The Quick Set Concrete Curing Under the Red Coupe Axles
CHAPTER 8: THE RIVER PAYOFF
“Flood surge!” Major Bradley yelled, his voice cutting through the roar of the diesel engines. “All personnel, off the bypass trench!”
The mud-choked torrent slammed into the wooden timber shoring twenty yards above the culvert excavation. Heavy spruce logs snapped like matchsticks under the kinetic weight of the river, water pouring across the old roadbed and spilling into the ditch where the fifty-ton precast concrete box sat suspended from the Liebherr crane.
“The culvert has to go in now!” Bradley shouted into his radio to the crane cab. “Set it down before the scour undermines the outriggers!”
The massive crane cables groaned under the strain as the operator lowered the fifty-ton concrete culvert box straight into the center of the surging channel. The immense box settled into the gravel bedrock with an earth-shaking thud. The river hit the upstream opening, diverted instantly through the twelve-foot reinforced conduit, and discharged safely out the downstream side, relieving the pressure on the mountain embankment in a matter of seconds.
Calloway and Brennan hauled the three aluminum flight cases and the ledgers safely onto the dry asphalt behind the patrol cruisers just as the edge of the river spray washed across the hardened pour.
The crimson sports coupe remained immovable. Enclosed in eighty thousand pounds of cured industrial stone, the vehicle sat like an iron monument to arrogance, its wheels, undercarriage, and lower doors fused permanently to the highway deck. The water washed over its red hood, harmlessly carrying away the last traces of wet gray slurry.
The two unmarked Suburbans from the Attorney General’s Office arrived, doors opening to reveal four federal and state investigators who immediately took custody of the evidence cases, Julian Vance, and Harlan Vance.
Julian, soaking wet and shivering uncontrollably in the back of the transport van, buried his face in his cuffed hands, weeping as the reality of a ten-year federal prison sentence closed around him. Harlan Vance sat stone-faced, staring straight ahead into the steel partition, stripped of his authority, his office, and his freedom.
By four in the afternoon, the rain clouds broke over Kettle Mountain, letting a shaft of pale autumn sunlight cut through the canyon mist. The roaring river flowed smoothly through the newly placed culvert box beneath Route 144.
Major Bradley walked over to Calloway, handing him a clean, dry metal citation clipboard retrieved from the project trailer.
“You’ll need this to write the highway destruction ticket, Trooper,” Bradley said with a weary smile. “It’s twenty-eight thousand dollars for the damaged deck section. We’re going to have to diamond-saw a ten-foot trench around that sports car, lift the whole slab out with the crane, and haul it to the county impound as a single four-ton chunk of rock.”
Calloway took the clipboard, checking the spring clip with his thumb. “Make sure they bill the crane hours to the Vance estate.”
“Count on it,” Bradley replied.
Calloway clipped his pen to the board, pulled down the brim of his campaign hat, and walked back to the centerline of Route 144, standing watch over the mountain road as the big state diesel rollers moved in to complete the repair.
