The Protector

8

"My God, what's happening?" Rutherford said. "What's that siren? What are those strobes?"

"Prescott," Cavanaugh said.

The shooting and screaming worsened.

"Call for backup!" Rutherford yelled to the radio operator in the van. He drew his pistol. "We've got to get in there! We've got to help them!"

"They're shooting each other," Cavanaugh said.

"What?"

"Anything that moves! If you go in there, they'll shoot you, too!"

"But we can't just let-"

The shooting stopped. The screams diminished as the siren persisted. The strobes continued to flash behind the windows, their pulse so rapid that it made Cavanaugh nauseated to look at them.

"For God's sake, don't go in there until I tell you," he said. "Somebody give me a pistol!"

"You're not authorized."

Cavanaugh grabbed a flashlight from the van. As he did, he noticed a pump-action shotgun lying on a table and grabbed it also.

"Hey!" the radio operator said.

Before anyone could stop him, Cavanaugh hurried past the barricade. He reached the rustic house on the right and moved from tree to tree through the darkness, darting across the big lots toward a utility pole that Prescott's outdoor lights illuminated against the night sky.

The pole was to the right of Prescott's house, and the closer Cavanaugh came to the strobes and the siren, the more he slowed. When he reached the final house on the right, he veered along its murky side and crept through its narrow backyard, where a waist-high stone wall separated him from a cliff that dropped to the ocean. The siren almost overwhelmed the pounding of the surf as Cavanaugh came to a tall redwood fence that separated this property from Prescott's. Past the fence, the utility pole stood next to Prescott's house. A large gray transformer capped it.

Cavanaugh considered climbing the fence, dropping to the ground, and searching for the exterior breaker box, which would usually be next to the electrical meter. A switch inside the box would shut off the power to the strobes and the siren. But the thought of raising his head over that fence and not knowing what might confront him made him hesitate. Besides, he took for granted that the box would be locked and that Prescott would have rigged some kind of device to incapacitate anybody who might try to open it and cut off power to his house. Given the time pressure, there was only one choice.

He pumped a shell into the shotgun's firing chamber, aimed at the transformer on top of the pole, and pulled the trigger, absorbing the recoil against his shoulder. With a roar, a ten-inch gap appeared in the transformer, buckshot reaming it. But the siren and the strobes persisted. He pumped out the empty shell, chambered a full one, and fired a second time, the roar of the shotgun accompanied by a roar and flash from the transformer, sparks falling as the strobes and the siren stopped.

Prescott's house became totally dark.

Wary, Cavanaugh shifted through shadows along the fence and crouched at its end, peering around it toward the front of Prescott's barely visible house.

Hurried footsteps sounded along the street.

Urgent voices came nearer.

Suddenly, Rutherford crouched next to him. "Okay, since you know so much about this, now what?"

"Before anybody goes in, we have to break all the windows."

"Break all the-"

"So the breeze from the ocean can clear the air inside, get the smell of the hormone out of the house. Otherwise, anybody who goes in will panic enough to start firing at shadows, and anybody still alive in there will do the same."

Two FBI agents joined them. Across the street, police officers and other agents took cover among murky trees and bushes.

The only sound became the muffled pounding of waves at the bottom of the cliff.

A moan drifted out the front door.

"Tony?" Rutherford shouted to the SWAT commander.

No answer.

"Tony, can you hear me in there?"

Still no answer.

That didn't mean anything, Cavanaugh knew. If Tony was all right, he might not want to give his position away by answering the shout.

Again, a moan drifted from the front door.

Rutherford pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt. "Anything from their radios? Over."

The walkie-talkie crackled. "Nothing."

Cavanaugh heard sirens in the distance. "Anybody who isn't dead will bleed to death if we don't get them to a hospital."

"And Prescott can pick us off as we try to go in for them." What Rutherford said next seemed to come out of nowhere. "Do you know what Baptists believe?"

Cavanaugh assumed he was talking to calm himself. "No, John. Tell me."

"Humans are sinful." "Truth to that," Cavanaugh said. "Our only hope is God's mercy." "Truth to that also."

"Well, God have mercy," Rutherford said. He darted toward a pine tree in front of Prescott's house.

Cavanaugh wanted to follow, but his legs unexpectedly resisted. Imagining the smell of the hormone, he felt an impulse to back away, to get as far from the house as possible.

Rutherford said something into his walkie-talkie. As the sirens wailed closer, the FBI agents and the police officers shifted toward the house.

