The Protector

by David Morrell

  "Or his bowels." Cavanaugh said. "Or he got sick." Cavanaugh moved through the dark bushes, checking. "Prescott!"

  Behind him, he heard Tracy drive the first Jeep up the ramp from the underground garage.

  As the helicopters rumbled nearer, Cavanaugh suddenly realized that he hadn't heard Roberto take off with the chopper. Move, Roberto! he thought. If you don't lift off soon, you won't have a chance of getting ahead of them.

  "Prescott!" Scraping branches, Chad continued to search through the undergrowth as Tracy got out of the Jeep and ran back into the garage.

  Now that his eyes were accustomed to the night, Cavanaugh could see to avoid obstacles in the starlit darkness while he rushed past the bunker's entrance and made his way through evergreen branches, hurrying toward the helicopter pad.

  "Prescott!"

  At once, Cavanaugh saw that the camouflage net hadn't been retracted and the dark dragonfly silhouette of the helicopter still sat on the pad, its motor silent, its blades unmoving. His nostrils contracted from the sharp smell of aviation fuel. The night air was saturated with it.

  Turning to run, he missed seeing a shadowy log and tripped over it, falling. Careful to keep the AR-15's barrel from jamming into the dirt, he rolled, his shoulder and his back absorbing the impact. He used the momentum of his roll to rise to a crouch, but not before he saw that what he'd tripped over wasn't a log.

  Roberto lay motionless, a half-moon providing enough light for Cavanaugh to see Roberto's stark open eyes and the black pool of blood where the rear of his head had been bashed in.

  Simultaneously, the darkness exploded into an eye-searing glare as the aviation fumes ignited. The flames reflected off the fuel pump's hose, which lay on the ground, spewing liquid through the forest. A long wall of fire burst up through the bushes and trees. The force of the heat thrust Cavanaugh backward.

  Before he ran, he saw the blaze envelope the helicopter, the camouflage net vanishing in a crackling flash. The light from the flames was so intense that he saw individual needles on tree branches, the texture of bark on trunks. Sprinting toward the bunker, he heard his footsteps crush dead needles and then a roar as the fire erupted farther through the forest, chasing him.

  "Prescott!"

  Although the power of the fire's roar overwhelmed what Cavanaugh shouted, it wasn't loud enough to obscure the din of the rapidly approaching helicopters. Racing harder, Cavanaugh saw the two Jeeps that Tracy had driven from the underground garage. Holding their AR-15s, she and Chad stood next to the vehicles, staring in surprise at the rapidly spreading flames.

  The next instant, Tracy and Chad disintegrated as something streaked from one of the helicopters and hit the two Jeeps, the detonation spewing chunks of metal and body parts in every direction.

  The shock of what Cavanaugh had seen, in combination with the force of the blast, almost knocked him to the ground. His sanity felt threatened, the enormity of what had happened overwhelming him. But then he saw Duncan race from the bunker, and his conditioning took control. Tightening his grip on his assault rifle, he hurried in a crouch toward where Duncan gaped at the flames spreading quickly through the trees.

  "Prescott's not inside!" Duncan swung to stare at the crater where the Jeeps had been. "Chad and Tracy—"

  "Took that hit!"

  "Son of a bitch!" The outrage on Duncan's face changed to alarm at the sound of something else shrieking from one of the helicopters toward the flames.

  * * *

  10

  Charging along the bunker's entryway, they dove through the open door a moment before a second explosion struck near the bunker. Shrapnel and chunks of burning trees filled the space where they'd been standing.

  Duncan slammed the door shut. "I thought Escobar wanted Prescott alive!" The bunker shook from another explosion. "How can he be sure he won't kill Prescott along with us?"

  "Roberto's dead, too!" Cavanaugh rose to his feet and ran toward the control room.

  "What?" Holding his AR-15, Duncan rushed after him.

  "His skull's bashed in!"

  "What the Christ is going on?"

  They hurried into the control room and faced it's monitors. Although Tracy had left the electronics on, some screens were blank, the fire having destroyed the cameras linked to them. As Cavanaugh studied the remaining active screens, some of those went blank also. But enough cameras remained undamaged for him to see that the fire had spread fast enough to have enclosed a third of the area around the bunker on the side where the landing pad and the helicopter had been.

