Cutting Edge

by Ward Larsen

  The man remained silent.

  But he knew … he had to know. With the gun steady in his right hand, DeBolt swung the club with his left like he was chasing an outside fastball. The man leaned away, but the club connected with his right shoulder. He staggered to one side.

  “What the hell!”

  Something dark and unfamiliar took hold of DeBolt. He brandished the post high and said, “Why … why did you kill her?”

  “It was by the book—a kill order. You’re a confirmed threat!”

  A threat? DeBolt’s thoughts went into free fall. He felt as though he were jumping from a helo into a cloud, unalterably committed but with no idea what was below. “A threat to what?” he managed.

  This time the man didn’t answer.

  “Who do you work for?” he demanded.

  Again no response.

  DeBolt sensed a shuffle of motion from around the corner, near the front desk. The manager? He stepped to his right, trying to see who it was. The instant his eyes shifted, it happened—a foot lashed out, sweeping his legs from under him. DeBolt went down hard and the gun clattered away. The man was closer, and made a dive for it. DeBolt realized he still had the post, and from his knees he brought it down like an ax, catching the man’s arm just before it reached the gun. He screamed in pain, and the gun skittered away across the polished wood floor.

  DeBolt scrambled to his feet.

  The man shouted, “Thunder! Thunder!”

  Words that made no sense. Not until DeBolt noticed the wire looping into his adversary’s ear. Soon he would be facing five men. Still brandishing the post, DeBolt saw his backpack and the gun on the floor. He wanted both, and they were only five steps away. But he would have to get past the man to reach them. With a glance over his shoulder, DeBolt ran toward the back door and disappeared.

  * * *

  The deputy sheriff arrived in less than five minutes. Even with such an admirable response time, there was little to see. A broken rail on the staircase, some blood on the carpet of the second-floor landing. One very distraught innkeeper.

  Karounos said, “They are violent, I tell you. One of them had a gun!”

  “Any shots fired?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But I haven’t checked the rooms.”

  “Where did they all go?” the deputy asked.

  “The one from the second floor, the crazy one—he ran toward the back door. The other two staggered out front together and got into a truck.”

  “Can you describe the vehicle?”

  Demetri Karounos tried. Something white or perhaps gray, he said. A big SUV.

  The deputy frowned and stepped outside, ostensibly to see if any of the perpetrators were loitering in the parking lot. He keyed the microphone mounted on his chest, and began talking to the dispatcher.

  When Karounos came outside a minute later, what he heard was, “I dunno, some kind of altercation. Doesn’t sound too serious. I’ll see if I can get the owner to avoid an official complaint…”

  * * *

  The Tahoe sped south on a secondary road, the Toyota locked in trail. No one had spoken since leaving the Calais town limits.

  The commander was in back, bruised but functional. His second in command was next to him—he’d regained consciousness, but his bloody head lolled against the window and his eyes remained glassy. The man in the front passenger seat turned and looked at the backpack their target had dropped—the commander had snatched it up in the course of a rushed egress.

  The man in front exchanged a look with his commander, then pulled the backpack onto the center console and yanked the zipper open. Everyone gaped at the wads of cash.

  “What the hell?” he exclaimed, rifling through the stacks. “There’s gotta be close to a million bucks here. Where did he get that?”

  Of the four men in the car, three still had their wits about them. The driver spoke for everyone when he said, “I don’t know who this guy is … but I’m done thinking he’s some ordinary Coastie.”

  21

  UBER REQUEST SENT

  INTERSECTION LINCOLN AVENUE/SPRING STREET

  CALAIS, MAINE

  DESTINATION MACHIAS, MAINE

  DeBolt stood away from the curb as he waited for his ride. He’d seen a small-town cab in the distance, and that set the idea of an Uber call into his head. He’d made the request on the fly, thinking it wouldn’t work—Uber only dispatched cars for people with active accounts. He had barely caught his breath when the response came:

  UBER CONFIRMATION

  PRESENT LOCATION TO MACHIAS, MAINE

  FARE ESTIMATE $35 USD

  DRIVER 2 MINUTES AWAY

  So apparently he did have an account. Somewhere, in some name.

