The naked edge

3

The warehouse was next to the Mississippi. Despite dampness that rose from the floor, the building was used as a dormitory. Cots with sleeping bags formed three rows, twenty in each. Men sat on the cots, cleaning weapons. Others sat at tables, playing manhunter video games or watching action movies that emphasized accurate tradecraft. Ample food was available. After the punishing youth most of these men had known, after their prison experience, after the pride and discipline they'd acquired at the training camp, they were content.

When a side door opened, they looked toward a man silhouetted by sunlight. His tall, lanky figure and powerful-looking forearms were immediately recognizable. Dressed in hiking boots, multi-pocketed pants, and a slightly large shirt hanging over his hidden gun, he closed the door, obscuring two men outside who looked like dock workers but were actually sentries.

As he walked to a podium, the men gathered before him. Without needing to be told, each assumed a military posture with his feet apart and his hands behind his back.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen." Carl's voice echoed off the metal walls.

Eyes alert, they nodded in response to the respectful way he addressed them.

"Let's deal with the most important thing first. Are you getting enough to eat?"

They chuckled.

"Well, are you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Taste good?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Nothing beats New Orleans cooking. Oysters. Crawfish. Shrimp in Creole sauce. Pecan-crusted catfish. Red beans and Cajun rice. Praline bread pudding. Lord, I'm making myself hungry."

They laughed.

"When we get this job done, I'll arrange a feast worthy of Antoine's or some other of those fancy restaurants around here. In the meantime, just remember when there's ample tasty chow, make sure you take advantage. You never know when famine follows feast. That's a soldier's law. Got all the equipment you need?"

They nodded.

"If you have any doubts about the weapon you were given, get another one. Load up on ammunition. After all, you're not paying for it."

They laughed again.

"Speaking of pay, this fine-looking gentleman over here-" Carl indicated Raoul. "-has your next month's cash. You can pick it up after the briefing."

Guns, money, and respect. This was heaven.

"I mentioned work. Are you ready to get down to it?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Positive?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Then here's the drill. Tomorrow, a conference starts. They call it the World Trade Organization, and it brings a ton of important people to town. Politicians. Billionaires. The fat cats who run international corporations. It also brings a ton of people who think the World Trade Organization wants to chop down the world's forests and strip-mine what's left. They believe it wants to keep poor folks in the mud so rich guys can get richer by paying twenty cents an hour in an overseas factory and then slapping a big price tag on shoes and shirts or whatever they make. These protestors start a riot. It always happens. It's as sure as sunrise and sunset. They riot. Which is where we come in. The people we work for want us to help the rioters. They want us to make this a really impressive riot. A riot the World Trade Organization will never forget. To make them think twice about chopping down forests and strip-mining and paying poverty wages. So how are we going to make this the end-all and be-all of riots? We're going to give each of you one of these."

Carl held up a battered knapsack that looked as if it had been tied to a truck and dragged along a dirt road for ten miles. The group studied it, the only time anyone would ever pay attention to the nondescript object.

"Each of these knapsacks has a smoke canister in it. You're going to mix with the crowd. There'll be so many protestors, thousands of them, that no one'll pay attention to you. Each knapsack has a number. Go over to the map on the wall, and find your number on it. Convention Center Boulevard. Fulton Street. Commerce Street. Poydras Street. Along Riverwalk. Outside Harrah's Casino. Up past LaFayette Square. Duncan Plaza. The City Hall. Each street has one of your numbers. That's where you'll place yourself. And when the riot gets going, when they start torching cars and smashing windows and throwing Molotov cocktails, when the police march in to stop the festivities, you're going to find a place to hide your knapsack. At eleven hundred hours on those expensive, synchronized, Navy SEAL watches you were given, you'll tug this cord here and trigger your smoke canister.

"Wait until the smoke's thick enough. With all these knapsacks evenly spaced, there'll be plenty. As soon as the cops can't see you, draw your gun and rapid fire above everybody's head. We don't want to kill anybody. Just scare them. Sixty guns going off. It'll sound like a war. But nobody'll be able to see you to know you're doing the shooting. The rioters'll think the cops are doing it. The cops'll think it's the rioters. There'll be screaming and yelling and stampeding.

"Use all your ammo. Drop your piece. Make sure you've got these stick-on latex pads on your finger tips so you don't leave prints, and make sure you wore gloves when you loaded the magazines so there won't be any prints on the ejected cartridges. Then get out of there. Rendezvous two days from now at the campground I told you about near Galveston, Texas. We'll celebrate and plan the next mission.

"Your part in all this shouldn't take more than a minute, but it requires steady nerves. That's why you've been training. A can-do attitude. Dependability. Resolve. Control. A cool head. That's the secret to getting along in life, gentlemen. You're not punks anymore. Prove it. Show me how professionals behave. But being a professional also means knowing your limitations. If there's anybody here who doesn't think he's ready, who needs more training, tell me now, and you can walk away with no hard feelings."

About a dozen-the least sociopathic-looked hesitant, but no one raised a hand.

"Good," Bowie said. "Then get your cash and your knapsack. Find your place on the map. Make sure your weapon's ready. Get plenty to eat and a good night's sleep. I'll talk to you tomorrow morning."

As Carl stepped from the podium, the men formed a line in front of Raoul, who distributed the money.

"Mr. Culloden," Carl said to one of the men, "when you first came to us, you looked soft and pale from solitary confinement. You were puffy from lack of exercise and the starchy crap the prison called food. Now you're solid. You've got a healthy glow. You ought to be paying me for treating you to a spa."

Culloden chuckled. "Right, Mr. Bowie, but if it's all the same to you, I'll keep the cash."

Carl continued his banter, making the men grin and feel part of a cherished team. Sometimes he shook hands or gave a man a good-natured slap on the back. But as he scanned the line, concealing his calculated assessment, he noticed that a half-dozen men hung back.

They waited while the majority pocketed their money and drifted back to cleaning guns, playing video games, watching action movies, and eating the best buffet in New Orleans.

"Mr. Bowie," one of them said.

Knowing where this was headed, Carl replied, "Yes?"

"We, uh… We've been wondering…"

Another man said, "Did you mean it that, if we didn't think we were up to this, we didn't have to do it?"

"This isn't a dictatorship, Mr. Todd. I believe that the best team is one that's totally voluntary."

"Then…," another man said.

"Yes, Mr. Weaver?"

"I think I've got myself in enough trouble for one lifetime. I don't need any more."

"It's not as if you're going to kill anybody," Carl said. "All you need to do is activate the smoke canister and shoot into the air."

"I guess I was more comfortable holding up gas stations, but I don't even want to do that now."

"Totally voluntary," Carl said. "I won't pretend I'm not disappointed. A lot of effort went into training you. But if you can't commit to the mission, you're doing everybody a favor by admitting it. You're sure you won't change your mind?"

They didn't respond.

"Okay then." Carl sighed. "Naturally, you won't get next month's wages. And naturally, you can't stay with the team any longer. But I can't let you stay in New Orleans, either. If you get drunk, you might stagger into some bar in the French Quarter and say more than you should."

"We wouldn't do that, Mr. Bowie. You know you can count on us."

"All the same, Mr. Weaver, you have an alcohol problem that made you do things that put you in prison. You also, Mr. Todd. I'll arrange for the six of you to stay in a motel for a couple of days. Outside town. Stock it with booze. Get take-in food. I don't want you out in public."

"No, sir."

"Two days from now, you can leave the motel, and it won't matter what you tell anybody after that."

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.