Chapter 14 - The Breach at Brooklyn's
The thunderous tolling of the church’s five-ton bronze bell shattered the silence of the valley behind us as Ryan and I sprinted through the wooded perimeter to our hidden car.
We jumped into the vehicle, Ryan gunning the engine and speeding away into the fog with our headlights off to avoid detection. Behind us in the rearview mirror, volunteer fire trucks and local utility vehicles were already speeding down Main Street toward the historic chapel, responding to the emergency chime that had signaled disasters in our town for over a century.
Ryan dialed Brooklyn Bartlett’s phone with trembling fingers, putting it on the dashboard speaker.
The line clicked open, but instead of Brooklyn’s calm southern drawl, the horrific sound of glass shattering and rapid gunfire burst through the phone.
"Brooklyn! Brooklyn, where is Lily?" I screamed, tears blinding my eyes.
"They found the farm!" Brooklyn yelled over the deafening cracks of gunfire. "A black van drove through our front pasture fence two minutes ago! My brother is holding the hallway with his service weapon, but they're trying to breach the nursery windows!"
"We're three minutes away!" Ryan roared, slamming the accelerator to the floorboard. The SUV's engine screamed as we tore around the winding rural curves leading to the Bartlett homestead.
"Keep her in the pantry, Brooklyn! Don't let them touch her!" I sobbed, my fingernails digging into the dashboard until they bled.
When our SUV crested the hill overlooking the Bartlett property, the scene was horrific. A modified black commercial van had smashed directly through the wooden porch railing. Two masked gunmen were firing semi-automatic pistols into the reinforced front door, while a third was using a sledgehammer against the iron security bars on the lower bedroom window.
Ryan didn't slow down. He didn't swerve.
He aimed the heavy front bumper of our four-ton SUV directly at the rear quarter panel of the attackers' van and drove into it at fifty miles per hour.
The impact was cataclysmic. The deafening crash of crumpling steel and shattering glass echoed across the valley as the black van was tossed sideways, crushing the man holding the sledgehammer beneath its overturned chassis.
The two remaining gunmen turned toward our steaming, wrecked vehicle, raising their weapons.
Before they could fire, the heavy oak front door of the farmhouse was kicked outward. Captain Bartlett, Brooklyn's brother, stepped onto the porch in his tactical state trooper vest, leveling a 12-gauge police shotgun from his hip.
Two thunderous blasts echoed through the night. The heavy buckshot ripped through the front yard, sending the surviving gunmen scrambling into the darkness of the surrounding cornfields in terrified retreat.
I kicked open my bent passenger door, tumbling out onto the gravel and sprinting up the wooden porch steps.
Brooklyn stepped out of the dark hallway, holding Lily tightly in her arms. Lily was crying softly, her tiny face buried in Brooklyn’s shoulder, wearing her favorite dinosaur pajamas.
I grabbed my daughter, pulling her into my arms and collapsing onto the porch floorboards. I buried my face in her soft blonde hair, smelling her baby shampoo and the sharp scent of gunpowder, weeping uncontrollably with profound, overwhelming relief.
Ryan fell to his knees beside us, wrapping his arms around both of us, his body shaking with exhausted, protective fury.
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Captain Bartlett lowered his shotgun, looking down at the overturned van and then at the Pelican case Ryan had dragged from our wrecked vehicle.
"I called the regional FBI field office twenty minutes ago," Captain Bartlett said, his voice hard as iron. "Special Agent Morales is landing a tactical helicopter in my back pasture right now. Whatever is in that case, Rodriguez... it ends tonight."
