Chapter 34 - The Dash to Miller’s Creek
The Ford F-250’s diesel engine roared like a wounded predator as Damon shoved the transfer case into high gear, throwing twin rooster tails of wet gravel fifty feet into the pine trees.
He had left the Vance estate through the service road, completely bypassing the wall of state and federal emergency vehicles converging on the front gates. The speedometer needle climbed past eighty, then ninety, trembling violently as the heavy pickup tore down the two-lane mountain highway.
Damon grabbed his secure burner phone from the dash, dialing a single-digit speed dial.
It rang once. Twice.
"Talk to me," a deep, gravelly voice answered.
"Mack," Damon said, not wasting a breath. "The perimeter at the hospital is blown. Harrison has a strike team inbound for Leo."
A heavy silence fell over the line, followed by the metallic *rack* of a twelve-gauge shotgun slide chambering a round.
Mack Coleman, Damon’s former squad leader from Red Squadron, was sitting in the quiet corner of Miller’s Creek Memorial Hospital’s third-floor pediatric wing. Mack had lost his left eye in Kandahar, but his right eye was sharper than an eagle's, and his loyalty was forged in the blood of six combat tours.
"How long do I have?" Mack asked, his voice steady as granite.
"Ten minutes. Maybe eight," Damon replied, swerving the truck violently around a sharp bend, the tires screeching against wet blacktop. "Harrison’s team isn't local muscle. These are Tier-2 contractors. Suppressed carbines, night optics, body armor. They aren't coming to kidnap him, Mack. They're coming to erase the bloodline."
"They won't get past the nurses' station," Mack said coldly. "How's the boy doing?"
"He has two cracked ribs from the mat, but he’s tough," Damon said, his voice tightening with suppressed fury. "He’s my son, Mack. Don't let them touch him."
"Over my dead body, brother. Step on the gas."
The line disconnected.
Damon threw the phone onto the passenger seat and slammed his foot down until the accelerator hit the floorboard. Trees blurred past the rain-slicked windows into a solid wall of black and green. His mind mapped the terrain ahead: three miles to the interstate interchange, seven miles down Route 11, then the climb up Hospital Hill.
At ninety-five miles per hour, that meant six minutes.
In six minutes, an elite four-man breach team could clear an entire hospital floor, execute twelve targets, and exfiltrate via the emergency exit stairwells without alerting local patrol cars.
Damon reached into the glove compartment, pulled out two spare magazines for the captured SIG MPX, and slapped them into his tactical vest. He checked the sidearm on his hip—a custom Sig Sauer P226 with night sights, the weapon he had carried across five continents.
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"Hold on, Leo," Damon whispered into the dark cab. "Hold on."
***
