The Naked Edge (21 page)

Bowie shoved his face close to Raoul's, screaming, “Four bad guys ran into this building! They have automatic weapons! They have hostages! No time to negotiate! There's a bomb set to explode in thirty seconds! It'll level the block! Get in there, kill the bad guys, save the hostages, and shut off the bomb! Move!”

With a force that snapped Raoul's teeth together, Bowie pushed him into the building. It was actually a maze of walls without a roof, but Raoul's emotions were so engaged, he imagined it
was
a building. He was vaguely aware of Bowie rushing behind him, but all Raoul paid attention to was the pistol he drew from his holster, a target popping up, a man with a gun, shooting him, crouching, peering around a corner, another target, a man with a gun, an elderly woman next to him, shooting the man, pivoting, another target popping up, a woman holding a baby, Bowie yelling, “She's got a gun in the blanket! Shoot her!,” ignoring the voice, rushing forward, a guy with an assault rifle popping up, shooting him, the fourth guy, where was the fourth guy, where was the bomb, peering around another corner, a kid popping up, a priest popping up, pivoting in search of the fourth guy, realizing the priest had a gun, ducking, turning, shooting him, seeing a metal box on the ground, rushing over, flipping the “off” switch, and suddenly noticing how fast his heart was pounding, how sweat-soaked his clothes were.

Trembling, he looked up from the box, seeing Bowie and a couple of students grin at him.

“Three seconds before the bomb would have blown,” Bowie said. “Every bad guy down. No hostages lost. You spotted the trick with the priest. Very good, Mr. Ramirez.”

“Thanks.” Raoul's voice was unsteady, remembering to add “sir.” The emotional involvement in navigating a shooting house amazed him.

Outside, as more shots and explosions rumbled from the swamp, he watched Bowie approach more students. “Mr. Ferguson, you're next.”

The tall, red-haired twenty-year-old didn't look enthusiastic.

“Let's go, Mr. Ferguson.” Bowie pushed him, beginning the disorientation process. He shook him, cursed, spun him, yelled orders, and shoved him into the shooting house so hard that Ferguson nearly fell.

Raoul and the students who'd passed the exercise followed Bowie.

Ferguson shot the first bad guy and the second, ignored the old woman, shot the third gunman, saw the woman holding the infant, pivoted in search of another target, and heard Bowie yell, “She's got a gun in the blanket!” He fired three times into the target. “You missed!” Bowie yelled. “Shoot her!
Shoot her!
” Ferguson emptied the rest of his magazine into the target. He did a rapid reload, hurried on, ignored the priest, and ran to the metal box, flicking the “off” switch.

Looking up in triumph, he frowned when he didn't receive the approving looks he expected.

“Mr. Ferguson, it appears you're a menace to society,” Bowie said.

“What are you talking about? I shut off the bomb, didn't I?”

“You'd have been dead before you reached it. That guy in the white collar would have dropped you.”

“The priest? Give me a break.”

“He's not a priest.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“The gun in his hand.”

“
What
gun?” Ferguson groaned when he took a closer look.

“Even if you
had
shot him and disabled the bomb, it wouldn't have been any consolation to the woman and baby you killed.”

“That wasn't a baby! The woman had a gun in the blanket!”

“No.”

“But you told me—”

“I made a mistake.”

“You lied to me.”

“I tested you.”

“This is bullshit.”

“No, Mr. Ferguson. It's an exercise in discipline and control, qualities you apparently lack.”

Ferguson seemed about to raise his gun. Bowie drew his knife from his pocket.

Ferguson stared at the knife and took his hand off his pistol. “I didn't come here to get bossed like I was still in the joint.”

“No, you came here for a two-thousand-dollar signing fee and three thousand a month, plus room, board, and training.”

“What good is the cash if I can't spend it anywhere?”

“Would you prefer to leave, Mr. Ferguson?”

“Does it show? All these damned mosquitoes. If I stay any longer, I'll get malaria or some fucking thing.”

Bowie turned from Ferguson and faced Raoul, his tone hard. “Mr. Ramirez.”

Raoul was taken by surprise. “Yes, sir?”

“After your next class, report to my office.”

