The Biker In The Rain And The Secret Of Sarah Hart
CHAPTER 6: THE SIEGE OF SAINT JUDE
The emergency backup generator in the basement utility shed died with a coughing metallic rattle, plunging the stone halls of Saint Jude’s Clinic into pitch-black darkness. Through the rain-lashed stained-glass windows of Room 12, the blinding white cone of an airborne searchlight swept across the limestone courtyard, illuminating armed tactical operators in Kevlar assault armor fanning out along the perimeter.
Jackson Dalton stepped into the doorway of Room 12, his massive silhouette blocking the entrance, his 12-gauge tactical shotgun held at the low ready.
“Stay with your mother, Maya,” Jackson commanded, his voice cold, steady, and immovable as iron ore. “Big Dan and the boys are holding the central nave. Nobody enters this wing while I’m drawing breath.”
From the courtyard below, Harrison Benton’s electronically amplified voice boomed through the storm, echoing off the stone bluffs:
“Jackson Dalton! The building is surrounded by twelve private security contractors armed with automatic weapons! Bring Sarah Hart and her daughter out to the courtyard with the laboratory ledgers, or we will breach the facility with thermite grenades and burn this monastery to the foundation!”
Jackson didn’t answer. He turned to Dr. Vance. “Doctor, keep Sarah on manual oxygen. Maya, hold your mother’s hand.”
Jackson walked down the long, vaulted stone hallway toward the chapel sanctuary. The heavy oak double doors had been blown off their hinges by a hydraulic breacher, admitting the freezing rain and the harsh white glare of portable tactical floodlights.
Four private contractors in black tactical gear advanced into the nave with short-barreled carbines raised.
From behind the heavy oak choir stalls, Big Dan and six burly mechanics from the River Valley MC struck like mountain panthers. Big Dan hurled a fifty-pound forged steel truck axle across the aisle, crushing the lead contractor’s weapon and driving him backward into the stone baptismal font with an explosive smash.
Jackson lunged from the shadows, his heavy shotgun barrel parrying an assault rifle slash, driving his massive steel-toed boot into the second operator’s ribs with crushing kinetic force. The contractor flew ten feet across the flagstones, crashing into the wooden pews as Jackson disarmed the third man with a single, brutal twist of his wrist, snapping the tactical carbine in half across his knee.
The fourth mercenary panicked, turning to flee toward the open courtyard, but Bear, waiting outside the door, tackled the man into the muddy rhododendron bushes, pinning him face-down in the gravel.
Jackson stepped out onto the rain-swept stone portico of the clinic, the cold wind whipping his gray beard.
Standing twenty yards away in the muddy driveway, shielded beneath an umbrella held by his private helicopter pilot, was Harrison Benton. In his right hand, Benton held a silver-plated .38 revolver, his eyes wild with homicidal desperation.
“You’re too late, Dalton!” Benton shrieked over the howling wind. “The helicopter will take me across the state line! You can’t prove a thing without Sarah’s live testimony!”
Benton raised the revolver, aiming directly at Jackson’s chest.
Before Benton could pull the trigger, the mountain sky exploded in a blinding fury of red, blue, and amber emergency strobe lights.
Six four-wheel-drive tactical Suburbans of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and ten marked cruisers of the West Virginia State Police roared through the monastery gates in a synchronized pincer formation, their sirens screaming through the gorge, their front-mounted brush guards boxing Benton’s helicopter against the stone garden wall.
A federal loudspeaker boomed across the bluffs: “This is the Federal Bureau of Investigation! Drop your weapon immediately, Harrison Benton! You are completely surrounded!”
Benton froze, his face draining of every drop of blood. The silver revolver slipped from his trembling leather glove, tumbling into the mud at his feet.
Two armed federal tactical marshals tackled the billionaire to the ground, pulling his arms behind his back and ratcheting heavy steel handcuffs around his wrists. Special Agent Miller stepped forward, retrieving a heavy leather valise from Benton’s dropped briefcase.
Inside the valise lay the original fifteen-year-old carbon copy of the cashier’s check Benton had paid to the towing company driver who had rammed Sarah Hart’s car off the Bellaire bridge, along with the corporate board minutes authorizing the illegal chemical dumping into the municipal aquifer.
Agent Miller looked at Jackson Dalton, nodding with deep, solemn respect. “The chain of custody is closed, Captain. Benton Chemical is under federal seizure, and this man will spend the rest of his natural life in a maximum-security penitentiary.”
The rain fell in cold, sparkling sheets around the stone portico of the monastery as the federal marshals escorted the handcuffed billionaire down the steps into the back of an armored tactical Suburban. Harrison Benton looked back over his shoulder, his expensive overcoat ruined by mud and road grit, his aristocratic face contorted with bitter disbelief as he stared at Jackson Dalton standing tall in the light of the emergency beacons.
“You won nothing tonight, mechanic!” Benton hissed through his broken teeth. “The lawyers will file twenty appeals by morning! You can’t stop a multi-billion-dollar corporate machine with a handful of grease-stained notebooks!”
Jackson walked slowly down the steps, stopping three feet from the vehicle door, looking down into the disgraced CEO’s eyes with cold, immovable pity.
“The machine is dead, Harrison,” Jackson said, his voice flat as the winter river ice. “The EPA just seized your refinery pipelines, the state police are raiding your corporate servers, and the people of this valley are drinking clean water from their own wells tomorrow morning. Your money couldn’t buy Sarah Hart’s soul, and it sure as hell can’t buy you a ticket out of a federal penitentiary.”
