Cutting Edge

He wobbled a hand in the air.

“I’d categorize it as lukewarm. There’ve been a few candidates, besides you. They were all well intentioned, bless ’em. But being a dog lover or even somebody who’s put in hours at an ordinary animal shelter, isn’t necessarily enough of a qualification. People who haven’t had experience with greys don’t expect the kind of work that’s involved after we rescue them from the track. The dogs are sick, malnourished, and covered with open sores from being cooped up in wooden boxes whenever they’re not racing. They’ve spent their lives in what amounts to a state of sensory deprivation, and it’s easy to lose patience with a seventy- or eighty-pound, five-year-old adult that’s basically a puppy in terms of behavioral development. They aren’t housebroken. They need to be taught how to walk up and down stairs. They’ve never seen windows before and think they can jump right through glass. They’re traumatized, afraid of everything. And with good reason. Maybe sixty percent of them have caught regular beatings from their handlers. I’ve got to figure, though it’s not as if anybody’s going to fess up to it. The dogs come in with gashes, bruises, torn ears, even broken teeth and ribs.”

Julia nodded.

“Jill couldn’t do stairs for six months,” she said. “And Jack must’ve been very badly abused. He’d wake up from a dead sleep and spring onto all fours, screaming, his eyes bulging. The sound of those screams, God, it was so horrible. So human. The first time, I was sure he was in excruciating pain, having some kind of physical seizure. I think it was the middle of the night. My husband… well, my ex… phoned the veterinary clinic’s emergency number, but before we could reach anybody, Jack settled down. From then on, I’d try to soothe him whenever it happened, talk to him the way you’d talk to a person who’s had an awful nightmare. That worked okay after a while. But he still has occasional episodes.”

Howell gave her an assaying look from where he stood against the counter.

“Guess I don’t need to worry about your experience,” he said.

She smiled. “Guess not.”

Howell was silent a moment.

“You want to know the hardest thing about running this show?” he said at length. “For me and Cyn, anyway?”

She nodded again.

“It’s letting go of the dogs once we’ve gotten them healthy,” he said. “We find that handling more than fifteen or twenty stretches us thin, though we’ve boarded as many as thirty at a time. Every grey we save arrives with a whole set of problems and needs lots of attention. Some are here months, even years, before we find a suitable home, and they can grow on you. One-on-one. But you have to be able to keep a certain distance, almost a doctor-patient relationship, and that takes a strong kind of person. You invest too much of yourself in a particular animal, you’re going to have your heart broken more than a little when it’s placed.”

Julia looked at him.

“Or wind up living with the whole cast of Friends,” she said, thinking she’d managed to survive her disastrous seven-year investment in a marriage that had been liquidated when Craig decided to take a sudden hike on her — talk about having to let go and learn to cope with heartbreak.

The room was quiet. Howell leaned against the counter, a thoughtful expression on his face. Julia heard the distinctive throaty woofing of a grey somewhere out back of the building, followed by that of a second dog. Then the overlapping, explosive barks of what sounded like at least three or four more of them.

“Rolling thunder,” Howell said. “They’ve been stuck in their kennels all day, and are letting me know they want to be let out to do their business.” He pushed himself off the counter. “You have time to help with that right now?”

Julia smiled.

“Sure,” she said. “Whatever dirty job you ask of me.”

Howell motioned toward the door.

“C’mon,” he said. “We’ll work out your schedule while we walk.”

THREE

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA MADRID, SPAIN GABON, AFRICA

Wearing protective goggles and earmuffs, the two men stood ready, their knees bent, hands wrapped around the butts of their weapons.

Then they heard the double beeps in their electronic muffs, a cue that their timed session had started.

They sighted down the shooting range’s raceway lanes. Now, or maybe an instant from now, their targets would begin moving at changing speeds and angles in computer-generated, randomized tactical scenarios.

In Nimec’s lane, inconspicuous lights dimmed to simulate crepuscular conditions. It was dawn or twilight, and the big bad wolves were out on the prowl.

Nimec saw a metal practice figure shaped like a male head and torso swing up at a firing point in front of him, snapped the muzzle of his Beretta 92 toward it, and squeezed the trigger. The exposed target turned edgewise on its pneumatic actuator stand, avoiding the first 9-mm round. Then it began to duck down. But Nimec’s second shot tagged its flank before it could reach concealment.

He had no chance to congratulate himself. Another target had emerged from the left side of his raceway lane and charged. Nimec shifted his aim as Metal Man reversed and started to retreat, covering ten feet in about a second. One shot, two, and then the third stopped Metal Man dead in his tracks.

Fast SOB, Nimec thought. He drew a breath, sliced his gaze this way and that. Another target leaned out from against the wall — a shoulder, a head. His gun crashed, good-bye Charlie.

In the next lane of the newly overhauled indoor course, Tom Ricci stared into different lighting conditions. Diffuse, full. It could have been the artificial illumination of an office building, a warehouse. Or—

No, not there, he didn’t want to go there.

Ricci held his FN Five-Seven by its stippled grip, waited, his nose stinging from the nitrate smell of propellent powder. He’d aced a pair of badguys that had sprung into sight back at the end of the lane and expected more of them, knew there’d be more, wanted more.

Ricci kept waiting, concentrating, eyes hard for the kill. He tasted acid at the root of his tongue and liked it.

Then, about forty feet down, here was pop-up badguy number three. Dead center in the lane, cutout gun in hand, got himself some balls, this one. Okay. Okay. Ricci aimed, eager to take him.

And suddenly his mind turned the hated, unwilling loop. Could be it was the preprogrammed lighting. Or maybe that was groping for a reason. Ricci wouldn’t think about it until later. Office building, warehouse… germ factory. Right now he was back. He was there.

Northern Ontario. The Earthglow facility. Deja vu all over and over and over again—

Together they move down the hall. Ricci in the lead, followed by Nichols, Rosander, and Simmons, three members of the Sword rapid deployment team assembled at Ricci’s unrelenting insistence. This is their first mission as a unit, and it is one hell of a nasty biscuit: They have penetrated the heavily guarded facility seeking a cure— or information that might lead to a cure — for the lab-engineered virus with which Roger Gordian has been deliberately infected. Around them are austere gray walls, doors with plain institutional signs. Ricci slows before each sign to read it, then trots forward, seeking the one they need.

The corridor bends to the right, runs straight for twenty feet, hangs another right, then goes straight again for a short hitch and angles left. The men sprint around this last elbow and see a bottleneck elevator. An arrow below its single call button points downward — a sublevel. On the wall next to the button is a glass plate, what Ricci believes to be an electronic eye, hand, or facial geometry scanner. There is a biohazard trefoil above the elevator’s shiny convex door. The sign beneath it reads:

RESTRICTED

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