The Protector

12

"They're not eager to kill me," Prescott said.

"What?"

"They want me alive."

Abruptly, Cavanaugh felt a deeper chill than that caused by the rain blowing in on him. As he checked the rearview mirror to see if the assault team was in pursuit, his sense of reality shifted dramatically, making him think of the attack in an entirely different way. In the warehouse, when the gunmen had fired, Cavanaugh had believed that the shadows and the rain falling through the roof had thrown off the attackers' aim. Now he realized that the bullets had, in fact, been carefully placed, trying to stop Prescott but not to kill him. If anyone was a shoot-to-kill target, I was, Cavanaugh thought. It was now clear to him that the bullets aimed toward the car had been directed toward the driver's side, toward him, not toward Prescott. The only indiscriminate part of the attack had been the rocket aimed toward the bricked-over window, but that, too, could be explained. In retrospect, Cavanaugh realized that the explosive force of the rocket had been less than normal. The damage it inflicted to the building should have been far more extensive. The shell's power had been reduced in the hopes that it would stun, not kill.

"Sure." Gratified to see traffic through the rain, Cavanaugh steered from the warehouses and reached decrepit houses near a highway. "They disguised themselves as crack addicts, blending with their surroundings, hoping to catch you by surprise. When I showed up, they realized the situation was about to change and quickly adjusted their time table, attacking before they were ready."

Ahead, the sirens grew louder.

"Use my cell phone," Cavanaugh repeated. "Press the numbers I gave you."

Prescott finally did. "Here. It's ringing on the other end."

As Cavanaugh released his right hand from the steering wheel and took the phone, he decided to test Prescott by saying, "Those sirens. Don't you want me to go to the police?"

"No," Prescott said.

"Why not?"

"No police," Prescott emphasized.

Before Cavanaugh could question him further, he heard Duncan's voice say, "Global Protective Services."

"This is Cavanaugh. I'm in Condition Red."

Cavanaugh imagined Duncan sitting ramrod-straight.

The wind and the roar of the broken muffler made it difficult for Cavanaugh to hear what Duncan said next: "The location transmitter in your Taurus isn't functioning. I can't find you on the screen."

"The Taurus is history. Prescott and I are in a stolen car." Working to control the vehicle with his left hand, Cavanaugh pressed the cell phone harder to his ear.

"Give me your location."

"I'm going to voice encryption." Cavanaugh pressed a button at the bottom of the phone, which activated a scrambler. If the men in the pursuing cars had cell-phone scanners, they wouldn't be able to overhear. "I'm still in Newark," he continued. "Heading away from the river. I see a lot of traffic ahead, but I can't identify the highway."

"How many assailants?" Tension made Duncan's voice sound tight.

"Maybe eight."

"Are they in pursuit?"

"I'm not sure. I might have…" Speeding past more dismal houses toward the highway, Cavanaugh peered again toward his rearview mirror. He was about to finish his sentence with "lost them," when two cars skidded around a gloomy corner back there and rushed in his direction. "Yes," he said. "They're in pursuit."

Cavanaugh reached the access ramp and saw a sign. "I'm heading north on Route Twenty-one." He saw another sign. "The Me Carter Highway."

"If you're leaving the river and moving north on Twenty-one"-Cavanaugh imagined Duncan scanning a map on a computer screen-"keep going in that direction. In about ten miles, you'll intersect with Route Three. Head east, then north on Seventeen. Can you make it to Teterboro?"

Duncan meant the Teterboro airport, the fourth-important airport in the New York City area, after Kennedy, La Guardia, and Newark International. Located where Routes 17 and 46 converged near Interstate 80 in New Jersey, Teterboro was twelve miles from midtown Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge. It was designated a "reliever" airstrip, which meant that corporate, charter, and private aircraft used it, taking pressure off the larger airports and the large passenger carriers they served. Because many of Global Protective Services' clients were corporate executives, the agency had an office and a helicopter at the airport, although these had logos for Atlas Avionics, a Protective Services subsidiary.

"I'm in the Teterboro office now." Duncan's voice crackled from the storm's interference. "We're doing a handover." Translation: After having been protected while in Manhattan, a client was being transferred from an armored car to the client's corporate jet, where non-Protective Services agents would take over.

When the jet left the ground, the assignment was completed. "Can you get here?"

"I'd better." Cavanaugh studied the fuel gauge, which had dropped from three-quarters to half indicating how much gas he was losing from bullet holes in the tank.

"Call back in ten minutes," Duncan said. "By then, I'll have rendezvous specifics."

Cavanaugh broke the transmission and put the phone down beside the.45 on the seat. He stared toward the rearview mirror and saw the two pursuing cars merge onto the highway. Because of the storm, most cars had their headlights on, but these cars stayed dark as they sped past traffic.

The sirens receded into the distance.

"Prescott, you didn't answer my question." Cavanaugh wiped rain from his face and concentrated to pass a transport truck. "Why don't you want me to go to the police?"

"They wouldn't know what to do with us. Guns. A stolen car. Christ." Prescott's face had lost some of its puffiness, tension shrinking it. "They'd question us on the street. They'd question us at the station. When they finally let me go, the people who want me would've had time to get ready again."

