Authors: David Vinjamuri
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A stone-tiled walkway thirty yards long led to the employee parking lot, which housed over a hundred vehicles. The Harley I’d ridden in on was not one of them, but any thoughts I’d had of riding it out had disappeared in the secret room in the basement under the National Front’s conference center. I wasn’t getting out of this fortified compound on a cruiser and my best hope of getting out at all was walking three steps in front of me. Alarms could start going off any minute, and if they weren’t it was because most of the National Front’s security apparatus was tied up managing the music festival. I knew I’d pushed my luck by lingering to search Heather’s room, but as far as I was concerned, it was the one promise I’d come to honor. Even though I was leaving with more questions than I arrived with.
Ventura led me to his pickup truck, a full-sized Ford F-150. I felt in my pocket for the key I’d found on the smaller guard and traced the initials molded into the hard plastic. It’s always nice to have a backup plan.
In that instant, I almost missed an expression that passed over Ventura’s face like a rogue wave on the ocean. His eyes flicked over my shoulder as he faced me with his back to his pickup. I heard a click, the barest sound of a round being chambered in a semi-automatic pistol, and I ducked forward, grabbing Ventura’s wrist. I pulled him around in front of me just as three slugs that would have hit me tagged him instead. He wasn’t a big guy, and there was an instant where I froze, wondering if the slugs would still end up in my chest. But they were nine-millimeter rounds and probably hollow point at that. The damage they did to Ventura’s chest was horrific, but the slugs stayed inside him.
I drew the Sig and fired in one smooth motion, targeting a black-jacketed guard who was firing two-handed from about thirty yards. Three guards were within range and I counted another four approaching. The guy I shot first had the best angle on me and I guessed he’d put the rounds into Ventura. His stance also marked him as the most experienced shooter of the bunch. He was turned sideways to show me the narrowest profile, and much of that was hidden behind a Jeep Grand Cherokee. My first round took him clean in the forehead. I shot for the head because I assumed he was wearing body armor.
My human shield froze the other two guards within pistol range for a precious second. While they hesitated and weighed the risk of hitting a colleague, I fired first, hitting one man in the neck twice and the other in the forehead. The other guards had thrown themselves behind vehicles by that time and I stepped away from Ventura, letting him slide down against the rear tier of the F-150 as I sprinted past, ducking low. By the time I got around the rear fender, shots were plinking and whining past me, but the guards were moving more cautiously now, fanning out to try to flank me. A parking lot has a lot of good cover from small-caliber pistols, so it quickly became a chess game. A round smashed through the driver’s side window of a Jeep Wrangler three feet after I’d darted around it, and another punctured the tire of a big GMC Acadia as I passed. I stole a glance at the row of motorcycles at the back of the employee lot and spotted the one I was looking for, a bright orange Austrian dirt bike.
I was pinned down behind the Acadia when I realized that some of the guards were firing at me from behind Ventura’s pickup. They most certainly had checked him for signs of life, which they would not have found. Pulling down my sleeve, I pushed the two odd buttons on the Timex and prayed for a second, trying to recall whether the Activity armorer had told me the range limit for the remote detonator.
The explosion came in two heartbeats: a thump followed by a crash that knocked me down on my backside behind the Acadia. As I was struggling to get up, there was a much bigger blast as the fuel tank on the Ford exploded in sympathy. It knocked me back off my feet. I rolled over a few times just to keep moving then pushed myself up off the ground as my equilibrium returned. I clawed the motorcycle key out of my pocket as I ran unevenly toward it, hoping that nobody on my side of the wreck had recovered quicker than me.
I slid the key into the slot just under the right handlebar of the orange KTM dirt bike, swung my leg over and started it up. As I pushed the bike off of its polished aluminum kickstand, I heard the ping of a slug as it ricocheted off of a big Honda cruiser next to me. I revved the throttle and took off, leaning low over the handlebars as I jumped the curb. I ran the bike flat out for thirty yards until I reached the forest. The ground ran level for about fifty yards into the trees before I hit the edge of the holler and the terrain started to grade up swiftly. I heard the sound of four-stroke ATV engines starting up and the crack of a few more rounds shot in my direction but pushed the bike to keep climbing straight up the hill.
