Chapter 12 - Frozen TracksThe wind howled across the frozen expanse of the Saint Lawrence River—the natural boundary separating Maine from Quebec. The ice cracked and groaned beneath the weight of the snowmobile as Clara pushed the machine to its absolute speed limit.
"Mom!" Ethan yelled over the rushing wind, pointing back at the white horizon behind them. "Headlights!"
Clara glanced in the side mirror. Two heavy, treads-equipped arctic assault vehicles were slicing through the snow drifts behind them, their searchlights cutting through the blizzard like blinding lasers.
"They cut through the forest road!" Clara gasped, her hands turning numb on the frozen handlebars.
A heavy machine gun burst rattled from the lead assault vehicle. Bullets kicked up fountains of ice fifty yards behind them.
Suddenly, six-year-old Noah—the quietest boy, who sat in the back—reached into his heavy wool coat. He pulled out a small, metallic cylinder he had slipped into his pocket from his grandfather's secret safehouse box.
"Noah, what is that?!" Clara screamed, glancing back.
"Grandpa’s flares," Noah said calmly.
With uncanny precision, the six-year-old struck the friction primer on the side of the canister and threw it backward onto the slick, mirrored surface of the river ice.
The magnesium flare ignited in an blinding burst of 3,000-degree white light directly beneath the lead assault vehicle's heavy rubber treads. The sudden, extreme thermal shock instantly fractured the stress-strained river ice beneath the 4-ton vehicle.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
The ice gave way with a sound like a cannon shot. The lead assault vehicle tipped forward, plunging violently into the pitch-black, freezing depths of the river. The secondary vehicle swerved wildly to avoid the expanding hole, losing traction and flipping onto its side across the jagged ice.
Clara didn't slow down. She drove the snowmobile straight up the northern embankment, bursting through the boundary marker posts into the dense woods of Quebec, Canada.
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Sitting at the top of the ridge, waiting beside three heavy military trucks with Canadian armed forces markings, was a tall, silver-haired man in a heavy officer's coat.
It was General Thomas Vance—Lucas’s uncle.
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