  He was hopeful the immediate threat was gone, but all the same DeBolt kept in the shadow of a large maple tree. He’d kept tracking the Tahoe, and minutes ago had actually seen it speed past on Route 1 in the distance, no more than a white flash from where he stood—and precisely where the map in his head said it would be. It was an overwhelming tactical advantage—knowing your enemy’s position in real time. Comforting as that was, he kept out of sight as best he could until a Volkswagen Golf arrived three minutes later. A young woman with purple hair was at the wheel.

  “Going to Machias?” she asked as he got into the backseat.

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  Machias, Maine, was thirty miles south. DeBolt had plucked the town from the map in his head because the most direct route there looked isolated, and because it looked big enough to offer transportation options going forward. He would have preferred Bangor, but that was nearly a hundred miles south. He had no idea if Uber would take him that far, but more critically, it would mean uploading a destination two hours before his arrival. His greatest advantage, DeBolt reasoned, was unpredictability.

  The driver kept to herself, and he was happy to do the same. They followed a narrow road through a tunnel of leafless trees that had probably been stunning a month ago, but now appeared lifeless and gray, their branches shivering under chill autumn gusts. The road was virtually devoid of traffic, and other than an occasional farmhouse he saw few signs of life. He’d made a good choice, in both using Uber and selecting a route. Any sense of victory, however, was dimmed by the uncertainty that lay ahead.

  DeBolt massaged a new bruise on his shin—acquired when his legs had been chopped out from under him. In that same moment he’d dropped the backpack. He felt no remorse about losing the money. He’d never even bothered to count it, and it was dirty in the first place. The cash was no more than a tool, a necessity to keep moving forward.

  Ensuring the driver’s eyes were on the road, he pulled out the wads of bills he’d stuffed into his pockets, and took the time to count a more manageable sum. Fourteen thousand five hundred dollars. He folded the bills, more carefully this time, and put them back, thankful he’d had the foresight to separate a stash. Maybe I do have a talent other than jumping out of helicopters, he thought.

  He sat back and closed his eyes. The window next to him was cracked open and fresh air buffeted in through the gap, an evergreen scent that belied the forest’s lifeless appearance. He was somewhere in a remote bend of eastern Maine, and predictably he’d lost his connection. The Tahoe had long ago dropped from his private radar. DeBolt didn’t want to put too much trust in that anyway—his pursuers would at some point acquire a new vehicle, something he couldn’t track. The road was smooth, the air cool, and with his eyes still closed his thoughts drifted.

  His makeshift meditation lasted ten minutes, at which point, without even a request, a map flashed into view. It startled DeBolt—would he ever get used to this?—and for a time he didn’t understand what he was seeing. The map was full of red dots, the majority concentrated in two clusters. Only when he discerned that one group was centered on Cape Split did he realize what he was looking at: the results of his search last night for a track on Joan Chandler’s phone. Arriving ten hours after his request.
r />   Why the delay? he wondered in frustration. For all his capabilities, he had little understanding of how things worked, how the information was being acquired and fed. But he had what he wanted—a record of the movements of Joan Chandler’s cell phone.

  He had requested two months of data, but the result framed in his vision was clearly labeled as covering the last thirty days. No matter. He had a pictorial display of where she’d been in the weeks before he had ended up at her cottage. Not for the first time, it struck DeBolt that the data he was receiving was eminently user-friendly. Unlike some interfaces, it came presented in a format that was easily deciphered and direct, implying that the system was designed with a certain type of user in mind. A distinctly tactical approach.

  As expected, the largest concentration of hits on Chandler’s phone had occurred near the cabin on Cape Split, with a few scattered nearby—travel for groceries, clothing, undoubtedly a liquor store. A secondhand wetsuit. Of more interest to DeBolt was a second cluster of dots, these twenty-five miles west near a place called Beddington. Oddly, this group appeared to be in a remote district, a place where lakes and forest predominated. With some trial and error he was able to focus on individual hits, and he acquired what appeared to be time and date stamps for a few. Each predated October eighteenth, the day he had awakened in the cottage by the sea.