3

As Raoul crossed the packed earth of the compound's parade ground, he tried not to gaze around in continuing wonder at the sun-drenched encampment. Dense bushes and trees formed the perimeter. To his left were two wooden barracks mounted on stilts. Beyond, students shot at moving vehicles or learned to storm a building. Others practiced hand-to-hand combat, while still others learned how to handle knives. Raoul had no idea where all this was headed, but he knew that he couldn't be happier. Guns, movies, video games. The only thing missing was booze and women. Almost heaven. And he was getting
paid
for it. The weight of the pistol on his waist, the sense that he was doing something important and doing it well—these brought a straightness to his posture, a fullness to his chest.

He heard an instructor shout, “When you catch your enemy from behind and pull back his head, don't try to slit his throat. You might cut your hand. Grab his chin and mouth so he can't scream. Yank his head back. Stab a kidney.
That's
the killing stroke. A kidney. Almost instant renal failure.”

Pausing outside a corrugated-metal shed, Raoul heard the clang of a hammer against metal. He had no idea why Bowie wanted to see him. His elation at having done well in the shooting house was replaced by confusion about the argument between Bowie and Ferguson and what it had to do with
him
.

The hammer's angry clang became rapid and insistent. When Raoul mustered the resolve to knock, the noise abruptly stopped.

“Come in.”

4

According to the Bible, Cain had many descendants, one of whom was the first to forge iron. Carl enjoyed that idea, just as he enjoyed the notion that Hephaestus, the son of Zeus, was also supposed to have been the first to forge metal: the armorer of the gods. It was an interesting parallel, for Hephaestus's skill with a hammer and an anvil had an effect as terrible and long-lasting as Cain's murder of Abel. The Greek god's most ingenious creation was an elaborately engraved metal box that contained every evil and disease. The box was given to the seductress Pandora, and when she opened it, she released war, pestilence, famine, and a host of other darknesses. Only one evil did not escape before Pandora closed the box: cruel, seductive hope.

Carl wore gloves, a canvas apron, and safety glasses. Through their dense lenses, he watched the burning coke in his forge, the thick strip of steel beginning to glow the requisite orange color while he worked the bellows. Heating the metal for exactly the right amount of time and at the necessary temperature, he used tongs to remove it from the forge and set it on his anvil. With his powerful right arm, he wielded a hammer, pounding the steel into submission, flattening, shaping. The forge's heat softened the metal, making it malleable, allowing him to impose his will upon it.

Clang!

Aaron.

Clang!

Aaron.

Bittersweet memories seized him. The rhythmic high-pitched din of the hammer on the anvil sounded to him like ricochets, like screams of pain. He pounded harder, then sensed another sound and turned toward the door, where someone had knocked.

“Come in.”

The door slowly opened. Raoul stepped apprehensively into shadows that were dissipated by the glow of the forge.

“Come closer. I want to show you something,” Carl said.

Raoul did what he was told.

“The knife I'm working on is named after the one the first Jim Bowie carried. You've made the connection? Bowie? The Bowie knife?”

Raoul showed that he'd absorbed one of the lessons Carl had taught him—to admit what he didn't know. “I've never heard of it.”

“It's the most famous knife of all time. Bowie was a land speculator along the Mississippi. A knife fighter. An adventurer. He died with Crockett and Travis at the Alamo. In 1827, he used a knife to kill one man and wound another in what's known as the Sandbar Duel. Nobody's certain what Bowie's knife actually looked like. The one I'm making is based on a design from a movie called
The Iron Mistress
. Alan Ladd played Bowie. But the knife was the true star. It was later used in other movies, Walt Disney's
Davy Crockett
and John Wayne's
The Alamo
. When you see the beauty of the finished product, you won't be able to take your eyes off it. A whole generation of knife makers was inspired to take up the craft because of this knife.”

