Chapter 7 - The Henderson Sawmill
Old Mill Road didn't exist on most commercial GPS maps. It was a private logging trail, paved fifty years ago with crushed river stone and coal slag, snaking through a dense canopy of black walnut and weeping hemlock trees that choked out the moonlight.
I killed the headlights two miles out.
The Dodge Ram crawled through the pitch-black corridor, its diesel engine idling at six hundred RPM, the exhaust muffled by the thick, damp mountain air. Rex sat completely rigid on the center console, his whiskers twitching, his nose pressed against the defroster vent, filtering the mountain breeze.
One mile out, the smell hit us.
It wasn't the clean scent of pine resin and damp earth. It was the sharp, synthetic reek of industrial solvents—anhydrous ammonia, ether, and red phosphorus. The unmistakable chemical stench of a high-yield methamphetamine lab running at full operational capacity.
I pulled the truck off the logging trail, nosing it into a thick stand of rhododendrons that swallowed the vehicle whole.
I cut the engine.
"Status check," I murmured.
Rex turned his head, tapped his right paw against my knee twice, and looked out the windshield.
Hostiles present. Target acquired.
I stepped out into the damp leaves, leaving the door unlatched to avoid the metallic click of the latch. I walked around to the bed of the truck, opened Vance’s emergency tactical locker, and pulled out what the sheriff had brought for a raid: a Colt M4 patrol carbine with four thirty-round magazines, an infrared weapon light, and a tactical nylon chest rig.
I slapped a magazine into the well, pulled the charging handle back, and let it chamber a round with a muted snick.
The Henderson sawmill was situated in a natural bowl carved into the western slope of the ridge. It was a sprawling, derelict compound of three corrugated steel drying sheds, an open-air sorting platform with a six-foot circular blade still mounted to its carriage, and a two-story administrative shack that served as the gang’s primary operations bunker.
Six heavy Harley-Davidson cruisers sat parked under an open lean-to, their engines ticking as they cooled.
Beside them, parked near the primary drying shed, was an unmarked white refrigerated box truck—the transport vehicle they used to move fifty-pound bricks of narcotics onto Interstate 81.
There were eight men visible on the perimeter.
Four were stationed around a burn barrel near the sorting platform, passing around a bottle of clear corn liquor, laughing loudly as they warmed their hands over the flames. Two more were loading heavy plastic barrels into the rear of the box truck, their movements erratic, twitchy with the chemical paranoia that comes from living inside a cookhouse.
And standing on the second-story wooden deck of the administrative shack, leaning against the railing with an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth, was Butch.
His left arm was bound in a crude plaster cast and an old olive-drab sling, his face still caked in dried blood and bruises from our encounter at the diner. He was screaming into a radio handset, his voice carrying clearly down the bowl:
"...tell the Sheriff to bring the damn tow truck! I want that veteran's Ford hauled down to the river and chopped for scrap before sunrise! And if he finds the dog, tell him to skin it and leave the collar on my desk!"
I stood in the tree line sixty yards up the ridge, looking through the four-power optic of the M4 carbine.
The crosshairs settled squarely on the center of his chest.
One trigger press. Fifty-five grains of copper-jacketed lead traveling at three thousand feet per second. In three-tenths of a second, the man who had poured ice water on my dog and ordered our execution would cease to exist.
My finger rested on the cold steel of the trigger shoe.
Inhale. Exhale. Hold.
My pulse was forty-eight beats per minute.
Then I lowered the rifle.
A sniper kills to eliminate an existential threat on a battlefield. But this wasn't Helmand Province. This was American soil. And men like Butch didn't deserve the clean, instant mercy of a rifle round in the dark.
They deserved to watch their empire burn to ash while they sat in an iron cage.
"Agent Chen," I whispered into the tactical radio headset I had paired with my phone. "I am on the high ground overlooking the Henderson sawmill. Eight hostiles confirmed on the perimeter. High-value target Butch is on the second-story deck. Chemical production is active in Shed B."
A pause on the line, followed by the crisp, steady voice of the FBI tactical commander:
"Copy that, Team Leader. We have three HRT units forty seconds out. Stand by for breach."
"Negative, Agent Chen," I whispered back, watching the two men near the box truck hoist a heavy iron lever onto the master gate. "They're prepping the transport rig. If they load that truck, they disperse into the state forest before your armor gets down the logging road."
"What are your intentions?"
I looked down at Rex.
May you like
The big dog was staring up at me, his amber eyes reflecting the yellow glare of the burn barrel below. His tail gave a single, slow thump against the fallen leaves.
"We're initiating the breach," I said.
