The Protector

3

The helicopter followed the Hudson River two hundred miles north, passing several waterfront towns and cities, some of which were crested with smog. Beyond Kingston, it headed west into the low, rolling Catskill Mountains. Thickly wooded, they had numerous scenic valleys.

"Look." Cavanaugh pointed toward a plume of smoke rising from a ridge to the north.

"Yes," Duncan said. "It's been a dry spring."

"I've been listening to radio chatter," Roberto said over his shoulder as he worked the helicopter's controls. "The rain didn't get this far, but the lightning did, and that's what started the fire. It's small. They've got it under control."

Duncan nodded and glanced toward the sky behind them. "Is anybody following us?"

The helicopter had been modified to accommodate a sophisticated array of electronic instruments, including a powerful radar system, which was capable of isolating any aircraft following their course.

Roberto tapped numbers on a keyboard and studied the radar screen. "Nada."

"Do it," Duncan said.

Roberto crested a peak and sank into a small valley that was especially dense with evergreens.

"Look down, Mr. Prescott," Chad said. "You'll find this interesting."

The helicopter sank lower into the valley. "What am I looking for?" Prescott said. "All I see are fir trees." "That's what you're supposed to see," Tracy said. "I still don't…" Prescott stared down through the Plexiglas. Working the chopper's controls, Roberto pressed a button. "See anything now?"

"No, I-careful. If you go any lower you'll crash into the trees. Good God."

Cavanaugh wasn't in a position to see what Prescott did. Nonetheless, he knew what was happening. What seemed to be a section of the forest-thirty square yards of it-started moving. All of a sudden, concrete appeared.

"What the…" Prescott said.

"The best camouflage net available," Duncan said. "Even as low as we came, it's hard to distinguish the illusion from the real thing."

The helicopter settled onto the concrete landing pad. After Roberto shut off the engine, the group unbuckled their seat belts, opened hatches, and stepped down.

"Careful," Cavanaugh said. Feeling the wind from the still-rotating blades, he made Prescott stoop.

The group went to the left, toward a closed electrical box on a post among the trees at the side of the landing pad.

Duncan unlocked and opened the box. "We have to wait a few moments for the blades to stop or else the downdraft will suck the camouflage net into the blades."

Then Duncan pressed a switch, and a motor hummed.

Prescott watched in wonder as the net, an eerily realistic painting of the thick evergreens as seen from above, resumed motion, this time in reverse. Held up by sturdy poles that moved along motorized rails in the ground, the net shifted over the group, shut out the sky, and concealed the helicopter.

"In winter, when it snows," Duncan explained, "a sensor causes the net to retract automatically to keep the weight of the snow from damaging it. Heat coils in the concrete melt the snow. When the storm's over, the net returns to where it was. The snow on the trees melts swiftly, so the net continues to look like its surroundings."

Roberto added, "The flight plan I filed with the controller at Teterboro lists private property in these mountains as our destination. One valley's pretty much the same as another. The description isn't specific enough for anybody to be able to use the flight plan to follow us here. Even visitors, like you, wouldn't know which valley this is if you wanted to come back here."

"From the radar, we know we weren't being followed," Tracy added.

"And nobody can see the chopper from the air," Chad said. "So you can relax. This is as secure as you can be."

"But what about the helicopter's heat signature?"

Prescott's question made everyone in the group look at one another in surprise.

"You know about heat signatures?" Cavanaugh asked.

"What do you expect from a scientist? Every object gives off heat. An aircraft with sophisticated infrared sensors can detect that heat, isolate its shape, and know what's hidden under trees or a camouflage net, or in the dark."

"That's military or law-enforcement hardware," Chad said. "Anybody capable of equipping an aircraft with stuff like that is capable of equipping it with other fancy hardware."

"Like machine guns and rockets," Tracy said.

Prescott frowned. "Is that supposed to reassure me?"

"What they're getting at," Cavanaugh said, "is while you're worrying, why not worry about napalm and missiles?"

Prescott didn't understand.

Duncan stepped toward him. "It's a basic rule of protection that we match our security to the threat level the client faces. Escobar has a lot of money and resources, but his operation isn't sophisticated enough to be able to rig an aircraft with that kind of equipment in the little time his team had to try to follow us. There's no such thing as a totally secure location. Even the military command center in Cheyenne Mountain would be vulnerable if somebody managed to smuggle a suitcase nuclear weapon inside. But under the circumstances, given the threat you're facing, what Chad said is true." Duncan put a reassuring hand on Prescott's arm. "This is as secure as you can be."

Prescott glanced around, continuing to look uneasy. "Where do we stay?"

"Over there," Tracy said.

"Where? All I see are trees."

"Look harder."

"That hill? Is there a cabin or something behind it?"

"Sort of." Cavanaugh guided Prescott through the trees.

"I'll join you in a minute," Roberto said. "I need to refuel the chopper." He headed toward a pump next to a camouflaged equipment shed at the side of the landing pad.

"You mean you have fuel here?" Prescott sounded amazed.

"An underground tank. Every six months, we send a truck up here to refill it."

The setting sun cast shadows. A cool, gentle breeze smelled sweetly of fir needles. The group's footsteps were cushioned by the soft forest floor.

The hill they approached was about thirty feet high, with scrub brush and outcrops of boulders. Leading Prescott to it, Cavanaugh passed one of the boulders and indicated a recessed concrete passageway. "This is the cabin. Sort of."

Duncan stepped into the passageway and came to a metal door, next to which was an electronic number pad. A motion sensor triggered a faint light in the number pad as Duncan reached for it. Blocking the pad from Prescott's view, he pressed a sequence of buttons.

With a solid thump, the door's lock was released electronically. As Duncan opened the door, an alarm system began beeping.

"If the alarm isn't deactivated in fifteen seconds," Cavanaugh told Prescott, "the intruder gets a dose of knockout gas."

Duncan turned to an interior control panel, again blocked it from view, and pressed a further sequence of numbers.

The beeping stopped. Motion sensors turned lights on within the structure.

"Welcome to your safe site."