  One camera showed the three helicopters coming into view in the distance.

  Something stung Cavanaugh's nostrils. "Do you smell smoke?"

  "From the ventilation system." Duncan flicked a switch. "There. It's shut off. The outside air and the smoke can't get in. We've got enough air in here for a couple of days."

  Cavanaugh nodded. "We won't need to stay inside that long. Those choppers'll soon be forced to leave to refuel. They won't come back, not after the fire and the explosions send the state police and emergency crews up here."

  "They can't hope to get away unnoticed. I don't understand why Escobar's acting this desperately."

  "What you said earlier—maybe you were right." Cavanaugh kept staring at the green-tinted images. Some of the outside cameras were having trouble adjusting their night-vision lenses to the fierce brightness of the spreading flames. On a few, all Cavanaugh saw was a glaring green tint. "Maybe this isn't Escobar."

  "Then who else—"

  Haze in the room irritated Cavanaugh's throat. "I thought you sealed the ventilation system."

  "You saw me do it."

  "Then what's causing this smoke?"

  Thicker haze drifted from a ventilation panel in the ceiling.

  "1 smell—"

  "Aviation fuel." Cavanaugh pushed Duncan ahead of him, charging toward the corridor outside the control room. At the same moment, flames burst from the ventilation panel and ripped along the ceiling.

  Cavanaugh felt the heat at his back as he and Duncan reached the corridor.

  In the ceiling, smoke and flames erupted from a second ventilation panel.

  Pressed down by the heat, Duncan coughed. "The fire must have come down the ventilation shaft before I blocked it."

  "No! Look in the control room! The top left monitor!"

  Despite the haze and the fire on the ceiling, they managed to get a half-distinct view of the screens. The one on the top left showed the earth on top of the bunker. The fire hadn't reached the bushes up there, and yet smoke spewed from the ventilation shaft.

  "How the hell did aviation fuel get down the ventilation shaft?" Cavanaugh asked.

  More smoke spread along the ceiling.

  "We can't go out the front way!" Coughing, Duncan pointed into the control room toward the haze-enveloped screens.

  A monitor on the top right showed an image from a camera that was aimed along the inside of the entryway toward what should have been forest. All the screen showed now were flames.

  But the screen next to it showed the back exit, where the trees and bushes remained untouched, the fire not yet having spread that far.

  Stooping, Cavanaugh hurried through the smoke-filled kitchen and living room. He and Duncan reached the front corridor and ran to the right along the wall of doors that ended at the bunker's rear exit.

  Duncan twisted the lever on the dead-bolt lock and pulled the door open. Ready with his assault rifle, Cavanaugh rushed with Duncan along an exterior concrete passageway toward cool air and not-yet-burned trees. But the wind from the approaching fire whipped branches, and the forest's shadows were pierced by the rippling reflection of flames crackling nearer on the right. Suddenly, Duncan slammed backward into Cavanaugh, the two of them falling, the roar of an automatic rifle filling the passageway, muzzle flashes like strobe lights as bullets ricocheted off concrete. Duncan screamed.

  With equal abruptness, the shooting stopped. Amid the smell of cordite, weigh
ed down by Duncan, Cavanaugh groaned from a pain in his left shoulder. From the trees, he heard a scrape of metal that sounded like someone trying to free a shell stuck in an assault rifle's firing chamber. The approaching blaze dispelled shadows. Astonishingly, it revealed Prescott crouched among bushes. Glancing wildly toward the fire, Prescott held an AR-15, presumably Roberto's, and furiously worked to pull back the knob on the side.

  "Duncan," Cavanaugh managed to say.

  No answer.

  The pain in his shoulder intensifying, Cavanaugh squirmed out from under Duncan's weight. He smelled the nauseating coppery odor of blood.

  "Duncan, move!"

  He hoped desperately that Duncan's wounds weren't serious. But then he saw Duncan's mangled face, where at least half a dozen high-powered rounds had made him unrecognizable.

