The Protector

10

Charging along the bunker's entryway, they dove through the open door a moment before a second explosion struck near the bunker. Shrapnel and chunks of burning trees filled the space where they'd been standing.

Duncan slammed the door shut. "I thought Escobar wanted Prescott alive!" The bunker shook from another explosion. "How can he be sure he won't kill Prescott along with us?"

"Roberto's dead, too!" Cavanaugh rose to his feet and ran toward the control room.

"What?" Holding his AR-15, Duncan rushed after him.

"His skull's bashed in!"

"What the Christ is going on?"

They hurried into the control room and faced it's monitors. Although Tracy had left the electronics on, some screens were blank, the fire having destroyed the cameras linked to them. As Cavanaugh studied the remaining active screens, some of those went blank also. But enough cameras remained undamaged for him to see that the fire had spread fast enough to have enclosed a third of the area around the bunker on the side where the landing pad and the helicopter had been.

One camera showed the three helicopters coming into view in the distance.

Something stung Cavanaugh's nostrils. "Do you smell smoke?"

"From the ventilation system." Duncan flicked a switch. "There. It's shut off. The outside air and the smoke can't get in. We've got enough air in here for a couple of days."

Cavanaugh nodded. "We won't need to stay inside that long. Those choppers'll soon be forced to leave to refuel. They won't come back, not after the fire and the explosions send the state police and emergency crews up here."

"They can't hope to get away unnoticed. I don't understand why Escobar's acting this desperately."

"What you said earlier-maybe you were right." Cavanaugh kept staring at the green-tinted images. Some of the outside cameras were having trouble adjusting their night-vision lenses to the fierce brightness of the spreading flames. On a few, all Cavanaugh saw was a glaring green tint. "Maybe this isn't Escobar."

"Then who else-"

Haze in the room irritated Cavanaugh's throat. "I thought you sealed the ventilation system."

"You saw me do it."

"Then what's causing this smoke?"

Thicker haze drifted from a ventilation panel in the ceiling.

"1 smell-"

"Aviation fuel." Cavanaugh pushed Duncan ahead of him, charging toward the corridor outside the control room. At the same moment, flames burst from the ventilation panel and ripped along the ceiling.

Cavanaugh felt the heat at his back as he and Duncan reached the corridor.

In the ceiling, smoke and flames erupted from a second ventilation panel.

Pressed down by the heat, Duncan coughed. "The fire must have come down the ventilation shaft before I blocked it."

"No! Look in the control room! The top left monitor!"

Despite the haze and the fire on the ceiling, they managed to get a half-distinct view of the screens. The one on the top left showed the earth on top of the bunker. The fire hadn't reached the bushes up there, and yet smoke spewed from the ventilation shaft.

"How the hell did aviation fuel get down the ventilation shaft?" Cavanaugh asked.

More smoke spread along the ceiling.

"We can't go out the front way!" Coughing, Duncan pointed into the control room toward the haze-enveloped screens.

A monitor on the top right showed an image from a camera that was aimed along the inside of the entryway toward what should have been forest. All the screen showed now were flames.

But the screen next to it showed the back exit, where the trees and bushes remained untouched, the fire not yet having spread that far.

Stooping, Cavanaugh hurried through the smoke-filled kitchen and living room. He and Duncan reached the front corridor and ran to the right along the wall of doors that ended at the bunker's rear exit.

Duncan twisted the lever on the dead-bolt lock and pulled the door open. Ready with his assault rifle, Cavanaugh rushed with Duncan along an exterior concrete passageway toward cool air and not-yet-burned trees. But the wind from the approaching fire whipped branches, and the forest's shadows were pierced by the rippling reflection of flames crackling nearer on the right. Suddenly, Duncan slammed backward into Cavanaugh, the two of them falling, the roar of an automatic rifle filling the passageway, muzzle flashes like strobe lights as bullets ricocheted off concrete. Duncan screamed.

With equal abruptness, the shooting stopped. Amid the smell of cordite, weighed down by Duncan, Cavanaugh groaned from a pain in his left shoulder. From the trees, he heard a scrape of metal that sounded like someone trying to free a shell stuck in an assault rifle's firing chamber. The approaching blaze dispelled shadows. Astonishingly, it revealed Prescott crouched among bushes. Glancing wildly toward the fire, Prescott held an AR-15, presumably Roberto's, and furiously worked to pull back the knob on the side.

"Duncan," Cavanaugh managed to say.

No answer.

The pain in his shoulder intensifying, Cavanaugh squirmed out from under Duncan's weight. He smelled the nauseating coppery odor of blood.

"Duncan, move!"

He hoped desperately that Duncan's wounds weren't serious. But then he saw Duncan's mangled face, where at least half a dozen high-powered rounds had made him unrecognizable.

"Duncan!" Forced to drop his rifle, Cavanaugh dragged his friend back toward the bunker. He struggled to get inside before Prescott freed the jammed cartridge. The closer Cavanaugh got to the doorway behind him, the more heat pressed against his back.

The scrape of metal ended.

"No!" With one last desperate effort, Cavanaugh pulled Duncan through the doorway. Another furious volley sent bullets zipping above Cavanaugh's head. They struck the corridor's ceiling and cracked against the concrete above the door. Cavanaugh slammed the door shut just before Prescott corrected the barrel's upward tug, forcing down his aim as Cavanaugh had taught him, sending bullets walloping against the metal door.

"Duncan." Cavanaugh's left shoulder ached worse. Coughing from the smoke and the heat, he concentrated on Duncan, feeling for a pulse, but it was obvious he would never find one.

"Duncan!"