Chapter 45 - The Black Sedan on Highway 9
The rain had turned to sleet by the time David reached Highway 61 heading northeast along the jagged shoreline of Lake Superior. The stolen tactical SUV—a reinforced Chevy Suburban equipped with police interceptor packages—tore through the pitch-black night at ninety-five miles per hour.
The windshield wipers beat back and forth in a frantic, losing rhythm against the ice slinging off the lake. On his left, massive granite palisades rose like black teeth into the sky; on his right, the dark, churning expanse of the greatest freshwater lake in the world churned with ten-foot breakers that sprayed freezing foam across the asphalt.
David plugged the security guard’s tactical radio into the dash charger. The frequency hissed with encrypted private traffic.
*"Transport Lead to Apex,"* a voice crackled through the speaker. *"We are twenty miles out from Grand Portage harbor. The storm is worsening. Captain says we have a forty-minute window before the harbor master suspends all commercial and private departures due to high seas."*
Then, a voice that made the hair on David's arms stand up like needles.
*"The harbor master does what he is paid to do,"* Evelyn replied, her voice crystal clear over the digital link. *"If the boat is not ready to cast off the moment we arrive, shoot him and pilot it yourself. I will not have my granddaughter spending the night on this uncivilized shoreline."*
David slammed his hand onto the steering wheel. "Grand Portage."
Grand Portage was an isolated outpost at the very tip of Minnesota's arrowhead, spitting distance from the Canadian border. If she boarded that private ferry and slipped out into the territorial waters of Isle Royale, tracking her would become an impossibility in a Category 1 storm.
He stomped the accelerator to the floorboards. The Suburban's engine screamed, the transmission kicking down as the speedometer pushed past one hundred.
Ten minutes later, rounding the treacherous, hairpin curves of Silver Bay, David saw red taillights cutting through the white haze of sleet half a mile ahead.
It was an armored Mercedes Maybach, flanked by a trailing black pickup truck.
The pickup truck driver must have spotted the Suburban closing the distance with unnatural speed. Without warning, the pickup swerved across both lanes, blocking the road, and the passenger side window rolled down.
A rifle barrel emerged.
*Muzzle flashes strobe in the darkness.*
Rounds hammered into the Suburban's hood and cracked across the reinforced windshield, spiderwebbing the glass into a blinding lattice of white fractures.
David didn't tap the brakes. He leaned forward, ducking his head beneath the dashboard line, his eyes locked on the pickup's rear bumper through the lower clear patch of glass.
"You want my daughter?!" David screamed over the roar of the engine. "COME GET ME!"
He rammed the Suburban’s reinforced steel push-bumper directly into the pickup’s left rear quarter panel at ninety miles an hour.
The physics were catastrophic. The pickup’s rear end whipped around violently on the ice-covered road. It skidded sideways, its tires catching the gravel shoulder, and rolled three times over the guardrail, plunging two hundred feet down the sheer rock cliff into the boiling, freezing waves of Lake Superior below.
The explosion of sparks and breaking glass lit up the night.
May you like
Through the shattered remnants of his windshield, David saw the Mercedes accelerate, its tires kicking up twin roostertails of ice and slush as it sped toward the dark entrance of the Grand Portage ferry terminal.
***
