Chapter 8 - THE RIDGE AMBUSH
-8-
The dark SUV didn't retreat back down the logging road toward the highway. Instead, it ground to a halt fifty yards up the slope, kicking up a thick plume of gray dust that settled slowly over the salal bushes.
Through the cabin window, I watched as two men in dark tactical gear stepped out of the vehicle. They didn't look like local thugs or hired muscle; they moved with the synchronized, deliberate efficiency of former special operations contractors—men who cleared rooms for a living and left nothing to chance.
“Richard,” I whispered, keeping my eyes fixed on the ridge. “They’re not leaving. They’re deploying on foot.”
Richard didn't panic. He calmly reached into the open lockbox, pulled out a heavy-duty satellite phone with a military-spec ruggedized casing, and punched in a rapid eleven-digit sequence.
“Who are you calling?” I asked.
“An old contact from my days consulting for the Department of Energy’s nuclear regulatory commission,” Richard said, holding the phone to his ear while pacing across the wooden floorboards. “Back when Arthur and I were still on speaking terms, we used a secure military relay channel that bypassed local towers entirely. If I ping the regional detachment at the Coast Guard air station in North Bend, they can have a cutter off this cove in twenty minutes.”
“We don't have twenty minutes,” I said, pointing toward the edge of the tree line where the two operatives had already begun descending the steep ravine toward the back of the cabin.
“Then we buy ourselves ten,” Richard replied grimly, tossing me a set of heavy brass keys. “Take Eli down to the root cellar beneath the floorboards. There’s a secondary tunnel that leads out to the drainage culvert fifty yards down toward the creek. I’ll hold the front.”
“I’m not leaving you here, Richard,” I said sharply.
“Vic, listen to me!” Richard snapped, his voice cutting through the tension like a razor. “If they get inside this cabin, they aren't here to negotiate. They’re here to erase every hard drive, every backup, and every witness. If you and Eli don't make it to the creek, then everything we did on Highway 95 was for nothing.”
He was right. I looked over at Eli, who was standing frozen by the kitchen table, his eyes wide with terror as he clutched his dinosaur blanket to his chest.
“Come on, baby,” I whispered, scooping him up and running toward the small pantry in the back of the kitchen.
I pulled open the wooden floor hatch beneath the flour bins, revealing a steep, narrow wooden ladder descending into the cool, damp darkness of the root cellar. Pushing Eli down first into the protective gloom, I followed closely behind, pulling the heavy wooden door shut just as the first heavy thud of boots echoed against the front porch stairs above us.
The root cellar smelled of damp earth, stored potatoes, and rusted iron. Using the flashlight on the prepaid phone, I guided Eli down the low concrete tunnel that stretched away from the cabin toward the creek bed. The sound of our footsteps was muffled by the thick clay beneath our boots.
Suddenly, a dull, concussive boom echoed through the ground above us—not a gunshot, but the sound of the cabin’s front door being blown off its reinforced hinges with a breaching charge.
“Keep moving, Eli! Don't look back!” I urged, lifting him through the rusted iron drainage grate at the end of the tunnel into the damp morning air of the ravine.
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We tumbled out into the thick underbrush of the creek bed, hidden from the ridge by a wall of towering ferns and fallen logs. But as I pulled Eli behind a massive moss-covered boulder, I heard the crunch of heavy boots coming down the ridge trail directly toward our position.
The Aegis operatives hadn't just breached the front door; they had anticipated our escape route.
