The naked edge

5

The door to the shed banged open. Raoul flew backward through the opening and landed hard on the packed earth. Carl stormed after him and kicked his side, sending him rolling.

At the nearest firing range, students sensed the commotion and turned, seeing Carl kick Raoul again and roll him farther across the parade ground.

"Nobody talks to me like that! Pack your stuff!" Carl shouted.

Raoul came to a crouch, barely avoided another kick, and lurched toward one of the barracks.

Carl stalked toward the students at the firing range.

"Ferguson! You, too! I'm sick of your sloppiness! Get your stuff! I'm driving you and that other asshole out of here!"

"But-"

"Now!" Carl twisted Ferguson's pistol from his hand and shoved him away. "You said you wanted out? You're out!"

"Do I keep the clothes you gave me?"

"And the money! That was the deal, wasn't it? I honor my word, even if you don't honor yours! Move! You and that other prick have five minutes!"

As Ferguson ran toward the barracks, Carl turned in a fury toward a pickup truck in front of the administration building. He pulled keys from his pocket, started the truck, and made so fast a turn that dirt flew. He sped toward the barracks, made another sharp turn, and skidded to a stop, waiting for Ferguson and Raoul.

Raoul got there first, holding his knapsack.

"Get in the back, damn it!" Carl yelled.

As Raoul climbed into the uncovered cargo space, Ferguson arrived with a duffel bag, breathing heavily.

"Inside!" Carl commanded.

Before Ferguson could shut the door behind him, Carl sped away, tearing up more dirt.

"You're sure you got all your stuff?" Carl demanded. "I want to keep my part of the bargain!"

"Quit trying to make me feel like a piece-of-shit quitter," Ferguson said.

"Isn't that what you are?"

"Who wants to put up with the bugs and the heat and the fucking humidity?"

"Obviously not you."

"And the snakes and the spiders and the damned rain most afternoons, and trying to sleep while those jerk-offs play those stupid video games. Bang, bang, bang. My ears haven't stopped ringing since I came here."

"You knew from the get-go you were being paid to learn about guns."

"I know about guns."

"Yeah, right. I've seen the way you shoot."

"And you didn't tell me I'd have to clean the damned guns after I shot them. And you didn't tell me I'd be humping heavy packs and crawling through swamps and… I might as well have joined the stupid army. Everybody telling me what to do. This is worse than when I was in the joint."

"Not hardly." Carl stared at the scars on his hands.

"And where the hell are we anyhow? How close to the nearest city? I want to get back to Chicago. Hang around with the guys. Find some action. Get laid. Man, that would be different."

"Wanting sex too much is what got you in prison," Carl said. "Maybe you should stick with guns."

"Just answer the question. How close is the nearest city?" Ferguson demanded

"An hour. And it's not a city. It's a town."

"What? Why didn't we fly out of here? That's how you brought me into this mess."

"You're not worth the price of aviation fuel, buddy. You want to know a secret? You were part of a great experiment."

"Living in a swamp? Some experiment."

"About visualization."

"Whatever that means."

"First, I show you how to do something-shoot, use a knife, whatever. Then I make you close your eyes and repeatedly imagine doing what I showed you. I reinforce it by making you watch accurate movies of what I demonstrated, Hollywood stars doing things so smoothly you want to be those stars. Finally, I tell you to do what you imagined in the movie in your mind."

The truck hit a bump. Carl heard it jostle Raoul in back.

"The military discovered that, by using visualization, a four-week course could be reduced to three days," Carl said. "It's a form of self-hypnosis, reinforced by the video games."

"Yeah? Well, I've been here three weeks. How come it didn't work on me?"

"Nobody's perfect. You want to know another secret? A long time ago, this used to be a plantation."

"What's that got to do with anything? Drive faster."

"Then the plantation went bust, and the owners tried to keep the land in the family, and finally a private foundation bought it as a nature preserve."

"Tears, man. You're boring me to-"

"Then the CIA took over the foundation and all this land."