Chapter 12 - The Judas in Our Midst
The drive back to Lake Forest was a blur of agonizing, terrifying speed.
We were pushing the armored SUVs past their redlines, doing over a hundred miles an hour on untreated, icy highways. But Rockford was an hour away from the Estate under the best conditions. In this blizzard, it was an eternity.
I sat in the passenger seat, staring blindly at the encrypted radio console, listening to the nightmare unfolding at my home.
Silas had managed to route a one-way audio feed from the Estate's internal security cameras to our convoy, but he couldn't transmit video. All I had was sound. And every sound was a knife twisting in my gut.
"West wing corridor is compromised!" Elias’s voice roared through the radio, strained and ragged. "Fall back! Guard the subterranean door! Do not let them reach the medical bay!"
The staccato crackle of Elias’s sidearm echoed through the speakers, followed by the heavy, booming return fire of Russian assault rifles.
"Hold the line, Elias," I whispered into the empty cabin of my SUV, my hands gripping the dashboard so hard the plastic was cracking. "Just hold on."
"I'm out!" a guard screamed over the radio. "They're flanking us through the solarium!"
Then, another voice cut through the chaos. A voice with a thick, brutal Russian accent, echoing through the Estate’s PA system. Volkov.
"Gideon Vale!" Volkov’s voice mocked, his laughter dark and grating. "I know you are listening, Boss. I know you are racing back here. But you are too late. Did you really think my men didn't know the layout of your precious fortress? You should be more careful about who you pay to install your security systems."
The realization hit me like a physical blow. The corrupt cop who dropped Elias off earlier. He hadn't just delivered a message. He had planted a localized signal jammer and a backdoor code on the pedestrian gate keypad. We had a Judas, and they had let the devil right through the front door.
Over the radio, I heard the deafening crash of a heavy steel door being blown off its hinges. The entrance to the subterranean medical bay.
"Elias is down!" Silas screamed. "They're in the bunker! Boss, they're in the bunker!"
I closed my eyes. The image of Clara, bound to a wheelchair, and little Norah, clutching her stuffed rabbit, flashed behind my eyelids. The identical helplessness I felt three years ago on my driveway threatened to consume me.
No. Not this time.
"I don't care if you destroy the engine," I snarled at my driver. "Give me more speed!"
Over the radio, the gunfire had stopped. The eerie, horrifying silence of the bunker was suddenly broken by the sound of heavy boots crunching on broken glass.
"Well, well," Volkov’s voice echoed, closer to the microphone now. "The brave mother. And the little witness. It is a shame you didn't die in the snow, Clara. It would have been much less painful than this."
Then, I heard her. Clara.
Her voice wasn't shaking. It wasn't the voice of a terrified victim. It was a low, lethal hiss of absolute defiance.
"If you take one more step toward my daughter, I will blow your head off."
"A scalpel?" Volkov laughed cruel and cold. "You are going to fight me with surgical tools?"
"It's a .45 caliber Glock, you son of a bitch," Clara replied. "Elias left it for me. And I’ve been an auditor for ten years. I know how to find the target."
A single, deafening gunshot echoed through the radio.
A man screamed—a wet, gargling shriek of pain.
"She shot Ivan! The bitch shot him in the throat!" a mercenary yelled.
"Take the gun from her! Break her other leg!" Volkov roared.
The sounds of a brutal struggle flooded the comms. Clara screaming, the heavy thud of flesh hitting metal, and then, the sound that shattered whatever remained of my soul. Norah, shrieking in pure, unadulterated terror.
"Mama! Leave her alone! Mama!"
"I've got the kid!" a mercenary shouted.
"Bring them both to the vans!" Volkov ordered. "We have our leverage. Burn the rest of the house down."
The radio feed cut to dead static.
"No," I breathed, slamming my fist into the console, shattering the plastic screen. "NO!"
"Boss! I see the gates!" the driver shouted.
We tore around the final bend of the forest road. The heavy iron gates of the Vale Estate were blown completely off their tracks, twisted metal smoking in the snow. The courtyard was a war zone. Two of my security vehicles were on fire, illuminating the dark night with violent orange flames.
