Chapter 7 - THE BATTLE OF FROST VALLEY
The wood smoke inside the cabin was blinding, thick with the smell of splintered pine, burnt gunpowder, and sulfur.
Outside, the snow-covered clearing around Silas Thorne’s cabin had turned into a kill-zone. Fifteen of Julian’s mercenaries—dressed in white winter tactical gear—were advancing through the trees under the heavy suppressive fire of a mounted belt-fed machine gun sitting on the bed of an armored pickup truck down at the river ford.
"THE LOGS ARE HOLDING!" Silas screamed over the din, reloading his double-barreled shotgun through the shattered front window. "BUT THAT MACHINE GUN WILL TEAR THE ROOF OFF IN FIVE MINUTES!"
Ramona didn't panic. She crouched low beneath the window frame, her carbine clamped tight against her ribs, her mind operating with the cold, precise clarity of a mountain hunter.
She looked at Luca. He was standing near the side door, using the thick oak frame for cover, firing rhythmic, crushing loads of heavy buckshot into the advancing skirmish line, dropping two attackers into the snowdrifts before they could reach the porch steps.
"I'm going up to the loft!" Ramona yelled to Luca over the roar of gunfire.
"It's too open up there!" Luca shouted back, turning to slam another shell into his breech. "The machine gun is chewing the upper gables!"
"The loft has the dormer window!" Ramona countered, her eyes fierce and unyielding. "It’s the only angle that can see over the riverbank to the truck driver! If I take out the gunner, their assault stalls!"
Luca looked into her eyes, saw the absolute, immovable resolve of the woman who had pulled him from the black ice, and nodded once. "I'll draw their fire to the front porch! Go!"
Ramona scrambled up the narrow wooden ladder leading to the cabin’s upper loft. The air up there was hot, heavy with smoke that had drifted up to the rafters.
She crawled on her belly across the rough pine floorboards to the small, square dormer window overlooking the river valley. She kicked out the frosted glass frame with her boot, resting the heavy barrel of her .30-30 carbine on the wooden sill.
Through her iron sights, one hundred and fifty yards down at the river ford, she saw the armored pickup truck. A heavy-set man in a black parka was leaning over the belt-fed machine gun mounted on the bed, sending rhythmic streams of tracer fire into the cabin's front porch.
Standing beside the truck cab, wearing a long, expensive gray mink coat and holding a satellite phone, was Julian Falco.
Ramona’s teeth gritted tight. "There you are," she whispered.
The wind was blowing out of the north at ten knots—a slight crosswind across the canyon. She adjusted her aim two inches to the left of the gunner’s chest, took a slow, deep breath, and let half of it out.
CRACK.
The carbine kicked.
Down at the river, the machine gunner suddenly jerked backward, his arms flailing as he collapsed out of the truck bed into the snow. The heavy machine gun swung wild, its belt running out into the frozen mud.
"SNIPER IN THE LOFT!" a mercenary screamed from the clearing.
Julian Falco looked up at the dormer window in absolute shock. He dropped his satellite phone, pulled a heavy chrome pistol from his coat, and shouted at three of his men: "GET UP THERE! BURN THAT LOFT!"
Down on the main floor, the front door of the cabin was smashed open with a heavy iron ramming bar.
Two mercenaries burst into the room, but Luca was waiting. He stepped out from behind the stone hearth like a dark phantom of vengeance, his shotgun firing twice in rapid succession. The heavy buckshot lifted both men off their feet, throwing them backward out onto the snow-covered porch steps.
"LUCA!" a voice roared from the yard.
Julian Falco walked up the porch steps, flanked by his remaining three personal bodyguards. His gray mink coat was splattered with blood, his handsome, sharp-featured face twisted into a feral sneer of pure, desperate hatred.
"You should have stayed at the bottom of the lake, cousin!" Julian screamed, raising his chrome pistol and firing through the doorway.
Luca ducked behind the heavy oak table as bullets splintered the thick wood above his head. "You always were a terrible shot, Julian!" Luca shouted back, his voice echoing with absolute, terrifying calm. "And you never knew how to hold the border!"
Before Julian could fire again, a roaring, thunderous noise began to shake the entire river canyon.
It wasn't the wind. It wasn't thunder.
It was the high-pitched, screaming roar of thirty heavy-duty two-stroke racing snowmobiles coming down the river ice at eighty miles an hour.
"WHAT IS THAT?!" one of Julian’s bodyguards screamed, looking back toward the river.
Sweeping around the bend of the Black River came the loyal vanguard of the Falco syndicate—thirty men dressed in black tactical gear, riding heavy armored broad-track machines, bearing the falcon emblem on their helmets. At the lead was Henri, holding a heavy automatic rifle across his handlebars.
"THE FALCO CREW!" a mercenary yelled in sheer panic, dropping his weapon and bolting into the woods. "IT'S A TRAP!"
The loyalist force hit the clearing like an avalanche. They encircled Julian's remaining men in seconds, heavy automatic fire cutting down those who tried to fight, while the rest threw their weapons into the snow and dropped to their knees with their hands held high.
On the porch, Julian turned to run, but Luca stepped out from the smoke-filled doorway.
With a single, lightning-fast strike, Luca swung the heavy wooden stock of his shotgun, striking Julian across the jaw. Julian was lifted off his feet, crashing hard onto his back in the blood-stained snow of the yard, his chrome pistol spinning away into a drift.
Luca stepped down off the porch, his heavy boots crunching in the snow, and stood over his bleeding cousin.
"It's over, Julian," Luca said, his voice dropping into a quiet, lethal register that made the surrounding men fall dead silent.
Julian spat a mouthful of blood into the snow, looking up at Luca with wide, terrified eyes. "Luca... please... we're blood... we're family..."
"Family doesn't poison the valley," Luca said coldly. "Family doesn't throw puppies into frozen lakes. And family doesn't shoot at the woman who saved my life."
Henri dismounted his snowmobile, stepping forward with heavy zip-ties. "What do we do with him, Boss?"
Luca looked at Julian, then looked up at the dormer window of the cabin.
Ramona was leaning out, her carbine resting on the sill, her dark braid wind-blown, her face covered in wood-smoke, looking down at him with those fierce, unyielding mountain eyes.
Luca turned back to Henri. "Put him in the back of the truck. Take him to the federal authorities in Albany, along with all the cartel contracts in his safe. Let him spend the next forty years in a federal cage thinking about the cold."
"Understood, Boss!" Henri grinned, hauling Julian up by his coat collar and dragging him away.
The clearing fell quiet at last. The smoke began to drift away into the crisp, blue winter sky.
Luca turned and walked slowly back toward the cabin steps. He didn't look like a mob boss anymore. He looked like a man who had finally finished a long, terrible journey.
Ramona walked out onto the front porch, her carbine held low, her body shaking slightly as the adrenaline finally began to fade from her blood.
Luca stopped at the bottom of the steps, looking up at her.
"Are you hurt, Ramona?" he asked softly.
Ramona looked down at her torn sleeve, at the wood smoke on her hands, and then at the broad, magnificent man standing before her in the snow.
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"I'm fine, Luca," she said, a small, genuine smile finally breaking across her face. "Just hungry."
Luca let out a deep, booming laugh that echoed all the way down the Black River canyon, stepped up the stairs, and pulled her into his arms, holding her tight against his heart as the sun broke through the clouds over Frost Valley.
