Chapter 16 - The Ambush on Route 17
The plan to take the Chesapeake Bay was shattered within twenty minutes.
As Miller gathered his lockbox of backup hard drives and original handwritten engineering journals from inside the cabin, the distant, unmistakable drone of high-performance marine engines echoed across the creek.
I rushed to the edge of the porch, raising my binoculars to scan the mouth of the inlet. Cutting through the heavy fog at thirty knots was a sleek, black twin-engine interceptor craft—the kind used by elite maritime security units. Its radar dome was spinning rapidly, tracking directly toward Miller’s private pier.
"They didn't just watch the bridges," I yelled back to the cabin. "They tracked Miller’s phone signal or planted a beacon on my father’s truck! We're cut off from the water!"
"Out the back!" Miller barked, running out of the cabin with a heavy canvas duffel bag slung over his shoulder. "There's a logging trail behind the boat shed that leads to Route 17! My old Ford has four-wheel drive and five hundred horsepower under the hood!"
We sprinted through the damp grass toward the old pickup. My father threw himself behind the wheel, while Miller and I jumped into the double-cab rear, locking the heavy steel doors.
The roar of the interceptor’s engines grew deafening as it cleared the bend in the creek. Men in gray tactical gear moved onto the bow, brandishing automatic weapons.
"Punch it, Dad!" I shouted.
My father dropped the truck into gear and slammed the gas pedal to the floor. The heavy tires spun in the gravel, biting into the mud and launching the three-ton vehicle down the narrow logging trail just as the first burst of suppressed gunfire ripped through the trees above us, splintering branches and shattering the rear window of the truck.
Glass rained over my head as I ducked, pulling my weapon. "Keep your head down, Master Chief!"
The logging road was a violent gauntlet of deep mud pits, exposed roots, and overhanging pines. My father drove like a man possessed, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he wrestled the heavy truck through the terrain. Behind us, the scream of two black tactical SUVs echoed through the timber—Apex’s ground team had cut off the mouth of the road.
"They're boxing us in before we hit the highway!" my father shouted over the roar of the engine. "One mile to the state road!"
The lead SUV slammed into our rear bumper with bone-jarring force. The impact threw me forward, my scarred back slamming against the steel cage behind the driver's seat. A blinding flare of white-hot pain shot through my spine, but my training overrode the agony.
I rolled down the shattered side window, leaned out into the freezing wind, and leveled my pistol at the lead SUV's front left tire.
Three miles of tactical evasive shooting on the Navy range took over. I exhaled, tracked the bouncing chassis through the spray of gravel and mud, and squeezed the trigger three times.
*Crack. Crack. Crack.*
The high-pressure tire shredded instantly. The SUV swerved violently to the left, its rim digging into the deep ditch, flipping the two-ton vehicle in a spectacular barrel roll that blocked the narrow logging trail and forced the second pursuit vehicle to slam on its brakes to avoid a head-on collision.
"Clear!" I screamed, pulling myself back inside the cab, breathing heavily.
May you like
My father swung the truck through the tree line, bursting out onto the asphalt of Route 17 just as the sirens of three Virginia State Police cruisers—alerted by the gunshots—came roaring around the northern bend.
We were bleeding, covered in glass, and shivering from the cold bay air, but Miller’s duffel bag was intact on the floorboard.
