The naked edge

THE RULE OF FIVE MISSIONS
1

Dreaming that he was buried alive, Cavanaugh woke with a start. Having imagined the sound of dirt being shoveled onto his coffin, he knew that further sleep was out of the question.

Instead, he imagined Jackson Hole near dawn, the crisp autumn air, elk in the pasture.

Sounds interrupted. Opening his eyes, Cavanaugh clutched his pistol and listened to a door banging. He heard car engines, footsteps, voices. But there wasn't any sense of urgency. The police and the emergency crews must have finished their investigation, decided that the risk was over, and finally allowed the building to be reopened. As more cars arrived, he pulled the rope down, lowering the trunk's lid almost all the way. In the murky enclosure, he stared at his watch, waiting for his eyes to detect the faintly luminous dial. The hands showed that the time was eight minutes after one.

"Time for lunch, babe." Jamie's voice was close outside the trunk.

"Don't you think about anything except food?"

"And a bathroom," Jamie said. "But restaurants have bathrooms, so we're got everything covered. Incidentally, I'm pretending to unlock the trunk."

Cavanaugh released the rope and let Jamie raise the lid.

Her green eyes studied the enclosure. "Reminds me of the first dormitory room I had at Wellesley. Minus the weapons, of course. Nobody's watching. I'm partially shielding you. Come on out."

Cavanaugh's legs felt stiff as he stepped down to the concrete.

Eddie looked rested, putting a stick of gum in his mouth.

More cars entered the parking garage. Sounds and movement filled it. Men and women wearing business clothes walked toward the elevators. Cavanaugh heard bits of troubled conversation about rumors of what had happened during the night.

"Ready to go?" Eddie no longer wore the janitor's coveralls. Despite his beard stubble, his clean leather jacket and turtleneck made him look the most presentable of the three.

Jamie closed her blazer over the blood spots on her white blouse.

Cavanaugh decided that the coveralls he wore would attract less attention than the damaged clothes underneath. "Let's do it."

They got in the Taurus, Eddie behind the steering wheel, Cavanaugh next to him, Jamie in the back. Despite the care they'd taken to make sure the car didn't have a bomb, Cavanaugh tensed when Eddie turned the ignition key. But the only sound was the car's smooth drone.

Eddie drove up the ramp toward the building's exit, where he showed a GPS badge to a security officer. The crossbar went up. They emerged onto the noise and commotion of 53rd Street.

"It'll be hard to follow us in all this traffic." Eddie drove through noisy Madison Avenue and continued along 53rd.

"Unless they planted a location transmitter so small we didn't spot it when we searched the car."

"Unpleasant thought." Eddie checked his rear-view mirror. "Where to?"

"Get us off the island," Cavanaugh said. He turned on the radio. Billy Joel sang about "A New York State of Mind." Cavanaugh pushed a button that switched the sophisticated radio to an extremely wide FM spectrum, a Global Protective Services modification. "Jamie, why don't you tell us the fascinating story of your life?"

Jamie hesitated only long enough to gather her thoughts before starting her monologue. "It is fascinating. First I was born, and then I learned to crawl, and then I was toilet trained…"

Cavanaugh proceeded FM spectrum on the radio. Most location transmitters used an FM setting, as did many eavesdropping devices-tuned to bandwidths that weren't employed by local radio stations and police/fire-department radios. To discover if that type of beeper or bug had been concealed in the car, Cavanaugh needed only to continue up the FM spectrum and listen for Jamie's voice or the beep of a location transmitter to come through the radio.

"And then I went to junior high, and then I started dating boys, and then I went to high school, and I really started dating boys."

"You can skip that part," Cavanaugh said.

"And then I went to Wellesley, and I dated men."

"You can skip that part, also."

"And then I met you, and my life got weird, and…"

Cavavaugh reached the top end of the FM spectrum without hearing Jamie's voice come from the radio. "Seems like it's safe to talk." He didn't add his next thought, which was that if the attack team had used a radio transmitter that gathered conversations on exotic frequencies and sent them in microbursts, there was no easy way to detect it.

Eddie had his hands at ten o'clock and two o'clock on the steering wheel, his fingers slightly spread as a professional driver was trained to do. "How about the Lincoln Tunnel?"

"Good," Cavanaugh said. "Then head south on Ninety-Five."

"To?"

"Washington."

Eddie passed Fifth and Sixth avenues, then turned south onto Seventh, switching his grip on the steering wheel. The next light remained green. The many lanes of one-way traffic increased speed.

"Why are we going to… Shit."

"What's the matter?" Jamie asked.

"Something…" Eddie took his right hand off the steering wheel and stared at it. "Stung."

"What?"

"Something stung me."

They kept with the rapid traffic.

"A bee?" Cavanaugh glanced around. "A mosquito or something? It's a little late in the year for-"

"No." Eddie's voice was thick. "Steering wheel. Something on the…" Eddie pointed toward the two o'clock position on the steering wheel. "Jesus." His breathing sounded labored.

"Hey." Jamie touched his shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"Don't feel… Cavanaugh, have you got a…" Eddie shivered. "Handkerchief?"

Cavanaugh frowned. "In my jacket." He pulled it out.

"Wrap it." Eddie gasped. "Your hand."

"What?"

"Grab the…" Eddie shivered more violently. "Bottom… steering…"

Suddenly, Eddie's head jerked back. He slumped.