Chapter 10 - The Price of Intervention
"He's taking her out to international water," Dante reported as he sprinted down the concrete stairs into the chamber.
"Once that tug clears the federal three-mile line, Marcus doesn't need to fake an accident anymore. A weighted anchor finishes it."
Julian stared through the glass, his face transforming into an expression of absolute, terrifying calm.
The mob boss who had ruled the city's underbelly had completely erased the grieving husband.
What remained was an executioner.
"Dante."
"Sir."
"Where is the offshore interceptor?"
"Anchored at Dock 14, three miles upriver. It will take fifteen minutes to bring the turbines online."
"We don't have fifteen minutes," Julian said, watching the tugboat’s wake churn the brown river water into foam.
"The lock," Camille suddenly spoke up.
Both men turned to look at her.
Camille was holding Violet against her side, her eyes darting across the rusted control consoles lining the chamber wall.
"What did you say?" Julian asked.
"My father didn't just operate this lock," Camille said, stepping toward a large, dust-covered cast-iron wheel connected to an overhead emergency cable.
"He designed the emergency overflow sluice during the modernization project twenty years ago."
She pointed down into the foaming canal below the observation window.
"Lock 9 controls the water gradient for the entire south basin. If you drop the primary guillotine gate right now, the suction creates a five-foot drop in water level within sixty seconds."
Dante frowned.
"The tugboat has already passed the lower sill."
"Exactly," Camille said, her eyes flashing with cold, inherited technical knowledge.
"If the water drops five feet while that tug is moving over the shallow sandbar at the canal exit, the keel will ground out instantly."
"And the boat stops dead in the silt," Julian finished her thought, a vicious glimmer of realization lighting his eyes.
"Can you drop the gate?"
"The electric motors burned out ten years ago," Camille said, stepping up to the manual iron wheel.
"It requires releasing the mechanical counterweight manually."
Julian stepped beside her without a word.
He set his heavy hands on the iron spokes.
"On your count, Doctor."
Camille placed her hands beside his, her slender fingers pale against his scarred, tattooed knuckles.
"Now!" she yelled.
Together, putting their entire combined body weight into the rusted mechanism, they threw themselves forward.
The iron groaned, rusted teeth grinding together inside the housing.
A screech of shearing metal echoed through the entire concrete chamber as the retaining pins snapped under the strain.
Above them, forty tons of steel guillotine gate slipped from its holding brackets and plummeted into the churning canal.
The impact sounded like a bomb detonating in the river.
A massive wall of displaced water exploded upward, smashing against the reinforced glass of the observation window.
Downstream, the sudden, violent drop in water pressure ripped the silt bed bare.
The tugboat's bow dipped, then lurched violently sideways with a sickening crunch of tearing fiberglass and bent propeller shafts.
The vessel shuddered to a dead halt, stranded hopelessly on the newly exposed mudflat forty yards from the canal bank.
Julian drew his weapon, checking the night sights in the gloom.
"Dante, secure the perimeter. Take the engineer alive if possible."
May you like
"And Marcus?" Dante asked, cocking his weapon.
Julian looked back at Camille Hart, who stood among the dust and rusted gears, holding a dying cat that had brought them through hell to this exact spot.
