Chapter 21 - The Breach at Timber Ridge
The infrared beams sliced through the mountain fog like glowing red scalpels. Rain hammered the tin roof of my ancestral sanctuary, sounding like a continuous belt of machine-gun fire.
"Get him inside! Now!" Nathan barked, his voice dropping into the hard, clipped cadence of combat. He raised his suppressed rifle to his shoulder and fired two controlled double-taps into the treeline. Down the slope, the lead vehicle's spotlight exploded into a shower of white sparks and shattered glass.
I dragged the fallen JAG officer across the threshold. Blood streaked the century-old heart pine planks I had spent months restoring with my own calloused hands. The captain groaned, clutching the red-wax envelope against his ribcage with white-knuckled desperation.
"Captain Ross?" I gasped, recognizing his weathered face through the streaks of mud and crimson. Captain Julian Ross had been Chief Vance’s closest friend at the Pentagon, a decorated naval jurist whose integrity was legendary throughout the Fleet. "Hold on, Julian. Nathan, close the iron shutters!"
A hail of high-caliber rounds tore through the porch pillars, splintering oak and stone. The heavy cedar door slammed shut just as three rounds punched through the exterior paneling, embedding themselves into the plaster above our heads.
Nathan threw the solid wrought-iron crossbar into place and lunged across the foyer. "Tactical squad! Six to eight shooters, professional movement, suppressed carbines! They’re not local deputies, Evelyn—these are tier-one contractors!"
"They want... the seal..." Captain Ross wheezed, blood foaming at the corner of his lips. His active-duty service dress uniform was shredded across his abdomen, revealing the dark, puncture-style trauma of close-range flechette rounds. "Chief Vance found the shell companies... your family’s logistics conglomerate... they were laundering black-budget weapon manifests through Norfolk Naval Shipyard..."
My blood ran cold. The Mercer family dynasty—my parents, who had spit on my service and treated my uniform like a badge of shame—hadn't just disowned me to preserve their petty Virginia social standing. They were knee-deep in high treason. Chief Vance hadn't died of a heart attack in his bed. They had murdered the only man who had ever truly fathered me.
"Nathan, cover the hallway," I said, my voice dead and cold. The fear evaporated from my veins, replaced by the lethal, calculating focus of a Navy prosecutor who had seen the worst of human depravity. "We take the old root cellar tunnel down to the creek bed. They’re going to burn this house down."
Another burst of automatic fire shattered the side sidelights. Flashbang grenades detonated against the front porch, the concussive boom shaking dust from the rafters.
Nathan returned fire through the reinforced loopholes we had installed into the window frames. "Move! I'll hold them at the foyer choke-point for sixty seconds!"
"We go together," I snapped. I hooked my arm under Ross’s shoulders and hauled him toward the pantry, where the heavy floor trapdoor led into the mountain limestone below.
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Behind us, the front door shuddered under the brutal impact of a breaching ram.
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