The Edge

Chapter 2

Sitting in a tacky office in a 1960s-era strip mall in Annandale, Virginia, Emerson Campbell was not a happy man.

He was a retired Army two-star and, like Travis Devine, Ranger tabbed and scrolled, meaning he had graduated from Ranger School and then been accepted into the elite Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment, the Army’s most prestigious and demanding special ops force. His gunmetal-gray, closely cropped hair and weathered, grim features spoke of a lifetime of discipline and heightened professionalism. And, perhaps most tellingly, all the shit he had seen fighting on behalf of his country through a number of wars and also under-the-radar operations the public would never know about.

Devine sat on the other side of the desk and took in the man who, several months before, had recruited him to serve in the Office of Special Projects under the massive bureaucratic dome of Homeland Security.

Special Projects, thought Devine. It sounds like we plan office parties and cotillions.

“It’s a shitshow, Devine. The Italian and Swiss governments have filed official complaints. Two dead guys in a shot-up train toilet between their countries. Not a good optic.”

“It’s a better optic than one dead guy, meaning me. IDs on the corpses?”

Campbell shrugged. “Kazakhstan muscle, no more, no less. They’ve killed at least twenty people. All wired funds upon proof of the kill, no traceable interaction with whoever hired them. No way to dig beyond that, which is the whole point.”

“Glad I denied them the twenty-first. And the woman?”

“There was no woman found there,” said Campbell. “She must have recovered and high-tailed it out of there.”

“CCTV?”

“Working on it, though the Italians and Swiss are not exactly too cooperative right now.”

Devine shook his head. Knew I should have taken her out. But she was unconscious and no threat to me.

He caught Campbell studying him. “I know it was a hard call, Devine. Don’t know what I would have done.”

“Well, I gave you a description. Maybe your people can run her down.”

“Now, let’s focus on your new mission.”

“I don’t get a couple days off?” said Devine, only half-jokingly.

“You can rest when you’re dead.”

“Yeah, that’s what they told me in the Army, too.”

Campbell said, “I emailed you the briefing doc. Pull it up.”

Devine opened the attachment to the email on his phone and gazed at the photo of a lovely woman in her late thirties with smooth, pale skin, blond hair, and deep-set, intelligent eyes that seemed to shimmer with unsettling intensity in the midst of all the fine pixels.

Campbell said, “That’s Jennifer Silkwell. You heard of the Silkwells?”

“No, but I’m sure I’ll learn everything about them before this is over.”

“Curtis Silkwell was the senior U.S. senator from Maine. His great-great-grandfather made several fortunes, shipping, fishing, real estate, agriculture. All of that wealth is now mostly gone. They have the old homestead in Maine, but that’s about it.”

“He was a senator?”

“He resigned during his third term. Alzheimer’s, which has gotten progressively worse. He was treated at Walter Reed before it became clear there was nothing that could be done. He’s currently at a private facility in Virginia awaiting the end.”

“He was treated at Walter Reed because he was a senator?”

“No, because he was a soldier. He retired from the Marines as a one-star before jumping into politics, getting married, and having a family.” Campbell shot Devine a scrutinizing glance. “Full disclosure, Curt is one of my best friends. We fought together in Vietnam. He saved my life twice.”

“Okay.”

“So this is personal for me, Devine.”

“Yes, sir.”

“His wife, Clare, divorced him right after he won his last reelection. Between you and me, I think she could see what was coming and decided to bail. So much for ‘in sickness and in health.’”

“Where is she now?”

“Already remarried to some rich guy in DC who isn’t worthy of polishing Curt’s combat boots.”

“So, the case?” prompted Devine, wanting to push Campbell off the personal edge and back onto the mission-driven one.

“Go to page five of your briefing. Jennifer is the eldest daughter of Curtis and Clare. She worked for CIA, mostly in field operations, though she once served as a liaison to the White House for Central Intelligence. She was a quick climber and incredibly talented, and she will be sorely missed.”

Devine scanned page five. “What happened to her?”

“Someone killed her, four days ago. Up in Maine where she was visiting her old hometown.” The man’s voice cracked before he finished speaking.

Devine lifted his gaze. Campbell’s face was flushed and his bottom lip was trembling.

“I held her in my arms when she was a baby. I was her damn godfather.” He swiped tears away and, composed, he continued. “Curt got started late on his family. He was nearly forty when Jenny was born. Clare was a lot younger. She was still in college when they got married.”

“They have any leads on who might have killed her?”

“None that we know of.”

“And our interest?”

“Jenny Silkwell was a valuable asset of this country. She was privy to many of our most precious national secrets. We need to know if her death was connected to that, and whether anyone was able to gain any information that would jeopardize our interests. Her personal laptop has been found at her home, and her government-issued phone was there as well. But her CIA laptop was not found at her office or her home, and neither was her personal phone. The geolocators on the devices have been switched off. That’s normally the case for people like Jenny, unless she’s in an operational area where orders or logistics require she keep them on. The data is mostly cloud based now, but she might have something on her hard drive or on her phone that is sensitive. And we don’t want anyone using her devices to backdoor into our clouds.”

