He looked down at the flag in his lap, then up at the dog, and his mouth moved like he was saying something I couldn't hear.

The private airfield at the edge of the Blackwood estate was a strip of cracked black asphalt carved out of the Appalachian ridge, surrounded by miles of dense, impenetrable pine forest.

The rain was coming down in sheets, whipped sideways by forty-knot gusts that howled off the mountains. Through the chain-link mesh of the freight elevator's upper housing, I could see the silhouette of a twin-engine Sikorsky S-76 helicopter sitting on the tarmac three hundred yards away, its main rotors already turning through the mist, throwing up massive halos of illuminated spray under the security lights.

"He's getting away," I muttered, slamming the manual release bar on the freight gate.

The heavy iron door swung open with a rusty shriek. The cold mountain air hit us like a bucket of ice water, smelling of wet earth, pine resin, and burning jet A-1 aviation fuel.

Rex surged forward onto the wet gravel, his nose instantly dropping to the muddy tracks cutting across the apron. The drag in his rear leg was almost gone—the dog was running on pure adrenaline and defensive fury. He paused at the edge of the tarmac, lifting his snout into the gale, his ears locked forward on the running aircraft.

"Donald, wait!" Harold called out, leaning forward in his chair as he rolled onto the threshold of the concrete loading dock. "You can't cross that open ground! Campbell didn't come here alone! He has his private security detail on the perimeter!"

As if on cue, the crack of a suppressed high-caliber rifle echoed above the scream of the helicopter's engines.

A high-velocity round slammed into the concrete jamb inches from Harold’s head, spraying razor-sharp chips of masonry across my jacket. Harold instinctively ducked, cutting the power to his chair to drop below the steel sill of the freight opening.

"Sniper in the fuel shed!" I yelled, dropping flat onto the rain-slick gravel beside Rex.

I looked down the scope line. Two hundred yards out, nestled between two massive cylindrical kerosene storage tanks, a faint thermal signature flickered in the dark behind a rain-streaked window.

"We're pinned," Harold shouted from behind the steel door. "If Campbell’s bird gets above the tree line, he hits international airspace over the Atlantic in forty minutes. The titanium drive in your pocket won't mean a damn thing if he clears the jurisdiction!"

I reached into my canvas coat, my fingers wrapping around the cold, machined metal of the titanium cylinder my father had left in Rex’s collar. Harold was right. The documents inside were a death warrant for Blackwood Global, but only if they were tied to Campbell’s physical presence in this country. If he escaped to a non-extradition sanctuary in the Middle East, the files would be buried by corporate injunctions before a grand jury could even be seated.

I looked at Rex. The dog was lying flat in the mud beside me, his eyes locked on mine. He wasn't looking at the helicopter. He wasn't looking at the fuel shed. He was waiting for his handler.

"Rex," I whispered, reaching out to cup the back of his neck. The fur was wet and matted with grease, but his skin was burning hot with life. "Do you remember the creek, boy? Behind the barn?"

Rex’s tail gave one single, tight thump against the wet gravel.

My father used to train him in the creek bed during thunderstorms. He said the noise of the thunder was the only thing loud enough to simulate an artillery barrage, and the water masked the scent of the approach. Thomas had run drills with Rex for hours in the freezing rain while I watched from the safety of the kitchen window, holding a mug of cocoa, wondering why my dad was playing such cruel games with a dog he loved.

He wasn't playing. He was preparing him for tonight.

"Low crawl, Rex," I commanded, dropping my voice into the exact cadence my father used when we worked the cattle fences. "Flank right. Creek line."

Rex understood.

Without a sound, the dog dropped his belly entirely into the mud and slid sideways into the drainage ditch running parallel to the tarmac. He moved like an otter through the standing water, completely submerged except for his eyes and the tip of his black nose, invisible beneath the shadow of the tall reeds.

"Harold! Cover me with the lift lights!" I yelled.

"Go!" Harold shouted back, reaching for the master breaker panel inside the elevator housing.

Harold threw the three massive copper knife switches.

The six overhead industrial floodlights illuminating the tarmac suddenly overloaded with a blinding flash, their mercury-vapor filaments exploding in a sequential cascade of bright green sparks.