The holler enclosing the National Front compound was over a mile long going north and south, but less half as wide. As the grade increased to the point where my balance got fuzzy, I took a parallel path, heading further south. I saw the first of the ATVs enter the forest below me. It was a natural forest, not a pine stand, so it had to be rough going for the ATVs, which were wider than the dirt bike. But I wasn’t making great time, either, and there were too many leaves on the ground for me to see the terrain well. I needed to find a trail quickly before I hit a tree stump or slid the bike into a ditch. I visualized the satellite images of the compound. The property wasn’t fenced all the way around, as the 2500-foot-tall mountains served as a good barrier to intruders. I didn’t doubt that a paranoid group like the National Front might have motion detectors or infrared sensors along its perimeter, but that wasn’t much of a worry for me at the moment as long as they hadn’t set landmines. I needed to find a clear path out of the holler that would let me reach a road where I could take one hand off the bike long enough to use my cell phone to call for help.
After running the KTM cautiously for a hundred yards along the sloped, leafy bank on the side of a ridge, I found a dirt trail headed up the hill that switch-backed just enough to make the grade manageable. I powered up the grade, gaining speed and confidence as I went along. Then I heard engines straight down the hill and realized some of the guards must have taken the path from the bottom; I’d lost most of the lead I’d built up in the forest. I pushed the bike harder, and the small but torque-y 510cc engine responded, pulling me strongly up the hill. Some of the ATVs must have been sporting much larger motors, though, because I could hear the drone of their engines getting closer. I didn’t want to let myself slip back into shooting range.
I kept climbing, twisting and turning until I reached the top of the ridge. Then I saw a chest-high barbed wire fence blocking the trail. It was too frail and narrow to show up on the satellite images but sturdy enough to stop the bike, and me with it. I had barely enough time to drop the KTM almost parallel to the ground and slide the back tire out to avoid slamming into the wire. I swore as I heard the ATVs pursuing me draw yet closer. There was no question of cutting the fence; even if I had a wire-cutter, the National Front boys would be on me seconds after I stopped moving. Revving the throttle, I turned the bike south, running parallel to the fence. After sixty yards, I found what I was looking for—a downed tree trunk with its tip stuck in the dirt, rising up four feet toward its splintered stump. I powered the bike up the trunk and pulled on the throttle steadily. When the tree ended I had just enough air to jump the bike over the fence. I skidded in wet leaves when I hit the opposite side of the trail but regained my balance and headed downhill. I alternated between stretches straight down and darting south when the grade got too steep and I felt myself starting to pitch forward. After a half-mile or so I found another trail and started to descend in earnest. I still heard the ATV engines, but they were in the distance, and I relaxed a little, focusing on making the best time I could without losing control of the KTM on the steep, muddy trail.
24
For about three minutes I thought I’d lost them.
I’d followed the trail until it ended in the flats rather abruptly, smacking up against a dirt road that headed south. I kept my bearings and cut across the road, heading due east, and up and over another, much shallower ridge. The trail ended in the backyard of a small farmhouse and I had to swerve as I came out of the woods almost directly into a chicken coop. I bypassed that and plowed through a pumpkin patch, threading through monster vines. The small dirt road running in front of the house looked like an interstate to me.
Then I hit an honest-to-God, asphalt-paved, two-lane road and, praying the map in my mind was still running true, I turned north. I got the little dirt bike up to highway speed for the better part of three miles before I ran into a small residential development. It was about a dozen or so small houses huddled around a church. I turned east at the first major junction, past a red farmhouse onto Beckwith Road, which I remembered was Route 16.
If I wasn’t mistaken, I was on the outskirts of Fayetteville. I ran down the road as fast as I dared while I dug a hand into my jacket and retrieved my phone. I cursed myself for not grabbing it earlier, knowing that every moment counted. The folks who were supposed to rescue me were on the wrong side of the compound and in this part of West Virginia, that distance would take an eternity to cross.
