Chapter 4 - The Convoy Through the Dark
“Emma, you stay at the safe house,” I told her as our four black armored Suburbans idled in the subterranean service bay of the Drake Hotel.
“No,” she said, stepping into the back of my lead vehicle without hesitation. She had stripped off her maid’s apron, wearing a black tactical Kevlar vest over her uniform, the silver swan resting against the ballistic nylon. “Leo doesn’t know you, Damien. He has spent his entire life in hiding. If armed men breach that bunker with rifles blazing, he will panic. He knows my voice. He knows his father’s lullaby. I am going.”
I looked at the fierce determination in her hazel eyes and realized that no force on earth could stop this woman from reaching her child. I nodded once to Dominic. “Put a Kevlar helmet on her. If a single scratch touches her skin, the entire vanguard answers to me.”
At 8:15 PM, our convoy tore out of the underground ramp, tires shrieking as four tons of armored steel merged onto the rain-slicked pavement of the Stevenson Expressway. Sleet lashed against the windshields, reducing visibility to less than fifty feet.
As we crossed the bridge over the Des Plaines River, Dominic’s radio crackled with urgent static: “Boss! Two heavy Ford F-350 dually trucks with darkened glass just blew through the toll plaza behind us! They’re carrying heavy front-end cattle guards and high-mount spotlights!”
Through the rearview monitor, twin pairs of blinding halogen beams accelerated through the spray. The passenger window of the lead truck slid down, and the heavy barrel of a modified M249 squad automatic weapon poked through the frame.
“Brace!” our driver shouted, wrenching the wheel.
A storm of 5.56 rounds hammered against our armored rear quarter-panel, sparks erupting into the black night like fireworks. Emma gasped, ducking low between the bucket seats, but her fingers gripped my forearm with iron resolve.
“They’re trying to run the clock down,” I growled. “They know the timer in the quarry expires in twenty-five minutes.”
I unlatched the heavy roof hatch of the Suburban, rising into the freezing gale. The rain stung my face like needles of ice. I raised my customized short-barreled Colt carbine, aligning the thermal holographic optic through the spray, aiming directly for the exposed radiator grille of the chasing truck.
I fired two controlled three-round bursts. Armor-piercing incendiary rounds punched through the engine block. A plume of white-hot steam and oil erupted from beneath the hood; the heavy truck locked its front axle at eighty miles an hour, fishtailed violently across three lanes, slammed into the concrete highway divider, and flipped three times before exploding into a roaring ball of orange flame.
The second truck swerved frantically to avoid the inferno, lost traction on the black ice, and sheared through the metal guardrail, tumbling down the forty-foot embankment into the canal.
May you like
I dropped back through the hatch, sealing the lock. Emma was looking at me, her chest heaving, but her eyes were steady. She reached out, wiping a streak of black rain and soot from my temple with her thumb.
Up ahead through the sleet, the massive limestone cliffs of the Lemont Quarry loomed against the dark sky—and high atop the western quarry gantry, the red laser sight of a sniper rifle blinked to life.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(1048x378:1050x380)/Jenna-Bush-Hager-100223-c94955eb572d47ea815a340c18c6e771.jpg)
