Chapter 126 - The Narrow Gate of Castelmola
"Blockade," Patrice said softly, his fingers sliding around the Kimber's grip. "They weren't just following us up the hill. They put a cork in the bottle before they sent the sweep team."
"Can we push through?" I asked, testing the clutch with my left foot. The Defender had a heavy steel winch bumper mounted to the chassis, but an impact at forty miles per hour against a two-ton van would likely disable our radiator.
"No," Julien replied from the back. "The bridge behind them crosses a fifty-meter drop into the riverbed. If you hit that van and don't clear it, we go over the edge."
"Then we don't go down," I said. "We go up."
I wrenched the wheel hard to the left, slamming the transfer case lever forward into low-range four-wheel drive. The Defender grunted, its heavy diesel engine vibrating through the steel floorboards, and lunged up an ancient goat path cut directly into the limestone cliff.
The path was narrow, barely two inches wider than the Land Rover's wheel track, flanked on the right by a shear face of white stone and on the left by an empty drop toward the lemon groves below.
Behind us, the two men at the white van shouted in rapid Italian and Corsican dialect. The sharp, mechanical crack of rifle fire sounded almost instantly. A bullet struck the Defender’s spare tire mounted on the tailgate with a dull *thump*, followed by another that shattered the left taillight into red plastic confetti.
"Keep your head down, Clara!" Patrice barked, twisting around in his seat to shield the girl with his body while drawing his Kimber. He waited, disciplined and patient, refusing to waste ammunition at a moving target three hundred yards behind through a bouncing rear window.
The Defender clawed its way up the limestone face, stones showering down into the abyss beneath the spinning all-terrain tires. The gradient was punishing—twenty-five, maybe thirty percent—forcing the vintage engine into a deafening scream of strained metal and thick black exhaust.
"If we cross the ridge," Julien shouted over the engine roar, "there is an old aqueduct road that leads to the convent of Santa Maria! But the passage through the archway is narrow—built for carts, not modern trucks!"
"This isn't a modern truck," I shouted back, both hands locked on the wheel, fighting every rut and boulder that tried to tear the steering from my grip. "It’s British tractor iron. It will fit, or it will leave its mirrors behind!"
We crested the ridge in a shower of white dust. Ahead lay the ancient village of Castelmola, perched like an eagle’s nest above Taormina, its medieval stone ramparts clinging to the sheer rock face. Below, the panoramic expanse of the Mediterranean stretched out in endless blue, but there was no time to admire the view.
A dark sedan was already racing up the paved road from the valley floor below, sirens disconnected, tires squealing as it drifted around the switchbacks to intercept us before we could reach the village gate.
"They're anticipating the convent," Patrice said, eyes locked on the approaching threat. "Rossi’s men know Sarah is there."
"They don't know she’s there," Clara spoke up, her voice trembling slightly for the first time. "They think she’s in Palermo. But they know this is the only road out of the valley that doesn't pass through a police checkpoint."
"Then we make sure they never reach the gate," I said.
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At the entrance to the old stone aqueduct stood a pair of massive wooden barrier gates, reinforced with iron straps and locked with a chain to keep tourist buses from venturing onto the fragile medieval roadway.
I didn't slow down. I slammed my foot flat against the throttle, braced my forearms against the steering wheel, and aimed the steel winch bumper directly at the center of the wooden timbers.
