Chapter 25 - The Mechanics of War
The lead contractor screamed as steel dust blinded his eyes.
"Federal agents down! Drop your weapons!" Miller roared, lunging to the side and drawing his sidearm, using the hydraulic lift column for cover as two suppressed gunshots cracked through the bay, shattering the glass of the overhead lamps into raining shards.
I didn't reach for a gun. Guns belong to men who believe in distance. In my shop, distance was measured in inches and leverage.
I swung the four-pound sledge with thirty years of muscle memory behind it, catching the second man square across the knee just as he cleared his sidearm. Bone cracked like dry pine. He collapsed with a choked howl, his weapon clattering across the oily concrete.
The third contractor raised a submachine gun toward me, but Miller fired twice from behind the column. Both rounds punched through the man's tactical vest, dropping him against the chassis of an old Chevy truck.
"Reed! The back!" Miller shouted over the ringing in our ears.
The fourth man had already flanked around the tire rack, his weapon leveled directly at my chest. He was faster than the others, his finger tightening on the trigger.
Then came a deafening hydraulic screech.
From beneath the floor, the Bay Three hoist suddenly roared to life. Lily, working the manual valves from the safety of the pit, sent six thousand pounds of a lifted Ford F-250 crashing down diagonally across the rack. The shifting steel beam slammed into the gunman, pinning him against the wall in a cloud of dust and shattered cinder blocks.
Silence slammed back down onto the shop, thick with the smell of burnt powder and motor oil.
Miller emerged from cover, chest heaving, his weapon still aimed at the two men groaning on the floor. He kicked their dropped firearms across the concrete and into the inspection trench.
"They're Vance’s personal detail," Miller breathed, checking the pulse of the pinned man. "Black ops contracted through a state defense shell company. If they're here, it means the warrant on the mountain ridgeline wasn't just delayed—it was deliberately intercepted."
I walked over to the bay floor plate and tapped the steel with the heel of my boot. "Lily. It's clear."
The plate swung open. Lily climbed out, her face streaked with grease and dust, clutching the heavy master wrench she had used to override the lift's hydraulic release. Her hands were shaking, but her chin was high. She looked at the men on the floor, then at me.
"They won't stop with four, will they, Dad?" she asked.
"No," I answered, wiping blood and oil from my knuckles with a shop rag. "When men like Harrison Bell and General Vance hide bodies under mountains, they don't stop until the mountain is leveled or the witnesses are buried."
I reached into my pocket and touched the corner of Thomas’s notebook. "Pack what you need in two minutes. We're leaving the shop."
May you like
"Where do we go?" Miller asked, reloading his Glock with steady fingers. "Every state police precinct in three counties answers to Vance’s command."
"We don't go to the police," I said, heading for the heavy double doors at the rear of the property. "We go to the only people in this valley who know how to move through the dark without leaving tracks."