Carl remembered the first time he'd seen
The Iron Mistress
. The old knife maker had taped it off television and lent the video to Aaron and him. The start of the movie was boring: Alan Ladd in frilly clothes trying to make Virginia Mayo fall in love with him. He and Aaron had hooted at the television. But then Ladd went to a blacksmith and showed him a wooden model of a knife he wanted made. The blacksmith got all excited and said he had a piece of a meteorite that he would melt and add to the metal. The knife would have a bit of heaven, he said, and a bit of hell. In the next scene, the knife was finished. It flew through the air and stuck into a post. It had a long, wide blade, the elegant curving lines of which made Aaron and him shout, “Cool!” The handle was black wood with a brass cap. It had Bowie's name engraved in ivory and set into the handle. It had a silver guard and a brass strip on the back of the blade. The purpose of the brass strip baffled Aaron and him until they asked the old knife maker about it, and he explained that it protected the knife's owner during a fight. Since brass was softer that steel, it snagged an attacker's blade and kept the edge from slipping down the back of the knife and cutting whoever held it.

Aaron and he watched the best parts of the movie again and again. There were all kinds of knife fights, especially one in a dark room during a lightning storm, blades flashing. A bit of heaven and a bit of hell. But then the movie itself went to hell when Alan Ladd felt guilty about all the men he'd killed and threw the Iron Mistress into the Mississippi.

Carl came back from his memory. “Pay attention,” he told Raoul. “The blade has to be carefully cooled.”

Raoul concentrated as Carl used tongs to set the long, wide strip into a metal container of olive oil. That had been one of the old knife maker's jokes—to use olive oil to cool metal and then pour the oil over a salad.

But contrary to the way it was depicted in movies, Carl didn't put the glowing knife in tip first. Rather, he set the knife in lengthwise so that the oil didn't touch the back of the blade. The oil hissed.

After a few moments, Carl lifted the knife slightly so that the oil cooled only the blade's edge. Vapor rose, the smell like a hot, oiled frying pan before a steak was added. After another few moments, Carl removed the knife and set it on the anvil.

“People who don't know anything about forging think the entire knife has to be plunged into the liquid,” Carl explained. “That could destroy the blade, because sudden cooling has only one purpose—to produce hardness in the metal. A blade that's been hardened one hundred percent shatters if you strike it against something. Instead, the cooling needs to be done in stages. Here, at the edge of the blade, I cooled it the longest because I want the edge to be hard enough to retain its sharpness. I cooled the middle of the blade for less time because I want it somewhat pliant as well as hard. And as for the back of the blade, I didn't subject it to
any
sudden cooling because I want it even
more
pliant.”

“Pliant?”

“Capable of bending under stress.”

Carl paused, hoping Raoul would demonstrate his intelligence by asking the appropriate question.

At last, he did. “I can understand why the blade needs to be hard to be sharp, but why does the back need to bend?”

“In order to be certified a master, a knife maker must produce a blade that passes four tests. First, the blade must be sharp enough to cut through a one-inch free-hanging rope with a single stroke. Second, the blade must be hard and sharp enough to chop through a pair of two-by-fours. Third, it must still retain sufficient sharpness to shave hair off the knife maker's arm. Finally, it must be pliant enough to be placed in a vice and bent ninety degrees without snapping. The only way to meet all of these requirements is to cool different parts of the blade for different amounts of time. The hard edge supplies the sharpness. The pliant back supplies the give. Otherwise, the knife snaps.”

Raoul thought about it and nodded.

“Can
you
be like this knife?” Carl asked.

“I'll be anything you want me to be.”

5

The door to the shed banged open. Raoul flew backward through the opening and landed hard on the packed earth. Carl stormed after him and kicked his side, sending him rolling.

At the nearest firing range, students sensed the commotion and turned, seeing Carl kick Raoul again and roll him farther across the parade ground.

“Nobody talks to me like that! Pack your stuff!” Carl shouted.

Raoul came to a crouch, barely avoided another kick, and lurched toward one of the barracks.

Carl stalked toward the students at the firing range.

“Ferguson! You, too! I'm sick of your sloppiness! Get your stuff! I'm driving you and that other asshole out of here!”

“But—”

“Now!” Carl twisted Ferguson's pistol from his hand and shoved him away. “You said you wanted out? You're
out
!”

“Do I keep the clothes you gave me?”

“And the money! That was the deal, wasn't it? I honor
my
word, even if you don't honor
yours
! Move! You and that other prick have five minutes!”