Chapter 14 - The Siege of the Dry Docks
The first high-explosive round struck the corrugated steel roof of the hangar, blowing a ten-foot hole into the night sky.
Shower of twisted iron, sparks, and cold sea spray rained down across the concrete floor.
"Move to the maintenance bunker!" Luca roared, shoving his mother behind a reinforced concrete blast barrier.
Carmela didn't panic; she gripped Mrs. Gable’s arm, leading the elderly housekeeper into the subterranean tool vault.
Anthony refused to hide.
The old man pulled a vintage Remington twelve-gauge shotgun from beneath the mahogany table and racked the heavy slide.
"I helped build these docks with my bare hands sixty years ago," Anthony shouted over the thunderous concussions.
"No mercenary bastard is going to take them from me!"
Sophia took cover behind a three-inch steel bulkhead, leveling her Glock toward the harbor doors.
Through the blinding rain, two tactical assault boats slammed against the wooden loading piers.
Twenty heavily armed mercenaries dressed in black amphibious assault gear poured over the gunwales.
Leading the assault team was Viktor Cross, a towering man with a scarred scalp and cold, reptilian eyes.
He carried a customized German assault rifle fitted with a drum magazine and a thermal imaging optic.
"Cross!" Sophia yelled through the wind.
"Bennett!" Cross’s amplified voice boomed from a tactical megaphone mounted on his shoulder.
"Step out with the ledger and I let the old couple drown peacefully!"
"Come and take it, you coward!" Luca fired back with his Benelli shotgun.
Luca fired four rapid slugs through the shattered loading doors, striking the lead mercenary in the chest and tossing him back into the churning waves.
Automatic rifle fire immediately erupted from the pier, hundreds of armor-piercing rounds chewing through the hangar walls.
Steel rivets sheared off under the barrage, ricocheting like deadly shrapnel across the dry dock.
"We cannot hold this open floor against twenty rifles," Sophia warned, firing two precise rounds through a gap in the barricade.
"We don't have to," Anthony yelled back, pointing his silver cane toward an industrial control console on the upper catwalk.
"The floodgate valves," Luca realized, looking up at his father.
"If we open the tidal locks, thirty thousand tons of seawater will flood the lower dry basin within sixty seconds," Anthony explained.
"Their assault boats are docked directly over the drainage spillway," Sophia observed.
"The suction will capsize their craft and drag their team into the sea," Luca said.
"Someone has to reach the upper catwalk to turn the hydraulic wheels manually," Anthony said.
"I'll go," Sophia said without hesitation.
"No, you're still carrying broken ribs, Bennett," Luca protested, grabbing her arm.
"I'm lighter and faster than you, Moretti," Sophia replied, her eyes blazing with fierce determination.
"Cover my ascent!"
Before Luca could argue, Sophia darted out from behind the steel bulkhead, moving in a low, erratic sprint toward the iron staircase.
Rifle rounds chewed into the concrete at her heels, spraying clouds of stone dust across her trench coat.
Luca leaned out from his barrier, unleashing a relentless barrage from his shotgun, drawing the mercenaries' fire toward himself.
Anthony fired his Remington with steady, veteran rhythm, keeping the enemy snipers pinned behind the wooden pilings.
Sophia leaped onto the metal staircase, hauling herself upward hand over hand, ignoring the agonizing fire tearing through her dislocated shoulder.
Halfway up the catwalk, a burst of rifle fire severed the steel suspension cable above her head.
The metal walkway tilted violently downward, dangling twenty feet above the concrete floor.
Sophia swung by one arm, her tactical boots scrambling for purchase against the rusted girders.
She hauled herself over the railing onto the upper observation platform, gasping for air, her stitches tearing beneath her makeup.
Below her, Viktor Cross spotted her silhouette against the storm clouds.
"Take her out!" Cross roared, raising his assault rifle.
Sophia dove behind the heavy cast-iron hydraulic control wheel as a stream of armor-piercing bullets chewed into the metal housing.
