Victoria slammed the accelerator.
The van shot up the concrete service ramp like a rocket, bursting out of the subterranean darkness into the blinding glare of the morning sun. Tires screeched against the asphalt as Victoria whipped the heavy vehicle onto the elevated rail access corridor.
We bypassed the highway traffic in reverse, hurtling south along the railway gravel at sixty-five miles an hour. Dust, gravel, and palm fronds exploded behind us in a massive vortex.
“Ten minutes!” David yelled, checking his dispatch timer against his satellite navigation screen. “The demolition company is Coastal Marine Excavation! The owner is a ruthless thug named 'Big Dan' Kowalski! He took fifty grand in cash from Titan last night to make sure that Victorian house doesn't survive the morning!”
“Grandma, hold on!” I screamed as the van took a bone-jarring leap over a drainage ditch, landing with a heavy, suspension-creaking thud that threw us into our seats.
Grandma Rose held onto the overhead grab handle with one hand, her walking cane wedged firmly between her orthopedic sneakers. Her wire-rimmed glasses slipped slightly down her nose, but her jaw was set like a vice.
“Tell Victoria to drive faster!” Grandma Rose shouted over the deafening wail of the siren. “Your grandfather drove faster than this through the snowdrifts of Lake Erie, and he was hauling three hundred pounds of frozen cabbage!”
David burst into an incredulous laugh from the back of the van. “I love this woman! I swear to God, she’s my new hero!”
At 9:24 AM, the white van crested the coastal bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway.
Below us, stretching out along the glittering turquoise horizon, lay the golden sands of Hollywood Beach.
And there, rising like a dark, noxious stain against the clear blue sky above Victoria’s estate, was a thick plume of black, greasy diesel smoke.
“No!” Victoria gasped, her hands gripping the wheel so hard the leather groaned. “They're already running the heavy engines!”
Through the windshield, we could see the nightmare unfolding.
Three massive, yellow Caterpillar tracked excavators with sixty-foot hydraulic arms and heavy steel crushing jaws had breached the wooden perimeter of the estate. Two heavy-duty bulldozers with ten-foot steel blades were idling on the dunes, their diesel exhaust pipes belching black soot into the ocean air.
A crew of eight men in yellow hard hats, high-visibility orange vests, and heavy steel-toed boots were stringing orange plastic hazard fence around the Victorian manor.
At the edge of the dune, standing on the delicate cedar boardwalk where Grandma Rose had stood bare-footed just hours ago, was a massive, burly man with a thick gray beard and a reflective vest stretched over his bulging belly. He held a two-way radio to his mouth, gesturing toward the front porch of the historic house.
“Big Dan” Kowalski.
Beside him, an excavator was rotating its massive steel counterweight, raising its hydraulic boom into the air. At the end of the cable swung a five-ton solid steel wrecking ball, swaying with lethal momentum above the delicate, hand-carved turret of the Victorian roof.
“They’re dropping the ball!” I screamed.
Victoria didn't tap the brakes. She didn't slow down.
She turned the steering wheel hard to the left, aiming the five-ton commercial laundry van directly at the smashed gate of the estate.
“Brace yourselves!” Victoria roared.
The van cleared the curb, tore through the remains of the wooden gateposts, and launched into the private driveway. Tires threw wet sand and crushed coquina stone twenty feet into the air.
Victoria slammed on the brakes, cutting the wheel in a violent slide. The heavy commercial van spun ninety degrees across the lawn, coming to a halt directly across the cedar boardwalk, physically blocking the lead bulldozer from advancing toward the guest cottage where our luggage was stored.
The hydraulic screech of the excavator ground to a sudden halt.
The wrecking ball hung suspended fifty feet in the air, swaying like a pendulum of doom over the roof.
The demolition crew froze.
Big Dan Kowalski lowered his radio, his face turning an angry, sunburned crimson. He spat a thick stream of tobacco onto the sand, took a heavy steel crescent wrench from his belt loop, and stomped toward the van, flanked by four hulking construction workers carrying iron pry bars.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” Kowalski bellowed, his voice like grinding millstones. “This is an active, restricted demolition zone! Get this damn dry-cleaning truck off my site before I have the Caterpillar crush it into a beer can!”
The van door flew open.
Victoria leaped out onto the sand, holding the red-sealed court order high above her head like a fiery torch.
“Stand down, Kowalski!” Victoria commanded, her voice cutting through the roar of the idling diesel engines. “I am Victoria Sterling, legal owner and leaseholder of this parcel! This is an official Emergency Injunction of Cease and Desist issued by the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit of the State of Florida! The Zoning Commission has formally dismissed Titan Development’s petition with prejudice! The property is an inviolable historic preserve!”
Kowalski stopped ten feet away. He looked at the paper, then looked at Victoria with a contemptuous, mocking grin that revealed two gold teeth.
“I don't work for the Zoning Commission, lady,” Kowalski sneered, tapping the heavy steel wrench against the palm of his calloused hand. “I work for Titan Maritime Holding. My contract says I get a fifty-thousand-dollar completion bonus if this pile of rotten wood is on the ground by noon today. Until the county sheriff hands me an injunction in a patrol car with flashing blue lights, your piece of paper is toilet paper.”
He turned around, raised his radio to his mouth, and barked into the microphone:
“Marty! Drop the cable! Take out the front porch!”
“No!” Victoria screamed, lunging forward, but two burly workers stepped in her path, their broad chests blocking her from reaching the boardwalk.