of saying you intend to run your own investigation?”

“If a former client decided that he or she can't let me live with certain information, I have ways to find out.”

“You're not a law enforcement officer. Keep that in mind.”

“I will.”

“I'm serious. I wouldn't want to see you in front of
two
grand juries. ‘Cavanaugh.’” Garth tested the sound of the name.

“The idea was to keep my private life and my professional life separate.”

“Looks like it didn't work.”

4

A state trooper came over when Garth escorted Cavanaugh from the interview room.

“Did you find any of them?” Garth asked.

The trooper looked at Garth, as if to suggest that they speak in private.

“It's okay. You can talk in front of him.”

In the background, Jamie and William listened to the trooper's reply.

“No sign of the shooters.”

“They were dressed as campers,” Cavanaugh said.

“Which makes them fairly invisible around here,” Garth pointed out. “Even so, how do you suppose they got out of the area near your property so fast?”

“When you drove me from the ranch, I noticed that the van that had blocked the lane was gone. Did any of your team move it?”

The trooper shook his head
no
.

“Some of the shooters probably drove it away. The tires were low from weight in the back, but even so, they could have driven it. As for the rest, I'm guessing a couple of cars picked them up as they emerged from the trees. Using two-way radios, they could have easily coordinated it so they didn't show themselves if there were police cars or emergency vehicles in sight. Plus, you didn't know what you were dealing with and didn't start searching until thirty minutes after the explosion. Plenty of time to get away. They could have been in Jackson by then.”

Another trooper entered the room. “A lot of reporters and a TV crew in the parking lot.”

“Swell,” Garth said.

“We can't assume they're all legitimate,” Cavanaugh warned. “That hit team isn't going to fade away. They'll watch the building. They'll try to follow us when we leave.”

“Spend the night here.”

“There's nothing I'd rather do. But in the morning, we'll still have the same problem. Not to mention, they'll be organized by then. No, the best time to leave is when they least expect it. As soon as possible.”

“How? And where will you go? What will you use for transportation?”

“I already made the arrangements,” Jamie said.

5

In the harshly illuminated parking lot, dozens of reporters straightened as the barracks door opened. The lights from within silhouetted Garth, who stepped from the building and walked toward them. The weather had shifted, cold enough to bring frost from his mouth. Garth had no idea how the media had gotten word of the attack so quickly. If one of his officers was responsible, he swore to find out who it was and give him the worst duties imaginable. Since Jackson didn't have a TV station or a large newspaper, most of the men and women converging on him must have come from Idaho Falls (a drive-able 180 miles away) or from Casper, Laramie, and Cheyenne (much farther away—to get here this soon, the reporters would have needed to charter planes). Then it occurred to Garth that the person who alerted the media might have been somebody on the hit team. Get as many reporters and TV cameras here as possible. In the ensuing chaos, the gunmen could blend. Any of the supposed news people shouting questions at him could be a killer.

“Is it true that six men were shot—”

“Ranch thirty miles north of—”

“Explosion destroyed—”

“Sniper—”

“Helicopter—”

“Okay, all right.” Garth gestured for quiet. “If all of you talk at once, I can't hear your questions.” The television lights glared at him, hurting his eyes. “I have a brief statement. At four-thirty this afternoon—”

Suddenly, the front door to the barracks banged open. As Garth turned, he saw a trooper hurrying toward him, a concerned look on his face.

“What's the matter?” Garth asked.

Cameras flashed as the trooper motioned Garth away from the reporters and spoke in urgent hushed tones.

Garth spun toward the reporters. “This'll have to wait. There's been a—”

“Captain!” a trooper yelled from the front door.

A siren wailed in the fenced-off parking area behind the barracks. Roof lights flashing, a highway patrol car rounded the building and skirted the reporters. An officer was silhouetted in the front seat as the car reached the main road and sped north toward Jackson, disappearing around a curve in this sparsely populated section of the valley. Moments later, a second patrol car followed, lights flashing, siren wailing.

Some of the reporters raced for their cars.

Or possibly they aren't reporters
, Garth thought.

Others stayed, demanding to know what was going on.

“Tell us what happened this afternoon!”

“Are these incidents connected?”

Headlights blazing, a state police van hurried past, reached the road, and followed the three civilian cars that chased the cruisers.

6

Opening and closing his knife, the man who'd shot the sniper watched from a road on a bluff across from the police barracks. He was forty years old, tall and lean, with an etched face. His powerful forearms resulted from years of pounding a hammer onto an anvil, forging blades. He used various names. Currently, his devotion to knives had prompted him to choose the alias of Bowie. Sitting in his car, he used a night-vision magnifier that wasn't affected by the stark contrasts of light and darkness in the parking lot a quarter mile from him. While he listened to the sirens, he studied the sequence of vehicles speeding away: the first cruiser, the second cruiser, the three civilian cars, then the police van.

Damned smart
, Bowie thought.

He spoke into a two-way radio. “It's a shell game. The target's in one of the police vehicles. The question is which.”

A voice from one of the pursuing civilian cars said, “I vote for the van.”

“Or maybe the target's still in the barracks,” Bowie replied. “Maybe those police vehicles are decoys. We don't have enough personnel to follow everybody.”

“Wait!” the voice blurted. “Ahead of us. One of the police cars is pulling to the side of the road.”

