Chapter 8 - The Net Tightens
"Vance didn't take long," Leo muttered, stepping toward the gun rack beside the office door. He pulled down a semi-automatic tactical rifle and racked the charging handle with practiced ease. "They must have tracked Nolan’s radio signal before you turned it off."
"No," I said, looking at the security screen. "They didn't come with lights and sirens. This isn't an official police raid. Look at the cruisers—no county decals. Unmarked units."
"Death squad," Leo said flatly. "Kessler’s personal fixers. They’re here to wipe the files and leave two more bodies in the country."
"We don't shoot unless we have to, Leo," I told him, copying the decrypted contents of the Kingston drive onto three separate micro-SD cards Leo kept for his diagnostic tools. I tucked one into my sock, one inside the lining of my bra, and left the third on the workbench. "If we engage in a firefight with dirty cops on your property, the state will claim we ambushed law enforcement. We need to get these files to the State Attorney General’s Special Crimes Unit in Harrisburg."
"Harrisburg is three hours east," Leo said, his eyes scanning the monitors. "The highway will be locked down with checkpoints by daybreak. Vance will put an APB out on you for attempted murder on Kessler."
"Then we don't take the highway," I said. "Leo, do you still have that old dirt track through the timber reserve behind your property?"
"Track’s washed out from the rain," Leo answered. "Nothing gets through that mud except a tracked vehicle."
He pointed through the reinforced glass window toward the rear bay of the barn.
Sitting under a canvas tarp was an olive-drab, surplus military tracked carrier—a rebuilt M973 Small Unit Support Vehicle Leo had bought at a government auction five years ago to haul timber through the Pennsylvania snow.
"Fuel tank’s full," Leo smiled grimly. "She’ll chew through three feet of mud and spit it out the back."
The front gate splintered with a sickening crash outside. One of the black sedans had rammed the rusted iron barrier, rolling into the yard followed by three men in dark tactical gear, carrying suppressed carbines.
"Go to the back bay!" Leo yelled, flicking the master breaker switch on the barn wall.
The interior of the shop plunged into pitch darkness.
The sharp *phut-phut-phut* of suppressed rifle fire punched through the sheet-metal siding of the barn. Glass shattered above our heads as the office windows blew inward.
Leo’s German shepherds retreated to the secure kennel room beneath the hydraulic lift as Leo dropped to one knee and fired three deafening rounds from his 12-gauge through the heavy wooden front door. The blast blew the entrance open, sending two of the attackers diving behind the tires of an idling semi-truck in the driveway.
"Move, Sarah!" Leo roared.
I sprinted into the rear bay, climbed into the high cab of the tracked carrier, and hit the glow-plug switch. The heavy diesel engine sputtered, cough-coughed, and then roared to life with a bone-jarring vibration that shook the entire barn structure.
I engaged the hydraulic rear ramp. Leo sprinted backward, firing a final volley toward the front corridor before throwing himself into the passenger seat beside me.
"Hit the gas!" he shouted.
I slammed the dual-track throttle forward.
The multi-ton tracked vehicle surged through the corrugated metal rear doors of the barn like an armored tank, obliterating the wooden framing and bursting out into the torrential rain of the timber clearing.
Behind us, the attackers fired blindly into the exhaust smoke, their bullets ricocheting harmlessly off the reinforced steel plating of the tracked carrier’s hull.
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We plunged into the dense hemlock forest, churning through deep ruts of mud and fallen branches, climbing the steep ridge toward the county line where Kessler’s corrupt jurisdiction couldn't reach.
***
