The naked edge

13

GARAGE LEVEL TWO, the sign said. Cavanaugh cracked the door open and listened. Hearing only stillness, he opened the door farther and studied the few cars. In an emergency that required a building to be evacuated, it was standard procedure for the teams to start at the bottom, moving upward. Subsequently, they assumed areas they'd checked didn't need to be revisited.

As he stepped into the parking garage, the overhead lights made everything a sickly yellow.

"Over there." Eddie pointed past three drab-colored Tauruses that Global Protective Services used.

Eddie's car was equally anonymous.

"Let's see if it explodes."

They crouched behind the farthest car and put their hands over their ears-except for Eddie who could protect only one ear while he pressed an ignition button on his car's remote control. When the car started, Eddie relaxed. "Well, at least we don't need to worry about that."

"But there might still be a bomb," Jamie said.

Eddie agreed. "The attack team would have seen me drive in here. They'd have had plenty of time to hide one somewhere other than attaching it to the engine."

Cautious, they approached the car. Its nostril-stinging exhaust made Eddie press another button on the remote, shutting off the engine.

In the smothering silence, Cavanaugh reached under his sport coat, felt behind the pouch that contained his spare ammunition magazine, and unsheathed a small flashlight, another item from his bug-out bag. For its size-as long and wide as his index finger-it produced surprisingly intense light.

Jamie took out hers, also.

They knelt and aimed the beams behind the wheels and at every area of the car's undercarriage. Then Cavanaugh went to one side of the car while Jamie went to the other. He aimed his light through a window toward the rear of the interior while Jamie did the same from the opposite side. The idea was to concentrate on small areas, progressing from one tiny space to another in an ordered way. Cavanaugh had difficulty keeping his flashlight steady when he knew that at any moment the door to the parking area might bang open and what came through might not be an emergency team.

Through the windows, they looked for anything that seemed out of place. But the chances were, a bomb wouldn't be that easy to notice. Sometimes, the only indication was a slight shadow.

The dashboard. The steering column. The brake. The accelerator.

What they mostly searched for was a wire. When a door was opened, the wire would tug a concealed igniter, and the car would explode. The extremely thin wire might have a non-reflective coating that made it difficult to detect.

Cavanaugh's mouth felt dry. "See anything?"

"No," Jamie answered.

"Time for the game." Cavanaugh referred to "rock, paper, and scissors." He and Eddie made a fist and shook it three times. When they stopped, they had three options: to leave the fist closed (rock), to open the hand flat (paper), or to hold out the first two fingers (scissors).

Cavanaugh's scissors cut Eddie's paper. "Okay," he told Jamie and Eddie, "Get back behind the far vehicle while I open the doors."

"You didn't play the game with me," Jamie noted.

Cavanaugh studied her.

"Fine," he said.

They held up their fists and shook them three times.

Jamie's paper covered Cavanaugh's rock.

"I don't want you to do this," Cavanaugh said.

"I don't want to, either. But I'm part of the team, and I'm going to risk my life the same as everybody else."

"Yeah, you're tough," Eddie said.

Cavanaugh had never understood the expression "heart in my throat" until now.

"Do it slowly," he said. "Keep looking for wires."

The speed of his pulse made him sick as he and Eddie crouched behind the farthest car. He opened his mouth and pressed his hands over his ears to minimize the impact of an explosion. But even with his ears muffled, he was sure he heard Jamie open the doors.

A few instants lasted forever.

Then Jamie was standing in front of him, looking terrified but proud.

"Okay," he said, exhaling. "My turn. I'll check inside."

As Jamie and Eddie crouched behind the far vehicle, Cavanaugh aimed his small flashlight and cautiously leaned into the car, peering up under the dashboard. He checked under the seats.

Nothing looked suspicious.

As Jamie and Eddie rejoined him, he reached into his jacket pocket and came out with something else from the bug-out bag: a zip tie.

Without needing to be told what came next, Eddie unlocked the Taurus's trunk but kept his hands on the lid so that it opened only a crack. While Jamie aimed her flashlight, Cavanaugh inserted the zip tie into the crack between the lid and the car's chassis and drew it from one side to the other.

What he felt for was a taut wire. All an enemy needed to do was pick the trunk's lock, put a bomb inside, attach a wire to the bomb's detonator, close the lid until only the enemy's hand fitted inside, hook the wire to the inside of the lid, and then close the lid.

The twist tie was pliant enough that if it encountered a wire, it would bend without putting pressure on the wire. Sweat trickled down Cavanaugh's face. His hand wanted to shake, but he kept it steady. Five minutes later, he nodded to Eddie, who raised the lid slightly higher, while Cavanaugh and Jamie aimed their flashlights inside.

Finally, the trunk was all the way open. They searched among weapons and an armored vest, and to their relief found nothing that looked like a bomb.

Security specialists were paranoid about being held prisoner in the trunks of their cars. One of the first things an operator did when acquiring a vehicle was to inspect the trunk's interior and rig its latch so that it could easily be tripped from the inside. As a further precaution, a weapon and escape tools were hidden behind the trunk's lining, and air holes were drilled, tubes leading from them to the vehicle's interior. Finally, the best agents had a secret stash of something else. Smiling, Eddie now displayed it, peeling off the lining on the right side of the trunk.

Cavanaugh grinned at a plastic bottle of water and a bag filled with energy bars.

"God, I love working with a pro."

They took turns drinking. Water had never tasted so wonderful. Cavanaugh wiped drops from his lips and bit heartily into a caramel-flavored energy bar, all the while staring toward the door that led into the parking garage.

He looked at his watch. Almost five a.m.

"We still need to check the engine and under the car."

Twenty minutes later, every part of the vehicle had been studied.

"Clean," Eddie said.

"But we can't leave the building yet," Jamie said. "The police and the emergency crews would see us and stop us. They'd probably take us somewhere and question us."

Cavanaugh nodded. "We need to assume the assault team's watching the building. They'd follow."

"I'm tough to follow," Eddie said. "Even so, yeah, we'd better stay put and get some rest."

After another round of rock, paper, and scissors, Eddie got the spacious back seat, Jamie the front, and Cavanaugh, who hated enclosed spaces, got the trunk.

It faced a wall. He set the weapons to one side. Then he crawled in, put his handgun beside him, saw a section of rope, threaded it through a rib in the underside of the lid, and lowered the lid until the trunk was open about five inches. He tucked the rope under him so that his weight would keep the lid at the level he wanted. If he needed to, he'd be able to release the rope and raise the lid in a hurry.

Jamie stepped back, pretending she was someone who'd just entered the garage. "It looks natural. With the trunk facing the wall, I can't tell it's partly open."

Eddie was already stretched out in the back seat. With both doors closed, Jamie couldn't see him unless she stood at the side of the car and looked directly in. She turned toward the trunk's lid and peered through the gap. "Sweet dreams, babe." PART FOUR: