Chapter 5

Freezing November drizzle sheeted sideways off the East River, stinging Lydia’s cheeks as she moved through the Pier 42 Customs Inspection Yard at Red Hook Terminals. Damon’s heavy wool-and-Kevlar overcoat hung from her shoulders, swallowing her ruined emerald silk gown. The coat smelled of cedarwood, rain, and firearm lubricant. She had traded her evening heels for tactical combat boots from the SUV’s trunk. The heavy scent of brackish saltwater, sulfur, wet asphalt, and idling marine diesel engines saturated the air.

Ahead, the massive 160-foot steel legs of Gantry Crane 4 loomed like skeletal beasts against the foggy harbor sky. Damon moved at the point of the wedge, his SIG Sauer drawn, his posture coiled and lethal. Arthur Vance flanked Lydia, his HK P30L raised at high container corners, his gait tight and watchful. Six Cross tactical operatives flanked them in a tight diamond perimeter formation with suppressed carbines.

They moved through the dark corrugated canyons of four-high shipping containers toward Terminal Warehouse B. Damon raised a fist, signaling a halt.

A high-voltage stutter rippled through the terminal yard. The steady, deep 480-volt hum of the auxiliary transformers died with a heavy mechanical groan. At exactly 23:45, every 5,000-watt stadium floodlight mounted across the eighty-acre terminal shut off simultaneously. Backup generators whined before cutting out as fuel lines were severed by Ward’s saboteurs. The entire Brooklyn waterfront plunged into pitch blackness. A distant, sickly amber harbor navigation buoy blinked in the fog.

The sudden, crushing weight of silence replaced the roar of thirty massive crane engines. The freezing trickle of ocean rain found its way down Lydia’s exposed neckline. The sharp, acrid smell of ozone lingered in the air as high-voltage breakers blew out.

Damon’s voice cut through the darkness in a harsh whisper. “Grid down. Ward killed the breakers. Form box on the girl—now!”

They advanced into Container Corridor 7, a twenty-foot-wide asphalt alley flanked by dark red and navy shipping containers. Puddles of oily rainwater reflected the sudden eruption of muzzle flashes twenty feet overhead.

Suppressed 7.62 automatic fire sounded like industrial staplers punching sheet metal. Two Cross tactical guards in the front dropped onto the rain-slicked asphalt without a sound. Arthur shoved Lydia violently into the recessed alcove of an open container door.

An explosive breaching charge detonated ten yards away on the asphalt. The concussive shockwave rattled Lydia’s jaw and blew out the remaining perimeter glass. The piercing, high-pitched whine of tinnitus deafened her.

Jagged steel shrapnel from the blast tore through Arthur’s reconstructed right leg. The veteran operative collapsed with a choked grunt. Dark arterial blood sprayed across the wet asphalt from his right femur. The warm, metallic stench of fresh blood pooled across the icy rainwater. His sidearm skittered five yards into the darkness.

Fifty yards down the corridor, Damon was cut off behind an overturned industrial container-forklift. He engaged in a savage, relentless firefight against three suppressed carbines, pinned behind the heavy steel, unable to cross the open kill-zone to reach them.

Anton and three mercenary gunners emerged from the swirling white phosphorus smoke. They advanced deliberately toward Arthur’s collapsed body, raising suppressed pistols to deliver point-blank headshots. Arthur weakly clawed at his combat knife, his breath bubbling with blood.

Lydia calculated the geometry. Arthur had seconds to live. She reached into her coat, pulled out her smartphone, clicked the high-lumen LED flashlight on, and held it directly beneath her chin. The harsh white light illuminated her face against the black rain.

She stepped out from the container shadow directly into the center of the kill-zone, her voice cutting through the gunfire with flat authority.

“Leave him! You came for the translator, Anton. Take me.”

Anton halted his men with a raised scarred hand. A brutal grin split his scarred cheek. He stepped forward, kicked Arthur’s reaching hand aside, and seized Lydia by the collar of Damon’s coat. He wrenched her arms behind her back and cinched a heavy, jagged plastic zip-tie around her wrists. The sharp, abrasive bite of thick industrial plastic dug into the soft bone of Lydia’s wrists.

Anton hauled Lydia up the rusted metal switchback stairs of Crane 4 by her bound wrists. The forty-knot harbor wind whipped her wet hair across her eyes, nearly pitching her over the knee-high safety rail. The terrifying structural groan and sway of the gantry crane fought the gale.

Looking down through the open metal grating from the thirty-foot landing, Lydia watched Damon Cross abandon every tenet of tactical self-preservation. Seeing Lydia dragged up the steel structure, he broke cover entirely. He advanced in the open through automatic fire, firing his SIG Sauer with surgical speed. He dropped a mercenary behind an equipment crate, double-tapped a second shooter on the access ladder, and executed a third emerging from behind a container with a shot to the temple.

A round caught Damon in the outer meat of his right thigh, tearing through the dark wool of his trousers. He did not stumble. He hit the base of the gantry stairs at a dead sprint. The bone-jarring metallic clang of his heavy boots sprinted up the perforated steel stairs.

Anton shoved Lydia onto the main gantry catwalk fifty feet above the water, leveling his weapon at the stairs. Damon reached the landing, his weapon raised, his chest heaving with ragged, icy fury. The freezing numbness crept from Lydia’s bound fingers into her forearms.

Heavy boots echoed from the crane’s operator control housing. Viktor Volkov stepped onto the storm-swept catwalk into the driving rain, wrapped in his dark cashmere coat, holding a heavy vintage Tokarev TT-33 pistol.

Viktor Volkov steps onto the storm-battered catwalk directly behind Lydia, his heavy cashmere coat flapping violently in the gale.

He wrenches her backward against his barrel chest with an arm like an iron vice. With his right hand, he raises the heavy, blued steel frame of a Tokarev TT-33 pistol, pressing the cold, flat circle of the muzzle hard against the bone of her left temple, forcing her head to the side.

Through the driving sheets of freezing rain, Volkov smiles down at Damon, his icy blue eyes gleaming with victorious mockery:

“Drop the gun, Damon. Or watch your clever little songbird learn how to swim in the Hudson with a hole in her brain.”