  "Duncan!" Forced to drop his rifle, Cavanaugh dragged his friend back toward the bunker. He struggled to get inside before Prescott freed the jammed cartridge. The closer Cavanaugh got to the doorway behind him, the more heat pressed against his back.

  The scrape of metal ended.

  "No!" With one last desperate effort, Cavanaugh pulled Duncan through the doorway. Another furious volley sent bullets zipping above Cavanaugh's head. They struck the corridor's ceiling and cracked against the concrete above the door. Cavanaugh slammed the door shut just before Prescott corrected the barrel's upward tug, forcing down his aim as Cavanaugh had taught him, sending bullets walloping against the metal door.

  "Duncan." Cavanaugh's left shoulder ached worse. Coughing from the smoke and the heat, he concentrated on Duncan, feeling for a pulse, but it was obvious he would never find one.

  "Duncan!"

  * * *

  11

  Anger fought with grief. Too busy raging to fear for his life, wanting only to hammer Prescott's face until it was as unrecognizable as Duncan's, Cavanaugh scrambled back. After one last look at his friend, he ran in a crouch toward the living room. He couldn't go out the rear door. The passageway was like a shooting gallery, funneling bullets toward the target. As long as Prescott keeps his aim down, I don't have a chance, Cavanaugh thought. The only reason Cavanaugh was alive was that Duncan had been ahead of him and had taken almost the full force of the barrage.

  Racing through the living room, Cavanaugh fought not to choke on the smoke. A round had hit an exposed area at the top of his left shoulder, between the vest's strap and his neck. As he charged bent over through the kitchen, his hand came away smeared with red from where he'd touched the meaty portion between his collarbone and his neck. Blood welled.

  He dropped to his knees and gasped whatever relatively smoke-clear air was near the floor. Stung by the heat from the burning ceiling, he hurried to the munitions room. To leave the bunker, he needed to use the front exit, but as the camera in that passageway had shown, the burning trees and bushes out there blocked his way. The arsenal had a trapdoor that led to a concrete tunnel connected to an exit near the landing pad, but since that was the area where the fire was most intense, Cavanaugh wasn't sure he could use the tunnel as an exit.

  Amid spreading smoke and heat, he shoved away the table on which the Kevlar vests had been piled. He kicked away a carpet, exposed the tunnel's trapdoor, and lifted the handle. Wafts of smoke drifted up, confirming his suspicion that the tunnel wouldn't protect him. If he tried to avoid the flames by climbing down there, the fire would suck out the tunnel's oxygen, asphyxiating him before it cooked him.

  Cavanaugh's shoulder was stiff with greater pain. He felt lightheaded.

  Need to stop bleeding. Need to do it fast. Cavanaugh thought. He lurched toward a shelf that contained several red-colored pouches: Pro Med trauma kits favored by emergency service organizations. Among other things, each kit contained a fist-sized gauze wad called a "blood stopper" because it could soak up as much as a pint of blood. But as the fire worsened, Cavanaugh didn't have time to open a kit, pull out a blood stopper, apply it, and tape it down.

  All he had time for was the tape. Not surgical tape. Instead, he grabbed a roll of silver-colored tape that was next to the trauma kits and was considered part of the first-aid supplies. Duct tape. The gunfighter's friend. He couldn't count the number to times he'd seen wounds sealed with duct tape. He ripped his collar open and used his right sleeve to wipe blood from the meaty part where his shoulder met his neck. He tore off two sections of tape and pressed them crossways onto the wound. Then he pressed them harder, wincing from the pain but feeling the thick tape's sticky underside grip his skin and adhere to it.

  Staying closer to the floor, Cavanaugh ran from the arsenal and into a farther smoke-filled room—a bathroom—where he climbed into the tub and turned on the shower, dousing his hair and his clothes. He soaked a towel and tied it around his head. Dripping, he scrambled into the kitchen, where he grabbed a fire extinguisher from under the sink. The bunker's lights flickered, then failed as he ran into Duncan's office and grabbed another fire extinguisher from a corner of the room.

  Staggering now, he crossed the living room, which was lit only by flames, and managed to reach the corridor at the bunker's entrance. He set down the fire extinguishers and took a third one from a closet. As with the rear exit, the front door had a knob and a lever for a dead-bolt lock. After freeing the lock, he tested the knob and jerked his fingers back when he felt heat on it. Wavering, he tugged down his jacket sleeve and protected his hand as he again tried the knob, still feeling heat but no longer caring, desperate to escape from the bunker.

