A Knife Edge

by David Rollins

  It was like a morgue inside, only without that smell. The CO was away on an extended training mission, and just about everyone else was apparently out in San Francisco. The only person in was the duty officer, a captain. I tapped on his door just as a pile of folders stacked high on his desk toppled and splashed onto the floor, sending paper to the four corners of the room.

  “Should I come back in five?” I said. The man's name, Lyne, was stitched to his breast pocket. Lyne had a hare lip and the flustered manner of an overworked man.

  “ Shee-it,” he said, with a Texan accent, surveying the mess. “Goddamn it, I don't know… tell me who you are and then let me decide.”

  “Special Agent Vin Cooper.”

  “Cooper… Cooper…”

  “I'm down from Andrews,” I said, “taking over on the Ruben Wright inquiry.”

  “Cooper… yeah, Cooper. I remember now. Hey, sorry. Woke up slow this morning.”

  Having a natural affinity with underachievers, I took an instant liking to Lyne.

  “Take a seat and watch me clean up this crap, or you could give me a hand. Take your pick.”

  I helped.

  “What do you know about the case?” Agent Lyne asked while we collected paper.

  “I know the dead CCT was working with a bunch of Limeys. I also know somewhere between walking out the back of the C-130 and hitting the ground he came to be separated from his parachute.”

  “Well, there you go. You know more than me, Special Agent.” He pulled a folder caught under the leg of a desk, checked the title on the front, then passed it to me. “That's pretty much everything the previous investigator had—the coroner's report, forensics. No interviews with suspects yet.”

  I skimmed the contents. “Got all this already,” I informed him.

  “Like I said, you know more than me.”

  Lyne divided the single precarious mountain of paperwork on his desk into two smaller, more manageable foothills. “I bet the company that invented the laser printer owns the entire Amazon basin. Look at this shit.” He glared at his desk, hands on his hips. “So, where was I? Um… That's right—I've got accommodation for you on the base. And a vehicle—you'll probably need one. I don't know how long you'll be staying, and probably neither do you, right?”

  “I'm hoping not to get comfortable,” I said.

  “Trust me, you won't. The place I've secured for you ain't exactly the Ritz. The housing for officers and transients is all full, and there's a waiting list a mile long. You're lucky. One became available unexpectedly. I reckon I can hold back the tide for ten days, max.” The captain handed me a key with a tag on it. “Tell anyone I let you jump the line and you're a dead man.”

  I nodded. “Thanks.” I didn't think he'd end up having to evict me. The case involving the death of Master Sergeant Ruben “Wrong Way” Wright was a touchy one involving our allies the British. According to the previous investigator's notes, Wright's final jump had been in the company of a small team of their Special Air Service, the SAS, here to learn our methods and tactics. Nothing unusual in that. The SAS often trained with our people. Reading between the lines of the report, it was likely one of this particular unit of SAS guys—probably a staff sergeant by the name of Chris Butler—was going to see the inside of a U.S. military correctional facility. And that was unusual. I knew from my own experience that visiting forces from other countries were usually on their very best behavior when they were on our turf. From what Arlen told me, I had the impression everyone wanted this case to just go away.

  “So, you know where to go?” the captain asked.

  “Yeah, I was stationed here during the first Afghanistan deployment.”

  “With the OSI?”

  “No, back then I was a special tactics officer in the CCTs.”

  Special tactics officer? “You were one of those lunatics?”

  “I grew out of it,” I said.

  “Woke up one day and realized you were mortal, eh?”

