The Protector

by David Morrell

  Heart pounding furiously, he saw the choppers rise and separate, moving to equidistant points near the fire, making him realize that he was far from being safe, for the hunters who remained in those choppers had to be using thermal sensors to search for anyone trying to escape from the flames.

  He didn't dare run. The moment the sensors detected a human-shaped source of heat, whoever was in charge up there would radio directions to the assault team on the ground. The gunmen would converge on that sector of the forest.

  To save himself, Cavanaugh realized, he had to go back, to put himself as close as he could risk to the edge of the blaze so that his heat pattern would be disguised by the fire's. He turned and stumbled up the gully toward where trees and bushes erupted into flames ahead of him. The noises they made were like small explosions and gave him hope that when the fire extinguishers had detonated, they'd been noticed only as a seemingly natural part of the fire's progress. He felt the scorched air envelop him and tried to take heart from the thought that he was now invisible to the thermal sensors above him.

  But the heat was so fierce that he couldn't possibly survive if he got any closer to it. The fire moved faster, forcing him to retreat with increasing speed as bushes in the gully burst into flames and gave the impression of chasing him. In that calculated, on-the-edge-of-death pattern, Cavanaugh shifted with the fire, moving as it moved. His vision blurred. His skin felt parched. He'd never been so thirsty. But he couldn't think about any of that, for in addition to keeping pace with the fire, he had to concentrate on the edges of the blaze to his right and left, watching for the gunmen. He assumed that they had separated to form a perimeter around the fire, keeping pace with it as he was, except they'd maintain a safe distance while they hunted for anyone the thermal sensors in the choppers failed to notice.

  Pursued by fire as further trees and bushes burst into flames, Cavanaugh reached a more uneven part of the gully. His knees bent. He forced them to straighten. His chest fought to take in the little air available. His knees bent once more, and this time, he lost his balance, toppling, no longer rolling smoothly. In the shadows at the bottom of the gully he banged his side against a boulder, winced, and started to come to his feet, only to tense, making himself motionless as a man holding a submachine gun emerged from trees ahead on Cavanaugh's right, following the edge of the fire.

  A sharp crack of blazing wood made the gunman spin to look behind him. In that instant, Cavanaugh dove to the side of the gully, toward a narrow space between the boulder he had banged against and the gully's dirt slope. He pressed himself down, desperate to merge with the terrain, hoping that the soot blackening his clothes and face would make him appear no more than another boulder or a rotting tree trunk.

  If you're hiding, never look directly at a man who's searching for you, Cavanaugh's instructors had warned. The hunter might notice the glare of your eyes, or else the intensity you radiate might make him sense, rather than see, he's being stared at. Keep your gaze slightly away from him. Study him from the side of your eyes. Use your peripheral vision to keep track of his movements.

  Cavanaugh did that now. Staring toward the opposite side of the gully while concentrating his peripheral vision on the right, he saw the blur of the gunman's silhouette descend into the gully. The gunman paused, as if studying the progress of the fire. Cavanaugh braced himself to shoot if the man showed any interest in the boulder Cavanaugh tried to hide behind. The man paused a moment longer. Too long. Cavanaugh was just about to pull the trigger when the man climbed from the gully, and continued along the edge of the fire.

  The flames got closer. Pressed down by the accumulating heat, Cavanaugh squirmed forward past other boulders, straining to gain some distance from the fire behind him but unable to proceed with any speed lest the gunman glance back into the gully and notice movement. The heat became so intense that, as Cavanaugh breathed through his mouth, trying to get as much air as he could, his tongue and throat felt burned.

  Above him, the three helicopters remained spread out like the points of a triangle, continuing to search for the human-shaped thermal pattern of any fleeing survivor. Feeling heat on the soles of his shoes, nearly overcome by the close flames behind him, Cavanaugh squirmed faster through the boulders. He was too low to be able to see if other gunmen approached the gully. All he could do was try to solve one problem at a time, and at the moment, his biggest problem was how not to get burned to death.