"God have mercy is right," Cavanaugh said. Hearing another moan through the open front door, he bolted from the fence. Punishing himself for having almost been a coward, he raced across Prescott's lawn, reached a space between two windows at the front of the house, pressed himself against the stone wall, and smashed each of the windows with the butt of the shotgun.

Next to him, he heard other windows being smashed, the agents and police officers following his example, using the butts of shotguns to shatter the glass while pressing themselves against the front wall. A half minute later, the windows in back were shattered, as well.

As Cavanaugh waited for Prescott to shoot, an ocean breeze drifted through the house, fluttering curtains. "What's that smell?" a police officer said. "Get away from the house!" an agent yelled. "Take cover! I saw something move!"

"Don't shoot till you're sure of the target!" Rutherford yelled. A policeman raced from the front of the house.

Two agents followed, scrambling toward the barricade of police cars at the end of the block.

Cavanaugh tried to hold his breath.

Then he had to inhale, the breeze carrying the pungent smell to him. Even diluted, it shocked his brain. Instantly, sweat burst from his body, soaking him. He'd have run if panic hadn't paralyzed him. With tortuous slowness, the breeze took the last of the hormone from the house. But even though the only smell was now one of salt and kelp from the ocean, Cavanaugh continued to tremble.

"Living room's clear!" someone shouted from inside. Because the team in back had followed the breeze into the house, the hormone hadn't overcome them.

"Media room clear!"

"Guest room clear!"

"Bathroom clear!"

Beyond the broken windows, flashlights zigzagged, moving through the house. Agents and policemen slipped in through the front. More flashlights zigzagged.

"Second bedroom clear!"

"Second bathroom clear!"

"Office clear!"

As the litany continued and the search team shifted toward other rooms, Cavanaugh eased through the front door. In place of the hormone's pungent smell, the air was filled with cordite and the coppery odor of blood.

"Move the barricade! Get the ambulances down here!" Rutherford yelled into his walkie-talkie.

Cavanaugh saw him hunched over a body on the floor. A flashlight showed blood on a SWAT uniform. The man had been shot in the face.

As Cavanaugh moved from room to room, he saw more bodies, more blood. Thank God, some of the men were squirming, moaning, their armored vests having saved them from center-of-mass damage. But the wounds to their arms and legs might still cause them to bleed to death.

Through broken windows, he saw the flashing lights of two ambulances approaching the house. He shifted his attention to the array of strobe lights mounted at the corner of every room, sirens next to them.

"Master bedroom clear!" "Master bathroom clear!" "Garage clear!" "Laundry room clear!" "Darkroom clear!"

Amid the glare of more flashlights, ambulance attendants rushed into the house and hurried from body to body, doing their best to keep the wounded alive.

"You were right," Rutherford said. "They shot at each other." Cavanaugh pointed. "The way the strobes were set up, the flashes probably looked like automatic gunfire. Maybe they even created a flashing image of somebody with a weapon. The sirens would have engaged a startle reflex. Wherever those guys turned, they couldn't tell the difference between a threat and their own men. All it took was for one of them to panic because of the hormone and start shooting. Others would have followed suit. Scared beyond any extreme they'd ever experienced, they cut each other down in a cross fire." "Professionals," Rutherford said.

"Just like the fifteen Rangers who lost control and shot at each other in the swamp. Damn it, where's Prescott?" Cavanaugh asked.

Reinforcements arrived, more flashlights filling the darkness as two dozen agents and police officers searched the house repeatedly.

"No basement, no attic," Rutherford said. "It's a sloped roof. There'd be some kind of space under it," Cavanaugh said.

"Two agents checked every inch of it twice. Prescott isn't up there."

"As the SWAT team approached the house, he shut off the lights," Cavanaugh said. "He rigged a motion sensor for the strobes and the siren."

"Then he slipped out the back way," Rutherford said. "Check the neighboring properties. Search the houses. Get squad cars on the streets and the highway. If he's on foot, he can't go far."

"Well, that's the problem," an agent said.

"Problem?"

"There aren't any cars in the garage. Maybe he's got a vehicle hidden around here."

For the first time, Cavanaugh heard Rutherford swear.

Rutherford's walkie-talkie crackled. A voice Cavanaugh recognized as belonging to the van's radio operator asked, "Is that bodyguard with you? Over."

"Right next to me. Over."

"Tell him we just got a phone call from the hospital."