Chapter 22 - Flight Through the Whiteout
The heavy steel firedoor slammed shut behind us, and I threw both mechanical deadbolts just as a volley of rounds struck the reverse side with heavy, resonant clangs. The steel dented inward, but held.
"Mommy! Mommy, they have guns!" Emma wailed, tears streaking through the dust on her cheeks as she stumbled onto the cold concrete floor of the two-car garage.
"I know, baby, I know. Get into the back of the Suburban! Floorboards! Get down beneath the emergency blanket and don't move until I tell you!"
She didn't hesitate. She scrambled over the tailgate, diving into the footwell behind the driver's seat. I didn't waste a second searching for the keys; they were already hanging from the ignition switch—a habit I’d kept ever since Brenda’s first visit to our home months ago.
I leaped into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and twisted the key. The massive V8 engine roared to life with a deep, throaty growl that vibrated through the chassis.
Through the rear window, I saw the steel firedoor shudder violently. The mercenary with the shattered nose was already using a tactical breaching wedge, hammering at the hinges. Beside him, Douglas Sterling stood with his cane raised, his face twisted in homicidal fury through the reinforced glass window of the inner door.
There was no time to wait for the automatic garage door to roll open. In a storm like this, the power was dead anyway, and the manual chain would take forty seconds I didn't have.
I slammed the heavy transmission lever into Reverse, clamped both hands onto the steering wheel, and stomped the accelerator directly to the floor.
Tires shrieked against slick concrete, smoke billowing from the wheel wells, and then three tons of armored American steel smashed backward through the wooden garage door. The overhead panels exploded outward in a storm of shattered cedar, splintered fiberglass, and twisted metal tracks.
The freezing gale hit us instantly. The Suburban violently rocked as the rear wheels caught the snowdrift piling high in the driveway. Through the shattered rearview mirror, I saw the second mercenary burst into the yard, dropping to one knee in the deep snow, lining up his rifle.
A bullet blew out the passenger side mirror in a shower of sparkling glass. Another ripped through the rear tailgate, missing Emma’s blanket by inches.
I yanked the shifter into Drive, wrenched the wheel hard to the left, and slammed the gas again. The four-wheel-drive system locked into the deep snow, churning ice and gravel as the heavy truck catapulted forward down the winding mountain driveway, plowing through three-foot drifts like an icebreaker ship.
"Hold on, Emma!" I shouted over the howling engine and the scream of the blizzard.
The headlights cut two pale yellow cones through the swirling, blinding whiteout of the storm. The temperature gauge on the dashboard read five degrees below zero. Ahead, the private mountain access road curved sharply toward the valley, banked by sheer drop-offs and pine trees weighed down with heavy frost.
In the rearview mirror, two sets of intense xenon high beams suddenly ignited at the top of our driveway.
Douglas Sterling’s convoy hadn't just brought two men. A pair of heavy, lifted black pickup trucks roared out onto the road behind us, chains rattling against their oversized tires, closing the gap with terrifying speed.
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"They're coming, Mommy!" Emma cried from beneath the fleece blanket, peeking her eyes over the seat.
"Close your eyes, Emma!" I yelled, downshifting the transmission to keep the engine RPMs screaming high as we skidded around a hairpin curve, the rear end drifting dangerously close to the cliff edge where the valley floor dropped three hundred feet below into darkness. "I’m not letting them touch you! Not tonight, not ever!"
