The naked edge

11

The lock and the hinges disintegrated, presumably from thermite cord. As the front door crashed inward, three men charged in, firing muffled automatic rifles.

In the bedroom, Cavanaugh grabbed Jamie and dove to the floor. Chunks of the wall erupted. He and Jamie drew their pistols, but before they could shoot, the gunmen veered out of sight. Kim astonished him by squirming across and slamming the bedroom door, locking it.

"Stay down, Kim! They'll shoot through the door!"

"It's metal!

With a ringing echo, the bullets struck the door but didn't come through.

The shooters returned their aim to the wall, firing holes in it, their sound-suppressed weapons no louder than sewing machines. Given enough time, they could level a portion of the wall and step through to finish their job. But they didn't have time. They counted on surprise and massive firepower to give them the advantage. Now they had another obstacle to overcome, and despite their muffled weapons, the din of bullets bursting through walls would alarm the neighbors. Cavanaugh prayed that someone would phone the police, that sirens would converge on the building. The shooters would worry about that. They would soon need to run.

The sudden silence in the living room supported his logic. They were leaving.

No. He was wrong. He heard a noise against the hinges and locks on the metal door.

"They're using thermite cord on this door also!"

Cavanaugh fired three times at the wall, not expecting to hit the attackers but wanting to make noise, hoping to panic neighbors into calling 911.

"Let's go!" He hurried toward the bedroom window, shoved it upward, and stared at a fire escape he'd noticed earlier when he'd closed the draperies.

Waving Jamie and Kim through, he squirmed to follow.

A dark, narrow alley was three stories down. A brick wall across from Kim's apartment had prevented the shooters from establishing a sniper's post.

"Faster!" Cavanaugh yelled, hearing Jamie and Kim scramble down ahead of him. The clang of their impact on the next landing was followed by the crash of Kim's bedroom door falling inward.

They realize we've gone, Cavanaugh thought. They used all their time. They need to run before the police arrive.

To assure himself, Cavanaugh spun and peered up, dismayed to see a face and a rifle barrel at the open window. The slots of the fire escape deflected the gunman's bullets, the ricochets loud in the confines of the alley.

"Go, go, go!" he yelled to Jamie and Kim.

He heard Jamie's desperate breathing as she surged down ahead of him. Kim's martial arts training allowed her to vault the railing, dangle from the bottom of the platform, and drop to the next landing. Cavanaugh rushed down next to her, seeing her straighten, an expression of pain tightening her face.

He stared up. The face was gone from the window.

We're two floors below them, he thought. But there might be other gunmen on the street. We don't know what we'll be running into.

He noticed that the windows next to him were dark.

"Look away! Protect your eyes!" he warned Jamie and Kim.

He kicked the window, glass flying.

Jamie reached through, freeing the lock, raising the window.

"Go!" he urged.

He crawled in after her. As glass crunched under his shoes, Kim gripped the inside of the window frame and swung in behind them.

Eyes adjusting to the dark, Cavanaugh hurried from a kitchen into a living room, put his ear against the door, heard footsteps thundering down stairs, unlocked the door, yanked it open, and slammed against a man with a rifle who tried to charge past. The impact knocked the man's breath out. A railing snapped when he struck it. As the man dropped his rifle and almost plummeted into the stairwell, Cavanaugh grabbed him, dragged him back, and gripped him in a restraining hold. Leverage pried Cavanaugh's gun from his hand.

Abruptly, more thundering footsteps made Cavanaugh spin toward where the stairs led upward. A second gunman charged into view. As the man raised his rifle, he lurched back, his eyes going blank, Jamie's bullets-two to the chest, one to the head-dropping him.

At the end of the landing, a door opened, an elderly woman peering out.

"Stay inside!" Cavanaugh shouted, struggling to keep the man in a restraining hold. "Call the police! Where's the third man?" Cavanaugh yelled to Jamie and Kim.

"There!" Kim shouted, pointing downward.