  He came under an outcrop of earth, which past storms had formed when flash floods raged along the gully and tore a hollow along its side. Abruptly, dirt trickled onto him from the roof, the earth of which was held together by roots. His muscles compacting, Cavanaugh again stopped moving and imagined a gunman above him, aiming his weapon, scanning the edge of the approaching fire. He worried that the man's weight would collapse the roof, that his hunter would drop on him. More specks of dirt fell as the man shifted his weight. The specks pelted the back of Cavanaugh's head.

  Fighting not to cough from smoke drifting toward him, Cavanaugh prepared to shoot if the man descended into the gully. Then the smoke became so thick that Cavanaugh had to hold his breath. But the man above him had to be holding his breath also, Cavanaugh knew. The smoke would soon force the man to move. The question was, Would the man move before Cavanaugh had to? During the arduous training Cavanaugh had received in Delta Force, he had once held his breath for four minutes in a room filled with tear gas, but that had been years earlier, and no matter how determined he was now, he doubted that he could hold his breath that long. Plus, he didn't know if the man above him wore some kind of mask that filtered the smoke.

  Seeing the flames get nearer, almost overpowered by the heat, Cavanaugh realized that in a very few seconds, if the man didn't move, he was going to have to roll from his hiding place and shoot, then run farther along the gully so he'd be able to breathe.

  And then what? Would other gunmen hear the shots and rush toward this sector? Even if they didn't hear the shots, the man would be expected to use the radio microphone on his helmet to maintain regular contact with the helicopters and the other members of his team. When the man didn't report on schedule, the other hunters would become suspicious and head in Cavanaugh's direction.

  So would the helicopters. As Cavanaugh kept holding his breath, spots beginning to swirl in front of his eyes, it seemed that the helicopters were already heading in his direction, so suddenly loud did they become. They were descending toward the trees.

  The man standing above Cavanaugh said something Cavanaugh couldn't distinguish. The man was evidently speaking to his radio microphone, his tone urgent. The next moment, Cavanaugh heard heavy footsteps pounding the earth, rushing away. More dirt fell. The thunder of the helicopters became even louder.

  Cavanaugh couldn't hold his breath any longer. The spots before his eyes thickening, he bolted from the hollow. Scrambling to escape the dense smoke, he passed one boulder and then another, reaching clear air, and filled his lungs. Despite its warmth, the air was cooler than any he'd drawn in since he'd left the bunker. His vision became focused enough for him to see the orange ripple of flames within the smoke that he'd left. But what he concentrated on, aiming his weapon, were the rims of the gully, toward which he prepared to shoot if any gunmen showed themselves.

  None did. To his right, the close roar of the helicopters made him peer warily over the slope's rim. The fire showed the helicopters a hundred yards away, above the trees. The gunmen seemed to be magically levitating toward hatches in the choppers, although they were actually being drawn up by power-driven cables. It was one of the smoothest extractions Cavanaugh had ever seen. In what felt like no time at all, each of the helicopters raised five men, and even before the hatches were closed, the helicopters pivoted, veering past the fire, heading west toward the denser sections of the mountains. Their thunder receding, they vanished into the darkness. Then the only sound was the roar of the blaze, which Cavanaugh was now free to get as far away from as he could.


  Staggering away, reaching cooler air, he heard explosions that rumbled from the direction of the bunker. Obviously, the fire had detonated the munitions inside. He plodded past more boulders, over fallen tree limbs, through dense bushes and intersecting evergreen boughs. His loss of blood made him so weak that he was tempted to sit and rest, but he had to keep moving, had to muster all his discipline to put more distance between him and the fire. A new sound now intruded. In the distance, he heard a faint, shrill, high-pitched wail that gained volume, coming nearer. An approaching siren. No, he told himself. Several sirens. No doubt the state police and emergency crews. From a narrow paved road that went through the nearest town, eight miles away, they'd be rushing up the barely noticeable tree-flanked dirt lane that led to the bunker, which they didn't know existed but which they'd have no trouble finding now because of the fire.

  The idea of plodding toward those sirens, of reaching the lane and waiting for the headlights of the emergency vehicles, was powerfully tempting. A chance to rest. To get his injuries treated. To gulp water—how thirsty he was, his tongue so dry that it felt swollen. He'd done nothing illegal. He had every reason to go to the police and get help.

