The Protector

by David Morrell

  * * *

  6

  The hot shower cascaded over Cavanaugh, drenching his bowed head and his back. Then he tilted his head up, letting the water pour over his face and chest. He was so unsteady, he had to sit.

  The shower curtain was pulled open. Silhouetted by the light from a makeup mirror outside the shower stall, Jamie lowered the lid on the toilet seat. She sat, put her elbows on her knees, and watched him.

  Although the light out there hurt his eyes, it allowed him to see the blood, dirt, and soot swirling down the drain. As he shampooed his head, bits of singed hair followed them.

  "You've got bruises on your legs and chest," she said.

  During the drive north, he had haltingly told her what had happened. Again, she had made him proud by listening, not interrupting with outbursts, instead swallowing her emotions and asking occasional necessary questions.

  "Must have been when I rolled down the gully," he said. "You could have been an operator, you know that? You learn fast. I don't know where you got them, but you have the right instincts."

  Her solemnity straining her beauty, Jamie said, "The instincts come from hanging around with you." She rolled up her sleeves and soaped his back. "So why did Prescott want your team dead?"

  "And who were the guys in the helicopters? They handled themselves the way military special ops teams do," Cavanaugh said.

  "What about the assault team at the warehouse?"

  "They had hardware, but their tactics were conventional. They weren't as disciplined as the guys in the helicopters. When they stormed the stairs at the warehouse, they hung back, almost as if they were afraid."

  He turned off the shower. As the water dripped from him, neither he nor Jamie moved for a moment.

  "I guess it's show time," he said. "You remember what needs to be done?"

  "You were very clear."

  "Okay." Cavanaugh took a deep breath, reached his right hand to his left shoulder, pried up the edges on the duct tape, exhaled, took another deep breath, and started to pull the strips away. The pliant tape had a sticky under-side that parted slowly from his skin. He couldn't do it quickly, because he wanted to avoid tearing and widening the wound. Each second prolonged the pain. With the tape off, blood now flowed, but not as much as when he'd first been shot, clots having formed in the meantime.

  Immediately, Jamie pressed the soapy washcloth onto it, swabbing quickly but gently, cleaning away dirt and puss.

  He grimaced.

  "Done," she said.

  He leaned forward to turn on the shower, rinsing. "I can't move my head enough to see it."

  "It's a gouge across the top of your shoulder. The good news is, as much as I can tell, the bullet went through."

  "Felt like it. What's the bad news?"

  "The gouge is two inches long."

  Cavanaugh nodded. As blood flowed down the drain, he turned the shower off and braced himself for what Jamie was going to do next.

  Before checking into the motel, they'd made a quick stop at a drugstore to buy a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

  Jamie opened the bottle and poured it over the wound.

  As the liquid bubbled and foamed in the long, deep gouge, the pain felt like razors and fire combined. He gritted his teeth and grabbed the side of the tub.

  "Rinse it," Jamie told him.

  His vision shaking, he turned on the shower again. More blood, mixed with foaming liquid, swirled down the drain. When he leaned back from the spray, Jamie poured another stream of hydrogen peroxide. Again the long, deep gouge erupted in bloody foam.

  "Christ Almighty . . ." Cavanaugh murmured. He leaned into the spray. As more bloody foam swirled down the drain, he turned off the shower and slumped over the side of the tub, feeling Jamie towel the wound.

  His jaw muscles hardened.

  "The skin's red," Jamie said.

  "The tape must have irritated it."

  "No. This is a different kind of red. It looks like the wound's infected." Jamie soaked up more blood. In a rush, while the gouge was temporarily dry, she opened a tube of antibiotic cream, squeezed half of it along the gouge, pressed a wad of gauze over that, and sealed everything with several strips of first-aid tape.

  He took a deep breath.

  "Can you stand?" Jamie asked.

  He slipped when he tried. Jamie grabbed him before he could fall, water from him sticking her blouse to her chest.

