The Protector (2003) (29 page)

Rutherford frowned past Cavanaugh. "Jennifer, you look sick."

Cavanaugh turned toward her. "You're pale. You'd better sit."

"What I had in mind was kneeling." She went through the bedroom and into the bathroom.

A moment later, Cavanaugh heard the muffled sounds of her throwing up.

"Her first time on an operation?" Rutherford asked.

"Yes."

"She did good."

Cavanaugh nodded.

When she came back, he held her.

"I didn't let you down," Jamie said.

"You didn't let me down." And I didn't let you down, he added silently.

As the mustached man moaned on the floor, Jamie stepped over him, easing into a chair across from Rutherford. "Don't mind me. Go on with what you were saying while I try to convince myself that I'm still alive."

Cavanaugh's hands had been steady as long as he'd had something to do. Now he had to concentrate to keep them from shaking. "Yes, what happened next?"

"After these guys worked me over enough to prove they meant business, they put a gun to my head and gave me a choice--either I'd tell them why I wanted Prescott or they'd kill me." Rutherford held the wet washcloth to his bruised cheek. "I explained I didn't want Prescott. A friend of mine did. They gave me the same choice--tell them who my friend was or they'd kill me. I didn't use your name. All I said was 'a man who'd been part of Prescott's security.'"

Cavanaugh nodded.

"That got them extremely interested," Rutherford said. "They couldn't wait to get their hands on you."

"Sure. They thought I might know where Prescott had gone."

"I told them
you
were trying to find him, too, that you didn't know anything more than they did."

"But they didn't buy it?" Cavanaugh asked.

"No way. They put the gun to my head again and ordered me to tell you Prescott's lab was at a place called Bailey's Ridge in Virginia."

"And now four of them, including Kline, are at Bailey's Ridge, arranging a trap for me?"

"They left as soon as your phone call was over," Rutherford said.

Jamie leaned forward. "When nobody shows up, they'll wonder what went wrong. They'll come back here and hope you make contact again, as you promised."

"Yes," Cavanaugh said. "They'll want to set another trap."

Rutherford reached for the phone.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Cavanaugh reached to stop him.

"Getting help."

"No."

"But the Bureau can--"

"We don't know who else is involved in this."

Rutherford hesitated.

"You said Kline might have an informant in the Bureau," Cavanaugh said. "Suppose Kline got word we were waiting for him. This'd be the last place he'd come near."

Chapter 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."