The Protector

15

Two levels high, the place was warm, dry, and bright, packed with shoppers, loud with conversations, but all Cavanaugh paid attention to was an electronics store immediately on his left.

"In there!" he told Prescott.

The black car would stop at the rusted sedan, Cavanaugh knew. The three passengers would rush into the mall. The driver would stay with the car and use his cell phone to keep in touch with the gunmen as they tried to find where Cavanaugh and Prescott had gone. That way, the driver could be alerted to speed to another section of the mall if Cavanaugh and Prescott tried to leave via other doors.

Urging Prescott toward the electronics store, Cavanaugh shoved the.45 under his belt. Frantic to get out of sight before the gunmen rushed into the mall, he held the Sig close to him, hiding it. He ejected its empty magazine, put it in a pocket, shoved in a fresh one from the pouch on the left side of his belt, and pressed the lever that allowed the slide on top to snap forward, chambering a round. Moving, he did all this without thinking, with a sureness that came from hundreds of training exercises.

A young clerk in the electronics store looked puzzled by the haste with which Cavanaugh and Prescott entered, water dripping from them. "May I help you?"

Holding the Sig out of sight beneath his jacket, Cavanaugh tugged Prescott past the clerk, past harshly lit rows of televisions, video tape recorders, and DVD players. "What we're looking for is in the back of the store."

The clerk hurried to follow. "If you'll show me what it is, I'll be glad to help."

"Great." Cavanaugh and Prescott squeezed past customers, approaching a counter in the rear.

The counter had a door on the left. Cavanaugh nudged Prescott past the counter and opened the door.

"Sir!" the clerk said. "Customers aren't allowed in the storeroom!"

"But this is what we're looking for." Pulling Prescott into the storeroom, Cavanaugh closed the door and locked it.

"Sir!" a muffled voice objected.

Cavanaugh spun toward palely illuminated shelves stacked with boxes containing VHS and DVD players. "Let's go, Prescott."

Hearing the knob being turned and then someone pounding on the door, Cavanaugh headed toward a metal door on the opposite wall. He'd seen the outside of that door when he'd stopped at the mall's entrance. He knew that the law required exterior doors in commercial establishments to have locks that could be easily freed so that people wouldn't be trapped if there was a fire. This door was secured by a simple dead bolt.

He twisted the lock's knob.

While the gunmen searched the mall, Cavanaugh and Prescott rushed out into the rain. At the curb, the black car, its engine running, was parked behind the rusted sedan, as Cavanaugh expected. The skinhead driver stared toward the glass doors through which his companions had hurried, again as Cavanaugh expected.

By the time the driver noticed movement next to him, Cavanaugh had run in a crouch through the gloom. Using the rusted sedan and the steam from it to conceal his approach, he drew the.45, which was useful to him now only as a blunt object he could afford to risk damaging, and slammed its barrel against the car's passenger window. Beads of safety glass burst inward over the startled skinhead as Cavanaugh aimed his Sig at him and saw that the man's cell phone and pistol were on the seat next to him, along with a Zippo lighter and a pack of cigarettes. The motor kept running.

"Out!" Cavanaugh told him.

With his gloved hands on the steering wheel, the frightened skinhead glanced toward the pistol on the seat.

"Out!" Cavanaugh shouted.

Terrified, the skinhead continued to stare at the pistol on the seat.

Cavanaugh pulled the Sig's trigger and blew a hole in the ceiling.

Flinching, the skinhead hurried from the car.

"Run!" Cavanaugh fired above the driver's bare scalp, making him race faster through the rain as he headed along the side of the mall.

"Prescott, get in!"

As Prescott obeyed, Cavanaugh ran around to the open driver's door, but before he got in, he grabbed the cigarette lighter off the seat.

He ignited it and threw it under the back of the sedan, where the lighter was protected from the rain and where gasoline from the perforated fuel tank had pooled. Immediately, vapor erupted into flames that spread along the bottom of the sedan. He hurried into the black car, put the gearshift into drive, and sped away.

