The Protector

12

The roar of the flames blocking the passageway was matched by the howl of the wind they created. The heat was intense enough to suck the remaining oxygen from the bunker, causing a fierce wind from the interior that stopped Cavanaugh's reflexive backward motion and instead pushed him forward.

Now!

As a boy in Oklahoma, Cavanaugh had once seen a fire on an oil rig that his father had worked on. Cavanaugh had never forgotten how high the flames had gushed and how powerful the heat had been. The fire had started at sunset and had raged all night, making the area around the oil rig shimmer like noon in August. It had resisted the full force of five high-pressured water hoses, until finally Cavanaugh's father, dressed in a fire-retardant suit, complete with a head covering, had driven a bulldozer close to the upward-surging blaze. The bulldozer's blade had been raised to try to protect Cavanaugh's father from the heat. A metal pole had extended from the blade, a container of explosives dangling from it, asbestos-covered wires leading back from it. Cavanaugh's father had dumped the explosives near the heart of the gushing flames, had hurriedly backed the bulldozer away, and then had leapt down, taking cover behind the bulldozer as someone else had pushed a plunger that detonated the explosives. The wallop of the blast had nearly knocked Cavanaugh down, even from a distance. The din had made his ears ring for hours, although his hands had been clamped over them. But most impressive of all, most amazing, the explosion had blown out the fire.

"Because of the vacuum the blast created, because it sucked air away from the blaze," Cavanaugh's father had explained.