The Sliced Brake Line At The Rally And The Daughter’s Warning
CHAPTER 5: THE CANYON AMBUSH
The roar of five Harley-Davidsons echoed off the sheer, eight-hundred-foot limestone palisades of Spearfish Canyon like rolling thunder.
Autumn rain had begun to fall—a cold, torrential mountain downpour that slicked the asphalt into a mirror-like black ribbon and turned the jagged gravel shoulders into treacherous mud. The winding two-lane highway carved through the canyon floor beside the roaring, swollen white water of Spearfish Creek, twisting through blind ninety-degree switchbacks that demanded total, unrelenting concentration.
Jax Stone rode point on his customized Dyna Glide, with Tommy seated behind him, wrapped in a heavy thermal fleece jacket and riding vest. Carly rode in the center of the diamond formation, shielded between Red’s heavy Road Glide on her left and Preacher on her right, while Tank and Hawk rode the rear guard, their high-beam LED light bars slicing through the blinding rain.
Ahead in the darkness, the twin steel rails of the Black Hills industrial freight spur crossed the highway at the historic Savoy Trestle Bridge.
Sitting on the siding beneath the towering timber bridge was a slow-moving diesel switcher locomotive pulling three flatbed cars, each carrying heavily reinforced steel military shipping containers marked with red Department of Defense hazard placards.
Parked across the highway on the approach to the trestle were two matte-black Ford F-350 dually pickup trucks equipped with heavy steel push-bumpers, high-output off-road light bars, and mounted gun rings in the cargo beds.
“Roadblock ahead!” Preacher radioed through the intercom. “They’ve got the bridge choked off!”
From the bed of the lead truck, an enforcer raised an automatic tactical shotgun and opened fire. Heavy twelve-gauge buckshot slammed into the rock wall above Jax’s head, showering the asphalt with limestone shrapnel.
“Break formation! Diamond split!” Jax commanded.
Red and Preacher peeled hard to the left shoulder, using the natural drainage ditch as cover, while Tank and Hawk swung wide to the right. Jax dropped two gears, the high-output V-twin engine screaming as he charged directly down the center yellow line at seventy miles an hour.
Thirty yards before the roadblock, Jax slammed his rear brake pedal and counter-steered with master-class precision. The heavy motorcycle broke traction on the wet asphalt, sliding sideways in a controlled ninety-degree power slide that carried the rear crash bars directly into the front quarter-panel of the lead pickup truck.
The steel-on-steel impact struck with the force of an artillery shell.
The heavy truck’s steering tie-rod snapped with a deafening CRACK, and the three-ton pickup skidded off the roadbed, plunging nose-first into the rushing waters of Spearfish Creek, where the cold rapids immediately swamped the engine block.
The second truck attempted to reverse, but Tank and Hawk swept in from the flanks, firing non-lethal heavy beanbag rounds that shattered the driver’s side window and pinned the remaining gunmen against the headrests.
Jax brought his motorcycle to a halt on the approach to the train siding.
“Red! Secure the road!” Jax shouted, dismounting and hauling Tommy off the saddle.
On the railway siding, Victor Vance stood on the open platform of the lead flatbed car, a handheld wireless detonator gripped tightly in his trembling hand. Connected by heavy black industrial wiring to the undercarriage of the rail car was a commercial two-hundred-gallon pressurized propane tank, wired with an electronic blasting cap.
Beside Vance on the flatbed sat the master military telemetry black box—a heavy, olive-drab titanium crate containing the encrypted flight guidance firmware.
“Step back, Holloway!” Vance shrieked over the howling wind and roaring creek, his face twisted in manic desperation. “You take one more step and I blow this propane tank! It will vaporize these rail cars, the bridge, and every living soul within a hundred yards!”
Jax stepped onto the gravel trackbed, keeping his hands visible, his eyes locked onto Vance’s finger on the trigger switch.
“It’s over, Victor,” Jax said calmly, taking slow, measured steps forward across the wet railway ties. “Your road crews are neutralized. The state police and federal marshals have already raided your Sturgis corporate headquarters. There is no buyer waiting in Wyoming. You’re standing on a dead-end track with a bomb.”
“I spent twenty years building this empire!” Vance screamed, his voice cracking with hysterical rage. “I didn’t spend two decades in the dark to let an old biker and an orphaned girl take it from me!”
Carly stepped forward onto the tracks, her voice ringing out through the rain with clear, unshakeable authority.
“You didn’t build an empire, Victor,” Carly said, her brown eyes burning into the billionaire’s face. “You built a cage. And my father is finally out of it.”
Vance’s gaze darted to Carly, a flicker of pure hatred crossing his sallow face.
In that split second of distraction, Tommy Evans moved.
Despite twenty years of malnutrition and forced captivity, the muscle memory of an Army combat engineer took over. Tommy threw his weight forward, lunging across the iron coupler of the train car, his hands clamping around the brass emergency shut-off valve of the propane manifold!
The icy spray from Spearfish Creek whipped across their face shields as the motorcycles held the center of the roadbed. The roar of the water was nearly deafening, swollen into a foaming torrent of mud and mountain runoff that pounded against the wooden trestle pilings fifty feet below.
Tank pulled his motorcycle beside Jax, his heavy shotgun resting across his forearm. “Vance has two more tactical gun trucks staged at the Wyoming border cutoff, Jax! If that switcher engine clears the siding and hits the main rail corridor, the state line jurisdiction will tie our hands while Vance’s private cargo plane takes off from the private airstrip in Newcastle!”
“We don’t let it touch the main line,” Jax roared back over the howling storm. “We take the trestle switch and we derail his escape right here in the canyon!”
