David Morrell - The Protector

"There!"

In what was evidently a gutted utility room, the flame revealed a large pipe that came up from the floor and connected to a network of smaller pipes leading into a wall. The main pipe had a valve. Jamie turned it, but even when it was opened as far as it would go, the pipe didn't vibrate with the flow of water. Nor was there any sound of splashing from the pipe they'd opened in the next room.

"The water's been turned off somewhere else." Cavanaugh pivoted frantically toward the wall behind him. The panel on an electrical breaker box had been removed. Except for a switch on the upper right, which presumably supplied power to the front entrance, all the other switches had been removed also. Various colored wires dangled.

"This place probably uses a well," Cavanaugh said. "Which needs a pump. But the water isn't flowing because the pump isn't getting electricity."

They shifted toward the wires and tried to figure out which went with which. A few moment's study made Cavanaugh suspect that the wires hung in vague pairs. Holding two wires by their rubber insulation, he joined their exposed tips. Nothing happened. He pressed another two together. Nothing.

Jamie desperately did the same. "How much time do we have left?"

"Less than fifteen minutes."

Shadows thickened as the flame weakened. Cavanaugh pressed another pair together and saw a spark when they connected. But the flow of electricity had no obvious effect on anything around him. He separated the wires but bent them back in such a way that he'd have no trouble finding them again.

"Faster," Jamie said. Her raspy breathing echoed. When Cavanaugh could barely see the wires he was trying to match, he took off his jacket and tore his shirt along its seams, the chill of the concrete making him shiver. After setting fire to a section of his shirt, he rushed back to the wires, only to hear something droning under the floor and water vibrating through the intake pipe.

"I did it," Jamie said. "I found the right pair." From down the hall, they heard water splashing out of the opened pipe in the bathroom.

Trying to control his emotions, Cavanaugh noticed an outline on the floor where a furnace had been. He focused on hooks projecting from the wall next to the breaker box. The hooks must have had something to do with supporting the furnace ducts, he realized.

Pressured by time, he returned his attention to the wires in the breaker box. "They've got to be longer."

Jamie pulled two wires from a gap in the wall, stretching them as far as they would go. She and Cavanaugh bent them back and forth rapidly to create enough friction to break them.

Meanwhile, the pump kept droning, spewing water from the pipes in the next room.

As Cavanaugh used his teeth to pull the insulation off the tips of each wire, the flame got smaller. Jamie attached another section from Cavanaugh's shirt and pulled the fire into the corridor. "I don't see any water on the floor," she said in alarm. They hurried toward the water splashing into the washroom and found that only the central part of the washroom's floor was covered with it.

"My God, there's a drain," Jamie said. She yanked off her blazer and pushed it onto the drain, trying to create a plug.

Cavanaugh left the burning cloth in the corridor and hurried in next to her, adding his jacket as well, pushing it onto the drain.

Tense, they watched the water collect. Feeling light-headed, Cavanaugh realized he was holding his breath.

The plug worked. The water began to spread. As it reached the entrance to the corridor, Cavanaugh got to the burning cloth and pulled it back to the utility room.

He heard a frenzied splashing sound and realized that Jamie was kicking water along the corridor, trying to make it spread as far and fast as possible. At the breaker box, he grabbed the wires that he'd bent back earlier, the ones that had made a spark. Keeping them separate, he extended them to their maximum length from the box and connected them to the wires that he and Jamie had taken from the gap in the wall, twisting them together.

The tips reached the floor.

Jamie's bare arms flashed in the light from the burning cloth as she appeared at the entrance to the utility room. "The water's spreading."

"We have to get it to here." He ran into the corridor with her and had just enough light to see that the murky floor was covered with a film of water. He helped kick it as far as it would go, guiding it toward the utility room.

Before it got there, he hurried back and raised the wires off the floor, keeping them separate, suspending them over the hooks next to the breaker box.

The water entered the utility room. "Jamie, get your belt."

Simultaneously, Cavanaugh separated the burning cloth from his belt and dipped its buckle in the approaching water, cooling the metal. He put the belt's tip through the buckle and cinched it, making a circle. Jamie did the same with hers. He looped his belt over a hook. So did Jamie.

As the water spread toward the burning cloth near them, they waited in silent tension for the light to be extinguished. Just before the fire made a hissing sound, in the last of the light, Cavanaugh separated the wires that controlled the water pump.

The underfloor droning stopped. So did the splashing. The flame went out.

Plunged into darkness again, they waited.

The chill of the water added to that of the concrete. Cavanaugh shivered harder now that his upper torso was completely exposed. In the blackness, he listened to Jamie's nervous breathing.

He tried to distract her. "When this is over, I'll have to teach you about neuro-linguistic programming."

"What's that?"

"A way of using language to control what you're thinking and feeling."

" 'When this is over'? You're doing it to me again, making me think we'll get out of this."

"We will get out of this." Cavanaugh hoped he sounded confident. "Visualize what's going to happen and what you need to do. Don't let yourself get surprised by something you haven't imagined."

"I'm visualizing sunlight."

"Which you'll see very soon."

"The future tense is wonderful."

"Isn't it, though."

A rumble from along the corridor indicated that the concrete door was being opened. The sound of numerous footsteps came down the steps, echoing along the corridor. Flashlights glared, high enough that they didn't reveal the film of water on the floor.

"I've brought your doctor," Grace said.

In the utility room, Cavanaugh and Jamie remained quiet.

"Where are you?" Grace demanded. No response.

"Where are you? Damn it, get out here! I warned you what would happen if you tried to hide."

No reply.

"Flash-bangs you want, flash-bangs you get," Grace said.

Fabric rustled. Cavanaugh guessed that the team was putting on ear protection. He felt for Jamie's hands, pressed them over her ears, then quickly protected his own ears. That would help against flash-bangs detonated a distance away, but if any were thrown into the utility room, the nonlethal concussions would be so great that hands over ears wouldn't relieve the agony.

In his imagination, Cavanaugh heard the clatter of a flash-bang hitting the floor of one of the rooms.

A muffled blast compressed the air around him. Reverberating off the concrete, the roar was something he felt as much as heard.

Another distant blast shook him.

And another, coming closer.

Cavanaugh pressed his hands harder against his ears. When yet another flash-bang detonated, Jamie leaned against him, trembling. The blasts were in rooms close enough that Cavanaugh could see the fierce glare-the flash of the immobilizing device-reflect off the corridor's walls. He assumed that Grace and her team were shielding their eyes.