  There could be no doubt. This second grouping identified the place where she had worked. But was it also where his nightmare had begun? Where his surgery had been performed? It seemed an implausible setting. What kind of clinic was situated in the middle of nowhere? What kind indeed.

  “You okay?”

  DeBolt blinked, the words breaking his spell. The driver was looking at him in the mirror, concern on her face.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  “You looked really worried—seemed a million miles away.”

  “Not quite a million … but yeah, I had a rough night.” For the first time DeBolt recognized what would be an ongoing problem—how distracted he must look when discoursing with the computer in his head.

  “We’re almost to Machias. Where exactly did you want to go?”

  “I’ll let you know when we get there.”

  In the mirror the driver’s expression turned doubtful.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a big place.”

  * * *

  The Gulfstream III business jet was gliding high over the Atlantic, seven hundred miles northeast of the Azores, the water below going dark in the late afternoon light. Benefield had never before warranted a GIII, but the secretary of state had upgraded at the last minute to a Boeing 757 for her trip to Israel, leaving the GIII, with its superior range and speed, empty for a repositioning flight to Europe. The general had not hesitated.

  It was the kind of perk some men relished for prestige, and others for the accoutrements: a bed in the aft compartment, a plush conference area, and a communications suite that was on par with Air Force One. Benefield only cared about speed. He was desperate to shut down his fast-disintegrating operation.

  And there it was. No denying it.

  The META Project was his, a bond as intimate as any marriage. His name was stamped on every concept briefing, every equipment order, every funding request. In the end, he saw but one salvation—the project was so radical, so intrinsically risk-laden, that no one above him had dared attach themselves to its precarious coattails. META wasn’t a black project—it was a black hole project, a place where money went in but no light escaped. Not unless success was stumbled upon. In the arcane world of DARPA, the defense department’s laboratory for speculative technologies, there were many such ventures. A handful even succeeded, some spectacularly. New stealth coatings for aircraft, software algorithms to distinguish Bedouin SUVs from those of terrorists. The majority of the agency’s efforts were expected to end in failure. Some rattled to slow deaths when the scientific premises upon which they were based proved to be flawed, while others flamed out in shocking budgetary fireballs. In Benefield’s view, however, META was different from any other DARPA project ever envisioned—different because it assumed a new level of risk. META wasn’t a gamble on advanced polymers or encryption methods—it directly leveraged human life in order to achieve its miracle.

  “Message, General.”

  Benefield was sitting in a leather swivel chair, and he looked up to see the attendant, an Air Force master sergeant. He was a strongly built black man, with a starched uniform and impeccable deportment. He handed over a printout from the cockpit as if it were some kind of holy scripture. The general unfolded the paper.

  MAINE STILL INCOMPLETE. UNABLE REPOSITION TO VIENNA.

  Benefield sat stunned. He knew how very capable the colonel and his team were. So why couldn’t they finish this one thing?

  “Do we have an ETA?” Benefield asked the sergeant.

  “Three hours and ten minutes remaining to Vienna,” he replied, clearly having anticipated the question.

  “All right. And have you heard if I’ll be allowed to keep the jet for a second day?”

  “I’m sorry, but we did get a ruling on that, sir. The assistant secretary of defense is in Germany, and he needs to go downrange tonight.”

  “Downrange,” Benefield knew, meant somewhere in the Middle East. It also meant he would be flying commercial home. He supposed it didn’t matter. By that time, if all went well, he would no longer be in a hurry.

  * * *

  Machias, Maine, was perfectly predictable. You could buy a brand-name tool at a mom-and-pop hardware store, or a used one at the thrift shop. Within fifty paces you could visit a lawyer, a health insurance office, and the doctor situated anxiously in between. A big fireworks outlet was positioned strategically across town from the fire department. Machias was like any of a hundred other New England towns: small, cozy, and centered around the spire of a Gothic revival church. It would be a simple and unsurprising place. Which was exactly what DeBolt wanted.

