David Morrell - The Protector

"Hey, if you can't take a joke." A thought occurred to Cavanaugh. "You followed the truck? Why did you bother if you already knew we'd used a helicopter to leave the area?" "Helicopter? I don't know what you're talking about." The man's confusion looked spontaneous enough to be convincing, reinforcing Cavanaugh's suspicion that the team who'd tried to grab Prescott at the warehouse had not been the same team that had used helicopters to attack the bunker.

While he and Jamie continued to aim at the men on the floor, Rutherford tied their ankles and wrists.

Cavanaugh removed a 9-mm Beretta from beneath the second man's loose pullover. He felt beneath the first man's black leather jacket and found a 9-mm Browning Hi-Power. He also found a folding knife clipped to the inside of his pants pocket. Only the clip showed on the outside. By pulling upward on the clip, the owner could draw the knife instantaneously from concealment. A small ribbed projection on the back of the blade allowed it to be thumbed open one-handed in the same motion as the knife was being drawn. When open, it was almost eight inches long.

Knives had once been considered inferior weapons ("Dummy, you brought a knife to a gunfight"), but a graphic self-defense video released in the 1990s, Surviving Sharp-Edged Weapon Attacks, had shown law-enforcement and security personnel that an assailant with a knife could race across a distance of twenty feet and cause lethal wounds before someone with a concealed handgun could overcome his startle reflex, draw, and fire. Now some operators considered a knife as prudent a backup weapon as a pistol and carried as many as three. The knife Cavanaugh held had a nonreflective flat-black surface and had been manufactured by one of the best self-defense instructors and knife makers: Ernest Emerson. It was called the CQC-7, the initials representing "close-quarter combat." Its weave-patterned epoxy handle was designed not to be slippery when covered with water, sweat, or blood. Its serrated steel was hard and sharp enough to punch through a car door.

"Cute," Cavanaugh said, echoing what the first man had said. He closed the knife and clipped it into his pants pocket. He sat cross-legged on the floor, at the first man's eye level. "You're using the name Kline?"

"It's as good as anything."

"Tell me about Prescott."

Kline didn't answer.

"I'll tell you what I know about him," Cavanaugh said. "Feel free to chime in any time you feel like it."

Cavanaugh told Kline what had happened after the car chase: the arrival at the bunker, the instructions to Prescott about how to disappear, the fire, the helicopter attack, and the other fire at Karen's house. "So, you see, I want him as much as you do. Probably worse. We'd accomplish more if we worked together."

"But our purposes conflict."

"I'm sure we can work around our differences." Cavanaugh studied him. "You look like your arms are starting to hurt. Why don't I make you more comfortable?"

Kline frowned, puzzled, as Cavanaugh brought a captain's chair from the kitchen. Kline frowned even more when Cavanaugh raised him to his feet and thumbed open the Emerson knife.

"I'm going to cut the rope on your wrists," Cavanaugh said. "If you make any move against me, my friend here"-Cavanaugh indicated Rutherford-"who's in a world of hurt and a really foul mood because of the beating your team gave him yesterday, will shoot you."

Rutherford had gone into the kitchen and returned with an empty plastic soft-drink bottle shoved over the barrel of his pistol as a sound suppressor. "I want my tooth back."

It was a tactic that he and Cavanaugh had rehearsed, and it had its intended effect, especially the rigged sound suppressor, causing Kline's eyes to narrow.

"But why invite trouble?" Cavanaugh asked. "We're having a pleasant conversation. We want to cooperate with one another." Cavanaugh stepped behind Kline, cut the rope on his wrists, and told him, "Sit." Kline obeyed.

Cavanaugh retied Kline's wrists, this time to the arms of the captain's chair.

"Comfy?" Cavanaugh asked. "Good. I honestly think we'd have a better chance of finding Prescott if we worked together. It's your turn. Tell me what you know." Kline looked away.

"For starters," Cavanaugh said, "why do you want him so much? He told me a story about addiction research he was doing for the DEA. He was supposed to find a way to block the physical mechanism that causes people to become addicted. Instead, he claimed he found an easy-to-manufacture substance that causes addiction. He said Jesus Escobar somehow found out and tried to grab him to get the formula. He said you guys worked for Escobar. But all that turned out to be a bunch of hooey. The DEA never heard of Prescott, and Escobar was killed two months ago, so who do you guys really work for?"

Kline finally looked back at Cavanaugh. Tension made his European accent-Slavic or possibly Russian-more pronounced. "You know I can't tell you that."

"Maybe I should make you some coffee while we consider the problem."

"Coffee?" Kline tilted his head, puzzled.

"Yeah, there's nothing like a chat over coffee. John, where do you keep it?"

"Above the fridge." He and Jamie looked as puzzled as Kline did. "The grinders next to it. The percolator's next to the toaster on the counter."

"Percolator? What I had in mind was instant coffee," Cavanaugh said.

"Uh, in the cupboard to the right of the stove."

Cavanaugh turned Kline's chair so Kline could watch. Then Cavanaugh went into the kitchen and opened the cupboard, finding a small box that had packets of various kinds of instant coffees. "Let's see. Hazelnut roast, vanilla roast, chocolate roast. Any of that appeal to you?" he asked Kline.

No answer.

"John, you've got to lay off this sweet coffee," Cavanaugh said. "You'll put on so much weight, you won't be able to run it off. Haven't you got anything with some heft to it? Wait a minute. What's this? Mocha Java? Now that sounds like a manly brew."

Cavanaugh opened two packets of it and dumped the powder into a small transparent juice glass. He put very little water in a kettle and set the kettle on the stove, turning the burner to high.

"Won't be long now," he assured Kline. "There's nothing like hot, rich caffeinated coffee to promote conversation. Are you sure you don't want to give me some tidbits right now-about why you want Prescott and about who else would be after him?" Kline continued to look stubborn.

"Ah, well," Cavanaugh said, "I certainly respect your principles. You're definitely not a blabbermouth." The kettle whistled.

Cavanaugh poured what amounted to an ounce and a half of boiling liquid into the juice glass. There was barely enough water to dissolve the two packets of coffee crystals. He gave it a stir, letting Kline see how dark and thick the mixture was. "Nothing limp-wristed about this stuff. It'll put fire in your eyes and hair on your chest."

Kline looked even more perplexed. "You expect me to drink that? What the hell good will that do to make me talk? I'd probably throw it up."

"Drink it? The farthest thing from my mind. And believe me, you won't be throwing it up."

Cavanaugh opened Rutherford's first-aid kit and removed one of the syringes.

Kline's eyes got bigger.

Cavanaugh inserted the syringe in the thick coffee mixture and pulled back the plunger, filling the tube, then pushed the plunger to remove air from the syringe. He started humming "Fly Me to the Moon."

"Hold it," Kline said. "You're not seriously thinking about-"

Cavanaugh interrupted him by ripping Kline's shirt open, fully exposing his neck. Now he was humming "Black Coffee" as he angled the tip of the syringe toward Kline's jugular vein.

"For Christ's sake, stop!" Kline tilted his body toward the opposite side, nearly overturning the chair.