"Then we don't cross the lawn," I replied, pointing to the wall beside the service entrance.
Mounted on the paneled mahogany was the master emergency management terminal for the estate's private hydroelectric grid—a brass-handled main circuit breaker box installed in the 1970s.
"If I drop the estate's main breaker," I whispered, "it kills the runway guidance lights, trips the automated hydraulic security gate at the end of the airstrip, and cuts the terminal power to their satellite dish. The plane won't be able to lift off blind in this fog with the perimeter barriers engaged."
"Do it," Marcus said, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. "The second the lights go out, we hit the terrace."
I grabbed the heavy brass handle of the master breaker. With every ounce of strength in my arms, I hauled the lever downward.
CLACK-CLUNK.
A violent, blue-white electrical arc flashed across the copper contacts.
Instantly, the entire four-thousand-acre compound died.
The chandeliers in the grand gallery went pitch-black. The exterior halogen floodlights illuminating the lawn sputtered and died. Down on the runway, the twin rows of runway approach markers snapped off, plunging the asphalt into an impenetrable wall of gray fog and falling rain. At the southern terminus of the airstrip, the massive hydraulic iron gates, designed to keep deer and unauthorized vehicles off the private runway, slammed shut with a heavy, distant metallic boom as their fail-safe counterweights dropped.
On the portico, Vance’s shout cut through the dark. "What happened to the power?! What is that?!"
"GO!" Marcus roared.
We kicked the service door wide open, our boots thundering across the marble gallery, bursting through the French doors onto the stone terrace into the freezing downpour.
"FEDERAL AGENTS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS!" Marcus’s voice cracked like thunder across the lawn.
The four private contractors spun around, their weapon lights cutting through the darkness in erratic, blinding cones.
"CONTACT! REAR TERRACE!" one of them screamed.
TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
A wall of automatic gunfire erupted from the contractor stack. 7.62 rounds shattered the French doors behind us, turning twenty feet of antique glass into flying shrapnel, chewing through the carved stone balustrade in explosive sprays of gray dust.
We dropped behind the heavy limestone railing.
Marcus and his operators returned fire with surgical, devastating precision. The sharp, rhythmic cracks of their suppressed M4s punched through the rain. The lead mercenary—the one reaching to shut the SUV’s rear cargo hatch—was struck twice in the chest, his body collapsing backward into the mud as the aluminum flight case tumbled from his grip, bursting open on the wet gravel to spill hundreds of encrypted flash drives and ledger folders into the slush.
"GET TO THE PLANE! GO!" Vance shrieked, his voice climbing into a terrified, manic register.
He didn't wait for his men. He scrambled into the passenger seat of the lead SUV, slamming the door shut.
The remaining two contractors vaulted into the driver and gunner seats, the heavy diesel engine roaring to life with a ferocious cloud of black exhaust. The armored vehicle launched forward, its tires tearing trenches through the manicured turf as it tore down the slope toward the taxiway, abandoning the dead guard and the scattered evidence.
"They're going to ram the runway gate!" Marcus shouted, scrambling over the ruined balustrade onto the grass. "If they punch through, the plane can take off from the grass strip!"
"Not in that truck, they won't!"
I sprinted down the terrace stairs, vaulting over the fallen flight case, my boots digging into the slick mud.
Twenty yards ahead of me, parked near the manor’s maintenance barn, sat the estate’s heavy-duty Caterpillar front-end loader—an eight-ton diesel beast with an eight-foot steel grading bucket used for timber clearing, its ignition key resting in the open cab.
I lunged into the steel cab, slammed the key forward, and hammered the starter button.
The massive diesel engine turned over with a deafening, earth-shaking shudder, spewing an enormous column of white smoke into the rain. I shoved the hydraulic transmission lever into fourth gear, slammed the throttle to the floorboards, and dropped the heavy steel bucket until the cutting edge hovered six inches above the dirt.
The machine surged down the hill with the unstoppable momentum of a rolling locomotive, tracking diagonally across the lawn toward the taxiway.
Through the rain-streaked cab glass, I saw Vance’s armored SUV accelerating hard down the runway access road, its high beams pinning the closed iron perimeter gates two hundred yards away. The SUV was doing seventy miles an hour, its heavy steel push-bumper aligned directly with the center seam of the iron barrier.
They were thirty yards from the intersection where the taxiway met the main runway.
I was twenty yards out, cutting across their flank at an acute angle.
Vance looked out his passenger window.
The color vanished from his face. His mouth dropped open in a silent, horrified scream as the eight-ton steel bucket of the Caterpillar bore down on him through the gray mist like the blade of a guillotine.
The contractor behind the wheel of the SUV jerked the steering wheel hard to the right, attempting to avoid the collision, but the heavy armored vehicle was carrying too much speed on the slick, wet pavement. The SUV went into a violent, sideways skid.
BOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The heavy steel grading bucket struck the armored SUV broadside directly across the B-pillar with the catastrophic kinetic force of an artillery strike.
The impact tore the SUV’s passenger side inward like an aluminum soda can. The vehicle was lifted clean off the asphalt, rolling twice through the air in a shower of shattered safety glass, shredded tires, and torn body panels, before crashing upside down into the muddy drainage canal bordering the runway.
The engine of the front-end loader stalled with a loud hiss of escaping hydraulic fluid.
I kicked the cab door open, leaped down into the ankle-deep muck of the drainage ditch, and drew my service pistol.
Marcus Hayes and his four operators arrived on the run ten seconds later, their rifles leveled at the smoking wreckage of the overturned SUV.
Inside the crushed passenger compartment, hanging upside down from his jammed seatbelt, was Harrison Vance.