Chapter 25 - The Broken Chain at Mile Marker 14
The road became a nightmare of sheer ice and fallen timber.
Sheriff Vance left his battered cruiser behind at the weigh station and climbed into the back seat of my F-250, his shotgun resting across his knees. The truck climbed higher, every foot of elevation bringing colder temperatures and fiercer winds that shook the five-ton vehicle like a toy.
"Mile Marker 14 is coming up," Richard warned, wiping condensation from the passenger window with his sleeve. "There’s a ninety-degree hairpin turn around the gorge. If they slip there, they go five hundred feet down into the canyon."
"They won't slip," I muttered grimly. "They’re professionals. Julian hired men who do this for a living."
As we rounded a sweeping bend bordered by towering rock walls, our headlights suddenly caught a reflection—a pair of crimson tail-lights glowing through the whiteout barely two hundred yards ahead.
It wasn't a standard truck. It was an enormous, eight-wheeled Canadian forestry transporter, fitted with a massive steel V-plow on the front, its engine roaring with the deafening thunder of a locomotive. The heavy chains on its rear tires were chewing the packed ice into a flurry of deadly shrapnel.
"There they are!" Vance yelled, leaning between our seats. "Pull up alongside them! Force them toward the inner bank!"
"Are you crazy?!" Richard screamed. "That rig weighs twenty tons! If he taps us, he'll swat us off the mountain like a fly!"
Before I could answer, the transporter’s backup floodlights suddenly flared to life—blinding, stadium-intensity halogen beams that struck our windshield like physical blows.
I squinted through the blinding white glare, slamming my sun visor down.
"Brace yourselves!" I shouted.
The heavy transporter didn't try to outrun us. The driver stomped on his air brakes with a loud, hissing screech. The massive steel rear bumper, reinforced with welded railway ties, halted abruptly right in our path.
I yanked the steering wheel hard, but the ice gave us no traction. The front right corner of my F-250 slammed into the corner of the transporter's steel chassis with a sickening crunch of crumpling metal and shattering glass. The impact threw Richard forward against his seatbelt, while Sheriff Vance was tossed violently into the driver's seatback.
My truck bounced off the hauler, spinning forty-five degrees and slamming sideways against the granite wall of the mountain, coming to a dead stop. Steam hissed from my punctured radiator, filling the cab with the sweet, sickening smell of boiling coolant.
Ahead of us, the cab door of the transporter flew open.
A tall man in a heavy caribou-skin coat jumped down into the snow, holding a stubby twelve-gauge shotgun. His face was wrapped in a black balaclava, but his eyes were pale, cold, and utterly indifferent.
"Stay down!" Vance bellowed, kicking his door open and rolling out into the snowdrifts, leveling his service pistol. "Sheriff’s Department! Drop the weapon!"
The man in the caribou coat didn't speak. He leveled the shotgun and fired.
A blast of heavy buckshot tore through the upper corner of our truck's windshield, showering Richard and me with thousands of safety-glass diamonds. Vance returned fire, two sharp cracks echoing against the granite cliffs, but the gunman was already ducking behind the transporter's massive steel wheels.
"David!" Richard groaned beside me, clutching his arm. A stray pellet had grazed his forearm, soaking his flannel shirt in bright crimson.
"Are you hit?!" I asked, reaching for him.
"I’m fine! Go!" Richard gasped, his eyes wild with terror and determination. "He’s keeping us pinned down so the hauler can reach the gate! Look!"
Through the shattered windshield, I saw the transporter’s engine rev again, dark plumes of diesel smoke billowing into the snow. The passenger door opened, and another figure stepped out onto the running board—carrying a small bundle wrapped in an oversized green winter parka.
"Maisie!" I screamed.
The child squirmed in the man's grip, kicking her little snow boots against his ribs. The man cursed, shifting her under one arm like a sack of grain, and began hauling her toward a narrow footpath that bypassed the blocked logging road, leading directly up toward the abandoned ridge summit.
"Vance, cover me!" I yelled.
May you like
I didn't wait for an answer. I kicked my door open, ducked low beneath the hood of my steaming truck, and scrambled into the frozen ditch, lunging after the man who had my child.
***
