Chapter 18 - The Ambush at Black Bear Pass
"Holy hell," Mac breathed, reading the yellowed parchment. "William didn't just save the land. Harold Vance tried to bribe your father with half the mineral rights to keep quiet. When William refused, Harold swore on his life that his son would finish what he started."
"It’s all here," I said, flipping through the pages. "The mineral vein isn't on our land. It’s on state-owned park territory three miles north! Vance’s company forged the county boundary surveys to make it look like the vein ran through the Morse parcel so they could strip-mine it under private agricultural exemptions!"
"Captain!" David’s voice crackled through my radio from the attic. "We’ve got a convoy coming up the pass! Two flatbed haulers with commercial bulldozers, three county marshal cruisers, and Victor Vance’s black Suburban. They’re ten minutes out!"
"We don't fight the marshals," I said firmly. "They’re executing what they believe is a lawful court order. We take this evidence straight to the State Attorney General’s field office in Bluefield."
"The main road is cut off by their convoy," Mac pointed out.
"Then we take Black Bear Pass," I said. "The old logging trail."
Ten minutes later, David and I were in Dad's vintage Jeep CJ-7, cutting through the dense forest tracks while Mac stayed behind at the house, unarmed and sitting peacefully on the front porch with a thermos of coffee, ready to stall the marshals with pure, stubborn Appalachian bureaucratic delay.
The Jeep bounced violently over exposed roots and limestone boulders as we climbed the steep, overgrown switchbacks toward the highway. The mountain was unforgiving, but Dad had taught me every inch of this dirt.
Suddenly, an engine roared from the tree line above us.
A customized Ford Raptor burst through the brush on an intersecting ridge trail, deliberately ramming our rear quarter panel. The impact threw the Jeep violently sideways, the tires screaming against wet shale, teetering on the edge of a sixty-foot drop into the rocky creek bed below.
"Hold on!" I shouted, wrestling the steering wheel back toward the mountain face.
The Raptor reversed, preparing to ram us again and send us over the precipice. Behind the wheel was Vance’s head of security, grinning maliciously as he revved the engine.
"He wants the lockbox!" David yelled.
"He’s not getting it," I snarled.
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I slammed the Jeep into reverse, cutting the wheel hard. Instead of bracing for impact, I punched the accelerator straight toward a massive fallen hemlock trunk spanning the ditch. The Raptor lunged forward, but misjudged the angle; its front bumper struck the solid hemlock log at forty miles an hour. The truck’s front axle snapped with a violent explosion of metal and hydraulic fluid, sending it spinning into a ditch, disabled and smoking.
I dropped the Jeep into first gear and gunned it down the final descent toward the paved state highway.
