Chapter 6 - COUNTER-CURRENT
The rain had turned into a thick, clinging drizzle by 3:00 a.m. when Marcus pulled his truck behind an abandoned roadside diner twelve miles east of the county seat. The neon sign buzzed erratically, casting sickly pink reflections across the cracked asphalt puddles.
A dark, unmarked Chevrolet Suburban sat idling in the gravel lot, its windows heavily tinted. As Marcus killed his engine, the Suburban’s driver-side door opened, and a woman stepped out into the damp chill. Special Agent Elena Miller was a woman built like rebar—lean, sharp, with iron-gray hair cropped close to her skull and eyes that had seen through the lies of corrupt generals and cartel chieftains for two decades.
Marcus stepped out of his truck, carrying the Pelican case by its heavy nylon handle. He set it down on the hood of his truck with a dull, heavy clunk.
Miller didn't waste time with pleasantries. She walked over, snapped on a pair of latex gloves, and popped the latches. She shone an ultraviolet forensic light over the interior, checking the serial stamps and the electronic serial numbers on the detonators.
"Three years," Miller muttered, her breath forming small clouds. "We’ve been tracking missing manifest items out of Fort Benning for thirty-six months. We knew someone with high-level logistics authority was diverting hardware, but we couldn't bridge the gap between military transit and civilian dispersal. Vance was using disaster emergency declarations to bypass federal transport audits."
"It's worse than theft, Miller," Marcus said, his voice raw. "He used these charges to blow the southern levee. He drowned the lower wards to save the northern commercial ports."
Miller snapped the case shut, her jaw hardening. "That’s federal terrorism, civil rights violations under color of authority, and intentional destruction of critical infrastructure. It carries a life sentence. But Vance isn't acting in a vacuum, Marcus. He has half the county board of commissioners on his payroll, and the regional prosecutor went to high school with him. If we move on him with local warrants, evidence will burn before my agents can leave the regional field office."
"He wants this case delivered to Hangar 4 at the municipal airfield by 6:00 a.m.," Marcus said. "He offered to buy my silence. If I don't show, he kills Ruth and Maya, then frames me as a rogue looter."
"Then you give him what he wants," Miller said simply.
Marcus stared at her, his eyes flashing with fury. "I'm not leaving that little girl exposed as bait!"
"Listen to me, Sergeant!" Miller snapped, stepping into his space, her eyes unyielding. "I don't have the tactical personnel to raid that airfield right now. My closest federal strike team is eighty miles away in Atlanta, fighting flooded interstates. If we move prematurely, Vance’s contractors will execute Darryl, scrub the hangar, and disappear into the civilian contractor network. Vance will claim he was running an undercover recovery operation and hang the whole thing on you."
She tapped the Pelican case with her gloved knuckle. "You go to the meet. You wear an encrypted audio transmitter. You keep him talking until my tactical team breaches the airspace. You force him to explicitly state the connection between the stolen ordnance and the levee demolition on a federal record."
Marcus looked down at the case, then out toward the western horizon where the floodwaters still covered Elm Street. He thought of Maya’s small arms wrapped around his neck, whispering, Are you scared?
"I need one condition," Marcus said.
"Name it."
"Ruth and Maya get immediate federal protection. Now. Before I turn my truck toward that airfield. You put two armed marshals on that cabin, or this crate stays in the trunk of my truck and I handle Vance my own way."
Miller studied him for three seconds, recognizing the unmovable line of an infantryman who had chosen his hill. She pulled out her tactical radio. "Marshals are already rolling to the coordinates you gave me. They’ll be on-site in twenty minutes. You have my word as an officer of the court, Reyes. The girl is safe."
Marcus nodded slowly. "Swap out the explosives. Put inert lead weights in the foam cutouts. If things go sideways in that hangar, I don't want live C4 in the middle of a firefight."
Miller nodded to her Suburban. Two junior agents stepped out, carrying heavy Pelican tool cases. Within ten minutes, the military-grade plastic explosives were secured in federal evidence lockers, replaced with precision-cut lead blocks that matched the weight down to the ounce.
At 5:15 a.m., Marcus drove through the chain-link gates of the Blackwood Municipal Airfield. The airfield had been officially closed since the flood, its runway lights dark, the tarmac dotted with pools of standing rainwater.
At the far end of the taxiway, Hangar 4 stood open, a cavern of corrugated iron illuminated by buzzing halogen floodlights. Parked inside was Vance’s armored SUV and an unmarked twin-engine turboprop plane, its cargo doors open.
Marcus parked his truck twenty feet from the entrance, cut the lights, and stepped down onto the tarmac. He hauled the heavy case out of the back, his fingers wrapping around the handle. Underneath his heavy jacket, taped securely against his chest, a tiny red diode blinked once every three seconds—broadcasting his voice directly to an FBI surveillance van parked three miles down the perimeter road.
He walked into the hangar, his boots echoing sharply against the concrete floor.
May you like
Vance was standing by the wing of the plane, drinking coffee from a paper cup. His two private contractors were stationed near the tail, their rifles hanging from tactical slings. Sitting tied to an iron support beam near the back wall, his face swollen and bleeding, was Darryl.
"Right on time, Sergeant," Vance called out, tossing his paper cup into a trash can. "I knew you were a practical man."
