Chapter 33 - Red Lights at the State Line
By midnight, the heavy rain had turned into a steady, suffocating drizzle. The radio scanner inside the truck crackled constantly, patched into civilian and state police frequencies.
*"All units, be on the lookout for a blue late-nineties pickup, Virginia plates. Suspects wanted in connection with an explosion and homicide in Augusta County. Federal advisory issued by Department of Defense liaison. Approach with extreme caution. Suspect is female, former naval officer, classified as armed and dangerous."*
I felt a cold wire tighten in my chest. "They've already turned the state police into their hunting dogs," I said, leaning my head against the passenger glass. "They classified me as an armed fugitive to justify shoot-on-sight protocols."
"Look ahead," Nathan warned, his grip whitening on the steering wheel.
A quarter-mile south of the Maryland border, the highway was choked with flashing red and blue strobes. Concrete barricades narrowed the three-lane interstate down to a single bottleneck. Two state cruiser units sat idling, with three men in unmarked tactical vests standing alongside the uniformed troopers, holding biometric scanners.
"They're scanning every face," Nathan muttered, tapping the brakes. "We turn around on the median, they'll pit-maneuver us before we hit fifty miles an hour."
"Don't turn around," I said, unzipping my duffel.
Inside lay my service uniform—the very white-and-gold service dress uniform with my rank ribbons and Surface Warfare Officer pin, pressed and preserved in its garment bag. My father had once sneered at it, calling it a servant's suit for a daughter who refused to obey the family cartel. Now, it was the only shield I had left.
"What are you doing?" Nathan asked.
"They're expecting a fugitive crawling in the mud," I told him, throwing off my mud-splattered slicker and pulling the crisp, immaculate tunic over my shoulders, buttoning every brass anchor button up to my collar. I pinned my name tag straight: *EVELYN MERCER, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER, USN.*
"Roll down your window, Nathan. Keep your hands on the wheel, don't look nervous, and let me speak."
The truck rolled into the glare of the roadblock spotlights. A Maryland trooper stepped forward, flashlight aimed at the windshield, hand hovering near his holster. Alongside him, one of the unmarked black-ops operatives lifted a handheld optical tablet, aiming it toward the driver’s seat.
Nathan rolled the window down halfway. "Good evening, Officer."
The state trooper peered inside, his flashlight beam sweeping across the cab until it struck the gold rank insignia on my shoulders and the rows of service commendations across my chest. The operative behind him frowned, looking down at his tablet screen, his finger furiously scrolling.
"Ma'am?" the trooper paused, instinctively lowering his light out of my eyes out of ingrained military courtesy. "We have a felony perimeter check in effect. Can I see your identification?"
"Officer, I am Lieutenant Commander Evelyn Mercer, Judge Advocate General's Corps, operating under priority directive from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service," I said in a tone of sharp, unyielding military authority that brooked zero hesitation. I held up my active military CAC card, letting the laminate gleam under his halogen beam. "My escort and I are on direct transit to Naval Submarine Base New London on a priority counter-espionage briefing."
The civilian trooper blinked, clearly rattled by the commanding presence and the uniform. "Uh, Commander, we received an alert from DOD regarding a female deserter—"
"You received a spoofed bulletin initiated by a compromised contractor ring we are actively dismantling," I cut him off, leaning forward so my eyes pinned the operative standing behind the trooper. "And if you check the security clearance on my credentials, you will find it outranks whoever handed you that tablet by five tiers. If your perimeter delays my transport by another sixty seconds, I will personally place every badge number at this checkpoint under federal obstruction charges before sunrise."
The operative’s face darkened; he raised his radio to whisper into his collar, recognizing that the uniform had created an instant civilian buffer he couldn't violently dismantle without forty dashboard cameras recording the slaughter of a decorated naval officer.
The state trooper swallowed hard, looked at the operative, then back at my medals. He stepped back and waved his baton. "Clear lane one! Let them through. Safe travels, Commander."
May you like
Nathan pressed the accelerator smoothly. The truck rolled past the barricades, slipping into the dark Maryland highway as the taillights vanished into the black horizon.
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