  “Something like that.” In fact, it was exactly like that. The CCTs were part of the Air Force's Special Forces. They parachuted into enemy territory with Navy Seals, Army Rangers, and, occasionally, Special Forces from other countries. Their motto was “First in,” because they always were. It was the CCTs' duty to open airstrips for assault forces or reinforcements, or to lay navigation beacons on hilltops—often in hostile terrain—that would guide the bombers on their final run in on the target. Sometimes CCTs acted as forward air controllers, directing and separating the traffic in the sky, “Boogying on the mic,” as one guy I knew described it. Like all Special Forces, CCTs did the impossible, and thrived on it. I'd been one of them until the CH-47 I was in got blown out of the sky, and I found myself on a hill in Afghanistan with a bunch of guys who either got shot or had their heads removed from their necks by Taliban fighters. A second CH-47 helo was sent in to evacuate the survivor, me, only it was also shot down. Somehow, I survived the crash, but my nervous system wouldn't let me fly again. And my reputation for being a Jonah—a bad-luck charm—was spreading. As I saw it, I had two choices: get discharged or transferred.

  “Take this, anyway.” Lyne handed over a laser-printed sheet showing a small section of the base. The OSI building was circled. “The memory's not always infallible, right?”

  “Thanks,” I said, accepting the map. Lyne had insight. There'd been a little serious drinking done in the intervening period and it was highly possible many of the brain cells charged with remembering the details of this place just plain didn't exist anymore.

  “No, thank you,” he said in exaggerated fashion. “In case you haven't noticed, we're a bit light in the resources department around here. Glad to have you around. The name's Lloyd by the way. You need anything, give me a shout and I'll do my best to ignore it.” He smiled.

  I'd been sent to Florida because the people down here were all in San Francisco, exactly where I'd just been. The Air Force could have kept me there and left these people here, but that would have been too easy. “Got that vehicle handy?”

  “Oh, right. I forgot. Take your pick. At least with everyone gone, transport's something we have plenty of. You can have anything you want, as long as it's dark blue.” There were several sets of keys hanging off hooks on the wall behind a low filing cabinet.

  “I saw you've got a few SUVs out front. I'll take one of them.”

  “ Uh-huh,” he said, unhitching a set of keys and tossing them to me. “The registration's on the tag. Just sign here.” He slapped a form on the desk.

  Outside, the rain was coming down like shotgun pellets. The air smelled of rotting seaweed. It reminded me of Japanese food. I ran for the vehicle as a small knot of airmen hunched over in sodden battle-dress uniforms jogged past, gray water splashing up on each other with every footfall, their full packs doing their best to tip them over backward. Once upon a time I was one of these guys. There was no wistful nostalgia in the memory.

  The base looked and felt like it was on alert. No one walked; everyone seemed in a rush. There was a war on and the business in San Francisco was yet another reminder of it. The place was on a leash fraying with the strain.

  I got in the SUV and followed the map. Finding the accommodation was easy enough. It was in a small block, not unlike my home in D.C., though perhaps more utilitarian. I wasn't sure how a family could be expected to live in it comfortably, unless you happened to be a family of spiders, of which there were several nestled in the corners of the ceiling. I dumped my gear on the bedroom floor and plugged in the laptop, making myself at home. Some thoughtful soul had piled folded sheets and a towel on the bed.

  It was dark inside the house, probably because night was falling outside, though not as heavily as the rain, which was making a roaring sound, the clouds having flicked the switch from downpour to fusillade. Thinking that maybe time had managed to get away from me, I checked the clock on the oven: 5 P.M. I was probably too late, but I rang base information anyway and got a phone number for the investi
gator who I knew from the report was based here at Hurlburt Field. I called. Lucky me, the DI was in.

  * * *

  White lettering on the thin, black plastic plate screwed onto the bare wood-veneer door announced that this was the office of Lieutenant Colonel Clare Selwyn, DI. I knocked and stood in the doorway. The colonel was leaning over something on a bench that ran along one side of her office. She glanced up and frowned. I watched her eyes flick from the Hawaiian shirt to my face. Being out of uniform, I was an unknown quantity, either a temporary interruption or a more long-term pain in the ass.

  “Special Agent Vin Cooper,” I said, narrowing it down to the latter.

  “Come on in,” she said.

