Chapter 8 - The Siege of Blackwood
Outside, the perimeter of the hunting lodge was illuminated by the harsh, blinding glare of high-powered spotlights mounted on three armored SUVs.
Eleanor Sterling stood beneath the canopy of a heavy commercial marquee tent erected against the blizzard, wearing a full-length sable fur coat. In her gloved hands, she held a satellite phone and the megaphone. Surrounding her were six heavily armed mercenaries, their tactical gear covered in snow, holding assault rifles and incendiary charges.
Inside the cabin, the temperature was dropping rapidly as the kerosene lantern flickered low.
"She means it," Marcus whispered, peering through a slit in the heavy iron shutters. "They're unloading chemical accelerant drums. They’re going to incinerate the lodge."
Emily gripped Daniel’s arm, her breathing shallow and ragged. Suddenly, she gasped, doubling over, her hands clutching her lower abdomen. "Ahhh!"
Daniel’s heart stopped. "Emily?! What is it?!"
"The stress..." Emily choked out, tears streaming down her pale face. "Daniel... my water just broke."
The reality hit them like a freight train. In the middle of an off-grid siege, surrounded by armed mercenaries, seven thousand feet up a frozen mountain, Emily was going into active labor. Two months premature.
"No, no, no," Daniel panicked, gently laying her down onto the thick wool rug before the hearth. "Marcus, how long do we have?!"
"Ten minutes before they light this place up!" Marcus yelled, checking his ammunition. "I have eight rounds left, Daniel! Eight! We can't fight a private army, and we can't deliver a premature baby in an inferno!"
Daniel looked at his wife, writhing in labor pains on the floor, then down at the flash drive and the letter from his father clutched in his hand.
A cold, lethal calm washed over Daniel Sterling. The pain in his shattered spine vanished behind a wall of pure, focused adrenaline. He looked at Marcus.
"Does this cabin have a ham radio system?" Daniel asked, his voice steady as a surgeon's blade.
Marcus blinked. "Yes. Grandfather was an eccentric prepper. There’s an emergency broadcast transmitter hooked up to the secondary solar batteries in the cellar. But Daniel, the local frequencies are dead—"
"The national frequencies aren't," Daniel said, his eyes burning with an unholy fire. "That flash drive contains the full audio confession Charles secretly recorded before Eleanor poisoned him. It contains the financial routing numbers for her offshore accounts, and the names of every judge and politician on her payroll. It’s an encrypted broadcast file Dad prepared before his death."
Marcus realized what he was saying. "If we broadcast that over the emergency civilian and federal airwaves..."
"Every news station, every federal agency within three hundred miles will receive it instantly. It will bypass the local corrupt police entirely." Daniel grabbed Marcus by the collar. "Get to the cellar. Transmit the file on an infinite loop. Set it to override the local repeater tower."
"What about you?" Emily cried, reaching out to him through her contractions. "Daniel, please don't leave me!"
Daniel knelt beside her, pressing his forehead against hers. He kissed her lips, then kissed her swollen belly.
"I'm not leaving you, my love," Daniel whispered softly. "I'm going to buy our child enough time to be born."
Daniel stood up. He grabbed a twelve-gauge pump shotgun mounted above the mantle and three red road flares from the emergency kit.
He walked to the heavy oak door.
"Daniel, wait!" Marcus shouted from the cellar stairs.
"Transmit the file, Marcus," Daniel ordered without looking back. "And get ready to deliver my child."
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Daniel threw open the deadbolt and stepped out into the blinding glare of the spotlights, walking alone into the teeth of the blizzard.
***
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