The Protector

17

When the intercom buzzed, Cavanaugh waited a few seconds, then pressed the button. "Yes?"

The security guard's voice was tinny. "Mr. Kline and another gentleman to see you."

"Send them up." Cavanaugh released the button and went back into the living room.

"Two of them," Rutherford said. "The other two must have stayed at Bailey's Ridge in case you showed up."

Jamie glanced at her watch. "Just past noon. Earlier than you expected."

"After being on a stakeout all night, Kline must really be annoyed that I didn't do what I said I would. Now he wants another heart-to-heart with John. Are we ready for guests?" Cavanaugh directed his question toward the skinhead and the mustached man, who were tied to chairs. It had taken the men an hour to regain consciousness. Insistent questioning had revealed only that they were contract operators and knew nothing about why Prescott was important.

On two occasions, the skinhead's cell phone had rung, Kline angrily checking in. Cavanaugh had rehearsed with the two captives, making sure they knew exactly how to respond if either of their cell phones rang. With his pistol to the skinhead's temple, Cavanaugh had watched the man's eyes as he spoke into his phone. If Cavanaugh had detected even the slightest attempt to warn Kline, he'd have shown keen displeasure.

The skinhead now wore a baseball cap to hide his gashed scalp. "I asked you"-Cavanaugh tapped the cap-"if you're ready to receive guests."

The skinhead winced and nodded.

"I'll see you in a few minutes," Jamie said. Following instructions that they'd worked out earlier, she left the apartment. Rutherford locked the door.

Cavanaugh nervously imagined her moving along the corridor, opening the door to the stairwell near the elevator, and waiting behind it. When Jamie heard the ding of the elevator, she would count to twenty, the length of time they had calculated it took to walk from the elevator to Rutherford's condo. Then she would open the door and step from the stairwell, fumbling in her purse for what was presumably the key to her unit, never once looking down the hallway at the two men outside Rutherford's door. The men would notice her, but with no reason to be suspicious of a trap-after all, they were the ones setting a trap-they would soon be distracted by what happened when Rutherford's door opened. Jamie had looked steady as she left, having used the intervening time to practice visualization techniques that Cavanaugh taught her, imagining possible variations to the scenario they had planned, replaying them in her mind, preparing herself not to be surprised. To give her more confidence, she wore the Kevlar vest under her blouse and jacket. It made her look overweight, her clothes too tight, but her appearance was the last thing she was worried about.

"Okay," Cavanaugh told the skinhead, aiming his pistol at him. "Be a good host."

Rutherford had already freed the man's ankles and wrists. Now he untied the ropes that held the hostage to the chair. "Remember," Cavanaugh told the man. "You'll be the first one in our line of fire." He motioned for him to cross the living room. Following, he watched the man go down the corridor and pause at the front door.

"Now all you have to do is make sure you don't give us a reason to shoot you," Cavanaugh said.

Rutherford took his position in the kitchen, ready with a pistol.

Sweat trickling down his sides, Cavanaugh waited.

Fifteen seconds. Thirty. Fifty. Cavanaugh recalled how slowly the elevator had seemed to rise. That the men hadn't yet knocked on the door didn't mean something was wrong, he tried to assure himself. Be patient. Everything's going to be-

Knock, knock. Pause. Knock, knock. That was the pattern John had heard the team agree on-the code that signaled it was okay to open the door.

Cavanaugh's stomach constricted as he motioned for the skinhead to let them in.

At that point, the start of a carefully rehearsed sequence, Cavanaugh stepped back into the living room, out of sight of the doorway. The skinhead would be very aware that Rutherford was aiming at him from the kitchen. Having opened the door, the skinhead would say, "He hasn't called," then turn and walk toward the living room, directly into Cavanaugh's line of fire. Meanwhile, Rutherford would have taken cover beside the refrigerator. Only when the men came inside and started along the corridor would Rutherford again show himself, aiming at them through the kitchen archway. The second man would notice Rutherford about the same time the first man noticed Cavanaugh in the living room. Simultaneously, Jamie would have come up behind them, drawing her pistol, saying, "Into the living room," which she did now.

Caught by surprise in a three-way vise, their weapons beneath their jackets, the men had little choice but to comply.

"On the floor," Rutherford said. "Hands behind your head."

"Now," Cavanaugh said.

The skinhead did what he was told, sinking chest-down onto the carpet. The other two hesitated only briefly before they imitated him, putting their hands behind their heads. Jamie stepped in, locking the door.

"Was anybody else in the hallway?" Cavanaugh asked, aiming at the men. "Did they see your pistol?"

"Two people got off the elevator as I came in here. My pistol was next to my purse. Nobody saw it."

Cavanaugh felt a measure of relief. John had assured him that the people who lived in the building were mostly professional types, not likely to be home early in the afternoon on a weekday. Even so, someone coming along the hallway at the wrong time had been a liability Cavanaugh couldn't plan for.

