"And was it successful?"
"Eventually, word came back that Carl's father died from liver disease. Carl never went to college. He certainly never had a chance for that pro-football career. But while we went to high school together, he and I were friends."
"I don't understand why you thought about him in connection with what's happening," Jamie said.
"Carl had a thing about knives."
11
Jamie looked at him. "Knives?"
"This was before those two kids shot up that high school in Colorado and suddenly every school had a zero-tolerance policy about bringing anything that might be a weapon onto campus. Carl was obsessed about knives. He carried one in his pocket every day he went to school. Or under his sweater. Or in his knapsack. He showed them to me when nobody was looking. Once, he even hid one under his uniform when he was playing football."
"And this was your friend?"
"It's hard to explain. We lived on the same street." Cavanaugh's memory was painful. "Hafor Drive. He was the first kid I met when my mother and I moved to my stepfather's house. There was a soccer field at the end of the street. Woods. A creek. Carl and I used to play in those woods a lot. He didn't like to go home. Neither did I. The thing about a friendship is, once it's formed, you get used to how your friend behaves. No matter how strange he acts, you think it's normal."
"You mean the knives."
"Folders. Fixed blades. Utility knives. Tactical knives. Fishing knives. Skinning knives. Carl and I had jobs delivering for one of the local morning newspapers, the Gazette. This was before newspapers decided it was safer and cheaper to have adults deliver them by throwing them from cars. My stepfather insisted I put the money I earned in a bank account. But Carl's father-at the time, I thought this was cool-let Carl spend his money however he wanted. I didn't think the knives themselves were cool. The truth is, they made me nervous. But Carl's father was really pleased with the knives, as if they proved Carl was macho enough to have a chance at being a pro-football player. So Carl played with knives, and because he was my friend, I joined him. We had contests to see how fast we could pull them from our pockets and open them. We practiced throwing them. We imagined scenarios in which we saved somebody's life with one. Then Carl discovered in a knife magazine that a top knife maker lived right outside town, on a farm near a place called West Liberty."
"You're talking about a hammer and anvil and forge?" Jamie asked.
"The old-time real deal. One day, Carl showed up at my house to say that he'd phoned this knife maker and convinced the old guy to teach us how to forge blades. He was more excited than I'd ever seen him, so I thought, 'What the hell, I'll go along and see what it's like.' My mom wound up driving us every Sunday afternoon. It turned out that the old knife maker belonged to something called the American Bladesmith Society. He had the rank of 'master,' a big deal when you realize there are only about ninety masters in the world. Making knives was the old man's life. His name was Lance Sawyer. The first time I heard it, I thought that name was hilarious. A knife expert whose name was Lance. He was seventy-five years old. He wore bib overalls. He was stooped and scrawny and bald and had brown tobacco juice on his white beard, but his arms were as muscular and strong as anybody's I've ever seen. For a year and a half, until Carl's father moved the family out of state, Carl and I learned how to stoke a forge, how to use a hammer and an anvil to shape a blade, how to cool the metal and then do the reverse, heat-tempering it. The old man made us use leaf springs from old pickup trucks as our rough material. It was hard, heavy work. My arms used to ache all week. But I must say we turned out some awfully fine-looking knives."
"Did you continue the lessons after Carl moved away?"
"For a while. But it wasn't the same without Carl's enthusiasm, and then the old man died. I wasn't there, but I heard he keeled over in the middle of hammering a blade. Went out happy, doing what he liked." Cavanaugh smiled wistfully to himself. "After that, I went to the University of Iowa. I'm pretty sure my stepfather wanted me to be what he was: an attorney. But I surprised him and my mom by leaving school before my first year ended and joining the military. That hatred-of-bullies thing I told you about. Eventually, I got into Delta Force." Cavanaugh paused. "And not long after, Carl showed up."
Jamie, who'd resumed aiming her pistol, now stopped and looked at him again. "Seems a hell of a coincidence, don't you think?"
"Except it wasn't a coincidence. From bits and pieces of what Carl told me, I eventually realized what happened. As his father's alcoholism got worse and the family's fortunes disintegrated, Carl kept looking back on Iowa City and his friendship with me and the lessons with the old knife maker as the best time of his life. He never went to college as his father planned. He never played football. He never had a chance for the big career his father wanted for him. He used to phone me a lot. The calls always felt as if they came from a ghost. I didn't talk long. Then one day he phoned, and my mother told him I was in the Army. As near as I can figure, he joined the Army shortly afterward. I realize now that he was hoping to get stationed with me and continue the ideal friendship he imagined we had. He kept following my career, taking special-ops training, eventually trying to get into Delta Force as he knew I had. Suddenly one day, there he was at the Fort Bragg Delta compound. I turned from completing a training exercise and saw him grinning at me. That was one of the few times in my life when somebody took me totally by surprise."
"Creepy," Jamie said. "It's like he was stalking you."
"Yeah. And it didn't help that the other Delta operators associated him with me. When he got too competitive, I could sense they wanted me to tell him to cool it. But Carl was in competition with me more than anyone. He wasn't about to let me give him advice. He knew enough to be a team player when it came to our missions. One time, in Iraq, in the first Gulf War, he saved my life. I made up for that by saving his life in Bosnia. The knives, though. He couldn't stop his fixation on the knives. In an effort to buy the team's friendship, he even went to the trouble of making tactical folders for everybody. But then he sabotaged any good will he created. Our team went on a mission to the Philippines to retrieve an American diplomat who'd been kidnapped by terrorists. Carl was supposed to take out an enemy sentry, using a sound-suppressed pistol. Instead, he crawled up to the guy and killed him with a knife. Almost jeopardized the assignment. Later, after we extracted the diplomat, our CO was furious. Carl claimed his pistol malfunctioned. He said his only option was to take out the sentry hand-to-hand. The CO seemed to accept his explanation. But Carl never got sent on another mission, and three months later, he was dismissed from the unit."
"So how did he get hired by Global Protective Services?"
Cavanaugh hesitated. "After Duncan retired from Delta Force and set up his business, Carl came to me, asking if I'd put in a good word. Even if it was sometimes strained, the friendship was there. He'd never done anything against me. To the contrary, he'd kept me from coming home in a body bag. Maybe his pistol had malfunctioned on that extraction assignment. For sure, his courage was never in doubt. Duncan and I talked about it. Duncan tried him on some low-level assignments. No problem. Some mid-level assignments. Again, no problem. Then Carl and I got assigned to protect a teenage female rock star who was getting death threats from a fan. The rock star was dating a sports celebrity, and the fan got jealous."
"I notice you haven't told me her name."
When Cavanaugh mentioned who she was, Jamie nodded. "Yeah, a knockout. The kind that flashes a lot of skin but claims to be a virgin."