  But then he imagined all the questions the police would ask him. They'd keep him in protective custody, which, from Ca-vanaugh's view, meant no protection at all. They'd try to guard him at a hospital and then at police headquarters, or at their own version of a safe site, which wouldn't be safe. They'd probably suspect him of being part of the massacre, and proving his innocence would take more time, causing further delays before he was released, putting him at greater risk. Prescott had wanted him and the rest of the team dead. The son of a bitch. Until Cavanaugh had a chance to clear his mind and get his thoughts straight—Who were the men in the helicopters? Were they military, as he suspected? What did they have to do with Prescott?— the most cautious thing he could do was to make Prescott and the men in the choppers believe that every member of the protection team was dead, including him. Otherwise, if they learned that he was still alive, they might make another attempt, although Cavanaugh had no idea why the hell they wanted the protection team dead. Duncan, Chad, Tracy, Roberto. The litany of lost friends made Cavanaugh want to scream. His head pounded harder from too many questions he couldn't answer. All he knew for sure was that until he understood what was happening, he had to make it seem that he had, in fact, died.

  I'm a corpse, he thought. A walking corpse.

  No, not walking. Staggering. He needed all his discipline and strength to place one foot in front of the other and keep moving. The duct-taped wound in his shoulder kept aching. The skin on his hands, face, and scalp smarted from having been too close to the flames. Nonetheless, he mustered every residue of energy he could, straining to walk straighter and with more control.

  Pretend you're at boot camp, he thought, attempting a joke. Or better—and this wasn't a joke—pretend it's your first day of Delta Force training. As he recalled Delta's isolated compound at Fort Bragg, a powerful flood of nostalgia seized him. Make your instructors proud, he thought, and walked more firmly.

  The sirens approached on Cavanaugh's right. Keeping a distance from them, using them to determine his direction, Cavanaugh continued working through the dark forest. I'm going to need help, he thought. I look like a war atrocity. The instant I show myself, somebody's going to scream and call the police. Who's going to help me?

  He thought of the man who'd initially been part of the extraction team, Eddie, the gum-chewing, pun-making—"These pieces'll soon be in pieces in a sewer"—driver who'd taken the black car away. Wary of a possible location transmitter, he'd intended to abandon it far from the airport. Cavanaugh had worked with him several times. As soon as Eddie learned what had happened, he would drop everything and come to get Cavanaugh as quickly as possible.

  But something about that plan didn't feel right. Suppose Prescott and/or the men in the helicopters had an informant in Protective Services. Suppose they knew that Eddie had been an initial member of the team. To assure themselves that Cavanaugh and everybody else had been killed, they'd maintain surveillance on Eddie. A phone call that summoned Eddie to a town near the destroyed bunker would be an obvious indication that not everyone on the protection team had died.

  Can't take the chance, Cavanaugh thought. Need to be invisible.

  Then who in God's name am I going to ask?

  No matter how he calculated it, he always came back to the same answer: the one person in the world he didn't want to contact and the only one he could.

  * * *

  PART THREE

  Threat Identification

  * * *

  1

  "Warwick Hotel." The male receptionist's voice sounded sleepy.

  "Room five oh four, please." In the darkness, Cavanaugh used his cell phone, keeping his voice low. He was hunkered behind rocks and trees a quarter mile past the lights of the town he'd spent the previous four hours working toward and then passing. He'd waited to get this far before calling, because there was always the risk that the area around the fire was being monitored by a cell-phone scanner (a military version could operate from miles away) in an effort to learn if there'd been any survivors. But near a town, someone using a cell phone, even at this hour, wouldn't seem unusual. Moreover, by now, emergency personnel would be making numerous cell-phone calls, which meant that a scanner could isolate a particular conversation only if it was calibrated to identify key words, such as dead, attack, Global Protective Services, or Cavanaugh's name. He intended to be as vague as possible.

  "You'll have to speak louder, sir. I can barely hear you."

  "Room five oh four."

  "It's awfully late. Are you absolutely certain you wish to disturb—"

  "My wife's expecting my call."