  Lieutenant Colonel Selwyn had attended Master Sergeant Ruben Wright after he splashed down. Selwyn was at least thirty-six years of age—had to be, given her rank—though she appeared much younger. Having met quite a few death inspectors over the years and knowing what they did in their regular nine-to-five, her youthfulness was surprising. Death had a way of leaving his imprint on your face, but not on hers. Her eyes were soft, brown, and intelligent, and her dark eyebrows contrasted with hair that was almost white blond. If she let it loose from her ponytail and gave it a flick, I'd be thinking Swedish shampoo commercial. A thick strand of that hair had managed to escape the elastic and hung in front of her face. The colonel tucked it behind an ear with a finger and then spread the photos out on the table. All featured Ruben Wright, and the poses weren't flattering.

  “He looked a lot different the last time I saw him,” I said. For one thing, the guy in these photos didn't have a beer in his hand or a grin on his face. For another, in these he resembled a puddle wearing clothes. One photo showed a close-up of a distinguishing mark, a Superman symbol tattooed on his shoulder. There was a tear in the S where the skin had split. On the other shoulder, Wright had sergeant's chevrons tattooed in khaki. I recalled the day and the place where he'd had both tattoos done. We were in Bangkok, with a bunch of Navy Seals, looking for action. As I remember, we found it. The morning after, Ruben visited a tattoo artist in a back alley. When the job was done, he bought a bottle of whiskey, drank half, and poured the rest of it over his newly acquired artworks. We then went on to find some more action, again successfully, I believe. Bangkok was that kind of town. I've been told it still is.

  “You knew the deceased?” Selwyn asked, standing up straight. She was tall, around five ten.

  “In a different life I was in the CCTs. I served with Sergeant Wright in Afghanistan and other places.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, would you mind taking me through your problems on this thing?” I asked.

  “Sure. This is my problem.” Selwyn slid back a door beneath the bench and pulled out a large, clear plastic evidence bag.

  I recognized the item as a parachute harness and chute bag. The chute appeared to have been removed. I must have made some kind of face because the colonel said, “I've also got the parachute.”

  I nodded.

  “It was one of those ram-air chutes the Special Forces guys use, and there was nothing wrong with it. The problem was with the harness itself.” The colonel dug around through the plastic until she found what she was after. “Take a close look at the thigh strap.”

  “Appears to have been cut,” I said, aware of the problem with the harness, and now also of her perfume.

  “Go to the head of the class.”

  “Had the chute been deployed?”

  “Yeah. We found it a mile from your friend's point of impact.”

  With that thigh strap cut, the considerable unbalanced forces coming into play when the chute popped open would have flicked Wright out the bottom of the harness like a stone from a slingshot. The reserve chute would have also gone with it. Ruben was free-falling with no chute and with possibly around twenty seconds to think about what would happen next. Pinpricks of perspiration erupted on my top lip. The guy had lived my own personal nightmare, and then it had killed him.

  “You OK?” Selwyn asked. “You've gone kinda green.”

  “Bus lag,” I said. “So, one theory is that Sergeant Wright cut the thigh strap himself and then deployed the chute. He would have known exactly what would happen. The chute and harness went one way, he went the other.”

  “Suicide?” said Selwyn with a snort. “Sure. Then I could've signed the autopsy and gone to lunch.”

  “So why didn't you?”

  “Because that's not what happened.”

  “Then what did?”

  “Let's run with the suicide angle a minute. If Wright intended to kill himself, why not just forget to pull the rip cord? Why the hell would he go to all the trouble of cutting himself out of his own harness?”

  I couldn't think of a single reason, except that people who do commit suicide are rarely what you'd call reasonable.

  Selwyn fetched another evidence bag from the cupboard. “He had two of these—one's missing from its scabbard, probably the one that did the cutting. Only, where is it?” In the bag was a distinctive knife, a British Fairbairn-Sykes commando dagger. I remembered it being Ruben Wright's preferred close-in weapon. He'd had this one modified, honed to a razor's edge on both sides. Inscribed along the slender blade were the words “Truth. Justice.”