But sitting in the center of the driveway, engines roaring, were three unmarked grey transit vans.
They were loading them in.
"Ram them!" I bellowed.
My SUV didn't even slow down. We hit the courtyard at eighty miles an hour. The driver aimed our massive armored vehicle directly at the lead transit van.
The impact was cataclysmic.
Our push-bar crushed the side of the van, driving it sideways across the snowy courtyard until it smashed violently against the stone fountain, pinning it in place. The two remaining vans immediately threw themselves into reverse, their tires spinning wildly on the ice, trying to escape the ambush.
I didn't wait for my vehicle to come to a complete stop. I kicked my door open and threw myself out into the snow, my sidearm drawn, Marcus and my tactical team pouring out of the escort vehicles behind me.
"Do not fire at the vans!" I roared, knowing Clara and Norah were inside one of them. "Take out the drivers!"
Marcus took a knee, shouldering his rifle. Two suppressed shots cracked through the night. The driver of the second van slumped against his steering wheel, dead instantly. The van rolled harmlessly into a snowbank.
The third van—the one closest to the shattered front doors of the Estate—gunned its engine, speeding toward the broken gates.
I didn't think. The civilized man was entirely dead.
I sprinted across the icy courtyard, intercepting the vehicle's path. The driver saw me standing in the headlights, but he didn't brake. He accelerated.
I raised my heavy .45, locking my elbows, my eyes staring directly through the glaring headlights at the shadow behind the wheel. I squeezed the trigger three times.
The heavy slugs shattered the windshield. The driver took all three rounds to the chest.
The van violently swerved to the left, missing me by inches, and crashed head-on into one of the massive stone pillars of the perimeter wall. The engine block crumpled, hissing violently as antifreeze poured onto the snow.
Silence fell over the courtyard, broken only by the crackle of the burning security vehicles.
I walked slowly toward the crushed transit van, reloading a fresh magazine into my weapon, my boots crunching heavily on the ice. Marcus and my men formed a lethal perimeter, aiming their weapons at the sliding side door.
I reached out, grabbed the handle of the van, and ripped the door open.
Inside the dark cabin, Viktor Volkov was pinned between the crushed passenger seat and the metal partition. His face was covered in blood, his right arm bent at a sickening angle. But in his left hand, he held a combat knife, pressed directly against the throat of a sobbing, terrified Norah.
In the back of the van, Clara was lying on the floorboards, bleeding from a vicious cut on her forehead, desperately trying to crawl toward her daughter.
"Back off!" Volkov spat, blood bubbling on his lips, pressing the blade hard enough to draw a thin line of red on Norah's pale neck. "You let me walk out of here, Vale, or the girl dies right now!"
I stood in the doorway of the van. The cold wind howled around us.
I looked at Norah. Her brown eyes were wide, filled with tears, looking at me with absolute, helpless trust.
Then I looked at Volkov.
I didn't negotiate. I didn't warn him. I didn't say a single word.
I simply raised my gun in a blinding, fluid motion and fired.
The bullet struck Volkov perfectly between the eyes.
The kinetic force snapped his head back against the partition with a wet crack. His eyes rolled back, the knife slipping harmlessly from his fingers as his lifeless body slumped sideways into the footwell.
Norah screamed and scrambled backward.
I dropped my gun. I fell to my knees in the snow, reaching into the bloody cabin.
"I've got you," I choked out, my voice finally breaking. "I've got you."
Norah practically threw herself into my arms, wrapping her tiny hands around my neck, sobbing into my chest. I pulled her tight against me, burying my face in her hair, feeling the rapid, terrified beating of her heart.
She was alive.
I reached my other arm into the van and grabbed Clara, hauling her out of the wreckage. She collapsed into the snow beside me, wrapping her arms around Norah and me, burying her bruised face against my shoulder.
May you like
We knelt there in the blood and the snow, surrounded by the burning wreckage of my empire. The three of us, clinging to each other in the freezing dark, breathing the exact same desperate, shattered sigh of relief.
The war was over. And for the first time in three years, I had finally saved my family.