  He pulled the door open and stumbled back, aware of the intense heat behind him but unable to resist the backward motion because of what faced him—hell.

  * * *

  12

  The roar of the flames blocking the passageway was matched by the howl of the wind they created. The heat was intense enough to suck the remaining oxygen from the bunker, causing a fierce wind from the interior that stopped Cavanaugh's reflexive backward motion and instead pushed him forward.

  Now!

  As a boy in Oklahoma, Cavanaugh had once seen a fire on an oil rig that his father had worked on. Cavanaugh had never forgotten how high the flames had gushed and how powerful the heat had been. The fire had started at sunset and had raged all night, making the area around the oil rig shimmer like noon in August. It had resisted the full force of five high-pressured water hoses, until finally Cavanaugh's father, dressed in a fire-retardant suit, complete with a head covering, had driven a bulldozer close to the upward-surging blaze. The bulldozer's blade had been raised to try to protect Cavanaugh's father from the heat. A metal pole had extended from the blade, a container of explosives dangling from it, asbestos-covered wires leading back from it. Cavanaugh's father had dumped the explosives near the heart of the gushing flames, had hurriedly backed the bulldozer away, and then had leapt down, taking cover behind the bulldozer as someone else had pushed a plunger that detonated the explosives. The wallop of the blast had nearly knocked Cavanaugh down, even from a distance. The din had made his ears ring for hours, although his hands had been clamped over them. But most impressive of all, most amazing, the explosion had blown out the fire.

  "Because of the vacuum the blast created, because it sucked air away from the blaze," Cavanaugh's father had explained.

  * * *

  13

  Cavanaugh threw the first fire extinguisher into the flames beyond the entryway. Frantic, using all his strength, he hurled the second extinguisher much farther. He had no idea how long it would take the intense heat to rupture the tanks, but he couldn't afford to wait. Not daring to think, feeling heat behind him about to boil his wet clothes, knowing that he'd die if he didn't move, he picked up the third extinguisher and ran toward the inferno.

  The shock wave from the first explosion hit him like a punch. Continuing to run, he hurled the third extinguisher ahead of him. The next explosion stunned him, nearly knocking him down. But he couldn't relent, couldn't hold back. He entered the roaring flames, or what had been roaring flame
s, for the explosions and the retardant they spewed had caused a vacuum in the fire. Then the third extinguisher detonated ahead of him, and he found himself racing, breath held, through an empty corridor in the fire, a wall of flames ten feet on each side of him. He crashed through unburned undergrowth and lost his balance, tumbling down a wooded slope, the motion putting out flames on his jacket and pants while with a mighty whoosh the blaze recom-bined behind him.

  He realized that the throbbing in his legs, arms, and back must have come from rocks he'd rolled over. He didn't care. Pain was life. Pain urged him forward along a deep gully. He'd lost the drenched towel he'd tied over his head. Not that it mattered, for the fire had quickly dried the towel, and the heat on his head was from smoldering hair, which he swatted with his hands and sleeves.

  He fell again, rolling. He came to his feet and staggered onward into darkness. He heard the crackle of the blaze spreading behind him. But he also heard the thunder of the three helicopters moving toward the side of the bunker that hadn't yet been enclosed by the fire.

  Staring up, Cavanaugh saw the flame-reflecting unmarked choppers descend to the treetops, saw ropes drop from each chopper, saw black-clad men with compact submachine guns slung over their shoulders fling themselves from a hatch in each chopper and rappel to the ground—one, two, three, four, five men from each hatch. They slid smoothly, expertly, relentlessly down. They wore helmets with earphones and radio microphones.

  Then they disappeared among the trees, and Cavanaugh stumbled onward along the dark gully, but he'd seen enough to conclude that no drug lord, not even Escobar, would have quick access to that many men who looked that well trained. The only place men got that kind of training was the military, but not just any branch of the military. The men who'd rappelled from those choppers were obviously special-operations personnel, just as he had belonged to special operations.