Chapter 2 - The Red Line at the Gate
The BlockadeThe flashing blue and red lights of the Wyoming Highway Patrol cruisers looked like small, bleeding stains in the thick, white fog at the base of Route 14. Two massive steel snow-gates, painted a stark, cautionary yellow, had been swung across the mouth of the highway, padlocked into heavy concrete pilings. Behind them, the road rose sharply into the darkness, completely swallowed by the blizzard.
State Trooper Marcus Vance stood inside the glass booth of the checkpoint, his hands wrapped around a steaming mug of black coffee. He was an older officer, three years from retirement, with a face that had seen every type of tragedy the Bighorn Mountains could inflict. On the desk before him, the police radio crackled with continuous, frantic updates from the county dispatcher.
"All units, be advised, visibility on the pass is now zero. All search and rescue operations are suspended until 0600 hours. Repeat, do not engage."
Vance sighed, looking out the window. Then he saw them.
At first, it looked like a wall of darkness moving through the whiteout. Then came the sound—not the high-pitched whine of standard truck engines, but the deep, guttural, rhythmic roar of heavy American V8s and custom-tuned exhausts. One by one, the massive, lifted four-wheel-drive trucks of the Iron Saints broke through the storm, their heavy off-road tires churning the fresh snow into a grey slush.
There were twelve trucks in total, led by Jaxon Reed’s blacked-out Ford F-350, the front grill reinforced with a heavy steel bull-bar that could clear a boulder. Before the vehicle had even come to a complete stop, Jaxon was out of the door, his canvas coat open, his dark eyes fixed on the locked yellow gate.
Behind him, forty men stepped out of the convoy. They didn't look like a rescue team. They looked like an invading army. They wore heavy Carhartt parkas over their club leather, their faces covered by dark neoprene masks, their eyes hard and bloodshot under the brim of their hats.
"Reed!" Trooper Vance shouted, stepping out of the booth, his hand instinctively dropping to the safety strap of his service holster. "Stop right there! The road is closed! Federal order!"
Jaxon didn't stop until he was six inches from Vance’s face. The heat radiating from the biker president’s body was visible as a thick cloud of steam in the freezing air. "My boys are on that mountain, Marcus," Jaxon said, his voice terrifyingly quiet, entirely devoid of inflection. "Move the gate."
"I can't do that, Jax," Vance said, his own voice shaking slightly as he looked past Jaxon at the forty iron-jawed men forming a semi-circle around the checkpoint. "There’s a jackknifed rig three miles up. The snow is drifting five feet high on the switchbacks. If I let you up there, I’m signing your death warrants."
"Then you’ll have to bury us on the mountain," Grave Stone stepped forward, a heavy, three-foot iron crowbar balanced across his shoulder like a ball bat. His long beard was already encrusted with frost. "Because we aren't waiting in the valley while Jaxon’s blood freezes."
Vance looked at Jaxon’s eyes. There was no negotiation there. No fear of the law. No concern for survival. There was only the raw, desperate madness of a father whose cubs were in the jaws of the winter.
Vance took a slow step back into his booth. He reached for his radio, but he didn't call for backup. He knew no backup would arrive in this storm. And he knew that if he tried to stop the men in front of him, the checkpoint booth would become his coffin.
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"The key is in the lock," Vance whispered, looking down at his desk. "If you make it past the third switchback... God help you."
Jaxon didn't thank him. He turned to Hawk. "Get the chains on the tires. We have nine miles of ice to break."
