Chapter 66 - The Ambush at the Spillway
A distant, echoing boom rattled the concrete walls of the basement.
The vibration traveled up through the soles of our boots. Dust trickled from the mortar joints above our heads. It wasn't thunder. It was the distinct, concussive report of industrial hydraulic blasting.
"They're not waiting for the courthouse," I snarled, grabbing the copper box and shoving the linen plats inside my coat. "Vance knows Elena will try to file an injunction. He's drilling into the spillway right now to create an irreparable facts-on-the-ground scenario."
We sprinted up the stairs and burst out into the biting morning air. The sleet had started to fall, dusting the brown pine needles with a crust of brittle white ice.
From the northern ridge, a massive plume of white steam and powdered limestone was rising high into the leaden sky. The roar of a high-pressure commercial rotary drill echoed through the valley like an artillery barrage.
"Stay here with the documents, Elena," I ordered, turning toward my four-wheel-drive utility truck. "Get in your car, take the back logging road through Pine Gap, and drive straight to the federal courthouse in Roanoke. Do not stop for state police. Do not stop for anyone."
"Julian, you can't go up there alone!" Chloe cried, grabbing my sleeve. "Vance’s security team is armed. They’re corporate mercenaries!"
"They're on my mother's land," I said, prying her fingers gently from my arm. "And they're about to crack the spine of this county."
"I'm coming with you," Chloe said firmly, her jaw set with an expression so remarkably like our mother's that it stopped me cold. "Arthur used my name to justify tearing your life apart. He claimed he was doing it for my future, for my marriage, for my standing. I spent ten years letting him use me as a shield. I am not hiding in this basement while they destroy what Mother died to protect."
I looked at her for a heartbeat, seeing past the fashionable, pampered sister of the wedding hall to the woman who had spent the last two months scrubbing grease and mortar dust from my floorboards.
"Get in," I said.
The truck roared to life, tires throwing wet gravel as we tore up the mountain track toward the spillway.
When we crested the upper ridge, the scene looked like an active war zone. Three massive drilling rigs, mounted on eight-wheel carriers, were positioned around the primary concrete spillway cap. A perimeter of temporary chain-link fencing had been erected, patrolled by eight men in black tactical gear carrying ballistic shields and sidearms.
At the center of the clearing stood Everett Vance, dressed in a long charcoal cashmere coat, holding a ruggedized tablet computer and barking orders into a satellite headset.
Beyond the fence, blocked by two security trucks, Thomas Miller and thirty local residents were shouting furiously, their tractors idling in a defensive line across the timber road.
I didn't slow down.
I aimed the front steel bumper of the heavy utility truck straight at the temporary chain-link gate.
"Julian!" Chloe yelled, bracing herself against the dashboard.
"Hold on!"
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The truck smashed through the gate with a deafening screech of tearing galvanized wire. The steel posts bent like drinking straws as three tons of four-wheel-drive momentum barreled into the clearing, skidding sideways across the wet crushed stone before coming to a halt twenty feet from Vance’s command tent.
***
