I looked down at the mud beneath my boots.
In the ditch where Garrett had shoved me down, right beside the rear tire of his cruiser, something glittered in the dark. It wasn't a shell casing. It was an oblong strip of heavy cardstock encased in laminated plastic, half-buried under wet pine needles.
My transport credential folder hadn't landed empty in the footwell. When Garrett had flipped it open under his cruiser's spotlight, the secondary dispatch pass—the laminated federal route override card signed by the district supervisor at four that afternoon—had slipped free and dropped into the ditch.
Taped to the bottom corner of that pass was my backup steel cuff key.
Every advance agent carried one sealed behind the county emergency transit sticker. It was standard protocol for rural security routing, a redundant precaution in case of local vehicle entrapment. Garrett hadn't checked the back of the laminate; he had assumed it was an ordinary operator ID.
The card lay four feet outside the reach of my boots.
The sound of the approaching motorcade was no longer a distant hum. The distinct, rhythmic roar of eight supercharged engines reverberated through the gorge walls, bouncing off the wet rock faces below the quarry. They were less than two miles away, climbing the blind six-percent grade toward the blocked bridge approach.
At fifty-five miles an hour on slick, unlit shale, the lead armored Suburban would need at least three hundred yards to brake once its high beams hit the unlit flatbeds.
There was no shoulder on the bridge approach. Just eighty feet of sheer rock wall on the right, and the gorge on the left.
I lowered myself into the ditch water, ignoring the icy mud soaking through my trousers, and extended my right leg until the steel toe of my boot grazed the corner of the laminate.
Garrett’s boots crunched on the gravel as he walked back toward the squad car. He stopped at the hood, resting his hands on the warm metal, staring south toward the highway cut where the headlights would first appear.
"Two minutes," he muttered to himself.
My toe hooked the edge of the card. I dragged it backward an inch at a time through the silt, feeling the plastic drag against the gravel. The edge caught on a wet root. I pressed down hard, digging the rubber tread into the mud, and snapped the root free.
The card slid directly against the heel of my left boot.
Reaching down behind my back with my cuffed hands, I bent my spine double, my fingers sinking into the freezing muck. My fingernails scraped against the plastic edge. I caught the corner, worked my thumb up the slick laminate, and felt the raised square of duct tape on the reverse side.
I ripped the tape away against the sharp edge of the guardrail cable.
The small, flat universal key dropped into the palm of my right hand.
Across the road, the air brakes on the second hauler let out an enormous, deafening hiss as the man in bibs dropped the mechanical landing gear into the roadway. The iron legs struck the asphalt with a dull, ringing shock that vibrated straight through the bridge foundations.
Garrett turned his head toward the sound. "Drop the second leg! Hurry it up! I hear the escort sirens crossing the lower culvert!"
In the dark behind the cruiser’s quarter panel, I slipped the key into the small keyway of the left cuff. The barrel stuck on grit. I ground the steel post with my thumb, forcing the dirt out, and twisted it hard to the left.
The ratchet released with a faint, greasy click.
I kept my left hand behind my back, holding the open cuff loosely against my wrist so the chain wouldn't rattle. I slid the key into the right mechanism and turned it. Both cuffs swung free in my fingers.
Ahead on the winding mountain road, the first sweep of blue and white emergency strobes flashed through the wet pine canopy. The convoy had reached the upper grade.