She gripped the frozen iron wheel with both hands, using every ounce of strength in her battered body.
The wheel groaned under decades of rust, refusing to turn.
"Come on!" Sophia screamed into the storm.
Below, Luca saw her struggling.
He dropped his empty shotgun, drew his Kimber forty-five, and charged across the open kill zone toward the base of the tower.
Two mercenaries stepped into his path; Luca fired twice without breaking stride, dropping both men into the flooded drainage trench.
He reached the base of the catwalk ladder and began climbing with ferocious speed.
Viktor Cross swung his weapon toward Luca, aiming directly for the mob boss's exposed back.
"Luca, look out!" Anthony shouted from the blast bunker.
Anthony stepped out into the open, raising his revolver, and fired his last round into Cross’s tactical vest.
The slug didn't penetrate the heavy ceramic plate, but the impact knocked Cross off balance for two crucial seconds.
That was all the time Luca needed.
Luca reached the upper platform, grabbed the secondary iron wheel alongside Sophia, and put his massive shoulders into the turn.
Together, with combined fury, the mob boss and the undercover detective threw their weight against the rusted machinery.
A deep, subterranean groan vibrated through the bedrock of Staten Island.
The massive steel tidal gates at the mouth of the dry dock swung open against the ocean surge.
A wall of black, roaring Atlantic seawater surged into the basin like an unleashed leviathan.
The thirty-foot tidal wave smashed into the two tactical assault boats, snapping their mooring lines like dry twigs.
The boats capsized instantly, their heavy engines dragging the vessels straight to the bottom of the bay.
The mercenaries on the lower pier were swept off their feet by the surging torrent, thrown into the swirling vortex of the industrial drainage pumps.
Weapons, equipment, and armored men were swallowed whole by the roaring current.
Only Viktor Cross managed to haul himself up an exterior service ladder, his face twisted in psychotic rage.
He lunged onto the catwalk, drawing a ten-inch serrated combat knife from his chest rig.
"You die with me, Bennett!" Cross snarled, slashing the blade toward Sophia’s throat.
Sophia ducked beneath the sweep, driving her palm into Cross’s broken nose with devastating martial precision.
Cross grunted in agony, but his massive bulk carried them both over the railing onto the narrow crane bridge.
The knife slashed across Sophia’s forearm, drawing a bright red line through her wool coat.
Cross pinned her against the edge, his massive hands wrapping around her throat, choking the breath from her lungs.
"Your brother died gasping for air under the water," Cross hissed in her ear.
"And you're going to join him."
Sophia stared into the killer's cold eyes, her vision beginning to darken into grey tunnel vision.
She didn't panic.
She reached down to her tactical boot, pulling the small ceramic backup blade she had kept hidden since the raid at Warehouse 42.
With a final burst of adrenaline, Sophia drove the blade deep into the soft femoral artery behind Cross’s knee.
Cross howled in shock, his grip loosening as his leg buckled beneath him.
Luca arrived like an avenging fury.
He grabbed Cross by the collar of his tactical armor and slammed him repeatedly against the steel crane rail until the mercenary went limp.
Luca held Cross suspended over the roaring abyss of the flooded dry dock forty feet below.
"This is for Thomas Bennett," Luca whispered into the dying killer's ear.
Luca released his grip.
Viktor Cross fell silently into the raging torrent below, his body swallowed instantly by the black sea.
Silence returned to the dry dock, save for the rush of water and the patter of the dying storm.
Luca turned to Sophia, who was leaning against the crane mast, gasping for breath, clutching her bleeding arm.
He took her into his arms, pulling her tightly against his chest.
Sophia buried her face in his soaked cashmere coat, her hands gripping his shoulders, her body finally trembling from exhaustion and relief.
"It's over," Luca whispered against her wet hair.
"The muscle is gone."
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Sophia looked up into his eyes, her gaze clear and unwavering despite the blood on her cheeks.
"Now we finish the judge."
