The checkpoint was a narrow pass between two granite peaks, a place where the old logging road squeezed through a natural bottleneck before descending into the valley beyond. The mountains rose on either side like the walls of a cathedral, their slopes dense with pine and spruce, their peaks lost in the low-hanging clouds. The snow had begun to fall—soft, silent flakes that dusted the windshield and turned the world to white.
Vance pulled the van off the road a quarter mile from the pass, tucking it behind an outcropping of rock that would shield it from view. The engine ticked as it cooled, the only sound in the sudden silence. The team had stopped talking. The plan was set. The intercept point was less than ten minutes away. And Vance Okonkwo was about to make a choice that he had been