"True." Cavanaugh wiped more rain from his face. "But I get the feeling you've got another reason for not going to the police."

"The same reason I wouldn't go to the Drug Enforcement Administration. I don't trust anything to do with the government."

"The Drug Enforcement Administration? What have they got to do with…" Cavanaugh had a sudden sick feeling that Prescott might be a monster after all.

"The men chasing us work for Jesus Escobar." Fear made Prescott's face the color of his soiled white shirt.

Cavanaugh felt even sicker: Jesus Escobar was one of the biggest drug lords in South America. He took another quick look at the rearview mirror and saw that the cars chasing him were drawing closer. "You promised me this has nothing to do with drugs. I don't protect drug dealers!"

"I told you I wasn't a drug dealer. That's the truth. But I didn't say this has nothing to do with drugs."

"You're not making sense."

"Have you ever heard of D.P. Bio Lab?"

"No." His tires sprayed a haze of water from the pavement, as Cavanaugh sped past another transport truck.

"The D.P. stands for Daniel Prescott. It's mine-a sophisticated biotech research facility." The pupils of Prescott's eyes grew larger with fear as he stared back through the rain toward the two pursuing cars. "If you had heard of D.P. Bio Lab, I'd have been concerned. Most of my work is for the government."

Cavanaugh suddenly had an uneasy feeling about what he was going to hear.

"As part of the latest antidrug campaign, I was hired to do research on the parts of the brain involved with addiction." Emotion made Prescott speak quickly. "Addiction's immensely complicated. It isn't clear whether some people become addicted for psychological or physical reasons." Prescott spoke faster. "Different personalities become addicted to different effects. Passives go for depressants. Active types crave stimulants. Sometimes it's the reverse."

The pursuit cars were now a hundred yards behind the rusted sedan.

"The idea was," Prescott said, "if I could find a common denominator, a physical trigger common to all of them, in the cerebral cortex, for example, or the hypothalamus, there might be a way to stop that trigger from functioning. The addiction wouldn't happen."

The pursuit cars were now close enough that in the rearview mirror Cavanaugh could see there were four men in each. One driver had a mustache. Another had shaved his head. Their eyes had the determination of manhunters.

"And did you find it-the addiction trigger?"

"No."

Cavanaugh tried to anticipate how the gunmen would handle this. They want Prescott alive, he thought. They won't shoot at me. Not driving this fast. They don't want to cause an accident that'll kill Prescott. Their only choice is to force me off the road. "I didn't find a trigger that could be disabled to prevent addiction," Prescott said. "What I found instead, God help me, is an easy-to-manufacture chemical that can instantly cause an addiction. To itself. It's cheap to produce. It doesn't require elaborate equipment. And the manufacturing process doesn't have toxic side effects or cause explosions and fires the way some illegal drugs can."

Cavanaugh stared again toward the rearview mirror. Speeding through the rain, the pursuit cars were now only twenty yards behind the sedan.

"As soon as I reported my findings," Prescott said, "the agency I worked for became so alarmed, they terminated the research program."

One of the cars positioned itself behind the sedan while the other came up on Cavanaugh's left. They're going to try to box us in and push us off the road, Cavanaugh thought.

"Suddenly, the DEA showed up and confiscated my research," Prescott said. "They swore my lab assistants and me to secrecy. Not that my lab assistants are a security risk. I'm the only one who knows the formula."

Cavanaugh studied traffic ahead and made a quick decision. Prescott's voice shook. His words gushed out. "But Escobar must have an informant in the DEA. My research is so well guarded there that even Escobar's people can't breach it. That leaves me. They want to capture me and force me to tell them the formula."

"For God's sake, why didn't the DEA try to protect you?" "They did. But Escobar's people attempted to capture me anyhow. I think somebody at the DEA works for him and told him where I was. The team guarding me was attacked. I barely escaped a kidnapping attempt. That's when I took advantage of the confusion and slipped away, managing to reach the warehouse."

"Which you'd set up earlier. In case," Cavanaugh said.

"But I couldn't stay there forever. I'd have run out of food. I wanted people to talk to. I'm tired of being afraid."

"I'll do my best to fix that." Cavanaugh rolled down his window. In addition to the rain, he heard the car coming up next to him. "Do you know how to load a pistol?"

"No."

It figures, Cavanaugh thought. He'd been about to give Prescott one of the Sig's spare magazines and have him reload the weapon. Now there wasn't time to explain what to do. Cavanaugh was going to have to rely on Prescott's.45.

The car on Cavanaugh's left came abreast of the sedan and slammed against its side.

"Make sure your seat belt's tight," Cavanaugh said quickly.

The car struck the driver's side again. Cavanaugh heard metal crumble. Concentrating to control his steering with his left hand, he used his right hand to pick up the.45. "This pistol had better work."

He transferred the.45 to his left hand and now controlled the steering wheel with his right.

The car on the left struck Cavanaugh's side a third time, trying to force him onto the highway's shoulder.

Feeling the shudder of the impact, Cavanaugh thumbed off the safety on the cocked.45.