Chapter 11 - The Phantom on the Ridge
I shoved Rex into the passenger side of the beat-up Ram, slammed the rusted door, and threw the truck into neutral, letting it coast down the dirt embankment without turning on the engine. Gravity pulled us through the mud until the farmhouse was completely swallowed by the pine trees behind us.
Only when we hit the asphalt of the old county road did I drop the clutch and turn the ignition. The V8 roared to life with an unholy rumble.
In the rearview mirror, red flares exploded into the night sky behind my father’s property. They were marking the coordinates. They weren't just searching; they were preparing to sanitize the perimeter.
"Stay down, Rex," I commanded.
He flattened himself on the floorboards, his chin resting against the transmission hump, his tail giving a single, disciplined thump against the floor mats.
Forty minutes later, the headlights illuminated the rusted corrugated steel of Caldwell's Mill. The place looked abandoned to the naked eye—piles of rotting cedar logs, rusted saw blades hanging from weather-beaten posts. But I knew the security cameras were hidden inside the hollowed-out birdhouses along the perimeter fence.
I stepped out of the truck, hands held high away from my jacket. Rex trotted at my knee, perfectly matching my stride.
From the dark overhang of the mill, a green laser dot painted the center of my chest.
"You're late, Miller," a voice rasped through a hidden loudspeaker, metallic and flat. "And you brought company."
"Vance! It’s Thomas’s boy. Harold sent me. We need the reader."
The silence stretched for ten heartbeats. Then, the hiss of hydraulic locks echoed across the yard. A steel slab behind a stack of cordwood slid open, revealing a ramp descending into fluorescent brightness.
A frail, gaunt man with a prosthetic leg and an oxygen tube beneath his nose stood at the bottom of the ramp, clutching an M14 rifle. His eyes weren't looking at me. They were locked onto Rex.
"Sweet mother of God," Vance whispered, his hand shaking as he lowered the rifle. "That’s the Carver line. I thought Thomas shot that entire litter in seventy-five."
"He lied," I said, stepping inside. "And now they’re burning down the county to clean up the mess."
May you like
Vance locked the blast door behind us, turning four heavy steel wheels into place. "They aren't just cleaning up a mess, kid. If you have what I think you have, you're holding the death certificate of five sitting senators and the entire founding charter of the Special Reconnaissance Division."
***
