The Biker In The Princess Gown And The Dying Brother’s Promise
CHAPTER 5: THE NEWFOUND GAP ROADBLOCK
“Forty minutes,” Dutch said, his voice flat, icy, and totally devoid of fear.
He checked his heavy field watch: 12:20 PM. The Sevier County Courthouse in Sevierville was twenty-six miles down the mountain. The only route out of Greenbrier Cove was Newfound Gap Highway—a winding two-lane mountain road with sheer drop-offs and hairpin switchbacks.
“Sterling knows we have the deed,” Dutch reasoned, his tactical mind assessing the terrain with veteran clarity. “He knows we have to reach the courthouse before one o’clock. He will have every private tow truck, utility truck, and crooked contractor in his network blocking that highway to run out the clock.”
“Then we don’t ride like tourists,” Tank growled, his knuckles cracking. “We ride like the Iron Ridge.”
Dutch turned to Eleanor. “Eleanor, Ray’s trust requires your physical presence in that courtroom to affirm your consent. Are you ready for the fastest ride of your life, ma’am?”
Eleanor looked at Dutch, looked down at the silver frame in her hands showing Ray smiling in his uniform, and her chin lifted with the fierce, indomitable spirit of a mountain woman.
“Ray took me down that mountain on his Shovelhead at eighty miles an hour in sixty-nine, Dutch,” Eleanor said, a proud, beautiful smile touching her wrinkled lips. “Put me in that sidecar.”
Within four minutes, the Iron Ridge MC rolled out of Greenbrier Cove in full tactical convoy.
Dutch rode point on his customized matte-black Road Glide with the heavy steel sidecar attached, Eleanor seated safely inside with a five-point racing harness strapped across her cardigan and a custom pink helmet secured over her silver curls. Dutch wore his scorched, battle-tested pink ballgown, the satin ruffles flapping wildly against the chrome engine heads, his rhinestone tiara gleaming under the autumn sun.
Flanking them were sixteen heavy Harley-Davidsons riding in an interlocking diamond wedge, their headlights cutting through the mountain mist like blazing torches.
They hit Newfound Gap Highway at seventy miles an hour, their knobby tires singing against the grooved concrete as they navigated the sweeping mountain curves.
The ascent up Newfound Gap was relentless. Dense stands of hemlock, yellow birch, and Fraser fir blurred into a ribbon of deep emerald green on either flank of the asphalt. With every hairpin turn, the altitude climbed, the air growing sharper and biting cold against Dutch’s bare knuckles and exposed forearms. Eleanor’s face in the sidecar was framed by the curved polycarbonate windshield, her eyes drinking in the rugged ridgelines where she and Ray had hiked as newlyweds fifty years before. Behind them, sixteen V-twin engines operated in flawless military cadence, their exhaust notes reverberating against the towering limestone bluffs like rolling summer thunder.
“Lead, this is Tank on tail gun,” the radio crackled in Dutch’s earpiece. “Rear is secure. No tail vehicles from the valley. But keep your eyes peeled ahead—Mile Marker 14 is a notorious choke point.”
“Copy that, Tank,” Dutch replied, shifting up into fourth gear as the speedometer needle hovered past seventy-two. “Stay tight on our flanks. Nobody breaks the line.”
At Mile Marker 14, where the highway narrowed between a vertical granite cliff on the left and a four-hundred-foot ravine on the right, the road suddenly vanished behind a wall of orange hazard cones and heavy machinery.
Parked across both lanes of the highway were two heavy commercial flatbed tow trucks, parked bumper-to-bumper, their heavy steel beds raised at an angle to create an impassable twelve-foot metal barricade across the asphalt!
Standing behind the trucks were six men in high-visibility vests armed with tire irons and road flares, signaling with crossed arms for the convoy to halt.
“Roadblock!” Tank yelled through the radio intercom. “They’ve choked the pass!”
Dutch didn’t touch the brakes. He twisted the throttle to the stop, the 114-cubic-inch twin-cam engine screaming in fury.
“Convoy protocol! Snowplow formation!” Dutch roared through his headset. “Tank, Bear, take the tow pins! We don’t stop for corporate trash!”
Tank and Bear pulled their heavy cruisers directly on either side of Dutch’s front wheel, their reinforced tubular steel engine crash bars locking into a solid, eight-foot-wide wedge of steel.
Thirty yards before the barricade, the workers in the road panicked, seeing a thousand pounds of roaring iron and a giant in a pink ballgown barreling toward them at seventy miles an hour! The men dropped their tire irons and scrambled up the rock face in terror!
CRRRRRRRAAAASH!
The synchronized wedge of three heavy motorcycles struck the junction between the two flatbed tow trucks with the concussive force of an anti-tank shell!
The heavy steel crash bars sheared the trucks’ hydraulic locking pins with an ear-splitting screech of tearing metal. The two commercial trucks were violently shoved outward, their tires screeching sideways across the asphalt as the barricade blew wide open!
The Iron Ridge convoy rocketed through the gap without losing a mile an hour of momentum, their tires showering the pavement with sparks and shattered glass as they cleared the pass!
“Clear!” Tank bellowed over the radio, laughing with wild, triumphant adrenaline. “We’re through the gap!”
Ahead, the highway flattened out into the valley, the red-brick clock tower of the Sevier County Courthouse rising in the distance under the midday sun.
The dashboard clock read 12:54 PM. Exactly six minutes remained before the probate docket closed forever.
The wind through Newfound Gap screamed like a dying animal as the sixteen motorcycles carved down the mountain pass. The asphalt was slick with pine needles and mountain runoff, but Dutch held his line with the immovable weight of a battleship.
In the sidecar beside him, Eleanor gripped the safety bar, her silver hair blowing in the wind, a bright, defiant joy shining in her brown eyes. She was no longer a frightened, confused widow in a salon; she was the wife of a Cavalry sergeant who had held the line against fire and blood.
“Faster, Dutch!” Eleanor called out over the engine roar, her voice ringing with the spirit of the Smokies. “Ray never backed off the throttle on this pass, and neither do we!”
Dutch threw his head back, a deep, booming laugh escaping his chest as he twisted the throttle, the Road Glide barking with thunder as the convoy stormed into the valley flats!
