military knife,” he explained. “Just habit to bring it along.”
“Sort of like a good friend?”
“Sort of,” he said, but he didn’t want to elaborate. He’d had a specially made CPM S90V blade made. It was super steel, consisting of steel with vanadium and carbon for the best wear resistance. “You use a knife for a lot of things, like chopping into bushes, cutting small limbs, and stuff like that.”
“To hide in?” she wondered.
“Yes, that’s one of many things. When you’re out in the Sandbox, you want a knife blade that stays sharp because you don’t have any way to sharpen it. The company, Crucible Industries, makes the best knife metal for the use that I needed it for. Crucible is legendary for their edge-retention on the blade, and a buddy of mine, another sniper who was retiring, told me to get one. He knew what he was talking about.” He touched the nylon sheath. “This particular type of metal has three times the amount of vanadium and it makes knives corrosion resistant. There were times I had to swim across rivers, or get soaked in a storm, and I wanted a knife that could stand up to those rigors.”
“Because rust will dull a knife blade?”
“Absolutely, it will. Plus weaken the blade itself over time. There’s been instances when I had to cut through a limb as thick as my wrist, and I did it with this knife. It remained sharp after that chopping, and it sure sold me on it. The knife is just plain tough, no matter what I used it on. Once, there was an earthquake and I had to dig my way out of the back of a cave. It took me two days, but that knife was a champ and dug through some tough rocks and gravel in order for me to find another exit.”
Cari stared at the knife and then up at him. “I’m not even going to bother asking you for more stories.”
“Nah, just stick to the go-bag,” he teased, chuckling.
“What else is in there?”
“Well, when out in the field I had identification that wasn’t really me. If I was caught, they couldn’t know my real name, where I was from, or anything else. There was always a small language book in Dari, the language most Afghan tribes knew, in there in case I needed it.”
“Do you speak Dari?”
“Used to, quite a bit,” he said, “but you lose it when you’re not speaking it all the time. I knew enough in case I had to question someone I apprehended.”
“So? No book in Spanish, since we’re going to be close to the border with Mexico?”
Smiling, he said, “No, not on this trip. But there is a very important thing in there.”
“What’s that?”
“Toilet paper. Actually, wet wipes.”
She giggled. “Geeze, Chase!”
“Well, hey, bodily functions and all that. They come and go on a twenty-four-hour cycle. Right?”
She nodded her head.
“I also have a portable cell phone charger in my bag. Where we’re going? It’s desert, low population, the Mexican border is roughly half a mile away from where we drive through Jacumba Hot Springs. That town is on Old Highway 80, where we need to go to get to the raptor place.”
“That’s close. I didn’t realize that.”
“Yes.”
She frowned. “Wait. . . . isn’t it dangerous to be driving in that area with drug smugglers always coming across the border?”
“It can be,” he agreed, “but I checked and Border Patrol works out of that hot springs town, and they know all the routes smugglers take, so I think we’ll be fine.”
“Okay . . . whew. Anything else in these bags?”
“Actually, in mine is a first aid kit, which includes the sewing kit and syringes I spoke about earlier. And the usual stuff like a lighter, matches, cash, socks, flashlight, a space blanket for each of us, and water purification tablets. Are you impressed?”
Laughing, Cari said, “Only at the amount of stuff you can get in this small knapsack. It probably weighs a ton to carry it.” She gave him a humored look, as dawn lightening the clear sky, chasing away some of the stars above them. “Seriously. Were you an Eagle Scout?”
“Yes, I was,” he said proudly. “My father had been one, and I wanted to follow in his footsteps.”
“Hopefully, we won’t have to use these things you started training with so early in your life.”
He grinned. “I don’t think so. It’s just a habit of mine; when I have to drive any distance, I always take a go-bag