  She sat him on the toilet lid and used the last towel, a big one, to dry his arms, chest, head, and back, avoiding the area of the wound, the thick bandage on it now pink with blood.

  "I'm going to pull you up," Jamie said.

  Off balance, Cavanaugh felt her move the towel over his legs, privates, and hips. Apart from the pain in his shoulder, his sensations came from a distance, as if his body didn't belong to him.

  "Hang on." Jamie hooked his arm around her neck and guided him into the shadowy bedroom, easing him onto the nearer of the two beds. "You feel hot. Do you think you have a fever?"

  Before he could answer, he started shivering.

  As his chills became more violent, Jamie took off her slacks, got under the covers, and held him. "You need a ..."

  "No," Cavanaugh managed to say between shivers.

  His eyelids felt heavier. The shadows in the room darkened.

  She held him closer.

  * * *

  7

  A tug at Cavanaugh's shoulder woke him. Blinking from faint light filtering through curtains, he managed not to wince when Jamie removed the bandage from his shoulder. Her green eyes narrowed, assessing the wound.

  "How does it..."

  "As red as last night," she said.

  He felt something inside him tighten.

  "But at least you don't feel as hot."

  "That's encouraging, don't you think?"

  "The wound crusted over."

  "See what I mean? Encouraging."

  She applied more antibiotic cream, covered it with another wad of gauze, and taped the wound securely.

  "What's the time?" Reflexively, Cavanaugh looked at the bedside clock and frowned at red numbers that told him 4:22. More troubled, he pointed toward the curtains. "How can it be light this early in the morning?"

  "It's afternoon."

  "What?"

  "You slept all night and most of the day. Don't you remember I fed you more of the pastrami sandwich and some of the potato salad from the cooler?"

  "No."

  "This morning."

  "No."

  "A couple of times, I helped you into the bathroom."

  Cavanaugh looked blankly at her.

  "When the maid came to clean the room, I went outside to talk with her," Jamie said. "I told her you were sick from eating sandwiches that had spoiled in the car. I said I didn't want to leave you alone. Then I gave her money to give to the desk clerk to rent this room for another night. I called the front desk, and she did pass the money along. 'No problem,' the clerk said."

  "Yes, you've definitely got the instincts of an operator."

  "You need to eat again."

  "Not hungry."

  "That doesn't matter. You won't heal if you don't eat."

  "Can't stand the thought of pastrami and potato salad."

  "They've probably gone bad by now anyhow. Name something. Pizza? We can have it delivered."

  He started to object.

  She made him proud by anticipating. "I take that back. No deliveries. Lousy security, right?"

  "Right."

  "Then I'll have to go out and get something. There's no alternative. Tell me what sounds good. Fried chicken? A milk shake? Anything."

  Cavanaugh had to make her think he had an appetite. Otherwise, she might be more tempted to get a doctor. "The chicken. Help me to the bathroom."

  Afterward, she handed him shaving soap and a new razor. Scraping off his three days of beard stubble made him feel cleaner. Nonetheless, he was exhausted by the time he got back in bed.

  "Will you be al
l right while I go out?" Jamie asked.

  "If the assault team knew where we were, they'd have broken in by now." A sheet and blanket over him, Cavanaugh propped himself up on pillows. "Put the do not disturb sign on the knob outside, and hand me my pistol."

  "You wouldn't think you needed the gun if you didn't suspect there might still be a threat."

  "Force of habit."

  "Right," she said skeptically.

  "I can't wait for that chicken."

  "Right," she added more skeptically, then left.

  Hearing her test the door to make sure it was locked, Cavanaugh glanced at the bedside clock, which read 4:58. There was something he needed to know. He reached stiffly for the television's remote control on the bedside table and pointed it beyond the foot of the bed, switching on the television and looking for a local station.

  On Channel 6, the Live at 5 news was starting. As Cavanaugh had expected, the fire was one of the initial stories. He concentrated on what the reporter said while watching shots of exhausted-looking firefighters working with chain saws, shovels, and hoses to keep flames away from the first town he'd reached the previous afternoon. Swooping through smoke, a helicopter dropped fire-retardant chemicals on the blaze.

