Chapter 8 - The Breach At Bay Four
The sound of shattering safety glass cascaded through the cavernous foundry like a wave of breaking ice.
The first Suburban had not stopped at the chain-link gates; it had rammed through the rusted metal at forty miles per hour, plowing directly into the heavy corrugated doors of Bay 4.
The steel door buckled inward with a thunderous groan, showering the concrete floor with masonry dust and sheared rivets.
Through the smoking breach poured half a dozen men dressed in tactical gear, carrying short-barreled automatic carbines fitted with tactical flashlights.
Blinding white beams of light sliced through the murky gloom of the foundry, searching the shadows for targets.
"Fire!" Alio's voice rang out like a crack of thunder.
From the elevated catwalks thirty feet above the floor, three of Alio's marksmen opened up with suppressed rifles.
The sound was not a series of deafening explosions, but a rhythmic, terrifying clatter of cycling bolts and whistling lead.
Two of Marco's vanguard collapsed instantly onto the wet concrete, their flashlights spinning across the floor and illuminating their motionless boots.
The remaining attackers scattered behind heavy iron pillars and industrial storage bins, returning blind, furious bursts of fully automatic fire toward the ceiling.
Sparks cascaded down like fireworks as high-velocity rounds chewed through the iron catwalks and shattered overhead skylights.
A stray round slammed into the steel workbench three inches from Norah's shoulder, throwing up a shower of white-hot metal shavings that stung her cheek.
She dropped flat onto her stomach, pressing her body against the freezing concrete floor, the Glock gripped tightly in both hands.
The black leather ledger was pinned securely beneath her ribs.
Across the floor, Alio was moving with terrifying speed.
Despite the surgical staples holding his flesh together, he advanced from pillar to pillar with the lethal grace of a hunting wolf.
He fired his Sig Sauer in double-tap cadences, each shot deliberate, measured, and devastating.
An attacker attempting to flank the mezzanine stairs took two rounds to the chest and fell backward into an empty oil trough with a sickening splash.
"Marco!" Alio's voice echoed through the vast chamber, reverberating off the brick walls with chilling authority.
"You brought sixteen men to an execution, and half of them are already bleeding into the dirt!"
"Throw down your weapons and I'll let you take Silvio to the hospital before his kidneys drown him!"
From behind the smoking wreckage of the Suburban at the door, a harsh, hysterical laugh echoed back.
"You always thought you were smarter than everyone else, Alio!" Marco's voice screamed, cracked with frantic rage.
"Silvio is already gone!"
"He signed the papers two hours ago!"
"I'm the head of this family now!"
Marco stepped out from behind the vehicle, holding an M4 carbine across his chest.
Behind him stood four more men, but they weren't aiming their weapons at the catwalks.
They were rolling two heavy, cylindrical metal tanks through the crushed doorway.
Norah's eyes widened as the weak light from the diesel heaters illuminated the red stenciled lettering on the side of the steel canisters.
PROPANE.
"Marco, you insane bastard!" Alio shouted, his voice finally losing its icy calm, replaced by raw alarm.
"There are residential blocks three hundred yards from this yard!"
"Nobody cares about Cicero, cousin!" Marco screamed back, his eyes bloodshot and wild with coke-fueled mania.
"If I can't have the ledger, nobody gets it!"
"Light it up!"
One of Marco's men struck a road flare, its brilliant crimson fire sputtering to life in the freezing draft.
He prepared to hurl the burning flare toward the opened valve of the first propane tank.
Alio was pinned behind a concrete support beam sixty feet away, pinned down by continuous suppression fire from two carbines chewing away at the masonry corners.
Norah knew what would happen.
If those tanks detonated inside the enclosed volume of Bay 4, the concussive pressure wave would vaporize everything on the ground floor and collapse the mezzanine office where her mother was hiding.
There was no time to think.
There was no time to calculate odds.
Norah pushed herself up from the concrete floor, her boots finding traction on the slick floor.
She rested the barrel of the Glock 19 across the top edge of the steel workbench, steadying her shaking hands against the metal.
She didn't aim for the men.
She aimed for the brilliant, sputtering crimson sphere of the road flare held high in the gunman's raised arm.
