Cutting Edge

by Ward Larsen

  It was all built for what was in the basement.

  “Really … I got a hit,” the young man repeated. “A primary response on node Bravo 7.”

  She set down her Coke. “No, Chris, you did not get a hit. How could you?”

  He leaned back and invited her to check his screen. She did, and saw the tiny warning flag and data bubble.

  “Has to be a bug in the software,” she said.

  “Could it be a test?” he ventured. “Do you think the general might input something like that to validate the system?” He was referring to the project director, Brigadier General Karl Benefield.

  “Could be,” she said. “That’s pretty much all we’re doing at this point, making sure everything works. You know our status—three months minimum before phase two is active. There won’t be a valid warning like that until phase five goes live, which is years away.”

  “Should I report it?”

  “Normally, I’d say yeah. But the general isn’t even around this week—I hear he’s buried in meetings to address software issues.”

  “So what should I do?”

  With no small degree of irritation, she leaned over and began typing on his keyboard. “There,” she said with finality, “all node interface alerts are disabled. We can bring it up at the next project integration meeting, but for now just forget it.”

  The young man looked at her questioningly, a Can we do that? expression.

  The woman, who had been here for two years, since the project’s very beginning, ignored him and went back to her screen.

  The two technicians had no way of knowing that the warning had also lit on a second computer thirteen miles away, in a much larger five-sided building. The reaction there was very different.

  6

  Over the course of that day, DeBolt said nothing about having seen the folder. Nurse Chandler didn’t ask if he had. The storm arrived in full gale, rain sheeting against the clapboard outer walls in what sounded like thousand-bullet volleys. Patient and caregiver hunkered down in the cottage, and shortly after dusk, as he cleaned up the remains of dinner, she caught him by surprise with, “You should go soon. You’re well enough.”

  He weighed his response carefully, reflecting on what he’d learned last night. “Go where?”

  “That’s up to you. But physically you’re ready—you’re getting stronger every day.” She was sitting at the counter, her nightly opener in hand.

  “And what will you do? Stay here? Do that?”

  She fell encased in a profound silence, and DeBolt let it run. The walls seemed to pull outward with each gust, then bend back in place—as though the house itself were breathing, gasping as it fought the storm. Both were startled by what sounded like a gunshot, then a clatter as something struck the house. Moments later subdued scraping noises kept time with the wind.

  “A big tree branch,” DeBolt said. “I should go outside and pull it away from the wall.”

  She didn’t argue, which he took as agreement. DeBolt went to the door, ignoring an oversized slicker on the coatrack. As he reached for the handle, she said, “The surgery you had, Trey … it wasn’t only to make you well. It was to make you different.”

  He paused where he was, staring at the door handle and waiting for more. Nothing came. He heard the empty glass hit the counter and the bottle slide. Heard the tree limb clawing at a windowpane. DeBolt went outside.

  The wind hit him like a wall, and he leaned forward to make headway. Rain slapped his face and pelted his body. He found it at the southeast corner, a pine branch with a base as thick as his leg leaning against the cabin’s outer wall. He looked at the roof and a nearby window, saw no obvious damage, and began dragging the limb clear. DeBolt struggled mightily, the weight of the branch and the incessant wind conspiring against him. Feeling a stab of pain in his injured shoulder, he adjusted to a different grip until he had the limb far enough away. Out of breath from the exertion, he leaned against a tree and stared out at the sea. The night was black, no moon visible through the thick cloud cover, yet there was just enough ambient light to see whitecaps troweling the surface all the way to the horizon. Closer to shore he saw rows of massive breakers, and he watched them rise to height, poise in anticipation, and smash onto the beach, each stroke rearranging the shore in a maelstrom of sand and foam.

  DeBolt stood mesmerized. He’d been outside no more than five minutes, yet he was soaked to the core, his shirt sodden, hair matted to his head. He shouldered into the wind and walked toward the shoreline, drawn by some primal urge to witness nature’s fury up close. He was more familiar than most with the compulsion—that irrational human urge to test oneself, to step close to the edge and look fate in the eye. How many times had he seen it in Alaska? Fishermen and sailors who crossed the boundary of common sense, trying to lay one last longline or arrive home a day early. A few got lucky and beat the odds. The rest ended in one of three groups: those who were rescued, those whose bodies were recovered, and the rest who were never seen again.