In a moment, I got through to the Activity op center.
“You’ve been busy, Orion.” It was Mongoose. He was putting in the same kind of hours as Alpha.
“You could say that. I’m not where I expected to be.”
“We have eyes on you now. We lost your beacon after you were detained in the National Front headquarters building. Glad you made it through. We sent video of the firefight in the parking lot to the FBI and they’re getting a warrant to enter the compound. That was an impressive explosion, by the way.”
“You do not want to know how that happened.”
“Your immediate problem is that we’re out of position to aid you and there’s a convoy of six vehicles closing in on you rapidly from the north. Recommend that you maximize speed, continue into Fayetteville and head south-west on Route 19. The FBI will have a helo with snipers over you in five minutes.”
“Roger that. Shit,” I said as chunks of pavement flew into the air a dozen feet in front of my bike. I swerved and dropped the phone as I grabbed the handlebar of the KTM in a desperate attempt to avoid crashing. I barely escaped ditching the motorcycle as I jumped the curb just to the right of another line of small explosions. It sounded like a light machine gun—perhaps a squad automatic weapon—firing from the passenger window of a black Cadillac Escalade. I caught this and the sight of five more black Escalades behind the first over my shoulder as I shot off the road, jumped a gulley and plowed down a steep hill toward a stand of trees. I heard the crash of bumpers and bending metal as one of the Escalades tried to copy my maneuver and failed. Then I was in the woods, slowing to thread through trees. Fifty yards further and I was suddenly in the clear again, roaring into cut grass. A child’s jungle gym set appeared in front of me. I swerved between two swings then sped through the backyard and cut around the tan ranch house, finding myself on First Avenue. I turned south on the road and weaved through the small residential development as fast as I could, hoping the noise of the bike and my velocity would get someone to call the police. I jogged left, hit Second Avenue then Third, and turned south again.
In three blocks I was back on Beckwith Road. I didn’t see my pursuers. Slowing, I considered reversing directions, but with my phone gone I decided to keep heading in the direction Mongoose had suggested. In one block I ran into Route 19, a divided two-lane road that passed for a highway in these parts. I was about to turn right—south-west—when I saw two black Escalades approaching from that direction. Just then I heard the crack of a bullet as a clod of dirt exploded from the shoulder of the road next to me. I could hear more SUVs screaming toward me from Beckwith Road as I pulled into oncoming traffic on Route 19 causing an old Chevy pickup to spin out as he tried to avoid hitting me. I proceeded through the light traffic, mindful that I had a slim lead on the procession of Escalades that had converged from two directions and were now speeding toward me in the correct lane of Route 19.
Southbound traffic cleared for a moment and I was able to speed up, momentarily keeping the line of SUVs from closing in on me. In a quarter of a mile, though, a UPS truck driving alongside a minivan with barely two feet of separation between them nearly forced me off the road. I ran onto the shoulder, spinning the back wheel out briefly as I struggled to regain the road. The black National Front caravan would have been on top of me then, but they were frustrated by another minivan passing a school bus, neither moving much more than thirty miles an hour. Speeding past, I heard the indignant horn of the yellow bus as the Escalades passed it blind on the right shoulder. Another half mile on, as my lead dwindled again, the open road suddenly turned into an unbroken line of traffic. I hopped the median and rode between stopped cars, risking a glance back to see the Escalades making steady progress on the fringe of the road, eliciting many fewer horns than they would have in D.C. They were in firing range, but the National Front guards apparently weren’t willing to take low-percentage shots in a crowded space. That gave me some hope. The crowd was getting denser. If I could keep them from physically catching me for two or three minutes longer, the FBI would be overhead and I might just escape.
That seemed like a good plan, anyway, until I spotted the reason for the traffic backup about a hundred yards further on. We were approaching a deep gorge, spanned by a steel arch bridge that looked to be the better part of a mile long. The bridge, dramatically perched above a green, rolling river, was blocked off at both ends. The roadblock must have come as a surprise to some, because half the motorists were turning back on Route 19 while the other half took a narrow road running south along the side of the gorge, parallel to the river.