Chapter 4 - The Scent of Pine and River
The storage facility in Oak Grove smelled of mildew and wet sheet metal. Captain Alvarez had dispatched two MPs to meet me with the decoy cases: two matte-black Pelican 1600 containers, their latches secured with heavy zip-ties, each weighted with precisely forty-eight pounds of crushed gravel from the motor pool.
They loaded them into the cargo area of my Jeep without a word. The young private who slammed the lift-gate looked at me with wide, terrified eyes. He had probably never seen an E-6 look the way I looked right then: stripped of rank, stripped of safety, operating purely on survival cortex.
By 20:00, I was clear of the Clarksville city limits, heading west along Highway 79.
The rain had intensified into a blinding downpour. The headlights of oncoming semi-trucks threw massive blinding sheets of spray across the road, momentarily washing out the world in white foam. Beyond the guardrails, the dense hardwoods of the Land Between the Lakes loomed like black fortresses against the bruised purple of the storm clouds.
My tactical radio, patched through the sheriff’s encrypted frequency on my dash, hissed with static.
“Unit Four to Vance. We found the Silverado.”
I lunged toward the receiver. “Where?”
“Logging spur off mile marker 87.5. Vehicle is abandoned. Engine block is cold. Driver-side door was left wide open.”
“Any signs of the girl?” Vance’s voice cut in from the command post.
“Negative. Footprints leading northwest into the drainage ditch. Two distinct adult sets. One heavy, deep heel strikes—looks like Hoyt. Second set is uneven, dragging—looks like Daniel might be injured or intoxicated. We also have smaller impressions, but they disappear after thirty yards.”
“He’s carrying her,” I said into the mic, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Sophie wouldn't stop walking unless her legs gave out or he slung her over his shoulder.”
“Sergeant Mercer,” Vance said over the channel, “stay on 79. Proceed toward the Cumberland Ferry landing. Do not deviate. We are moving our intercept team into the woods from the eastern ridge.”
“Copy,” I lied.
I didn't stay on 79.
I knew that logging road. Daniel had brought me out there seven years ago, back when we still pretended that our marriage could survive his second tour in Iraq. The spur didn’t lead to the ferry slip. It led to an old limestone quarry that had been abandoned by the Army Corps of Engineers in the late seventies. The ferry landing Hoyt had mentioned over the phone was a misdirection—a wide-open bottleneck designed to draw the police search perimeter south while he slipped north toward the Kentucky state line via the river bluffs.
I cut my headlights three hundred yards before the rusted cattle grate at mile marker 87. I dropped the transfer case into four-wheel-low.
The Jeep groaned as it rolled off the highway shoulder, the tires sinking four inches into the thick, clay-heavy mud of the drainage cut. Branches whipped against the windshield with sharp, cracking snaps, scraping the paint. The pine trees closed around the vehicle like a black curtain.
I turned on Alvarez’s red-lens flashlight, pinning it between my teeth as I reached into the back.
I cut the zip-ties on one of the Pelican cases. I dumped twenty pounds of gravel out into the mud to make it maneuverable, then reached into my personal kit behind the spare tire.
I didn't have my duty M4 carbine. Base protocol forbade taking service weapons off Fort Campbell without orders. But Daniel had left behind an old Mossberg 500 pump-action 12-gauge shotgun in our attic two years ago, tucked inside an oily silicone sleeve. It had been sitting behind the passenger bench of my Jeep for eight months, loaded with five rounds of double-ought buckshot.
I chambered a round with a heavy, mechanical *clack-clack*.
The sound settled the trembling in my fingers.
May you like
I stepped out of the Jeep into the freezing rain. The smell of wet cedar and sulfurous river mud hit me instantly. I pulled the hood of my combat field jacket over my head, lifted the Pelican case with my left arm, held the Mossberg low against my right thigh, and moved into the trees.
***