  He decided to eat while he worked through his next steps, which put him in a seat at the counter of a diner called The Granary. The chair was a high-backed circular stool with worn upholstery, and it groaned every time he leaned to the right. The man seated next to him was easily in his seventies, gray haired and engrossed in a half-eaten plate of pancakes. DeBolt caught the man’s eye and nodded.

  A waitress dropped a laminated menu in front of him without missing a step. As he began to study it, the man next to him leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “Don’t worry, they got real food here too.” He pointed to the wall and DeBolt saw a chalkboard DAILY SPECIALS menu. It was colorful and cluttered with things he’d heard of but never tasted: tofu, kale, and a wide array of gluten-free options.

  “I recommend the cheeseburger,” his seatmate said with a chuckle, then added, “medium rare.”

  DeBolt gave in and smiled.

  “Now the whole wheat bun, that’s not half bad. And the sea salt on the fries is a step in the right direction.”

  “Thanks for the advice—sounds like just what I need.” DeBolt held out a hand. “My name’s Trey.”

  “Ed Murch.”

  The two shook.

  “You live nearby?” DeBolt asked.

  “Two blocks from here,” Ed replied, dropping his R like the locals did.

  The waitress arrived in a flurry, her pencil poised over a pad. DeBolt said, “Cheeseburger … medium rare.”

  She stared at him for an instant, then fixed an accusing glare on his seatmate. “Ed Murch, you’re at it again.” DeBolt could see a smart-ass reply brewing, but she was gone before Murch could deliver it.

  “Her name’s Florence,” Ed said, “but whatever you do, don’t call her Flo, in spite of what her nametag says.”

  DeBolt realized he hadn’t even looked at her nametag. He also hadn’t checked the menu before arriving, and didn’t know the cook’s name or the owner’s, or if either of them had tax problems. He had ignored an entire parking l
ot full of cars. It felt good.

  “You’re not from around here,” Ed surmised.

  “Colorado originally. I’m only passing through. But I’m guessing you’ve been here a long time.”

  Ed told him all about it, starting with high school and the Vietnam War. DeBolt responded in kind, telling Ed about Colorado and Alaska, although he only admitted to being “in the service,” and didn’t mention what his job entailed. The two didn’t stop talking for nearly an hour, and by the time DeBolt was down to his last cold, sea-salted fry, Murch seemed like an old friend. Murch finished by explaining that his wife had passed a few years back.

  “Sorry to hear that,” said DeBolt.

  “Yeah, it was a damn shame. But you have to keep going, you know what I mean?”

  “I do.”

  Ed settled his bill, and said, “Well, it’s been nice chatting with you, Trey. You can learn a lot about people by just talking.”

  A slight smile creased DeBolt’s face. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  Ed got up from his stool. “I’ve got to go see my sister. She’s a good bit older than I am, and I finally convinced her to give up her driver’s license. I need to sell her car before she changes her mind.”

  “What kind of car?” DeBolt asked.

  “Oh, it ain’t much, a twelve-year-old Buick sedan. Real cream puff, though.”

  “How much you asking?”

  22

  The Buick was a peach, or so said Agnes Murch Reynolds. They settled on four thousand cash, and according to Ed the license plate was good for thirty days. With any luck, DeBolt thought, twenty-eight more than I’ll need.

  He got a handshake from Ed, a hug from Agnes, and after best wishes were exchanged DeBolt set out south along Route 1. He estimated that his journey to the lake district south of Beddington, Joan Chandler’s presumed place of employment, would take roughly an hour. The Buick handled differently from the Cadillac, the suspension stiff and the steering loose, but it was at least his own car, legally if not morally.

  Having not requested information for over an hour, he tried for a map in his head, but the image drifted in and out of view, and he finally gave up. It hardly mattered—he needed only to identify one turn to reach the general area. It felt good to be making headway, to have seized the initiative. For too long he’d been reacting. DeBolt would find the place where Joan Chandler had worked, and confront anyone he saw there. He would ask and plead and demand, in that order, until someone gave him answers. Until someone told him what had been installed in his jury-rigged head.