  His bare feet reached the surf, and the Atlantic swept in cold, gripping him up to his calves and then releasing in cycles. DeBolt looked up and down the beach, and in the faint light he saw nothing but the storm doing its work. Then suddenly, in his periphery, something else registered. Movement shoreward, near the cottage.

  It was another talent DeBolt had acquired in the course of so many search and rescue missions—the ability to separate the natural from the man-made. For thousands of hours his eyes had swept over open ocean searching for life rafts and boats, desolate shorelines for telltale wreckage. Objects made by man were more angular and symmetric than those occurring in nature. They moved against flows, with irregular motion, and created by-products of smoke and light. And that was what he saw at that moment—the smallest of lights, green and diffuse, moving counter to the wind near the cabin.

  In a spill of illumination from the window he saw a dark figure rush onto the porch, followed by two more. Then a strobe of lightning captured everything momentarily, a frozen image DeBolt could barely comprehend: five men now, all wearing battle gear and carrying machine pistols, the barrels bulked by silencers. They worked without hesitation.

  Two men battered through the cabin door. Chandler cried out. DeBolt heard shouting, a slammed door, followed by an explosion of crashing glass. He saw Chandler leap from the seaside bedroom window, glass shards bursting all around her. She landed in a heap, then scrambled to her feet and began to run. Within three steps she was cut down, muzzle flashes blinking from the window behind her, a matching clatter of mechanical pops. She dropped, a terrible leaden fall, and went completely still.

  Seconds of silence followed, an agonizing stillness.

  Without realizing it, DeBolt had sunk to one knee in the surf. He stared in horror, willing Chandler to move. Knowing she never would again. There was no time to wonder what was happening, or who they were. Three dark figures burst out of the house, weapons sweeping outward. DeBolt remained frozen, chill water sweeping over his legs. It was hopeless. The man in front, wearing some kind of night-vision gear, looked directly at him.

  DeBolt jumped to his feet and broke into a sprint. Only it wasn’t a sprint at all—the beach gripped him like quicksand, each footstep sucking in, holding him back. He heard a second volley of muffled pops, and the surf around him exploded. He was sixty yards from the cabin, but barely moving. It occurred to him that the men behind him were wearing heavy gear. If he were fit, in prime condition, if he had a hard surface on which to run, he might be able to get away. As it was, wallowing through sodden sand, still recovering from severe injuries—DeBolt knew he didn’t have a chance. He angled higher up the beach, zigzagging as he went, and found more stable footing. He ran for his life.

  The clatter behind him turned nearly constant, rounds striking left and right, chiseling rock and spraying sand. He glanced once over his shoulder and saw Chandler still there, unmoving, the squad of killers giving chase. DeBolt realized he had but one chance�
�the water. Long his adversary, it would have to become his refuge. He nearly turned toward it, but the idea of fighting the waves and the wind seemed overwhelming. Then he remembered—just a bit farther, in the lee of the natural jetty near the tide pools. The rip current.

  He squinted against the rain and darkness, his bare feet flying over sand. He was trying to make out the flat outcropping when something struck his right leg. The pain was searing, but he didn’t slow down. DeBolt heard shouting behind him—they realized he was heading for the sea. Soon the voices were lost, drowned by the thunder of tons of water slamming ashore, enveloping him, stalling his progress. With his last stride he dove headlong into an oncoming monster.

  The cold was paralyzing, but he kept moving, trying to keep his orientation in utter blackness. He had to stay submerged for as long as possible, pull himself seaward, but it felt as though he were tumbling in some massive agitator with no sense of up or down. Waves lifted him high, and then sent him crashing to the bottom. There was no way to tell if the rip even remained—DeBolt knew currents often altered during storm conditions. He rose for a breath of air, but didn’t chance a look back, and the instant he submerged again the sea was torn into a froth by arriving bullets. He dove for the bottom, found it with his hands, and felt that he was moving quickly. In which direction he had no idea.