Looking in his rearview mirror, he saw the rusted sedan heave as its gas tank, filled mostly with fumes, detonated. It didn't explode, contrary to popular belief. No huge fireball. No roar as if tons of TNT had gone off. Just a whump and an energetic burst of flame. In fact, if the gas tank had contained mostly fuel, there wouldn't have been enough oxygen for it to explode. The car would have kept burning only on the outside.

Taking one last look at his rearview mirror, Cavanaugh saw three angry men charge out of the mall. It seemed to him that, like the skinhead driver, they wore gloves. Then he reached the street beyond the parking lot and couldn't see them any longer.

He sped toward the ramp that led back to the highway. It was a luxury to have a car with an intact windshield and two functioning wipers.

Prescott's bulky chest heaved. He clamped his hands to it.

"Are you all right?" Cavanaugh accessed the highway, staying in the right lane, trying to blend with traffic. "You're not having a heart attack, are you?"

"No. Just can't get my… Out of breath."

"Out of condition," Cavanaugh said. "You've got to take better care of yourself." To calm Prescott, Cavanaugh prompted him to imagine a future scenario, one in which he'd be safe. "After we make you disappear, you'll have plenty of chances to get some exercise."

"Exercise. Even that would be welcome."

In the distance, yet another group of sirens wailed. Although Cavanaugh wanted to get to the Teterboro airport as fast as possible, he kept his speed under the limit so he wouldn't attract attention.

"It's good to be somewhere dry." Again Cavanaugh was trying to calm Prescott.

"And warm."

"Yes." Cavanaugh's wet clothes were cold against his skin. The driver had kept the car's heater on. Cavanaugh felt air from it waft over him.

Prescott shivered.

"Turn the heater up," Cavanaugh said. "Adjust the blower as high as it'll go."

Hands shaking, Prescott fumbled at the controls on the dashboard. "You set fire to the car as-what, a distraction?"

"Partly. The police will have to waste time while they deal with the fire and try to figure out what happened."

"You said 'partly.' " Prescott's puffy forehead wrinkled. "You had another reason?"

"Our fingerprints." Cavanaugh again checked his rearview mirror. "Originally, I planned to abandon the car in the parking lot. It wouldn't have been noticed for a while. We'd have had a chance to wipe our prints before we ran from the area and called for help. But then the other car showed up and… This way, with the fire, we don't have to worry about our prints. Believe me, the police would have dusted for them, and they would have been able to identify us. Not a good idea when you want to disappear and I want to stay invisible." "Cavanaugh." "What?"

"I don't know your first name."

"I don't have one. Cavanaugh is the only name I go by. A work name. I never give my real name. It would endanger the people I protect."

"A pseudonym?"

"You know some of the trade jargon?" Relieved that Prescott's breathing was less agitated, Cavanaugh didn't mind distracting him by answering harmless questions. "One way for an opponent to get at a client would be to learn the identities of the client's protector's."

"What would that accomplish?"

"The opponent could discover where the protectors live, whether they have relatives and so on. You see the liability?"

Prescott's ample chin wavered as he nodded. "The opponent could kill the bodyguards where they live, when they're off duty, when they're not as alert."

"And the new team the client hires wouldn't be up to speed on how to maintain his security. The client becomes a viable target," Cavanaugh said.

Prescott nodded again. "Or else the opponent kidnaps the bodyguards' relatives and puts pressure on the bodyguards to lessen the client's security."

"You catch on quick. People close to me can't be threatened if the bad guys don't know who the people close to me are. Because the bad guys don't know who I am," Cavanaugh said.

"You have a family?"

"No," Cavanaugh replied, lying. "You referred to 'bodyguards.' That's not what I am."

"Then…?"

"The technical term is protective agent."

"What's the distinction?"

"Bodyguards are thugs. They're what mobsters use. Crude muscle."

"But what you do, as you've proven, requires sophisticated talents. Thank you. What you went through to save me is the bravest thing I've ever seen."

"No," Cavanaugh said. "Not brave."

"I can't think what else to call it."

"Conditioned."

Between them, the skinhead's cell phone buzzed.