Chapter 37 - The Black Ledger of Saint Jude
The exhaust shaft was a vertical tunnel of freezing, galvanized steel, slick with industrial condensation and vibrating with the roar of two-thousand-horsepower extraction fans.
Nathan hauled Evelyn up first. Her prison jumpsuit snagged on the jagged edge of the sheet metal, but she scrambled upward with the feral agility of someone who had survived a decade of running for her life. Nathan followed, wedging his shoulders against the narrow walls, his boots finding traction on the rivet heads.
"Where does this lead?" Nathan shouted over the deafening mechanical roar.
"The air intakes pull from the old motor pool on the surface!" Evelyn yelled back, climbing upward through the dark. "If we hit the main filter bank before the pressure drops, we can breach the maintenance hatch!"
The air was bitterly cold, smelling of pine needles, freezing snow, and exhaust fumes. Up above, through the spinning blades of an auxiliary fan, Nathan could see the gray morning light filtering through an iron grate.
Nathan kicked the safety housing of the secondary fan with his steel-toed boot. The plastic blades shattered with a violent crack, sending shards flying into the darkness. He reached through the spinning hub, caught Evelyn by the waist, and shoved her upward through the opening into the snow.
A second later, Nathan pulled himself out, collapsing into the waist-deep drift behind the rusted hull of a de-commissioned army transport truck.
They were back on the surface. The blizzard had ceased, replaced by a gray, suffocating dawn. The Syracuse armory was silent, save for the low hum of a mobile tactical command vehicle parked two hundred yards away beside a helipad.
On the helipad, a black Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter sat with its twin turbine engines already whining to life, the rotor blades slowly beginning to turn, slicing through the freezing morning fog.
Standing near the open side door of the helicopter were Director Hayes and two men in black tactical flight suits.
Between them stood a terrified, weeping four-year-old boy in a red down jacket.
Toby.
"They're taking him," Evelyn whispered, her fingernails digging into Nathan’s forearm so hard they drew blood. "They're flying him to the private airstrip in Plattsburgh. Once Toby is outside federal airspace, Hayes will liquidate Eli in the holding facility and claim Toby as the sole survivor."
Nathan looked around the motor pool.
Ten yards away, parked beside the maintenance shed, sat an old surplus Ford F-350 utility truck with a heavy steel snowplow mounted to the front bumper. The engine block heater was plugged into the wall with a thick yellow extension cord, a telltale sign that the diesel engine was pre-warmed and ready to turn over.
"Can you drive a manual?" Nathan asked, his eyes locked onto the helicopter.
Evelyn stared at him, then looked at the heavy truck. A terrifying, predatory smile—the first real smile he had seen from her in five years—spread across her pale, bruised face.
"I learned to drive in an un-synchronized logging rig in Vermont, Nathan," she said. "Get in."
Nathan sprinted across the snow, ripped the heavy yellow extension cord from the engine block, and vaulted into the passenger seat as Evelyn jammed a flathead screwdriver she had palmed from the maintenance shaft straight into the ignition cylinder.
The six-liter diesel engine roared to life with a violent, black cloud of exhaust that billowed against the snowdrift.
Evelyn slammed the floor shifter into reverse, dropped the clutch, and the heavy truck rocketed backward out of the stall, spinning its rear tires against the packed ice before Evelyn threw the lever into first gear and stomped the accelerator to the floor.
"Hold on!" she screamed.
The three-ton truck surged forward, its massive steel plow blade lowered six inches above the tarmac.
On the helipad, Director Hayes heard the roar of the diesel engine. He spun around, his eyes widening in sheer disbelief as he saw the gray utility truck charging across the tarmac like an enraged rhinoceros.
"Fire! Stop that vehicle!" Hayes shouted into his collar mic, drawing his sidearm.
The two tactical operators leveled their submachine guns. Muzzle flashes flickered like strobe lights in the morning mist, 9mm rounds shattering the truck's windshield into a web of spidered glass and thudding against the heavy steel hood.
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Evelyn didn't duck. She didn't flinch. She locked her hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, her foot pinned flat against the firewall, aiming the steel plow directly at the tail rotor of the Sikorsky.
***