  DeBolt rose for his second breath on the back side of a wave. On the third, finally, he ventured a look shoreward. In the black night he could make out none of the assailants. He was at least fifty yards offshore now, and he knew they wouldn’t follow him. Swimming in conditions like this bordered on insanity. Yet it seemed to be working. He was escaping … but to where?

  A hundred yards to sea he no longer bothered to stay submerged. The shore was only visible in glimpses on the rise of each wave. He could tell he was being pulled north by the current, away from the cabin, but he was also being dragged out to sea. Sooner or later, he would have to swim clear of the rip and return to shore. Probably sooner. In recent days, even when he was wearing the wet suit, his swims had been getting shorter, the water temperature having dropped markedly. Now, with no protection, no sun for warmth, the beginnings of hypothermia were already evident. Shivering, a racing heartbeat, his muscles becoming sluggish. Soon the most dangerous element would take hold: his decision-making would become impaired. The upside for DeBolt was that he was an expert, not only in the clinical presentations of hypothermia, but knowing from experience the sequence in which his own body would shut down.

  He reached down and felt his right calf. There was definitely damage of some kind, but for now adrenaline overrode the pain. He drifted around a bend and the shoreline was barely visible. The cabin lights disappeared. Had it been five minutes? Ten? Would the attackers organize a search up and down the beach? How far would he have to drift to get clear? Soon, he knew, it wouldn’t matter. The cold would kill him just as surely.

  A rogue breaker caught him in the face, and he sucked down a lungful of the frigid brine. He coughed and spewed, and sensed he was moving faster than ever. Then, in an awful moment, he lost sight of shore. DeBolt spun his head left and right. He pulled himself up in the water, yet saw nothing but black sea and foam. He had no moon or stars for reference, the storm blotting out the sky.

  Safety lay to the west. But which way is west?

  The question looped in his head, again and again.

  Which way is west?

  And then suddenly, incredibly, an answer arrived. It displayed clearly amid the blackness, like some divine vision—a tiny compass rose and arrow. West was on his left shoulder. Could it be true? Or was he hallucinating, his mind playing tricks due to the cold?

  Apparition or not, it was all he had. Without understanding, without caring how or why the answer had come, DeBolt used the last of his energy to pull in that direction. His arms lost any sense of a rhythmic stroke, more clutching at the water than a means of propulsion. Time lost all meaning, and there was only one thing … Stay up, keep moving! The waves began to lift him, and it was all he could do to keep his head above water, keep his lungs charged with buoyant air. Finally, salvation—in a bolt of lightning, he caught a glimpse of the shoreline. It gave him a reference, a thread of hope.

  His feet touched sand and he was elated, then a tremendous breaker threw him into a cartwheel and his head struck the bottom. Tumbling and churning, he fought back to the surface and gasped when he got there, sucking in as much water as air. He glimpsed the shadowed outline of the beach. There was no sign of his attackers, although at this point it hardly mattered—he would go wherever the sea threw him.

  The muscles in his arms burned, and his good leg began to cramp. He tumbled beneath another breaker, and the water became shallow. Under his knees he felt a change in the bottom, not sand or bedrock, but a field of loose stone—the foreshore shelf that existed on every beach. DeBolt half rolled, half crawled the last yards, merciless waves pushing him on like a wayward piece of driftwood. With his knees on the rocks he coughed up seawater, and dragged himself higher up the slope. He only relaxed when his hands found the trunk of the first tree.

  He leaned against it and searched the night. There was no sign of the assault team. Assault team. It was the only name that fit. In that moment, as he lay frozen and spent, a disquieting notion came to DeBolt’s cold-soaked mind—whoever they were, they had not come here tonight with the aim of killing a nurse.

  They had come to kill him.

  7

  That the mountain rises out of the sea into one of the bleakest climates on earth ought to instill caution. That it is called Mount Barometer is all but an omen. Unfortunately, some people never listen.