She took a deep, freezing breath of air that smelled of burnt cordite and machine oil.
She pulled the trigger.
The weapon kicked violently in her hands, the sharp report echoing through the cavern like a whip crack.
The bullet went wide, striking the masonry four feet to the left.
The gunman hesitated, startled by fire coming from the administrative bench.
Norah adjusted her sight picture instantly, remembering her uncle's voice from a hot summer afternoon in Little Village twenty years ago: Don't fight the kick, Norah. Let the iron settle back into the groove.
She pulled the trigger again.
And again.
The third round struck the gunman squarely in the forearm.
The man shrieked, his arm snapping backward as the burning flare slipped from his numb fingers.
The flare fell, not toward the open gas valve, but into a deep puddle of muddy slush pooled beneath the truck bumper.
The sizzling chemical flame hissed violently, sputtered in the dirty water, and went instantly black.
"Shoot that bench!" Marco screamed, turning his carbine toward Norah's position.
Before Marco could acquire his target, Alio leaned completely out from behind his concrete pillar.
His weapon roared twice.
The two gunmen laying down suppression fire collapsed in rapid succession, their weapons clattering uselessly against the stone.
Alio vaulted across the open floor with terrifying momentum, closing the thirty-foot gap between himself and his cousin in three massive strides.
Marco tried to swing his rifle around, but Alio's left arm—the uninjured arm—shot out like an iron piston.
Alio's fist struck Marco squarely in the throat with concussive force.
Marco choked on a strangled gasp of air, dropping the carbine as his boots left the floor.
Alio slammed his cousin's back against the crushed hood of the Suburban, pinning him there by his collar.
The remaining attackers, seeing their leader captured and their tanks neutralized, broke discipline and scrambled back through the chain-link gap into the blizzard.
The gunfire died away, leaving only the whistling of the freezing wind through the shattered skylights and Marco's pathetic, wheezing gasps for oxygen.
Alio pressed the smoking barrel of his Sig Sauer directly beneath Marco's manicured chin, forcing Marco's head backward against the crumpled metal hood.
Norah slowly lowered her weapon, her chest heaving, the smell of burnt gunpowder hot against her lips.
She walked out from behind the workbench, her boots crunching over thousands of brass shell casings littering the floor.
Alio didn't turn around, but he knew she was there.
"You have a good eye, Miss Vasquez," Alio murmured, his voice deadly low.
Marco's eyes rolled down, terrified, looking at his cousin with pure venom and tears of pain.
"Kill me then, Alio," Marco wheezed through his bruised windpipe.
"It doesn't change anything."
"Silvio already sent the secondary team to the United States Attorney's house in Lincoln Park."
"They're going to burn the federal prosecutor in his bed before you can even show him your little book!"
Alio's grip tightened around Marco's throat until the smaller man's face turned purple.
"Silvio didn't send them to the U.S. Attorney, Marco," Alio whispered into his cousin's ear.
"How do you know?" Marco choked out.
Alio leaned in closer, his scar twisting into a cold, terrifying grimace of absolute triumph.
"Because the man who gave Silvio the prosecutor's address wasn't one of your captains."
"It was Mateo."
"And the house in Lincoln Park isn't occupied by the U.S. Attorney."
"It's currently surrounded by two tactical teams from the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
Marco's eyes went wide with horrifying, final comprehension.
"You set us up..." Marco whispered.
"You sewed your own shroud, cousin," Alio said.
He didn't pull the trigger.
Instead, Alio slammed his fist into Marco's jaw, knocking him cold with a single, brutal impact.
Marco crumpled onto the snowy bumper like a sack of wet laundry.
Alio turned around to face Norah.
His tactical shirt was torn again, and a thin line of fresh blood was trickling down his forearm from his reopened side.
He looked exhausted, battered, and lethal.
Norah stood before him, the Glock still in her hand, the black ledger tucked firmly under her arm.
"Is it over?" she asked, her voice steady despite the adrenaline roaring through her veins.
Alio looked up toward the raised mezzanine office, where Teresa and Mateo were watching from the reinforced glass window.
May you like
"The street war is over," Alio said softly, stepping closer to her until their breath mingled in the freezing air.
"Now comes the reckoning."
