Chapter 27 - The Ambush on Route 50
Route 50 was choked with an eerie evening fog as our two armored Suburbans roared down the damp asphalt at ninety miles per hour, sirens howling into the mist.
Ahead of us, the darkness was suddenly torn apart by a violent orange flash.
*BOOM!*
The shockwave rattled our windshield. A hundred yards ahead, the lead armored transport carrying Victor Vance had been flipped completely onto its roof, engulfed in a wall of fire. A thermite charge had detonated beneath the engine block, shearing the axles like toothpicks.
"Ambush! Nine o'clock!" my driver shouted, violently swinging the wheel as heavy machine gun fire raked across our armored hood.
*Spang-spang-spang!*
Rounds from an M240 machine gun sparked against our bulletproof glass, webbing the windshield into an opaque spiderweb.
"Return fire! Suppressive bursts on the tree line!" I roared into my tactical headset, kicking my passenger door open before the vehicle had even come to a complete halt.
I hit the asphalt rolling, coming up behind the smoking engine block of our second vehicle. The air was thick with the smell of burning rubber, pulverized asphalt, and high-caliber gunfire. Across the divided highway, two blacked-out tactical gun-trucks with mounted heavy weapons were pinning down the surviving federal marshals.
Four heavily armed operators wearing unmarked black combat gear and night-vision optics were advancing systematically toward the overturned transport, firing execution shots into the downed guards.
"Apex Sovereign," I growled, bringing my rifle to my shoulder.
I acquired the first shooter through my holographic sight—a six-foot-two mercenary moving to execute the pinned federal driver. I squeezed the trigger twice. Two rounds punched through the side of his tactical helmet. He dropped instantly into the ditch.
"Team, suppressive fire on the technicals! Flank left!" I barked.
My three Tier-One operators moved with lethal synergy. Smoke grenades hissed, blanketing the highway in a dense gray shroud. We moved through the smoke like phantoms. I advanced down the median, firing controlled pairs, dropping a second mercenary as he attempted to reload an assault shotgun.
A third mercenary turned toward me, leveling his rifle, but before he could fire, I drove my combat knife straight through the gap in his shoulder plate, twisting as I drove his body into the guardrail, using him as a human shield as his partner fired a wild burst of 5.56 rounds into his back.
I shoved the dying mercenary forward and fired three clean rounds into his partner’s chest, dropping him onto the asphalt.
Thirty seconds. The highway fell into a terrifying, smoking silence, broken only by the crackle of burning oil and the distant wail of approaching county sirens.
I rushed to the overturned transport. The rear reinforced doors were dented, but intact. I wedged my tactical pry-bar into the latch, kicking the hydraulic release.
The heavy door swung open.
Inside, Victor Vance hung upside down from his safety harness, covered in glass shards and bleeding from a head wound, but alive. Opposite him, however, lay the body of the transport guard—his neck broken from the impact.
Victor looked at me through swollen, blackened eyes, his arrogant smirk long gone, replaced by the sheer, unadulterated terror of a man who realized his own allies had just tried to incinerate him.
"Maya..." he croaked, coughing violently. "They... they tried to kill me."
"Sterling doesn't need a partner anymore, Victor," I said, reaching in and cutting his harness with a flick of my knife. He tumbled onto the roof of the van, groaning in pain. "He’s erasing the board."
I dragged him out by the collar, throwing him onto the wet asphalt.
"You're going to testify," I said, standing over him with my smoking rifle. "You're going to name every senator, every contractor, and every offshore account. Because if you don't, I will leave you on the side of this road with an empty magazine and let Sterling’s next cleanup crew finish the job."
Victor looked at the burning wreckage, at the bodies of the mercenaries who had just tried to slaughter him, and broke down in hysterics.
"I’ll talk! I’ll tell you everything! The safehouse... they’re not just after me, Maya!" Victor screamed, grabbing my boot. "Sterling sent a death squad to the mountain safehouse! He knows your daughter is there!"
My blood ran colder than ice.
The mountain safehouse in the Shenandoah Valley was where my mother and Clara had been moved under deep-cover military guard four hours ago.
"How does Sterling know that location?" I snarled, leveling my rifle barrel between his eyes.
May you like
Victor wept, shaking violently. "Because Richard didn't just have one burner phone, you fool! He had a subdermal tracker implanted in Clara's medical bracelet when she was born! Sterling had the satellite tracking link the entire time!"
***