  Shannon Lund climbed the rise carefully, having left the proper hiking trail a hundred yards back to reach the burnt-orange marker flag. The November ice was ahead of schedule, taking root in the gullies and fusing with last night’s snow, and causing her to slip repeatedly on the steep gravel slope. Farther up the mountain, white predominated. In a few more weeks there would be little else.

  Lund wished she had a good pair of climbing boots. The ones she’d been issued had met their end last March after an unusually punishing Alaskan winter. She had applied for a replacement pair, but probably wouldn’t see them until next spring. That was the thing about being a civilian employee of the Coast Guard, particularly in times of tight budgets—your requests always went to the bottom of the pile, beneath those of active-duty members who did the “real” work.

  She grabbed a thick branch and hauled herself up the last incline, ending at a stone landing of sorts. She decided then and there that the climb would replace her thirty-minute treadmill session tonight. It was a good excuse—at least better than most she came up with. An exhausted Lund plodded the last few steps to reach the scene, a twenty-foot patch of level rock and brown grass, all of it dusted with an inch of fresh powder. Two familiar figures were waiting. Frank Detorie was one of two full-time detectives with the Kodiak police, Matt Doran an EMT with the local fire department. Both were young and fit, seasoned climbers who preferred duty like this to being cooped up in an office. Lund herself might have seen it that way a few years ago.

  “You okay?” Detorie asked.

  Lund was panting as if she’d run a marathon, which she’d done once a long time ago. “Yeah, I’m good.” She was only thirty-one, but had gotten out of shape—far enough that she no longer pretended to be able to keep up. She reached into her parka for a pack of cigarettes, and lit up without offering to share. Both men were lean, outdoorsy types, and presumably not inclined to tobacco.

  “Okay, what do we have?”

  The men led to a stand of brush that shouldered to a sheer granite face where the mountain again went vertical. Nestled tight against the rock wall was the crumpled body of a man. His legs were bent at dreadful angles, and he was wearing a plastic helmet that had split open like an egg. A climbing rope had landed mockingly in loose loops over his torso, like the string of a dropped yo-yo.

/>   Detorie said, “His name is William Simmons. We got a cell call a few hours ago from his climbing partner.” The policeman pointed up the mountain. “They were four, maybe five hundred feet up. Had some gear, but didn’t know how to use it—I could tell right away from the partner’s description of what happened.”

  Doran pointed upward. “I climbed part of the way up. Found his ice ax and a bunch of skid marks.”

  “You sure he’s a Coastie?” Lund asked. This was the reason she’d been called in—she was one of two employees of the Coast Guard Investigative Service, Air Station Kodiak detachment.

  Detorie handed over the mort’s wallet. Lund flipped it open to find his military ID front and center. Petty Officer Third Class William Simmons. She tried to correlate the picture on the ID to the face inside the crushed helmet. It wasn’t pretty, but probably a match.

  “Where’s the other guy?”

  “He was Coast Guard too, pretty broken up,” said Doran. “Simmons had climbed up higher, but the guy didn’t want to go along—said it looked too dangerous.”

  “Best call of the day.”

  “My partner took him down to the station. We told him he’d have to talk to you later. It all looks pretty straightforward, but we’re taking plenty of pictures.”

  “The ax and the marks?”

  “Done.”

  “The spot where it all went wrong?”

  “I haven’t been that high yet,” said Detorie, “but I might get there today … assuming the weather holds.” They all looked up at a darkening sky.

  “Has anybody informed his commander?”

  “I figured that’d be up to you.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Lund turned and looked out over the city. It had been a murky day, even by the dubious standards of November in the Aleutians, and late afternoon was gripping the landscape hard as gunmetal clouds rolled in from the sea. Dusk would go on for hours, drowsy and restless in equal parts—a land suffering from insomnia. Having been raised in the Arizona desert, Lund was accustomed to extremes, and so she embraced Kodiak in spite of its severity. Or perhaps because of it. Seven years ago, mired in a sinking relationship with a naval officer in San Diego, she’d jumped at a temporary posting to Kodiak to cover for another CGIS civilian who’d gone on maternity leave. The mother had ended up having three kids, one after the other. Lund was still here.