David Morrell - The Protector

"Watch your language," Rutherford, the Southern Baptist, said seriously.

"All right, all right. Just stop," Kline told Cavanaugh. "You can't expect me to believe you're crazy enough to-"

"Expand your mind, along with your arteries and your vital organs," Cavanaugh said. "I'm going to set your heart racing and blow your brains out from the inside. I figure by the time your pulse gets up to about a hundred and eighty, you might even start to levitate, except you'll be tied to that chair. Now if you'll hold still…"

Cavanaugh put a firm hand on Kline's shoulder and readjusted the syringe's trajectory.

"No!" Kline tilted his body so far to the side that this time the chair did topple. With a thump, he landed on the carpet.

"Hey, have some consideration for the neighbors," Cavanaugh said.

"That stuff'll kill me!" Kline said.

"Kill you? It'll get your metabolism racing so fast, you'll probably self-combust."

Cavanaugh pushed Kline's head against the carpet and slanted the syringe's tip so that it pressed along Kline's jugular.

Kline whispered, trying to minimize his neck movements, sounding as if he'd swallowed ashes: "If you kill me, I can't tell you anything."

"You know what? Part of me doesn't care. Running into you twice was running into you twice too often. I'm pissed about my friends being dead. I'm pissed about Prescott trying to kill me. I'm pissed about what you and your men did to John. I want to get even with somebody, and if you don't intend to cooperate with me the way I cooperated with you, at least I'll get the satisfaction of this."

Cavanaugh pierced Kline's artery enough to draw blood.

Kline winced and looked as if he was trying not to shudder, but he didn't succeed, his involuntary movement causing a little more blood to leak from his artery. "The drug-addiction story was a cover. Prescott worked for the U.S. military." "I want specifics."

"A branch of it devoted to special-weapons development." Kline licked his lips, which suddenly looked very dry. "I might need to cough."

"Better not. The syringe'll go all the way in."

"A subsection of a subsection." Kline lowered his voice even more trying not to move his neck. "The kind of research they don't report to the secretary of defense."

"Or the kind the Pentagon itself doesn't know about? Like the LSD experiments in Washington in the 1950s or the nerve-gas experiments in Utah in the 70s."

Kline licked his dry lips again. "Yes."

"Our tax dollars at work. So what was this experiment about?"

"Fear."

The word seemed to linger in the air. It was so unexpected that Cavanaugh didn't react to it at first. He was certain he hadn't heard correctly. "Fear?"

Cavanaugh's muscles tightened and his palms became moist as he felt a premonition about what Kline was going to tell him next.

"Fear," Kline whispered hoarsely, repulsed by the pressure of the syringe's tip against his artery. "Prescott was in charge of biochemical research designed to create fear in any opponent the U.S. military confronted. My neck." Kline tensed. "You're shoving harder."

"Prescott. Tell me about Prescott."

Kline's brow was beaded with sweat. "He created a synthetic hormone that triggered adrenaline in such massive doses that panic was an immediate result."

Prescott's lie about trying to stop addiction and instead discovering how to increase addiction had been partially based on truth, Cavanaugh now realized. All that needed to be done was to substitute the word fear for addiction. His mind flashed back to the stairs in the abandoned warehouse and the pungent odor he'd smelled as he'd gone up to meet Prescott. He'd become more and more uneasy as he'd mounted the stairs, his body more jittery with each step.

"Prescott's military controllers were thrilled." Unable to turn his head, Kline strained his eyes sideways toward where the syringe pricked the artery in his neck. Sweat dripped from his face. "If the synthetic hormone could be modified into a gas and delivered in canisters dropped from planes or via rockets, it would render opposing armies helpless during an attack."

"Politicians tend to get a little nervous when they hear about chemical-weapons research, but why should that hold back a good idea?" Cavanaugh said, barely containing his anger.

He recalled how Kline's men had suddenly panicked when they'd invaded the warehouse's stairwell. Responding to an unseen threat, they had fired uncontrollably up the stairs, unable to force themselves higher. Prescott must have had canisters of the gas concealed in the stairwell. Traces of it had escaped, which explained Cavanaugh's jittery reaction.

He recalled something else-how Prescott had worked dials on a panel when Kline's team invaded the stairwell. But as frightened as Kline's men had become, their reaction had apparently not been strong enough, for Prescott had murmured in alarm to himself, as if something was wrong. Perhaps the canisters had developed a slow leak so that by the time Kline's team attacked, the full force of the weapon wasn't available.

"Prescott experimented with it on animals," Kline said. "Rats went berserk. Cats and dogs became so afraid of each other, they cowered in corners. On one occasion, it drove a dozen goats into such a panic that they raced around the walls that contained them until they dropped in shock and died."

Cavanaugh thought of Karen's basement, of the pungent smell that he now realized had caused him, for the first time in his life, to suffer fear, the effects of which continued to linger. He thought of the panic that had almost destroyed him in the fire. He thought of seeing Karen slumped motionless in her wheelchair, her hands clamped to her chest, her face contorted rigidly with horror. Now he understood what had killed her. Wanting to avoid a wound or a strangle mark that would alert a medical examiner to Karen's murder, Prescott had used the hormone to terrify her to death. Her heart and arteries must have ruptured from the massive force of terror.

"The syringe. Your hand's shaking again," Kline said.

"Tell me everything."

"Eventually, the temptation became too great. Prescott tried it on humans. Inner-city gangs ran in panic when a lone victim wandered onto their turf and defended himself from their attacks by throwing a small hissing canister at them."

"Then there must be a neutralizer," Cavanaugh said. "Otherwise, the person throwing the canister would become terrified also."

"Yes." Kline cringed from the pressure of the syringe against his neck.

Prescott must have used the neutralizer on himself when he was in Karen's house, Cavanaugh realized. Otherwise, the hormone would have overpowered him.

"Without the neutralizer, they couldn't have managed what happened at the World Trade Organization riots in St. Louis," Kline said.

All Cavanaugh remembered about the riots was that after three days of chaos, the authorities had finally overwhelmed the rioters and forced them into the Mississippi. "The tear gas?"

"Contained the fear hormone." Kline shut his eyes in an attempt to relieve his tension. "The gas masks, supplied by the military, had the neutralizer in their filters. The experiment was a success.

"Except that only a few military officers and Prescott knew what had really happened," Cavanaugh said.

"And a few powerful civilians with strong ideas about how your country should protect itself. They decided to try another secret test on humans, this time on a group trained not to respond to fear. A team of U.S. Rangers on a training exercise in a swamp in Florida."

Cavanaugh recalled being troubled by a recent report about fifteen Rangers who had drowned in Florida.

Sweating, Kline kept his eyes shut. "Maybe the hormone had the wrong strength. Or maybe men trained to use weapons do just that when they're overwhelmed with panic. They started shooting at anything and everything. Most of them didn't drown-they were hit by cross fire."