Chapter 2 - The Evasion Protocol
I slammed my foot onto the gas pedal with every ounce of strength I possessed.
The heavy tactical truck roared to life, violently tearing away from the hospital drop-off zone.
A deafening explosion shattered the quiet night exactly where my vehicle had been parked a second earlier.
The shockwave hit the back of my truck, shattering the rear windshield and showering the interior with safety glass.
Abigail screamed, covering her head as I recklessly swerved into the oncoming lane to avoid the flaming debris.
"Mom, what is happening?" she sobbed hysterically.
"Keep your head down, Abby," I ordered, my military training completely overriding my maternal panic.
The Fergusons were wealthy, but they did not have access to classified military drone networks.
Someone incredibly powerful within my own chain of command was protecting them.
I knew I could not trust the local police, the FBI, or my own commanding officers at Fort Liberty.
I drove frantically through the back roads of Charlotte, keeping my headlights completely off to avoid aerial detection.
We needed a secure location completely off the grid.
I navigated toward an abandoned lumber mill deep in the Appalachian foothills, a black-site safehouse I used during covert training.
The truck rattled violently over the overgrown dirt road until we finally reached the rusted metal gates.
I killed the engine and helped Abigail out of the bullet-riddled vehicle.
The safehouse was cold, dark, and smelled faintly of pine and old motor oil.
I activated the backup generator and began treating Abigail's wounds with a sterile trauma kit from my supply cache.
"They are going to kill us, Mom," Abigail whispered as I carefully taped her bruised ribs.
"No one is going to die tonight," I promised her, wiping a streak of dried blood from her cheek.
"Why would the military attack you over Nicholas?" I asked, needing to understand the true scale of the threat.
Abigail looked away, her hands trembling as she pulled a small, silver object from her torn designer dress.
It was a highly encrypted, military-grade USB drive.
"Nicholas wasn't just abusing me," she confessed, her voice barely a whisper.
"I caught him transferring billions of dollars from the Department of Defense into private offshore accounts."
She pressed the drive into my palm.
"He is selling classified weapon schematics to foreign enemies, and his mother is laundering the money through her charities."
I stared at the silver drive, realizing the domestic abuse was merely a cover to keep her terrified and silent.
Suddenly, the heavy iron door of the safehouse groaned under the weight of a massive impact.
Someone was trying to breach the reinforced steel.
I grabbed my sidearm and aimed it directly at the door.
May you like
A familiar voice echoed through the metal.
"Open the door, Rachel, or I will blow it off its hinges," shouted General Thomas Vance, my direct commanding officer and the man I trusted most in the world.
