Chapter 12 - The Fall of Special Agent Miller
The headlights of the four incoming vehicles cut through the swirling mountain fog like white searchlights.
Special Agent Miller’s lead vehicle accelerated down the narrow asphalt corridor, followed tightly by three armored trucks carrying Salazar’s private mercenaries.
They did not activate their emergency sirens.
This was an illegal black operation, completely sanitized of official federal paperwork.
As the convoy passed the narrowest pinch between the towering red sandstone cliffs, a deafening thunderclap ripped through the canyon.
It was not lightning.
It was a high-grade thermite charge detonating against the base of a dead hundred-foot Douglas fir on the upper ridge.
The massive timber groaned, sheared in two, and smashed across the road with the force of an avalanche.
The lead federal SUV slammed on its brakes, tires smoking and shrieking as it slid sideways across the black ice.
Before the driver could shift into reverse, a second explosive charge brought down twenty tons of fractured granite directly behind the rear vehicle.
The convoy was sealed inside a stone coffin.
"Ambush!" a voice screamed over the open emergency frequency.
The doors of the black SUVs flew open, and armed men in federal raid jackets and unmarked tactical gear poured into the road.
From the elevated ridge, Adrien's veteran marksmen opened fire with suppressed precision.
Muzzle flashes illuminated the canyon walls in rapid, rhythmic strobes of orange and yellow.
Tires exploded into shredded rubber, and windshields spiderwebbed into frost-white safety glass under the storm of high-caliber rounds.
Inside Adrien's vehicle, Victor Hale went completely hysterical.
"They're going to kill us all!" Victor shrieked, kicking wildly at the passenger door.
He managed to pop the latch, throwing his body into the freezing slush on the roadside.
"Victor, don't move!" Caleb shouted, reaching out to grab his coat.
It was too late.
Victor scrambled to his feet, sprinting toward Miller's trapped convoy with his hands waving in the air.
"Miller! It’s me! Don't shoot! I brought the—"
A heavy three-hundred-grain round fired by one of Salazar’s panicked mercenaries struck Victor squarely in the center of his chest.
The force of the impact lifted the lawyer off his feet and threw him backward into the roadside drainage ditch.
He did not move again.
His expensive Italian wool suit soaked up the dirty freezing runoff of the mountain ditch.
Adrien stepped out of his armored vehicle, keeping his silhouette low against the driver-side door.
He raised his tactical rifle, delivering two rapid shots that neutralized the mercenary who had gunned down Victor.
Through the drifting gunsmoke, a tall figure in a navy tactical jacket with yellow FBI lettering crawled out from behind an overturned truck.
It was Special Agent Miller.
His ballistic helmet was gone, his face was blackened with soot, and blood dripped from a shrapnel cut across his cheek.
Miller held an automatic pistol, his eyes searching wildly for an escape route up the sheer red stone walls.
Adrien slung his rifle over his shoulder, drew his Glock nineteen, and walked directly toward the rogue federal agent.
"Drop the weapon, Miller," Adrien said, his voice cutting through the ringing silence of the spent gunfire.
Miller spun around, raising his handgun with both hands.
His teeth were bared in a feral, cornered snarl.
"You're a dead man, Vale!" Miller spat, his voice trembling with adrenaline and panic.
"You think you can shoot a federal supervisor and walk away from this?"
"Every agent in the Rocky Mountain region will hunt you to the ends of the earth!"
Adrien didn't slow his stride.
He kept walking forward through the smoke until he was standing five paces away from Miller's trembling barrel.
"You aren't a federal agent anymore, Miller," Adrien said with terrifying calm.
"You're a paid mule for Hector Salazar."
"And your superiors in Washington are reading Mateo Torres's ledger at this very second."
Miller’s eyes flickered with sudden, sickening realization.
"The ledger was destroyed six years ago..." Miller stammered.
"Mateo gave the original to Elena before he died," Adrien said.
"And I uploaded the digital backups to the Deputy Attorney General thirty minutes ago."
"Your career is over."
"Your pension is gone."
"And the only question left is whether you die here in this dirt or spend the rest of your life in an isolation cell at Florence."
Miller let out a strangled roar of rage, his finger tightening on the trigger of his service pistol.
Adrien fired first.
A single round shattered Miller’s right wrist, sending the weapon spinning away into the gravel.
Miller collapsed to his knees, clutching his mangled arm and howling in agony against the frozen mountain floor.
Caleb walked up behind Adrien, carrying a pair of heavy steel handcuffs.
"Secure him," Adrien ordered coldly.
"Turn him over to the state highway patrol when they arrive at the roadblock."
"And what about Hector Salazar?" Caleb asked, snapping the cuffs tightly onto Miller's bloody wrists.
Adrien looked toward the east, where the morning sun was just beginning to break through the cloud deck above Broomfield.
May you like
"Salazar is at the private hangar waiting for the phone call that will never come," Adrien said.
"We finish this today."