  “If he did cut his own harness and then dropped the knife, you'd think the dagger's trajectory would have been vertical like his own. You should have found it close to his body,” I said.

  “Yep.”

  Thinking aloud, I continued, “There's no way the knife could have somehow got caught up in the suspension lines, or the wing itself, and come down somewhere between where you found Wright and where you found the chute?”

  She shook her head. “The deceased and the knife would have been on a divergent course to the chute, pretty much the instant it was deployed.”

  “OK, so let's look at the accidental-death angle. I understand this was a night-training jump.”

  “Yep.”

  “What if he became disoriented for some reason when he came out of the plane, found himself tumbling, and the chute didn't come out of the bag clean? What if he needed to cut himself out of the main chute before he could open the reserve, and accidentally sliced through his thigh strap instead?”

  “And maybe leprechauns live in my underwear drawer,” she said.

  Lucky leprechauns. I glanced at Selwyn. She wasn't smiling. OK, so this theory was dumb, every bit as dumb as the suicide angle.

  “You and I both know there's a far more likely scenario that fits the facts,” she said. “I examined the suspension lines and the chute. Everything was in A-one condition. If Wright got in a knife fight with his chute, you'd expect pretty extensive damage to it, right?”

  I nodded. “You would. Did you ascertain whether Wright had his second knife on him when he went up? If you can't find it, is there a chance he left it in his locker?”

  “You know these people… sorry, what did you say your name was?”

  “Special Agent Cooper.” I took a card from a back pocket and placed it on her desk.

  She picked it up and checked it over. “Special Agent, as an ex-CCT yourself, you'd know that guys like this are pro airmen with a capital F for fanatic. They do it right. Having all their gear present and accounted for is a given.”

  I took a stroll around the room. What Selwyn said was generally true, but professionals did get sloppy, even careless. I once knew a guy in 82nd Airborne who'd done over three thousand jumps—spent his whole life stepping out of planes. And then one day he did a demonstration jump with some buddies. The idea was to land on a pontoon moored in San Francisco Bay. For some reason, he decided not to wear a helmet. There was a wind shift. He made the pontoon OK, only he landed a little hard and hit his head on a bollard. This knocked him out cold and he toppled quietly into the bay. His buddies all high-fived each other while he drowned under their noses.

  “Let's say Wright did leave one of his knives behind, and did commit suicid
e,” said Selwyn. “Do you really think he'd have cut through the harness with the knife in your hand there, and then have the presence of mind to replace it in its scabbard?”

  No, I didn't.

  “So, what's the terrain like where Wright came down?” I asked.

  “Open, but scrubby with a few trees. The chute drifted and landed in a stand of slash pines half a mile from where the body was found.”

  A thought occurred to me. “Those knives are balanced for throwing. It would've come down point first, traveling fast. If the ground's soft, it would have come to a stop four feet under.”

  “I know. I personally combed every inch of ground in the vicinity of the deceased for exactly that reason. I found nothing.”

  “And I suppose you also scanned with metal detectors?”

  Selwyn leaned back against the bench, hands in her pockets, lips pursed. “Turns out the area was a former dump. All sorts of old World War Two scrap was bulldozed into the ground thereabouts, much of it metal. The screen on the scanner lit up like stage lights.” She tilted her head, studying me. “So, are we going to get around to discussing the only theory that fits the facts, or what?”

  “You mean the one where the men he jumped with—possibly the leader of the stick—attacked him in midair, used one of Ruben's own knives to cut him out of his harness, and then pulled his rip cord for him?” I said.

  “Yeah,” she answered with a crooked smile. “And here I was thinking I was going to have trouble with you.”

  Wright was the kind of guy who'd embrace death only if he could take maybe a dozen bad guys with him. He wasn't the suicide type. So that left murder. That meant I was looking for a murderer. I was also looking for a drink. The clock on the wall said so, it being almost 2100 hours.

  “You want to join me for a whiskey?” I asked Selwyn. The invitation was purely business, of course.