Chapter 7 - The Road to Nowhere
The old Ford pickup bounced violently along the unpaved logging road, its headlights cut off entirely to avoid drawing the attention of any aerial drones or perimeter patrols sweeping the surrounding airspace.
Inside the cab, the air smelled heavily of wet canvas, motor oil, and the sharp, metallic tang of adrenaline.
Creger lay slumped across the bench seat, his breathing shallow as Nora kept continuous pressure on the field dressing over his shoulder.
"How are you holding up, Petty Officer?" Nora asked, shining a small penlight briefly against his pale face.
"Feels like... like someone took a red-hot poker to my shoulder," Creger hissed through clenched teeth, his eyes glassy with shock and pain. "Damn it... how did they breach the primary bunkers so fast? Those access codes... only Admiral Holloway and the base commander possessed them."
"Which means the command structure at Fort Detrick has been completely compromised from the top down," Vance said from behind the steering wheel, his eyes locked on the dark, rain-slicked road ahead as he navigated purely by memory and instinct.
"Where are we heading, Vance?" Nora asked, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb Ranger, who was resting his heavy head quietly across her lap in the back of the cab. "We can't go to a civilian hospital. The moment Creger checks in with a gunshot wound, local law enforcement will flag it, and within an hour, military intelligence will trace the report."
"We aren't going to a hospital," Vance replied grimly. "We're going off the grid."
"What does that even mean?"
"It means there's an abandoned safehouse thirty miles north of here—an old cold-war listening post that was officially decommissioned back in the nineties," Vance explained, shifting gears smoothly as the truck climbed a steep, winding mountain grade. "It has an independent generator, a secure analog radio relay, and—most importantly—it doesn't exist on any active Department of Defense digital maps."
Nora stared at the back of Vance’s head through the dim dashboard illumination.
"And how do you happen to know about a decommissioned cold-war listening post hidden in the middle of a federal forest?"
Vance glanced sideways at her in the mirror, a dark, complicated shadow crossing his features.
"Because I was part of the clean-up crew that buried the operation that happened there twelve years ago, Nora," Vance said quietly. "Just like you were part of the cleanup crew in Sector Four three years ago."
Nora froze.
Her fingers stopped stroking Ranger’s ears for a fraction of a second.
"You have no idea what you're talking about," she whispered fiercely.
"Don't I?" Vance countered, keeping his eyes on the winding road. "I read between the lines of your file when you transferred in. I saw the exact operational scars on your forearms. And more importantly, I know that tactical Dobermans aren't assigned to standard medical units unless their primary handler was an active intelligence operative embedded with a front-line reconnaissance cell."
The cab fell into a heavy, suffocating silence, broken only by the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers and the steady purr of the truck's engine.
Creger groaned softly, shifting against the seat.
"Listen to me, both of you," Creger whispered, his voice weak. "When we reach that safehouse... you need to check the analog radio frequencies. Before the comms went down at the base... I heard an automated broadcast loop coming from the Pentagon joint staff channel."
Vance snapped his head around. "What kind of broadcast loop?"
"A burn order," Creger said, his eyes wide with horror in the dark. "All surviving assets from the 14th Task Force deployment... classified as active security threats. Orders were given to terminate on sight."
Nora's blood turned to ice in her veins.
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They weren't just running from rogue black-ops mercenaries anymore.
They were running from their own government.