"Cute," the first man said, peering up from the carpet. He was of medium height, wiry, with a thin face and military-style hair. Cavanaugh recognized the sandpapery voice. "We've spoken before. On this guy's cell phone." Cavanaugh meant the skinhead. "After I took the car from him outside the shopping mall." "You figured out the phone contained a homing device." Like the skinhead, the man had a European accent. "We followed it for hours, until we realized you'd thrown it into the back of a passing pickup truck."

"Hey, if you can't take a joke." A thought occurred to Cavanaugh. "You followed the truck? Why did you bother if you already knew we'd used a helicopter to leave the area?" "Helicopter? I don't know what you're talking about." The man's confusion looked spontaneous enough to be convincing, reinforcing Cavanaugh's suspicion that the team who'd tried to grab Prescott at the warehouse had not been the same team that had used helicopters to attack the bunker.

While he and Jamie continued to aim at the men on the floor, Rutherford tied their ankles and wrists.

Cavanaugh removed a 9-mm Beretta from beneath the second man's loose pullover. He felt beneath the first man's black leather jacket and found a 9-mm Browning Hi-Power. He also found a folding knife clipped to the inside of his pants pocket. Only the clip showed on the outside. By pulling upward on the clip, the owner could draw the knife instantaneously from concealment. A small ribbed projection on the back of the blade allowed it to be thumbed open one-handed in the same motion as the knife was being drawn. When open, it was almost eight inches long.

Knives had once been considered inferior weapons ("Dummy, you brought a knife to a gunfight"), but a graphic self-defense video released in the 1990s, Surviving Sharp-Edged Weapon Attacks, had shown law-enforcement and security personnel that an assailant with a knife could race across a distance of twenty feet and cause lethal wounds before someone with a concealed handgun could overcome his startle reflex, draw, and fire. Now some operators considered a knife as prudent a backup weapon as a pistol and carried as many as three. The knife Cavanaugh held had a nonreflective flat-black surface and had been manufactured by one of the best self-defense instructors and knife makers: Ernest Emerson. It was called the CQC-7, the initials representing "close-quarter combat." Its weave-patterned epoxy handle was designed not to be slippery when covered with water, sweat, or blood. Its serrated steel was hard and sharp enough to punch through a car door.

"Cute," Cavanaugh said, echoing what the first man had said. He closed the knife and clipped it into his pants pocket. He sat cross-legged on the floor, at the first man's eye level. "You're using the name Kline?"

"It's as good as anything."

"Tell me about Prescott."

Kline didn't answer.

"I'll tell you what I know about him," Cavanaugh said. "Feel free to chime in any time you feel like it."

Cavanaugh told Kline what had happened after the car chase: the arrival at the bunker, the instructions to Prescott about how to disappear, the fire, the helicopter attack, and the other fire at Karen's house. "So, you see, I want him as much as you do. Probably worse. We'd accomplish more if we worked together."

"But our purposes conflict."

"I'm sure we can work around our differences." Cavanaugh studied him. "You look like your arms are starting to hurt. Why don't I make you more comfortable?"

Kline frowned, puzzled, as Cavanaugh brought a captain's chair from the kitchen. Kline frowned even more when Cavanaugh raised him to his feet and thumbed open the Emerson knife.

"I'm going to cut the rope on your wrists," Cavanaugh said. "If you make any move against me, my friend here"-Cavanaugh indicated Rutherford-"who's in a world of hurt and a really foul mood because of the beating your team gave him yesterday, will shoot you."

Rutherford had gone into the kitchen and returned with an empty plastic soft-drink bottle shoved over the barrel of his pistol as a sound suppressor. "I want my tooth back."

It was a tactic that he and Cavanaugh had rehearsed, and it had its intended effect, especially the rigged sound suppressor, causing Kline's eyes to narrow.

"But why invite trouble?" Cavanaugh asked. "We're having a pleasant conversation. We want to cooperate with one another." Cavanaugh stepped behind Kline, cut the rope on his wrists, and told him, "Sit." Kline obeyed.

Cavanaugh retied Kline's wrists, this time to the arms of the captain's chair.

"Comfy?" Cavanaugh asked. "Good. I honestly think we'd have a better chance of finding Prescott if we worked together. It's your turn. Tell me what you know." Kline looked away.

"For starters," Cavanaugh said, "why do you want him so much? He told me a story about addiction research he was doing for the DEA. He was supposed to find a way to block the physical mechanism that causes people to become addicted. Instead, he claimed he found an easy-to-manufacture substance that causes addiction. He said Jesus Escobar somehow found out and tried to grab him to get the formula. He said you guys worked for Escobar. But all that turned out to be a bunch of hooey. The DEA never heard of Prescott, and Escobar was killed two months ago, so who do you guys really work for?"

Kline finally looked back at Cavanaugh. Tension made his European accent-Slavic or possibly Russian-more pronounced. "You know I can't tell you that."

