The naked edge

10

"Who's Carl Duran?" Jamie asked, lying next to Cavanaugh on a motel bed.

"Bad news." Preoccupied, Cavanaugh removed the magazine from his pistol and pulled back the slide, letting Jamie see that the firing chamber was empty. "Clear?"

"Clear."

He pressed the release lever, causing the slide to snap forward. Then, as was the habit of many operators, he practiced raising the pistol and lining up its sights. It was the equivalent of fingering worry beads. "Carl Duran and I went through Delta Force training together."

Jamie was propped against pillows the same as Cavanaugh was. She removed the magazine from her handgun, then pulled back the slide. "Clear?"

"Clear."

She too practiced aiming. The pistol came with a wide-notched rear sight that had a white dot on either side to encourage focusing. The front post had a similar, easy-to-distinguish white dot that made sighting easy.

"Some people have a misguided notion about special-operations personnel," Cavanaugh said. "They think we're beer-swilling bar-brawlers. They don't understand that what our trainers are looking for is discipline and control, and anybody who acts like a thug when he's off-duty doesn't meet those requirements. In fact, the best operators are amazingly well mannered. They've been conditioned to unleash massive amounts of violence. They've also been conditioned to have a mental on-off switch and to turn on that switch only when it's appropriate. When they're not working, it's essential to remain calm."

"And Carl Duran didn't?"

"He almost got kicked off Delta Force."

"What was his problem?"

"Special operators are attracted to the profession because they enjoy the rush of taking risks. You might even say they're addicted to it. They crave the satisfaction of knowing they were in danger and had the strength and determination to survive."

Cavanaugh thought a moment, remembering Carl. "Special operators are also attracted to the profession because they like the reinforcement of belonging to an elite group. There's no place for a grandstander in a special-ops unit. As the old joke goes, there's no 'I' in 'team.' For most special operators, the bond they feel for their group is greater than what they feel for their family. They get a powerful satisfaction from knowing that they and their teammates survived unimaginable dangers, that they're among the most special human beings in the world, and that they can count on each other for support, even if it comes to dying for each other."

"Carl Duran was a grandstander?"

"He wanted to prove he was better than anybody else. For him, everything was a contest-not with himself, which is the way Delta wants it, but with everybody in his unit. He had to be superior. The best operator. The best gunfighter. And he had to make sure everybody knew it. Even when he was a kid, he acted that way."

Jamie quit aiming her pistol and looked at him. "You make it sound like…"

"I went to high school with him in Iowa."

"But you told me you were raised in Oklahoma."

"Until my dad beat my mom and me once too often, and she took me and left him. Eventually, we landed in Iowa City, where she got paralegal training, went to work for an attorney, and married him."

"How is it we need to be running for our lives before you tell me about your past?"

"Why should I talk about what I want to forget?"

"Your stepfather wasn't kind to you, either?"

"He didn't know how to react to a child. He was a better husband than he was a father. Let's put it this way, he disapproved of mistakes, and in his eyes, I made a lot of mistakes. But he didn't raise his voice. He didn't beat me. He didn't beat my mother or the daughter my mom and he had. By comparison with what we'd been through, he was a saint. I was grateful that he gave us a home. Still am. Even so, I did my best to stay out of his way. When it came to sternness, though, nothing could equal Carl's father. That guy was a pusher. In his youth, Carl's father played football for the University of Iowa. In Iowa, few things are as important as college sports. Carl's father had ambitions to be a pro quarterback. Might have done it, too. To hear him tell it, he was a fantastic athlete. But he broke his leg in a game in his junior year. It crippled him, and he never got over the bitterness. So the old man decided that Carl, by God, was going to be the pro quarterback in the family. He pushed Carl, and pushed him, until Carl was so determined to please his father that he needed to prove he was better than anybody else on the West High team. Needed to prove he knew more than the coach. Needed to prove he was smarter and tougher than anybody, and proved it so well that the coach kicked him off the team. So Carl's father beat the hell out of him and sued the school and-"

"What a mess," Jamie said.

"It got worse. Carl's father was a stockbroker. He was also a secret drinker. Finally, he got better at one than the other, and his company fired him. The drinking problem got so bad that the family was forced to sell their house. They moved to an apartment. Then they moved out of state, trying for a new start."

"And was it successful?"

"Eventually, word came back that Carl's father died from liver disease. Carl never went to college. He certainly never had a chance for that pro-football career. But while we went to high school together, he and I were friends."

"I don't understand why you thought about him in connection with what's happening," Jamie said.

"Carl had a thing about knives."