David Morrell - The Protector

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.

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.

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 flames, 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.

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.