“So I’m heading to where she was killed in Maine?”

“Yes. Putnam, Maine. But not yet. I want you to talk to Clare first in DC. She may know something helpful. Then you head to Maine. The details of Jenny’s death are contained in your briefing book, pages eight through ten.”

Devine read quickly, but comprehensively, just as the Army had trained him. In combat, time was not on your side. But neither was skipping over something in a briefing that might prove catastrophic later.

“The shooter didn’t police their brass?”

“Right. And, technically, the casing was polymer, not brass.”

Devine looked surprised because he was. “A polymer casing?”

“Yes. It expands and then contracts in the chamber immediately. Brass just expands, as you well know. Less degradation on the equipment, because the polymer insulates the heat from the chamber.”

“And less heat and friction reduces choke rate,” said Devine, referring to the hesitation of the weapon in firing due to those factors.

“The Army’s been slowly moving away from brass. Hell, they’ve been wedded to it since before the Spanish-American War, so it’s about damn time. And the Marines are testing polymer casings for their .50-cal. M2 machine gun. And the Brits are looking at polymer too, for their 5.56 mm rounds.”

“A good thing, too. Brass adds a lot of weight to your gear pack.”

“That’s why they’re making the switch. What with smartphones and handheld computers and more weaponry and optics, the Army carry load is up to about a hundred pounds now for each soldier. Switching from brass to polymer is a cost-effective way of lightening the load. For the Marines, a forty-eight-box pallet of the .50-cal. in polymer weighs nearly seven hundred pounds less than brass. And there’s even the possibility of 3D-printing repair parts in the field because the casings are recyclable.”

As he’d been speaking Devine had continued to read. He looked up. “It was a .300 Norma mag round.”

“Yes,” replied Campbell.

“And the head stamp shows it’s a U.S. military round.”

“Army snipers and special ops guys chamber the Norma in the Barrett MK22 rifle.”

Devine nodded. “They switched from the 6.5 Creedmoor round after I mustered out. But does the Army already use polymer casings for the .300 Norma?”

“No, Devine. There are tests being run at various Army facilities across the country chambering the Norma and other ordnance with a polymer casing, but it has not been officially deployed. You know how that goes. Army needs to shoot a shit ton of it under every conceivable combat environment before it has any chance of getting approved for mass deployment.”

“Who’s the manufacturer?”

“Warwick Arsenal. A small firm out of Georgia.”

“So, the question becomes: How did a still-in-testing .300 Norma polymer round produced by a firm in Georgia end up at a crime scene in Maine?”

Campbell said, “We’ve spoken with the people at Warwick. They have checked and rechecked their inventory and found nothing amiss. But to me that’s meaningless because they’ve shipped hundreds of thousands of these rounds to Army facilities throughout the country, with hundreds of personnel taking part in the testing. There is no way that every single round can be accounted for. Proverbial needle in a haystack.”

“So someone could have pocketed the polymer casing and given it to someone and then it goes through various hands and ends up being used to kill Jenny Silkwell. Was it important she was shot with that particular bullet? Did she have any involvement with its development?”

“None. And I have no idea if the use of that particular bullet is significant or not. That’s your job to find out during your investigation. By the way, the local cops are also working the case. You’ll have to team with them.”

“And why would they team with me?”

Campbell took from his desk drawer what looked like a black leather wallet and slid it across. “Here’s why.”

Devine opened what turned out to be a cred pack, complete with shiny badge, and examined it. He looked up in surprise. “I’m a special investigator with Homeland Security? Seriously?”

“Your cover is rock-solid.”

“Only I’m not a trained investigator.”

Campbell gave Devine a drill sergeant death stare. “Don’t sell yourself short. You carried on investigations in the Middle East in addition to your combat duties. And you did a pretty damn good job of sleuthing back in New York on the Brad Cowl case. And you’ve done stellar work with the other assignments I’ve given you. Now, you are to find out who killed Jenny and why. And determine if any of our national security interests have been compromised. And find her laptop and phone.”

“Well, that sounds simple enough,” said Devine dryly.

“Rise to the challenge, soldier,” retorted Campbell.

“Why don’t the feds have a joint op platoon of agents on this? Central Intelligence goes scorched earth when one of its own goes down. And the FBI, too.”

“CIA has no jurisdiction on American soil. And if we deploy an army of FBI the press will start to pry and word will get out. Then our enemies could see us as weakened and themselves emboldened. Jenny Silkwell might very well have been killed because of something having absolutely nothing to do with her status with CIA. If so, we want to go in stealth and stay that way if the facts on the ground allow. So right now you, Devine, are the ‘army.’”

“And if my ‘rock-solid’ cover gets blown?”

“We never heard of you.”