David Morrell - The Protector

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?"

"There's a big difference. You had me to call for help. But a man that desperate wouldn't trust anybody to come and get him.

You said he's overweight. He'd be able to walk only so far. How did he expect to leave the area?"

"Maybe he did call somebody," Cavanaugh said. "As soon as he was taken to a safe place, he would have killed the person who helped him-to keep that person from revealing where he was."

Jamie's eyes darkened.

"Or maybe he reached the nearest town and forced somebody to drive him. Or maybe…" A sudden realization caught Cavanaugh by surprise. "He can't let anybody know how he's going to disappear."

The agitation of Cavanaugh's emotions made him lightheaded again. He managed to stand. "Where are my clothes?"

Jamie looked alarmed. "You'll fall on your face. What are you trying to-"

"I just realized where Prescott went." He grabbed his cell phone, pressing numbers.

On the other end, the phone buzzed.

"Quick, help me get dressed. I'll need my Kevlar vest."

The phone buzzed again.

"Answer, answer," he pleaded to the person he was calling.

The phone buzzed a third time.

"We have to get to her."

"Her?" Jamie asked.

The phone buzzed a fourth time.

A recorded female voice said, "Leave a name, a number, and a message. I'll return your call as soon as possible."

Cavanaugh canceled the transmission.

"Hurry. There's a woman here in Albany I think Prescott's going to kill."

As Jamie drove quickly through Albany's sunset-tinted streets, Cavanaugh needed all his energy to explain. "We gave Prescott the name and phone number of a bank, along with an account number. After he laundered his money, he was supposed to wire a hundred thousand dollars to a document forger who lives here in Albany."