  The receptionist exhaled wearily. "I'll put you through."

  Pressing the phone against his right ear, Cavanaugh listened to the repeated buzz on the other end.

  "Uh . . . hello?" Jamie's voice was thick with sleep.

  "It's me." Cavanaugh sank lower among the trees. The phone felt cold in his hand.

  "Hello? I can't—"

  "It's me." The phrase was their signal that Jamie could trust what he said, that no one was forcing him to make the call. He'd taught her never to use names over the phone. He hoped that she remembered.

  "Same here." That completed the signal. "Why are you? . . . What time is it?"

  That she'd absorbed what he'd taught her made him relax a little. "Late."

  "My God, it's almost four."

  He imagined Jamie brushing back her dark hair and squinting toward the numbers on the digital bedside clock. He wanted to tell her immediately what he needed, but the conversation had to sound normal in case someone was eavesdropping. "Yeah, I know, but you've got an early flight, and I wanted to make sure I reached you before you checked out and left for the airport. I couldn't sleep until we patched up the argument we had."

  "Argument?"

  Cavanaugh imagined her frowning. "Saturday afternoon at the hotel's bar. I'm sorry you got pissed when I decided to go back to work. You're right. We should spend more time together." He imagined her frowning even harder. "Remember you said you had more money than I did and you wanted to take care of me? How'd you like to spend some of that money and take care of me now?"

  Jamie paused a moment, evidently trying to figure out where the conversation was going. "Love to."

  "Good. This morning, check out of the hotel the same as you'd planned. But instead of flying home alone, why don't you go by car? With me. We'll see some country and enjoy ourselves."

  "Sounds perfect." Jamie continued to hide her confusion. "Where am I going to get the car? Rent it?"

  "Go over to the West Side and buy it. We're due for a new one anyhow. I never liked the way the old one handled."

  "Me, neither. It's about time we replaced it. What kind should we get?"

  "A Ford Taurus is nice. Nothing too flashy. How do you fee
l about dark blue or dark green?"

  "My favorite colors." Jamie still sounded husky from having been wakened. It made him wish that he could hold her now.

  "Get the high-end model." That one had a two-hundred-horsepower engine, Cavanaugh knew, fifty more than in the standard models. The extra horses wouldn't win any Grand Prix speed records, unlike the serious racing engines that Global Protective Services put in its Tauruses. But they definitely added pep, and anyway, given the millions of Tauruses on the road, anonymity was now more important to him than massive strength.

  "Since we're going to be traveling for a while, I could use more clothes," he continued. His suitcase had been in the trunk of the Taurus that had exploded at the warehouse. "Slacks, a sport coat, shoes. Jeans, a pullover, a pair of Rockports. You remember my sizes?"

  "How could I forget?"

  "Nothing gaudy."

  "God forbid. Anything else?"

  "Underwear."

  "I love it when you talk sexy."

  "Socks. Toothbrush. Razor. A first-aid kit. You never know what might happen on the road."

  "Can't be too careful."

  "You have no idea," Cavanaugh said. "Bring some sandwiches. And water. Plenty of bottled water."

  The phone was silent for a moment while Jamie tried to understand the significance of that. "It'll take a while."

  "I figured. That's why you'll need an early start."

  "Where should I meet you?"

  "I'm not sure yet. I'll call you at noon."

  "Can't wait to see you."

  "Same here. Sorry I woke you."

  "Hey, you can wake me anytime. It's better if you're next to me, though."

  * * *

  2

  Cavanaugh pressed the button that broke the connection. He switched off the phone to conserve its battery as well as to prevent it from ringing and attracting attention. Then he returned the phone to his windbreaker and glanced warily behind him, listening for the sounds of emergency vehicles at the town he'd passed. The fire was close enough that the state police had begun evacuating the inhabitants. He had barely been able to sneak across the road and into the continuation of the forest without being noticed in the frequent coming and going of headlights. He'd seen trucks arriving, dropping off men with shovels and chain saws, a team that looked ready to use the road as a perimeter from which to try to establish a firebreak. Other, bigger trucks had brought bulldozers.