"Maybe I should make you some coffee while we consider the problem."

"Coffee?" Kline tilted his head, puzzled.

"Yeah, there's nothing like a chat over coffee. John, where do you keep it?"

"Above the fridge." He and Jamie looked as puzzled as Kline did. "The grinders next to it. The percolator's next to the toaster on the counter."

"Percolator? What I had in mind was instant coffee," Cavanaugh said.

"Uh, in the cupboard to the right of the stove."

Cavanaugh turned Kline's chair so Kline could watch. Then Cavanaugh went into the kitchen and opened the cupboard, finding a small box that had packets of various kinds of instant coffees. "Let's see. Hazelnut roast, vanilla roast, chocolate roast. Any of that appeal to you?" he asked Kline.

No answer.

"John, you've got to lay off this sweet coffee," Cavanaugh said. "You'll put on so much weight, you won't be able to run it off. Haven't you got anything with some heft to it? Wait a minute. What's this? Mocha Java? Now that sounds like a manly brew."

Cavanaugh opened two packets of it and dumped the powder into a small transparent juice glass. He put very little water in a kettle and set the kettle on the stove, turning the burner to high.

"Won't be long now," he assured Kline. "There's nothing like hot, rich caffeinated coffee to promote conversation. Are you sure you don't want to give me some tidbits right now-about why you want Prescott and about who else would be after him?" Kline continued to look stubborn.

"Ah, well," Cavanaugh said, "I certainly respect your principles. You're definitely not a blabbermouth." The kettle whistled.

Cavanaugh poured what amounted to an ounce and a half of boiling liquid into the juice glass. There was barely enough water to dissolve the two packets of coffee crystals. He gave it a stir, letting Kline see how dark and thick the mixture was. "Nothing limp-wristed about this stuff. It'll put fire in your eyes and hair on your chest."

Kline looked even more perplexed. "You expect me to drink that? What the hell good will that do to make me talk? I'd probably throw it up."

"Drink it? The farthest thing from my mind. And believe me, you won't be throwing it up."

Cavanaugh opened Rutherford's first-aid kit and removed one of the syringes.

Kline's eyes got bigger.

Cavanaugh inserted the syringe in the thick coffee mixture and pulled back the plunger, filling the tube, then pushed the plunger to remove air from the syringe. He started humming "Fly Me to the Moon."

"Hold it," Kline said. "You're not seriously thinking about-"

Cavanaugh interrupted him by ripping Kline's shirt open, fully exposing his neck. Now he was humming "Black Coffee" as he angled the tip of the syringe toward Kline's jugular vein.

"For Christ's sake, stop!" Kline tilted his body toward the opposite side, nearly overturning the chair.

"Watch your language," Rutherford, the Southern Baptist, said seriously.

"All right, all right. Just stop," Kline told Cavanaugh. "You can't expect me to believe you're crazy enough to-"

"Expand your mind, along with your arteries and your vital organs," Cavanaugh said. "I'm going to set your heart racing and blow your brains out from the inside. I figure by the time your pulse gets up to about a hundred and eighty, you might even start to levitate, except you'll be tied to that chair. Now if you'll hold still…"

Cavanaugh put a firm hand on Kline's shoulder and readjusted the syringe's trajectory.

"No!" Kline tilted his body so far to the side that this time the chair did topple. With a thump, he landed on the carpet.

"Hey, have some consideration for the neighbors," Cavanaugh said.

"That stuff'll kill me!" Kline said.

"Kill you? It'll get your metabolism racing so fast, you'll probably self-combust."

Cavanaugh pushed Kline's head against the carpet and slanted the syringe's tip so that it pressed along Kline's jugular.

Kline whispered, trying to minimize his neck movements, sounding as if he'd swallowed ashes: "If you kill me, I can't tell you anything."

"You know what? Part of me doesn't care. Running into you twice was running into you twice too often. I'm pissed about my friends being dead. I'm pissed about Prescott trying to kill me. I'm pissed about what you and your men did to John. I want to get even with somebody, and if you don't intend to cooperate with me the way I cooperated with you, at least I'll get the satisfaction of this."

Cavanaugh pierced Kline's artery enough to draw blood.

Kline winced and looked as if he was trying not to shudder, but he didn't succeed, his involuntary movement causing a little more blood to leak from his artery. "The drug-addiction story was a cover. Prescott worked for the U.S. military." "I want specifics."

"A branch of it devoted to special-weapons development." Kline licked his lips, which suddenly looked very dry. "I might need to cough."

"Better not. The syringe'll go all the way in."

"A subsection of a subsection." Kline lowered his voice even more trying not to move his neck. "The kind of research they don't report to the secretary of defense."

"Or the kind the Pentagon itself doesn't know about? Like the LSD experiments in Washington in the 1950s or the nerve-gas experiments in Utah in the 70s."

Kline licked his dry lips again. "Yes."

"Our tax dollars at work. So what was this experiment about?"

"Fear."