Chapter 9 - The Siege of Saint Jude's
The morning sky over the South End hung low and bruise-colored, spitting a freezing mix of sleet and slush against the windshield.
Gabriel’s armored SUV tore through the industrial corridors at eighty miles per hour, its sirens screaming an urgent, unauthorized wail.
Norah sat in the front passenger seat, her knuckles white as she gripped the dashboard handle.
In the back seat, Leo was busy reloading three Glock seventeen magazines, his heavy knuckles bruised and bleeding.
"The mercenary squad didn't stay outside," Leo reported, pressing an earpiece tight against his ear as static crackled over the radio channel.
"Squad four got to Fourth Street ten minutes before Vance's strike team arrived."
"Our boys managed to pull Maya out through the fire escape, but Vance's mercenaries ambushed them three blocks away."
"Where are they now?" Gabriel demanded, steering the heavy vehicle around a stalled semi-truck with violent precision.
"Squad four retreated into the sanctuary of Saint Jude's Parish on Seventh Avenue," Leo replied, his face darkening.
"They're pinned down in the rectory."
"Vance's crew brought heavy suppressors and tactical breaching charges."
"They've cut the landlines and blocked the side alleyways."
"Our men are down to their last two magazines."
Norah buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
"Saint Jude's... that's where Rosa used to take me to light candles on Sundays," Norah whispered, her voice breaking.
"If anything happens to Maya, I will never forgive myself."
"Nothing is going to happen to her, Norah," Gabriel said, his voice flat, resolute, and devoid of fear.
"I spent twenty-two years believing my family was dead."
"I am not going to let this city take the only family that ever cared for my mother."
He pressed the accelerator flat against the floorboards.
The SUV crossed the Seventh Avenue bridge and skidded violently onto the cobblestones surrounding Saint Jude's Parish.
The church was a century-old gothic structure made of dark gray stone, its stained-glass windows rising toward the weeping sky.
Outside the wrought-iron gates, two black tactical vans were parked diagonally, blocking the entrance.
Four men in sterile black body armor were setting up a perimeter around the heavy wooden oak doors of the rectory.
The sound of sporadic gunfire echoed from inside the sanctuary, muffled by the thick stone walls.
"Hold on," Gabriel barked.
Instead of stopping at the curb, Gabriel aimed the reinforced steel bull-bar of the SUV directly at the rear of the nearest tactical van.
The impact was catastrophic.
The three-ton armored SUV struck the van at forty-five miles per hour, crumpling the rear axle and sending the vehicle spinning across the icy cobblestones.
Two of Vance's perimeter guards were thrown off their feet by the sheer force of the collision.
Before the smoke had even cleared from the deployed airbags, Gabriel kicked his driver-side door open and stepped out into the freezing sleet.
He fired three rapid, deafening rounds from his Kimber .45.
The two fallen mercenaries went limp on the wet asphalt before they could reach for their rifles.
Leo leaped from the rear door, a short-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun roaring from his hip.
The heavy buckshot tore through the iron gates, shredding the wooden doors of the rectory entrance into splinters.
"Norah, stay behind the engine block!" Gabriel commanded, not looking back as he advanced up the stone steps.
"I'm not staying behind!" Norah yelled, grabbing a heavy steel tire iron from the SUV's floorboard.
"My sister is in that building!"
Gabriel knew better than to argue with her fierce, reckless courage.
He signaled Leo with two fingers, and the three of them breached the rectory doorway in tight formation.
The interior of the church was filled with the acrid stench of cordite, shattered stained glass, and burning incense.
Votive candles lay scattered across the polished stone floor, their wicks hissing in puddles of melted wax.
Behind the altar, two of Gabriel's syndicate guards lay wounded, their hands pressed against bleeding abdominal wounds.
Beside them, huddled beneath the marble statue of Saint Jude, crouched an eighteen-year-old girl with dark hair and wide, terrified brown eyes.
Maya.
Standing over her was Vance's team leader—a tall, scarred mercenary armed with a tactical assault carbine.
The mercenary spun around as Gabriel entered, bringing the barrel of his weapon up toward Gabriel's chest.
Leo didn't hesitate.
He threw his massive body directly into the line of fire, shielding Gabriel and the girls with his broad torso.
Two high-velocity rounds punched through Leo's heavy wool overcoat with a wet, sickening thud.
Leo grunted, falling to one knee, but he managed to rack the shotgun with his remaining strength and fire a point-blank blast that blew the mercenary backward through the altar rail.
The church fell into a sudden, ringing silence.
"Maya!" Norah screamed, dropping the tire iron and scrambling across the shattered marble floor.
"Norah!"
The two sisters collided in a frantic, weeping embrace beneath the statue of the saint.
Norah checked Maya's neck, her face, her hands, searching for gunshot wounds with frantic, maternal precision.
"Are you hurt? Did they touch you?"
"I'm okay, Norah... I'm okay," Maya sobbed, clinging to her older sister's coat.
"Those men in suits broke our door, but these other guards got me out just in time."
"I'm fine, but... that big man took the bullets for you!"
Norah snapped instantly back to her medical training.
She turned toward the altar, where Leo was slumping against the marble steps, dark arterial blood pooling beneath his heavy thigh.
Gabriel was already kneeling beside his oldest friend, his hands tearing through Leo's blood-soaked trousers.
"Stay with me, Leo," Gabriel growled, his voice cracking with an emotion he rarely showed.
"Look at me, you old bastard."
"You don't get to die in a church."
"One round caught the femoral artery," Norah said instantly, dropping to her knees beside the dying enforcer.
"He's going to bleed out in ninety seconds if we don't clamp it."
Norah didn't hesitate.
She reached up, ripped the heavy silk liturgical cord from the altar drapery, and wrapped it high around Leo's upper thigh.
She grabbed the steel tire iron she had carried from the SUV, slotted it through the knot, and twisted it with all the strength in her small frame.
The improvised windlass tourniquet bit deep into the muscle, constricting the severed vessel.
The fountain of dark blood slowed to a trickle, then stopped completely.
Leo let out a strangled groan, his vision swimming, his heavy hand reaching out to grab Norah's sleeve.
"Good hands, kid," Leo whispered, coughing up a small fleck of red foam.
"You got... good hands."
"Keep that pressure held, Norah," Gabriel ordered, his eyes blazing with a mixture of terror and fierce respect.
"I'm calling the private medical transport."
"They'll be here in four minutes."
Gabriel stood up, walking toward the high arched windows of the sanctuary.
Outside, the sirens of his reinforcements were already howling through the South End streets.
He looked down at his bloodstained hands, then at the two sisters comforting his wounded enforcer on the steps of the altar.
May you like
The war was not just about territory anymore.
It was about survival, about honor, and about repaying a debt that had begun thirty years ago in a kitchen that smelled of cinnamon.
