The Silver Bracelet At The Service Station And The Lost Granddaughter
CHAPTER 4: THE DEFENSE OF RED ROCK
High-velocity armor-piercing rifle rounds chewed through the heavy timber doorframes and stone mantelpiece, throwing clouds of pulverized mortar and wooden shrapnel across the great room.
“Stay down! Behind the hearth!” Jackson roared, his body forming a solid, immovable shield over Lauren and Paisley.
Little Paisley buried her face in her mother’s chest, her tiny hands clutching her stuffed coyote tightly, whimpering in terror as the walls vibrated from the gunfire.
“Preacher! Kill the main generator!” Jackson commanded through his tactical collar mic.
Preacher sprinted into the utility room, throwing the primary circuit breaker. The ranch house was instantly plunged into darkness, stripping the mercenary snipers on the ridge of their interior silhouette lighting.
From the dark timberline three hundred yards up the canyon slope, the throaty roar of three modified trophy trucks tore through the silence as Blackwood’s heavy assault team advanced down the wash. Over twenty private military contractors wearing tactical night-vision goggles, Kevlar plate carriers, and carrying suppressed automatic carbines moved in a sweeping skirmish line across the pasture.
“They’re deploying commercial thermite charges against the rear stables!” Bear reported from the loft, returning fire with a heavy semi-automatic rifle that barked with deafening authority.
“They think they’re fighting civilians,” Jackson growled, his glacier-blue eyes flashing with the cold, lethal precision of an Army Ranger. “Doc, take the basement tunnel and move Lauren and Paisley into the underground root cellar. It’s blast-reinforced concrete with a steel submarine hatch. Lock it from the inside.”
Lauren grabbed Jackson’s leather vest, her brown eyes wide with fierce, desperate pleading. “Dad! Don’t go out there alone!”
Jackson leaned down, placing a warm, reassuring hand on her cheek, then kissed Paisley’s forehead.
“I spent thirty years looking for you, Lauren,” Jackson whispered, his voice steady, calm, and filled with infinite love. “Nobody takes my family away from me again. Lock the hatch and wait for my knock.”
Jackson slipped into the shadows of the rear breezeway, strapping on a night-vision monocular and drawing his custom suppressed tactical shotgun.
The Red Rock MC did not fight like an undisciplined street gang; they fought like the decorated combat veterans they were.
Doc detonated four perimeter trip-flares along the dry creek bed. Blinding white magnesium light illuminated the entire canyon in daylight-level brilliance, instantly blinding the contractors’ night-vision optics and leaving them exposed in the open caliche flats.
Jackson moved through the dense juniper scrub like a ghost rising from the desert floor.
He flanked the lead mercenary squad from the high granite rocks, his tactical shotgun booming with non-lethal heavy kinetic slugs that shattered body armor plates and sent the contractors tumbling into the cactus-strewn wash. Bear and Preacher laid down an overlapping field of suppressive fire from the stone parapets of the ranch, trapping the assault team in a deadly crossfire.
Within four minutes, twelve of Blackwood’s mercenaries were disarmed and neutralized, their weapons scattered in the dirt.
Suddenly, a high-pitched scream echoed from the rear courtyard of the ranch house!
Jackson’s heart turned to ice. He sprinted through the smoke toward the kitchen entrance.
The heavy steel submarine hatch to the root cellar had been breached with a hydraulic spreading tool.
Lying unconscious on the floor was Doc, bleeding from a blow to the temple.
Lauren was struggling wildly against two armed men in black tactical gear, her fists swinging with fury. “Let her go! Paisley! Let her go!”
Standing in the courtyard doorway, holding five-year-old Paisley in his arms, was Garrett Blackwood. The fifty-six-year-old billionaire wore a dark tactical storm coat, a cold, psychotic sneer twisting his features, a silver revolver pressed against his hip.
“Drop your weapon, Jackson!” Blackwood screamed over the roar of an idling trophy truck. “You take one step and this child dies right here in your yard!”
Paisley wept, reaching her small arms out toward Jackson, her silver eagle feather bracelet catching the flare of the burning fence. “Grandpa! Help me!”
Jackson froze, his shotgun lowering an inch, his heart tearing in two.
Before Jackson could spring forward, Blackwood hurled Paisley into the cab of the trophy truck, jumped into the passenger seat, and the truck roared out of the courtyard at ninety miles an hour, tires throwing a storm of caliche gravel as it sped toward the dark depths of the canyon!
From the western ridge, two more modified four-wheel-drive trucks carrying Blackwood’s enforcers attempted to flank the burning corral. Bear and Tank moved with disciplined tactical precision, deploying non-lethal heavy beanbag rounds that shattered the windshields and disabled the steering columns, pinning the mercenaries in the ravine.
Doc staggered up from the breezeway, wiping blood from his eyebrow with a gauze pad, his revolver gripped tightly in his good hand. “Jackson! Blackwood’s trophy truck is equipped with a military VHF tactical frequency scrambler! They’re communicating directly with an unregistered private air transport flying out of Phoenix Sky Harbor! Blackwood isn’t just running… he’s liquidating his entire corporate holding tonight!”
Jackson looked down at the tire tracks gouged deep into the caliche driveway, seeing the crushed pieces of Paisley’s yellow hairclip where the truck had spun its rear wheels. The sight ignited a white-hot fury in his chest that burned away every hesitation.
Lauren knelt beside Doc in the kitchen, pressing a clean towel to his temple to slow the bleeding. “Doc, are you all right?” she whispered, her eyes wide with shock.
Doc coughed, blinking up through the haze of smoke, nodding weakly as he gripped her wrist. “Don’t worry about me, girl. Your father is a Ranger. There isn’t a mercenary in this territory who can outrun Jackson Reed when his family is on the line.”
