What Lies Beneath The Broken Asphalt On County Road Nine
CHAPTER 4: THE AMBUSH AT WILLOW CREEK
The unmarked Dodge cruiser was twenty years old, a retired state pursuit sedan with a heavy steel push bumper and a rumbling 440 engine that smelled of rich unburned fuel. James kept the headlights off as he rolled the heavy vehicle down the rutted dirt access road, navigating by the faint silver glow of the moon filtering through the breaking cloud cover.
Robert sat in the passenger seat, his Colt resting across his knees, his fingers checking the spare magazines in his pocket. The charred ledger was secure against his ribs.
“We have twelve miles to the county line,” James said, his hands white-knuckling the steering wheel. “Once we cross the Shell Rock River at Willow Creek Bridge, we’re in Cerro Gordo County jurisdiction. Hatcher doesn’t have the deputies or the magistrates bought off in Mason City.”
“Willow Creek Bridge is a single-lane wooden trestle,” Robert noted, his gaze tracking the shadowy treeline flashing past the windows. “If you were planning to cut off an extraction route, that’s where you’d plant the cork.”
“It’s the only crossing within twenty miles,” James said grimly. “The state highway is already blocked by Hatcher’s fuel tanker. We either take the bridge or we swim.”
As the dirt track sloped down toward the black, rushing waters of the Shell Rock River, the headlights of the pursuit sedan finally clicked on, illuminating the dark timbers of Willow Creek Bridge.
The bridge was not empty.
Parked dead center across the wooden deck was a massive green John Deere articulated tractor, its twelve-foot earth-moving blade lowered directly onto the timbers, gouging deep into the wood. Standing atop the tractor’s cab, illuminated by a high-output halogen work light, was a man in an insulated canvas coat holding a scoped semi-automatic rifle.
“Brake!” Robert yelled.
James slammed his boots onto the pedal. The cruiser’s tires locked up, spraying twin plumes of mud and river gravel as the heavy car slewed sideways, stopping forty feet from the tractor blade.
“That’s Brad Hatcher,” James growled, his voice trembling with fury. “Donald’s nephew. The one who runs the cooperative’s heavy equipment yard.”
Before James could kick his door open, the halogen work light snapped directly into their faces, blinding them in a harsh cone of white illumination. Through a megaphone mounted on the tractor’s roll bar, Brad Hatcher’s voice echoed over the roaring water below.
“Step out of the car, Uncle James! Toss the weapons into the river! Uncle Donald says this ends tonight! You hand over the ledger and the old man, and you walk away with your pension intact! Otherwise, both of you go into the river with thirty pounds of tractor chain around your necks!”
Robert didn’t blink. He lowered his sun visor to shield his eyes from the glare. “He’s standing on the tractor cab, six feet above the fuel intake. The halogen light battery is wired into the tractor’s auxiliary alternator.”
“I have a rifle in the trunk,” James whispered. “A Remington seven-hundred. But if I pop the trunk, he’ll open fire through the windshield.”
“Then don’t pop the trunk,” Robert said calmly. “Keep the engine revving. Put the transmission in neutral.”
“What are you doing?”
“Giving him what he wants,” Robert said. He unzipped his jacket, pulled out the charred ledger, and held it high against the cruiser’s windshield where the halogen glare caught the unmistakable green canvas cover.
Brad Hatcher laughed through the megaphone. “That’s it! Bring it out, old man! Walk it across the hood with both hands up!”
Robert opened the passenger door and stepped out into the biting wind. He held the ledger in his left hand, high above his shoulder, walking slowly toward the front bumper. The cold river air cut through his shirt, but his pulse was steady, forty beats a minute, the rhythm of a man who had walked through minefields in the jungle.
“Keep walking, granddad!” Brad shouted, lowering the rifle until the crosshairs were centered on Robert’s chest. “Nice and easy! Drop it at the edge of the blade!”
“You’re twenty-four years old, son,” Robert called out, his voice carrying over the rushing current beneath the bridge timbers. “You weren’t even born when Lucas Hall was burned alive in that elevator. You want to spend the next fifty years in Fort Madison penitentiary for a crime an old man committed twenty years ago?”
“Shut your mouth!” Brad snarled, his finger tightening on the trigger. “My family built this town! You don’t know nothing about us!”
“I know that halogen light is pulling twenty amps off an ungrounded battery terminal,” Robert said softly.
With a motion so fast it defied his sixty-two years, Robert dropped the heavy ledger onto the hood of the car, ducked below the engine block, and drew the nickel Colt from his hip. He didn’t aim at Brad. He aimed at the four-inch exposed halogen glass fixture mounted directly above the tractor’s auxiliary fuel filter.
He fired three rounds in half a second.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The halogen bulb shattered in a shower of white-hot tungsten sparks. A stray bullet punctured the pressurized rubber fuel return line behind the mount. A brilliant plume of orange fire erupted along the tractor cab, illuminating Brad Hatcher as he stumbled backward, shrieking in panic, dropping his rifle onto the bridge timbers.
“Now, James!” Robert roared.
James dropped the transmission into drive and stomped the accelerator. The 440 V8 screamed. The heavy pursuit bumper smashed into the corner of the tractor blade with a bone-jarring impact that threw Brad Hatcher off the cab into the muddy reeds beside the bridge. The tractor shuddered, its hydraulic lines hissing, as the cruiser pushed the blade two feet aside—just enough to clear the timber lane.
Robert leaped onto the running board as the car surged past, hauling himself through the open window as the Dodge shot across Willow Creek Bridge, leaving the burning tractor and the screaming nephew behind in the dark.