  "The fire was ninety percent contained by midafternoon," one of the local news anchors assured her audience, and then switched to a story about a political scandal in Albany involving a state senator who'd been arrested for driving drunk and hitting a teenaged bicyclist, breaking her legs.

  Baffled, Cavanaugh stared at the television and then moved up through the channels, stopping at Channel 10, where a story about the fire was just ending. Stunned, he listened to a male reporter tell him that by late afternoon the fire had been fully contained. He went back to Channel 6, so troubled that he barely paid attention to the images on the screen. At 5:30, another edition of the local news came on, and now the story about the allegedly drunk-driving senator got most of the attention. The fire—"fully contained"—got only a half minute of attention. He switched to Channel 10, where the story about the contained fire came on just before the weather report.

  He frowned.

  At six o'clock, as yet another edition of the local news started, Cavanaugh heard a rap on the door, then a triple rap, followed by a key in the lock. Just in case Jamie had an unwelcome companion, Cavanaugh put his handgun under the covers and aimed it toward the door.

  Jamie entered, carrying paper bags marked kentucky fried chicken.

  Cavanaugh loosened his grip on his pistol.

  "Any trouble?" she asked.

  "Just something I saw on television."

  Jamie locked the door and removed cardboard cartons from the bags. "What did you see that bothered you?"

  "It's what I didn't see."

  She shook her head, puzzled.

  "Take a look," Cavanaugh said.

  She sat next to him while the local news continued.

  The political scandal was again the top story, followed by a report about a series of gas-station holdups. As on Channel 10, the story about the contained fire came just before the weather report; there were just a few shots of firefighters.

  "See what I mean?" Cavanaugh asked.

  "I hardly saw anything. If I'd blinked, I'd have missed the story." Jamie turned from the television and frowned at him.

  "Four people killed? A secret bunker? Helicopters with rockets? And all we see on the news are some firefighters with axes in their hands and dirt on their faces?"

  "The earlier reports were longer but basically the same," Ca-vanaugh said.

  "Maybe the fire crews haven't been able to get to where it started, so they haven't found the bodies."

  "Maybe," he said. "But the area where the fire started would have been the first to stop burning, due to the lack of fuel. Spotter planes would be able to see the destroyed helicopter and the two destroyed Jeeps. Chad and Tracy were blown apart." Anger made his voice hoarse. "But Roberto's body was intact. Even burned, it would still look like a body. And surely somebody in a nearby town heard the three helicopters and the explosions."

  "I bought the Albany Times Union." Jamie went over to the bureau. "It's this morning's newspaper, so it won't have up-to-the-minute developments. But maybe it'll tell us something."

  She took the paper from next to the bags and brought it to the bed.

  The story about the fire was at the bottom of the first page. It had a photograph of a haggard firefighter partially enveloped by smoke. The story carried over to page eight, where it was again at the bottom.

  "There." Jamie pointed toward a paragraph at the end. "Somebody in a nearby town heard explosions."

  "From propane tanks?"

  Cavanaugh couldn't believe what he read. She quoted the passage. "'Authorities theorize that the fire detonated propane storage tanks when it reached cabins higher on the mountainside.'"

  "There aren't any cabins near the bunker."

  "So they're just guessing about what caused the explosions," Jamie said.

  "Or somebody's lying. Did you notice that bit about a special team being brought in to investigate what caused the fire?"

  "You're thinking of a cover-up?"

  "It wouldn't be impossible," Cavanaugh said. "Somebody with influence puts pressure on the local authorities and arranges for the firefighters to keep a distance while a special team goes to where the fire started. The site's remote enough that it could be easily sanitized. No one would see helicopters coming in to remove bodies and wreckage."

  "Somebody with influence? You're talking about the government?"

  "I don't know who else would be powerful enough to keep everybody away from the site," Cavanaugh said.

  "But what on earth did Prescott have to do with the government?"

