The naked edge

10

As the pickup truck worked its way up a slope, Cavanaugh heard the blast from the direction of town. Using only parking lights so that the truck would be difficult to follow, Jamie drove, Mrs. Patterson and William sitting next to her. With no more space in the cabin, Cavanaugh sat in the truck's uncovered back.

He felt the explosion as much as he heard it. In the murky distance, a fireball illuminated the night, showing him that the explosion came from the direction of town.

The truck's back window slid open. "My God, what caused that?" Jamie asked through the opening.

Cavanaugh was reminded of what Garth had said when he'd arrived at the ruin of Cavanaugh's home-looks like a war zone. "This is beginning to feel like Bosnia did."

He sensed Jamie thinking as the truck jounced along a deep rut. "You never told me you were there."

"It's not something anybody who was there wants to remember. One thing you could count on-just when things got quiet, somebody'd start shooting again or blow something up."

The lane got bumpier, sending vibrations that jostled Cavanaugh in the back of the truck. From the direction of town, he heard sirens. A lot of them. Through another break in the trees, he saw that the flames silhouetted the hills close to town.

"How much farther?" William asked, uneasy.

"Five minutes."

The far-away sirens persisted.

"Who's Fairbairn?" William prompted nervously.

Cavanaugh studied the slope they'd been climbing. He didn't see any headlights following them. "Fairbairn invented the basis for some of those lessons you swore you were going to take."

In the back of the truck, he turned to look inside. The faint dashboard lights revealed that the attorney's face was stark with fear.

Maybe it's time for a bedtime story, Cavanaugh thought.

"Fairbairn was a police officer in Shanghai," he said through the open rear window. "In the early nineteen hundreds. When Shanghai was the most dangerous city in the world."

William raised his head and looked at him with interest.

"You're sure you want to hear about this?" Cavanaugh asked.

"For God's sake, would I ask if I didn't?"

"If he doesn't, I do," Mrs. Patterson said.

"One night, while Fairbairn was patrolling a particularly rough district, someone attacked him. He woke up in a hospital and vowed he'd never be caught off-guard again, so when he saw an advertisement for somebody named Professor Okada, 'master of ju-jutsu and bonesetting'-I love the bonesetting part-he decided to take lessons. Eventually, he became an expert in several Oriental martial arts and adapted those systems into a few simple deadly movements that anyone could learn in a couple of hours."

"Hours?" William asked.

"Shanghai's violence gave Fairbairn plenty of chances to test his methods. He created the first SWAT team. He also invented the shooting house: a series of rooms with various obstacles and pop-up targets of bad guys aiming weapons. Sometimes, the pop-ups show a woman carrying an infant or a bad guy holding a hostage. The point is, as you proceed through a maze, anticipating a threat around every corner, you can't start shooting every time there's movement. Instant decisions need to be made. Control has to be maintained. Anybody who's ever gone through a shooting house… Fairbairn called it a mystery house; the British SAS calls it a killing house… knows how tense and draining the experience can be."

In the darkness, the truck leveled off in what seemed to be a meadow.

"And?" William asked.

"In nineteen thirty-nine, at the start of the Second World War, Fairbairn went back to England and joined the War Office. There, he taught what he called 'gutterfighting' to the British commandos. After that, he went to America and taught the OSS, which eventually became the CIA. He and his colleague Eric Sykes invented the Fairbairn-Sykes dagger that the British commandos used. His students went on to teach other students. Those students spread the gospel according to Fairbairn until his close-quarter-combat tactics became pretty much universal in any unit that truly knows what it's doing. Not only are Fairbairn's tactics easy to learn, but they stick with you. In the nineteen nineties, the CIA tested his theories on some behind-the-lines World War Two agents. Those eighty-year-olds hadn't forgotten any of what Fairbairn taught them. The system was so simple and logical, it came back to them automatically and proved that you didn't need to be young and strong to protect yourself."

The truck stopped.

"We made it," Jamie said.

"See?" Cavanaugh told William. "That five minutes didn't take long." Wary, he climbed down from the truck, assessing the murky outline of a cabin. "Jamie, here's the key Garth gave me. While the rest of you get settled inside, I'll check the perimeter."

"Wait," William insisted. "You're just going to stop? What about the specifics of Fairbairn's system?"

"There's work to be done, William."