The Protector Read online

  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."

  * * *

  18

  The word seemed to linger in the air. It was so unexpected that Cavanaugh didn't react to it at first. He was certain he hadn't heard correctly. "Fear?"

  Cavanaugh's muscles tightened and his palms became moist as he felt a premonition about what Kline was going to tell him next.

  "Fear," Kline whispered hoarsely, repulsed by the pressure of the syringe's tip against his artery. "Prescott was in charge of biochemical research designed to create fear in any opponent the U.S. military confronted. My neck." Kline tensed. "You're shoving harder."

  "Prescott. Tell me about Prescott."


  Kline's brow was beaded with sweat. "He created a synthetic hormone that triggered adrenaline in such massive doses that panic was an immediate result."

  Prescott's lie about trying to stop addiction and instead discovering how to increase addiction had been partially based on truth, Cavanaugh now realized. All that needed to be done was to substitute the word fear for addiction. His mind flashed back to the stairs in the abandoned warehouse and the pungent odor he'd smelled as he'd gone up to meet Prescott. He'd become more and more uneasy as he'd mounted the stairs, his body more jittery with each step.

  "Prescott's military controllers were thrilled." Unable to turn his head, Kline strained his eyes sideways toward where the syringe pricked the artery in his neck. Sweat dripped from his face. "If the synthetic hormone could be modified into a gas and delivered in canisters dropped from planes or via rockets, it would render opposing armies helpless during an attack."

  "Politicians tend to get a little nervous when they hear about chemical-weapons research, but why should that hold back a good idea?" Cavanaugh said, barely containing his anger.

  He recalled how Kline's men had suddenly panicked when they'd invaded the warehouse's stairwell. Responding to an unseen threat, they had fired uncontrollably up the stairs, unable to force themselves higher. Prescott must have had canisters of the gas concealed in the stairwell. Traces of it had escaped, which explained Cavanaugh's jittery reaction.

  He recalled something else—how Prescott had worked dials on a panel when Kline's team invaded the stairwell. But as frightened as Kline's men had become, their reaction had apparently not been strong enough, for Prescott had murmured in alarm to himself, as if something was wrong. Perhaps the canisters had developed a slow leak so that by the time Kline's team attacked, the full force of the weapon wasn't available.

  "Prescott experimented with it on animals," Kline said. "Rats went berserk. Cats and dogs became so afraid of each other, they cowered in corners. On one occasion, it drove a dozen goats into such a panic that they raced around the walls that contained them until they dropped in shock and died."

  Cavanaugh thought of Karen's basement, of the pungent smell that he now realized had caused him, for the first time in his life, to suffer fear, the effects of which continued to linger. He thought of the panic that had almost destroyed him in the fire. He thought of seeing Karen slumped motionless in her wheelchair, her hands clamped to her chest, her face contorted rigidly with horror. Now he understood what had killed her. Wanting to avoid a wound or a strangle mark that would alert a medical examiner to Karen's murder, Prescott had used the hormone to terrify her to death. Her heart and arteries must have ruptured from the massive force of terror.

  "The syringe. Your hand's shaking again," Kline said.

  "Tell me everything."

  "Eventually, the temptation became too great. Prescott tried it on humans. Inner-city gangs ran in panic when a lone victim wandered onto their turf and defended himself from their attacks by throwing a small hissing canister at them."

  "Then there must be a neutralizer," Cavanaugh said. "Otherwise, the person throwing the canister would become terrified also."

  "Yes." Kline cringed from the pressure of the syringe against his neck.

  Prescott must have used the neutralizer on himself when he was in Karen's house, Cavanaugh realized. Otherwise, the hormone would have overpowered him.

  "Without the neutralizer, they couldn't have managed what happened at the World Trade Organization riots in St. Louis," Kline said.

  All Cavanaugh remembered about the riots was that after three days of chaos, the authorities had finally overwhelmed the rioters and forced them into the Mississippi. "The tear gas?"

  "Contained the fear hormone." Kline shut his eyes in an attempt to relieve his tension. "The gas masks, supplied by the military, had the neutralizer in their filters. The experiment was a success.

  "Except that only a few military officers and Prescott knew what had really happened," Cavanaugh said.

  "And a few powerful civilians with strong ideas about how your country should protect itself. They decided to try another secret test on humans, this time on a group trained not to respond to fear. A team of U.S. Rangers on a training exercise in a swamp in Florida."

  Cavanaugh recalled being troubled by a recent report about fifteen Rangers who had drowned in Florida.

  Sweating, Kline kept his eyes shut. "Maybe the hormone had the wrong strength. Or maybe men trained to use weapons do just that when they're overwhelmed with panic. They started shooting at anything and everything. Most of them didn't drown—they were hit by cross fire."