  When Cavanaugh shrugged, he wished he hadn't, the motion causing pain in his wounded shoulder. "His lab was hired by the DEA to do research on ways of stopping addiction."

  "That doesn't explain why a special ops military team would be involved," Jamie said, "or why anybody would want your team dead. At the warehouse, the attackers wanted Prescott alive?"

  "It certainly looked that way. They had several chances to kill the two of us. Instead, they tried to trap us."

  "But at the bunker, they suddenly wanted to kill everybody."

  Cavanaugh nodded again. "What made them change their mind? Or was the protection team the real target and Prescott was bait, tricking us to go with him to the bunker, where he arranged for us to be trapped?"

  "But why would anybody want to kill your team? Can you think of anything you learned on a past assignment that would make you and the rest of the group targets?"

  "As far as I know, I've never seen or heard anything so serious that a former client would feel threatened because I'd learned about it,"Cavanaugh said. "Anyway, Chad, Tracy, and Roberto hadn't worked on the same assignment with Duncan and me in the past six months. Even if they had, there wasn't any way for the attackers to know who'd be on this assignment. Duncan didn't know until the last minute."

  "This is just an idea, but. . ." Jamie hesitated.

  He waited.

  "While you were sleeping, I had a lot of time to think about this. Suppose the assault teams were not, in fact, related to each other?"

  "Keep talking."

  "Suppose the first group wanted to capture Prescott, just as their tactics indicated," Jamie said. "And the second group—"

  "Wanted to kill him, exactly as it seemed?" Cavanaugh asked.

  "Kill Prescott. You and your team were only secondary targets. You were simply in the way."

  "But that doesn't explain why Prescott wanted to kill us all. His behavior doesn't make sense if he wasn't working for the guys in the choppers."

  "Who looked like a special ops team from the military," Jamie said. "You told me you saw them being hoisted back up into the choppers."

  "Yes."

  "You saw all of them?"

  "Yes. I had to make sure all of them were gone.
"

  "Did you see Prescott being hoisted up with them?"

  "No."

  "Doesn't that strike you as odd if he was one of them?"

  "Maybe he was killed in the fire."

  "And they didn't take his body?"

  "Not if they couldn't get to it. That would be one of the things this special unit the newspaper referred to would want to take out of there."

  Jamie glanced down at the worn carpet. "Or maybe the facts are exactly as they seem. The first group wanted Prescott alive. The second group wanted him dead. He was scared to death of both of them. And your team did have information that absolutely had to remain a secret."

  Immediately, Cavanaugh felt cold—not from chills as a consequence of his fever but from the sudden intuition that Jamie was onto something. "Jesus."

  "Information that made you a threat," Jamie said.

  "The plans for Prescott to disappear." Agitated, Cavanaugh sat up, wincing from the pain this caused his wound. "The son of a bitch."

  It was clear to him now that Prescott had realized who was in the helicopters and that he'd been certain this group, unlike the first one, wanted to kill him. He'd known that the assault team would destroy any vehicle attempting to leave the bunker, just as he'd been sure the attackers would have sufficient armaments to blast their way into the bunker and overwhelm the protection team. Seconds away from being killed, he'd panicked. Deciding the only way he could escape was by creating a diversion for the helicopters, he'd started the fire, desperately believing it would give him a chance to slip away, as opposed to waiting for the certain death speeding toward him. But he couldn't stop worrying that a member of the protection team would somehow survive the attack and be captured.

  "I think killing us was Prescott's intention from the start," Cavanaugh said. "He had to guarantee that no one would ever know how we'd arranged for him to disappear. That way, he could be sure his secret was totally safe. He wouldn't have to lie awake night after night, fearing that his enemies had tortured one of us into revealing his new identity and where he'd gone."

  "But how did he hope to escape the fire?"

  "He's extremely calculating. He asks questions. He watches. He learns. I avoided the assault team by staying close to the fire so the thermal sensors in the choppers wouldn't detect my heat pattern. If I could figure that out, why couldn't somebody as smart as he is?"