“For God's sake, don't stop,” Bowie ordered.

“But we need to act like real reporters. Real reporters would stop.”

“That's what they
want
you to do. You'd be caught between the cruiser that stopped and the van behind you. Meanwhile, the
first
cruiser would get away. That must be where the target's hiding.”

“Okay,” the voice said five seconds later, “I didn't stop. In my rearview mirror, I see the other cars—the reporters who left with us—
they're
stopping. Shit. The cruiser ahead of us.
It's
stopping!”

“Drive past it!”

“It's turning sideways! It's blocking the road!”

7

Cavanaugh crouched out of sight in the police car's back seat. Feeling the state trooper expertly skid the cruiser sideways to block the road, Cavanaugh braced himself and reminded the driver, “Leave room for them to drive around!”

There was always the chance that actual reporters were in the pursuing car. On a hunch, the reporters might have decided to ignore the patrol car that stopped and to follow the one in the lead. If so, with the road blocked, the driver of the pursuing car would now stop and demand to know what was going on. But members of the assault team would want to get away.

Hurrying from the cruiser, Cavanaugh and the policeman took cover behind the engine, the only place in an unarmored vehicle that would stop a bullet. The pursuing car took advantage of the space the patrolman had left and veered toward the shoulder, passing the cruiser's back fender, throwing up dust. As it sped farther down the road, Cavanaugh aimed a powerful flashlight, centering the beam on the license plate.

“Got it!” He shouted the numbers and letters to the trooper who repeated them into a radio microphone attached to his collar.

The second cruiser arrived, and Jamie hurried from her hiding place in the back seat. Meanwhile, Cavanaugh's driver chased the escaping car, his siren wailing.

A moment later, the van arrived. William got out.

“It worked,” Jamie told Cavanaugh.

“Not just yet.” As the other cruiser joined the chase, Cavanaugh walked along the road, in the direction from which he'd come. The trooper who'd driven the van followed him, accompanied by Jamie and William. Cavanaugh turned left toward a dark lane that led into a gravel pit. He aimed the flashlight and saw a shadowy pickup truck parked between mounds of earth. In case there'd been a gunfight, the occupants would have been out of the line of fire. Even so, they'd obeyed instructions and taken cover behind the truck's engine.

“Mrs. Patterson? Kyle?” As Cavanaugh shone the light, keeping it away from eye level, he saw two people rise from behind the truck.

“More excitement,” Mrs. Patterson said. “I don't know how my husband ever put up with it.” But something in her voice suggested that some aspects of the excitement were enjoyable, that she now understood why her husband had liked being a police officer.

The man next to her—stout, bearded, with wooly hair—was Mrs. Patterson's son-in-law, one of the best horse trainers in the valley. “Good directions, Jamie.”

“Thanks.” When Kyle had picked up Mrs. Patterson at the barracks, Jamie had explained what needed to be done. “You won't be safe with your family,” she'd told Mrs. Patterson. “The people who attacked us know you matter to us. They might try to grab you and use you against us. Plus, your family won't be safe if somebody on the assault team follows you to them.”

“Jamie told you I need a favor?” Cavanaugh asked Kyle.

“The loan of my truck. Sure. Anything to keep Lillian safe.”

“Count on it,” Cavanaugh said. “This officer will make sure no one's following his police van when he drives you home.”

Kyle gave Cavanaugh the keys to the truck. “Where are you taking Lillian?”

“Can't tell you in case a couple of guys with guns come around and ask you.”

“Anybody who tries'll be dodging slugs from a deer rifle. No matter what, I wouldn't tell,” Kyle emphasized.

Cavanaugh thought,
But what if they put a gun to your daughter's face?

In the distance, the pursuing sirens echoed.

8

“The cops must have radioed ahead!” the voice blurted from the two-way radio. Sirens shrieked in the background. “We're in Jackson! They've got two police cars parked sideways, blocking the street! The other police cars are still chasing us!”

Saddened, the man who called himself Bowie shook his head. He had spent the past month with the team he spoke to. He had shared meals with them, slept in the same room, and gotten to know all the pathetic, painful outrages that had been done to them throughout their lives. Social conservatives would argue that those outrages were nothing more than excuses these men used to justify their outrageous acts. There was truth to that viewpoint, Bowie thought. No matter how damaged people were, they needed to accept responsibility for their actions. They needed to exert control over themselves. Without discipline, chaos reigned. He had learned that lesson with great difficulty.

“I'm going to do a one-eighty!” the voice yelled.

Leaning closer to the radio receiver, Bowie heard tires squealing.

“They're blocking us that way, too!” the voice yelled.

Yes, chaos needs to be eliminated
, Bowie thought.

Melancholy, he reached for a transmitter next to him. He pressed its “on” button and saw a red light appear. When he pressed another button, a green light appeared.

In the distance, a sound like thunder rumbled through the night.

9

Speeding toward the car, the state trooper stared beyond it toward the flashing lights of the Jackson police cars that blocked a main street through the small town.
Almost got them
, he thought.
One thing they're not is reporters
.

Suddenly, the quarry ahead executed a 180-degree turn. With equal abruptness, the trooper pressed his brake pedal enough to give him traction but not lock the brakes. He swerved so that his patrol car blocked the left side of the almost deserted street. The cruiser following him performed an equivalent maneuver, blocking the
right
side of the street.