Chapter 26 - The Unbroken Line
Twenty minutes later, the back roads behind Blackwood were swallowed in pitch darkness. I drove my 1987 diesel flatbed, its headlights switched off, running only on amber marker lights. Behind us, the garage was already a distant shadow against the hills.
Lily sat in the middle, Thomas’s ledger clutched against her chest like sacred scripture. Miller sat shotgun, watching the tree line through the cracked passenger window with his phone held against his ear.
"All federal communications in District Four are jammed," Miller said, snapping the phone shut in frustration. "They’ve placed a temporary communications blackout over Oak Creek under the guise of an unexploded ordnance drill. Nobody can transmit a digital file out of this valley."
"They don't need digital files," Lily said, flipping through the pages of her uncle's ledger under the dim glow of the dashboard clock. "Uncle Thomas wrote down the exact convoy manifest from November 1991. Look at these serial codes, Miller. These aren't bridge construction supplies. They're military logistics crates marked 'Project Horizon.'"
"Horizon," Miller repeated, his face turning pale in the dark. "That was the Cold War chemical cleanup initiative that was supposed to be incinerated at the Anniston depot. The federal government reported those stockpiles destroyed thirty-three years ago."
"They weren't destroyed," I said, shifting into third gear as we crested a steep gravel fire trail. "Harrison Bell’s construction firm was paid eighty million dollars in state bonds to transport the hazardous soil and casing to an incineration facility in Nevada. Instead of driving across the country, he dug a shaft three hundred feet beneath Oak Creek Mountain, dumped the containers, and capped it with two thousand tons of cheap concrete. Then he used the rest of the state money to buy the politicians who certified the bridge."
"And your brother found it," Lily whispered.
"Thomas found the manifests in Bell's private vault when he was inspecting the bridge's eastern abutment," I said. "He threatened to take it to the press. Two days later, his truck went off Dead Man’s Curve. And Julian Bell spent the next twenty years laughing in town board meetings, thinking his family’s dynasty was built on genius, when it was built on poison."
We turned down an overgrown logging road choked with pine needles. At the end of the clearing stood a low-slung, tin-roofed warehouse surrounded by decommissioned logging trucks and rusted scrap iron. The sign above the gate had faded decades ago: *Harlan & Sons Timber Supply.*
As the truck rolled to a halt, three figures stepped out of the tree line carrying hunting rifles.
I cut the diesel engine and pushed open the driver’s side door. "Harlan! It's Arthur Reed."
The tallest man lowered his rifle, stepping into the dim light. Harlan Vance—no relation to the General, just an old lumberjack whose son had worked the iron yards with me before Julian Bell cut pensions across the county. Behind him were six other men, their faces weathered by seventy winters, their hands calloused from honest labor.
"We heard the sirens on the interstate, Arthur," Harlan said, his voice like gravel grinding together. "They said on the local radio you fled an accident scene with stolen evidence. They’ve got your picture on every monitor in the county courthouse."
"The radio belongs to Harrison Bell's friends, Harlan," I said. "You know what they buried under that mountain when our boys were still working the drills?"
May you like
Harlan looked at the dirt, then spat tobacco onto the pine needles. "We always knew the water smelled like sulfur after they poured that second pier. What do you need, Artie?"
"I need an excavator, three torches, and men who aren't afraid of a general's stars," I said. "Tonight, we dig up the grave."