The last of the gunmen aimed from the bottom of the stairs. Cavanaugh lurched back as bullets disintegrated what remained of the railing. At once, a metallic scrape indicated he was reloading. Jamie leaned into the stairwell and fired repeatedly. The man groaned, slumping.

"There might be others! Get into the apartment!" Cavanaugh yelled, continuing to restrain the first gunman. As Jamie and Kim hurried toward the dark kitchen, Cavanaugh forced the man across the shadowy living room.

He winced when the man slammed a thick-soled shoe onto his right foot. Holding him from behind, Cavanaugh applied a strangle grip, feeling him squirm, hearing his labored breathing.

The man tried to reach behind him and grab Cavanaugh's testicles. Cavanaugh strengthened his grip and stomped the man's left foot.

The man grunted, lurched backward, walloped Cavanaugh against a wall, and rammed an elbow into his ribs. As Cavanaugh's grip loosened, the man charged free and suddenly had a knife in his hand. Cavanaugh blocked the exit from the apartment. The man pivoted toward the kitchen, where Jamie aimed her pistol toward him.

"No!" Cavanaugh said. "We need him alive!"

"I don't care!" Jamie told the man, "Take one step toward me, and I'll-"

The man swung toward Cavanaugh, jabbing with his knife. Cavanaugh leapt back and threw a lamp. While the man avoided it, Cavanaugh unclipped his knife from his pocket. By design, the hook on the back of the blade snagged against the edge of the pocket, the motion causing the blade to open as Cavanaugh yanked the knife out.

Kim jabbed the light switch. Cavanaugh saw her doing it, but the man did not. Surprised by the light and by how quickly Cavanaugh had produced his knife, the man thrust again. Cavanaugh parried, slicing the back of the man's hand, and now the crucial element was who acted faster. No staring at one another. No assessing. No calculating a clever move. Most knife fights took less than five seconds. Flick, flick, flick. Now you're bleeding. Now you're dying. Overwhelming primordial power would win. Cavanaugh believed that the term "martial arts" was a self-contradiction. When it came to combat, there was nothing artistic, nothing smooth and graceful about it.

As adrenaline dumped into Cavanaugh's system, his blood vessels expanded. His heart sped. Martial arts students claimed to be able to use Zen techniques to control their pulse during combat. But in Cavanaugh's experience, his adrenaline took charge, and as sure as death followed life, his heartbeat went ballistic. Fine motor skills, which use dexterity and hand/eye coordination to perform precise movements (accurate shooting, for example) disintegrate at 115 heartbeats per minute. Complex motor skills, which help muscle groups perform a series of blunt movements (kicks and punches, for example) disintegrate at 145 heartbeats per minute. But most hand-to-hand combat causes the heart to surge to 200 beats per minute. In that frenzy of adrenaline, the combatant becomes one of two large furious deadly animals charging one another.

Along with burnt gunpowder, the smell of testosterone filled the living room. Musk. A man smell of fierce power. Everything seemed fast and yet terribly slow. Sounds faded. Vision narrowed. All of this happened in an instant as Cavanaugh screamed, flicked his knife back and forth and up and down with a violent speed that the eye couldn't follow, and charged his opponent, using a buzz-saw technique against which his enemy couldn't defend unless he too used his knife as a buzz saw. But it was all happening so fast, so overwhelmingly that the opponent jerked back, screaming-not as Cavanaugh screamed, in massive aggression, but instead in abject terrified surrender. As blood flew from the man's arms and his chest, as the man tripped and fell backward, Cavanaugh was on him, kicking.

"No!" Jamie yelled.

But Cavanaugh couldn't stop kicking.

"You'll kill him!" Jamie shouted. "You said we need him alive!"

Cavanaugh's frenzy snapped, Jamie's urgency reaching him. He stopped. He stood over the unconscious man, breathing frantically. His clothes were soaked with sweat.

He was suddenly aware of sirens.

A voice yelled, "I told you to drop the knife and put your hands up! Lady, drop the gun! Don't make me shoot! Everybody, hands up!"