Chapter 81 - Crosshairs on the Runway
The crimson dots danced over the reinforced glass of the armored rover, three of them resting squarely on the center of my chest, two hovering inches from Noah’s bassinet. The roar of the twin-rotor transport choppers beat against the valley like heavy artillery, kicking up a hurricane of dust, gravel, and shredded pine needles that scraped against the black chassis.
*"VEHICLE OCCUPANT. STEP OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP. THE ARCHITECT AWAITS HER GRANDSON."*
The mechanical voice boomed through the speakers once more, vibrating through the metal frame into the marrow of my bones.
I didn’t blink. I didn’t breathe. My fingers remained curled tight around the cold, textured grip of the MPX submachine gun stashed under the seat. Beside me, Noah let out a soft whimper. His tiny hand reached out into the empty air, searching for comfort in a world determined to tear him apart and sell his marrow to the highest bidder.
"Not today, Eleanor," I whispered, my voice flat, deadened by pure adrenaline.
I didn't open the door. Instead, my left hand whipped across the console, slamming down on the rover’s emergency systems override. The dashboard flared amber. The Blackwood security package had one feature Julian had bragged about during our brief, poisonous marriage: an active countermeasure battery designed to blind infrared and laser target locks.
I hit the toggle.
A deafening pop echoed from the roof rack as four high-yield magnesium smoke canisters launched into the air, detonating forty feet above the hood in a blinding cascade of white-hot phosphorus and suffocating gray fog. The crimson laser dots shattered, scattering into harmless red refractions across the milky haze.
High above, the helicopter pilots cursed through open frequencies, their engines screaming as they fought sudden loss of optical tracking.
I slammed the rover into reverse, crushed the accelerator, and spun the wheel hard left. The heavy run-flat tires shrieked against the asphalt before gripping, slinging the three-ton vehicle into a violent J-turn. Snipers opened fire blindly. High-caliber rounds chewed into the rear armored glass, spiderwebbing the surface into crystalline sheets of opaque white, but the ballistic plating held.
May you like
Ahead of me lay the narrow maintenance service road plunging into the dense coastal forest—unmapped, pitch-black, and fraught with sheer drops.
I cut the vehicle’s high beams, switched to low-frequency tactical night vision, and dove headlong into the darkness. Behind us, the searchlights swept fruitlessly across the burning curtain of white smoke, but I knew the reprieve wouldn't last five minutes. Eleanor owned the sky, and she had just branded my son as the most valuable piece of contraband on the planet.
