The Protector (2003) (15 page)

Looking ashen, Prescott reached for one.

"No," Chad said. "Leave the fireworks to us. You might shoot yourself in the foot."

"Or one of us," Tracy said.

"But what if I have to defend myself? I should at least know how to use one of those things."

"If the situation gets that desperate, God help us," Roberto said. "Don't touch a rifle unless we're down and there's no other choice. Brace the stock against your shoulder. Point the barrel at your target. Pull the trigger. If a shell gets stuck, yank back this knob on the side to free it."

"The AR-15 likes to kick up," Cavanaugh said. "If you're not careful, all you do is shoot toward the sky. Keep forcing the barrel down toward your target. Can you remember all that?"

"I hope I don't have to."

Chad ran to the kitchen to make sure the stove and oven were off. Everybody grabbed windbreakers to cover their Kevlar vests. At the exit, Duncan opened the door. As the group hurried along the echoing concrete passageway toward the cold mountain night, Cavanaugh heard the
whump
of the approaching helicopters getting louder.

"Good luck, Roberto." Tracy's blond hair shone briefly in the light that spilled from the closing door.

"They've got less than an hour's fuel, and my tank's full. I can outrun them." Roberto backed to the left, moving into the murky forest. "Adios."

"Come on, Prescott." His Kevlar vest feeling bulky on him, Cavanaugh headed to the right, hurrying through the darkness toward the underground garage, the entrance to which was recessed into the hill. "Stay close to me." He reached the garage and glanced toward the shadows behind him. "Prescott?"

Holding their AR-15s, Duncan, Chad, and Tracy glanced back also.

All Cavanaugh saw were the indistinct outlines of trees and bushes. "Prescott?"

The helicopters thundered closer.

"What happened?" Chad asked. "Where'd he go?"

"The last time I saw him was ..." Duncan stared back toward the entryway. "Don't tell me he's still inside."

"I'll get the Jeeps," Tracy said.

"Prescott!" Cavanaugh yelled.

The concrete passageway prevented the helicopters from seeing the faint motion-triggered light that came on when Duncan rushed to the number pad next to the door.

"Prescott!" Cavanaugh scanned the dark trees. Behind him, he heard a muffled motor that Tracy activated, raising the garage door.

At the end of the passageway, another light appeared as Duncan hurried into the bunker.

"Maybe he's in the bushes," Chad said. "He got awfully upset when he saw those radar blips. It could be he's so scared, his bladder went crazy."

"Or his bowels." Cavanaugh said. "Or he got sick." Cavanaugh moved through the dark bushes, checking. "Prescott!"

Behind him, he heard Tracy drive the first Jeep up the ramp from the underground garage.

As the helicopters rumbled nearer, Cavanaugh suddenly realized that he hadn't heard Roberto take off with the chopper. Move, Roberto! he thought. If you don't lift off soon, you won't have a chance of getting ahead of them.

"Prescott!" Scraping branches, Chad continued to search through the undergrowth as Tracy got out of the Jeep and ran back into the garage.

Now that his eyes were accustomed to the night, Cavanaugh could see to avoid obstacles in the starlit darkness while he rushed past the bunker's entrance and made his way through evergreen branches, hurrying toward the helicopter pad.

"Prescott!"

At once, Cavanaugh saw that the camouflage net hadn't been retracted and the dark dragonfly silhouette of the helicopter still sat on the pad, its motor silent, its blades unmoving. His nostrils contracted from the sharp smell of aviation fuel. The night air was saturated with it.

Turning to run, he missed seeing a shadowy log and tripped over it, falling. Careful to keep the AR-15's barrel from jamming into the dirt, he rolled, his shoulder and his back absorbing the impact. He used the momentum of his roll to rise to a crouch, but not before he saw that what he'd tripped over wasn't a log.

Roberto lay motionless, a half-moon providing enough light for Cavanaugh to see Roberto's stark open eyes and the black pool of blood where the rear of his head had been bashed in.

Simultaneously, the darkness exploded into an eye-searing glare as the aviation fumes ignited. The flames reflected off the fuel pump's hose, which lay on the ground, spewing liquid through the forest. A long wall of fire burst up through the bushes and trees. The force of the heat thrust Cavanaugh backward.

Before he ran, he saw the blaze envelope the helicopter, the camouflage net vanishing in a crackling flash. The light from the flames was so intense that he saw individual needles on tree branches, the texture of bark on trunks. Sprinting toward the bunker, he heard his footsteps crush dead needles and then a roar as the fire erupted farther through the forest, chasing him.

"Prescott!"

Although the power of the fire's roar overwhelmed what Cavanaugh shouted, it wasn't loud enough to obscure the din of the rapidly approaching helicopters. Racing harder, Cavanaugh saw the two Jeeps that Tracy had driven from the underground garage. Holding their AR-15s, she and Chad stood next to the vehicles, staring in surprise at the rapidly spreading flames.

The next instant, Tracy and Chad disintegrated as something streaked from one of the helicopters and hit the two Jeeps, the detonation spewing chunks of metal and body parts in every direction.

The shock of what Cavanaugh had seen, in combination with the force of the blast, almost knocked him to the ground. His sanity felt threatened, the enormity of what had happened overwhelming him. But then he saw Duncan race from the bunker, and his conditioning took control. Tightening his grip on his assault rifle, he hurried in a crouch toward where Duncan gaped at the flames spreading quickly through the trees.

"Prescott's not inside!" Duncan swung to stare at the crater where the Jeeps had been. "Chad and Tracy--"

"Took that hit!"

"Son of a bitch!" The outrage on Duncan's face changed to alarm at the sound of something else shrieking from one of the helicopters toward the flames.

Chapter 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.