  Sickened, Cavanaugh found himself leaning back, taking the syringe from where he'd pressed it against Kline's jugular.

  Except for Kline's labored breathing, the room became silent. It took several moments before Kline—pale, taped to the chair, lying sideways on the floor—seemed to realize that the syringe had been removed. Slowly, apprehensively, he opened his eyes, evidently not believing that Cavanaugh sat across from him, the syringe next to him on the carpet. "Keep talking," Cavanaugh said.

  "Two things happened." Kline tried to raise his head so he could look at Cavanaugh straight on. "First, my employer learned about the experiments." "How?"

  "One of Prescott's researchers was an informant for us." "And the second thing?"

  "The informant wasn't cautious about the way he spent what we paid him. Prescott's controllers became suspicious, interrogated the man, and discovered that the research had been compromised, that an unfriendly foreign government wanted the weapon. In tandem with the dead Rangers in the failed experiment, that security lapse made the military officers decide it was too risky to continue. Before anyone in your government could learn about the research and make trouble about it, they aborted the program."

  Kline let the implication hang in the air. "You're suggesting Prescott's controllers worried about him, about whether they could trust him?" Cavanaugh asked.

  "Our informant knew the nature of the fear hormone but not how to produce it. Only Prescott had all the details. He was synonymous with the research. To shut down the program fully—"

  "Prescott had to be eliminated," Cavanaugh said.

  "Especially because his controllers knew we wanted to get our hands on him. He suspected the danger he faced. He fled—with us and his controllers after him, one group trying to capture him, the other trying to kill him. We managed to track him to that warehouse. Then you showed up, and here we are," Kline said.

  "But how did Prescott's controllers learn where we were taking him?" Cavanaugh asked. Abruptly, the answer seemed evident. "They must have followed you to the warehouse."

  "We were careful."

  "Perhaps one of your men informed on you."

  "Then why did it take so long for Prescott's controllers to try to get him?" Kline asked. "They made their move only after you became involved."

  Cavanaugh felt his face turn cold. "I was followed? Someone at Protective Services told them we were helping Prescott?"

  "Your firm protects the rich and powerful. It makes sense that various intelligence agencies would keep tabs on your company's activities."

  Again, Cavanaugh began to lose focus on reality. He didn't know what to think, what to depend on. Then he looked at Jamie, whose beautiful yet worried gaze was directed toward him, and he knew very definitely what to depend on.

  "To hell with it." Cavanaugh raised Kline from the floor and pulled out the Emerson knife.

  "What are you doing?" Kline flinched.

  "John's going to phone the Justice Department and have your companions picked up for a heart-to-heart chat about unfriendly foreign governments."

  Kline stared at the knife. "But what's going to happen to me?"

  "We're going sight-seeing."

  "What?"

  "A quiet drive in the countryside."

  "With you?" Kline looked pleadingly toward Rutherford. "Can't you see this guy's crazy? He'll take me out to
the woods. God knows what he'll do to me there. No one'll ever find my body."

  Rutherford studied Cavanaugh. "Can I talk to you a minute?"

  "Keep your pistol aimed at Kline," Cavanaugh told Jamie. He followed Rutherford into the bedroom.

  * * *

  19

  Rutherford closed the bedroom door. "Are you serious?"

  "I need him to show me Prescott's lab. Maybe something there will tell me where Prescott went. It's the only direction I can think to go."

  "Can't let you," Rutherford said. "Kline's an FBI prisoner now."

  "I haven't heard you read him his rights."

  "You will in about thirty seconds," Rutherford said.

  "How about in a couple of hours?"

  "What are you trying to—"

  "Once Kline's officially in FBI custody and the Bureau puts him in a government facility, the pressure's off him. He won't feel threatened. He won't tell you anything more."

  "Kidnapping a federal agent can put him in prison for life," Rutherford said. "He'll tell us anything we want to know in exchange for a plea bargain."

  "But plea bargains take time," Cavanaugh said. "Meanwhile, Prescott's trail gets colder. I need everything Kline knows now."

  "Can't," Rutherford repeated. "If the Bureau found out I let a prisoner go, I'd lose my job."

  "You won't be letting him go," Cavanaugh said.

  "Then why are we having this conversation?"

  "I'm taking him."

  "What?"

  "Wait two hours, then phone the Bureau. Tell them there was another prisoner but that I took him before the situation was under control. Tell them we went to Prescott's lab. Send a team out there. By then, I'll have learned everything I need from Kline."

  "You are crazy."

  "Let's just say things are happening inside me I need to stop."

  "I don't understand."

  Cavanaugh held up his shaking hand. "Prescott gave me a dose of the fear hormone Kline talked about."

  Rutherford didn't say anything for a moment. "God."