Cutting Edge

8

DeBolt had never been so cold in his life, a grave statement for an Alaska-based Coast Guard rescue swimmer. The temperature had dropped precipitously, and he was lurching through the forest with leaden legs, ricocheting from tree trunk to rock like a human pinball. He’d seen nothing more of the assailants, but that was hardly a relief given the utter darkness. He doubted he would hear them either, the noise around him like an oncoming train as the forest canopy was whipsawed by gusts and pelted with rain.

He wondered how much ground he’d covered since leaving the beach. A mile? Two? It would have to be enough. In both training and operations, DeBolt had faced some of the harshest conditions on earth with considerable tenacity. Now, for the first time ever, his legs defied his commands. He twice ended on his knees in wet moss and muck. When he got up the second time he nearly ran into the building.

He stood back at first and tried to make sense of the shadow. It looked different from the nurse’s place, larger and more rustic, a Lincoln Log beater. There were no lights inside, no signs of life at all, and by the time he’d staggered around two corners to reach what had to be the front door, he didn’t care if anyone was home. He gripped the door handle with two frozen hands and found it locked. Not having the strength to curse, DeBolt reared back, put his shoulder down, and threw himself at the door, more a guided collapse than a controlled strike. There was a sharp wooden crack as something gave way, and the door swung open. He stumbled inside, bringing the wind with him. It stirred stagnant, mold-infused air. The place was completely dark. DeBolt felt the wall for a light switch, found one, and flicked it up. Nothing happened.

He tried to shut the door, but the frame and latch were ruined, and the wind won another battle, slamming it back decisively against the inside wall. DeBolt ignored it, turned into a pitch-black room, and began feeling his way through the place with outstretched hands. His shin struck a table and he maneuvered around it. A floor lamp went over with a muffled crash, and he ended up on his knees. Then, finally, he found what he wanted — a six-foot length of fabric that could only be a couch. He crawled onto it and stretched to his full length, aching and depleted. There were no more visions. Nothing at all but an inexorable blackness.

The assault team commander, a former Green Beret, called off the search after an hour. The team assembled at the targeted cabin. He immediately assigned a two-man detail to deal with the woman’s body, and sent a third outside to monitor the perimeter. Only then did he turn on the lights in the cottage. The leader set his weapon down, pulled the earbud from his ear, and surveyed the damage. A few overturned pieces of furniture, some holes in the woodwork. It wasn’t bad, definitely containable. But they’d sprayed over a hundred rounds into the beach and surrounding sea. Messy, he thought. Very messy.

The storm outside had peaked, but conditions would be extreme until daybreak. That was in their favor. Maybe the only thing that had gone right all night.

“Dammit!” he said. “I can’t believe he wasn’t inside! Who goes to the beach on a night like this?”

He was venting to his second in command, a crew-cut man with a cinder-block build, who responded, “He made the perfect move to go for the water. It was dumb luck — we know this guy’s not an operator.”

That much was true. They’d never been given their target’s name, which seemed peculiar. But the mission briefing had included the fact that he was a rescue swimmer in the Coast Guard. “We knew he was a swimmer. We should have planned for that contingency.”

“I say the ocean did the job for us.”

The commander stared at his second, weighing it.

“He took at least one hit,” said the crew-cut man, trying to make his case. “We found a trail of blood. Swimmer or not … Michael Phelps couldn’t have survived the riptide and those waves.”

“Maybe not. But carry that idea forward. If he washes up on a beach tomorrow, what happens? It would be a suspicious death, which means an autopsy. The briefing was very specific about the male target — get rid of his body with no traces.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“I don’t know, but it seemed important.”

The crew-cut man cursed like the Army grunt he’d once been.

The commander acquired a faraway look. “Dead or alive, we have to find him. Obviously, there’s no way the five of us can cover the entire shoreline. We’ll have to ask the front office to put out feelers with local law enforcement. If somebody finds him washed up, we go in fast with our provisional federal IDs, claim jurisdiction. Then we get the body out of sight before anybody figures out what’s going on.”

“Okay. And if the guy is half fish and actually survived?”

“Then we track him down.”

“How?” asked the second in command.

“We put ourselves in his shoes. If you made it back to shore, what would you do? Would you go to the authorities?”

The subordinate thought about it. “Not a chance — not based on what we know.”

“Exactly.”

The crew-cut man frowned. “There’s something else we should consider.”

“What’s that?”

“What if someone saw him here, saw the two of them together? Our target might get blamed for the nurse’s death … at the very least he’d be a person of interest.”

The commander’s brow furrowed as he considered it. “True. Every law enforcement agency in the state would start looking for him. We can’t let that happen — far too much attention.” He looked around the room, contemplating how to handle it. “All right, so if he didn’t make it our hands are tied. We recover the body as fast as we can. But on the off chance that he did survive … it might be in our interest to help him avoid the authorities.”

“How?”

“By covering his tracks for him.” He explained what he wanted done.

“Okay. Then what?”

“Then we find him and provide some long overdue closure.”

“If he did survive, and if he could move, where do you think he’d go?”

The commander only looked at his protégé, implying he should answer his own question.

The crew-cut man thought it through, then said, “True. It’s the only place that makes sense.”

The explosion came forty minutes later. Manufactured by an artfully designed gas leak, closed windows, and a precisely governed ignition source, it could be heard miles away. Yet because there was still thunder in the distance, only one neighbor, an elderly woman who lived halfway to the main road, recognized the blast as something unnatural. When her 911 call was logged, at 12:07 A.M., a beleaguered dispatcher explained that due to the severe nor’easter, first responders were at a premium. Unless loss of life or severe injury was impending, or already proven, there was no one available to investigate a report of an explosion in a remote area. Someone would look into it tomorrow, the dispatcher promised. Possibly in the morning. Afternoon was more likely.