What’s at Mile Marker Nine? Cole demanded, pushing the Suburban’s speedometer past eighty miles per hour, the distance between the two vehicles rapidly closing.
The old processing bunker, Rachel said. It sits directly above the town’s primary water reservoir. If he drops those chemical drums into the overflow shaft, he cuts off the water supply for four counties and creates a biological disaster that will divert every federal resource in the state for months. He’s planning to use the chaos to cross the Canadian border through the logging trails.
Cole reached down, pulling a suppressed semi-automatic tactical rifle from the locking rack between the seats. Take the wheel, Rachel. I’ll take out his rear tires from the window.
No! Rachel yelled, grabbing Cole’s forearm with iron strength. You hit those drums with a high-velocity round, the hydraulic friction or a spark off the truck bed will ignite the toluene vapors! We’ll incinerate both vehicles! We have to force him off the road before he hits the bridge!
The bridge over Devil’s Gorge was less than a half-mile away. Built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the narrow, single-lane wooden-decked steel trestle spanned a three-hundred-foot vertical drop into a raging, rock-strewn river. If Vince made it onto the bridge, there would be no room to flank him, and the fragile timber would never support the combined weight of both charging vehicles.
Cole mashed the accelerator to the floorboards. The Suburban lunged forward, closing the final fifty yards in a matter of seconds. The front heavy-duty steel push bumper of the federal SUV came within three feet of the flatbed’s tailgate.
Through the rain-streaked rear window of the truck cab, the wild, desperate face of Vince Vance appeared in the rearview mirror.
Vince looked like a cornered animal. His face was twisted with manic terror, his jaw working violently as he recognized his sister in the passenger seat of the pursuing vehicle. Instead of slowing down, the coach reached down, slammed the truck into a lower gear, and violently jerked the wheel to the right.
The heavy steel tailgate of the flatbed swung out like a battering ram, smashing into the driver’s side front fender of the Suburban with a deafening screech of tearing sheet metal. Sparks cascaded across the windshield in an orange blizzard.
The impact sent the Suburban skidding sideways toward the edge of the asphalt. Beyond the crumbling shoulder lay a fifty-foot drop through jagged pine trees.
Cole fought the steering wheel, his knuckles white, but the momentum was carrying them over.
Hold on! Cole roared.
Rachel didn’t brace for impact. With lightning-fast reflexes, her right hand dropped to the emergency brake lever between the seats. She yanked the handle upward with a precise, two-stage pull, locking the rear axle while Cole counter-steered into the skid.
The Suburban performed a violent, controlled three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin across the roadway, the rear bumper shaving branches off a hemlock tree at the edge of the cliff before the four tires slammed back down onto the pavement, facing forward once again.
Cole let out an explosive breath. Jesus Christ, Rachel!
Drive! she commanded, her eyes never leaving the flatbed, which had gained fifty yards and was now rocketing toward the entrance of the Devil’s Gorge bridge.
Vince didn’t slow down for the wooden span. The flatbed’s tires hit the timber decking with a machine-gun rattle of loose planks. The entire bridge shuddered under the shockwave, ancient steel cables groaning in the storm.
Suddenly, through the rain, Rachel saw something that made her blood turn to ice.
One of the heavy yellow ratchet straps holding the chemical drums had snapped under the violence of the collision. The rear-most 55-gallon drum, painted in bright yellow industrial warning paint, shifted violently. It tipped backward, sliding over the wet diamond-plate steel of the bed, and crashed directly onto the wooden bridge floor!
The heavy steel drum bounced twice, its structural seams splitting under the kinetic shock. A thick, viscous black liquid—industrial-grade cutting solvent mixed with diesel accelerant—began pouring across the wet planks, splashing directly toward the Suburban’s path.
Cole slammed on the brakes, the ABS system shuddering violently as the SUV skidded to a halt mere feet from the edge of the bridge.
The flatbed reached the far side of the trestle. Vince slammed on his own brakes, bringing the truck to a halt on the gravel haul road across the gorge.
The driver’s side door of the truck flew open.
Vince Vance stepped out into the freezing sleet. He was not wearing his pristine athletic coaching jacket. He wore a dirty canvas barn coat, his hair soaked and plastered to his forehead, his face pale and grotesque in the glare of the Suburban’s high beams.
In his right hand, he held a heavy road flare.
