Chapter 7 - THE AMBUSH OF STEEL AND COLD RAIN
At eleven fifty-eight, the low drone of heavy diesel engines rolled across the wet tarmac of the Navy Yard.
Through the iron gates, three unmarked matte-black freight trucks crawled past the outer checkpoint with their headlights extinguished.
They moved in a tight, professional convoy, their heavy tires splashing through the flooded ruts of the industrial yard.
Inside the dark shadows between two stacks of rust-red shipping containers, Dominic Salvatore waited with seven men from his veteran inner circle.
These were men in their fifties and sixties, soldiers who had worn trench coats alongside Matteo Moretti decades before Isabella’s modern schemes existed.
Each carried a short-barreled automatic shotgun or a suppressed rifle, their faces grim under the brims of their caps.
Clara stood directly beside Dominic, her shoulder pressed against the corrugated iron wall of a forty-foot container.
Her eyes tracked the lead truck as it rolled to a stop beneath the massive skeletal frame of Crane Nine.
“The driver won’t get down first,” Clara whispered into Dominic’s ear, the rain dripping from her chestnut hair.
“Gianni Castiglione uses former military contractors from the Balkans.”
“They clear the perimeter in pairs before opening the cargo doors.”
“They expect Marco to meet them at the hydraulic control panel near the crane base.”
Dominic nodded once, his thumb flicking the safety off his Kimber rifle.
“We let the lead team dismount,” Dominic said, signaling to his men with two taps against his forearm.
“When the rear doors of the second truck open, we cut the drivers down before they can reverse into the main channel.”
The lead truck’s air brakes hissed with a sharp, pneumatic gasp.
Two figures clad in tactical vests and Kevlar helmets jumped from the passenger side, their weapons held at the low ready.
One of them whistled twice into the darkness, a high, piercing signal meant for Marco Viti.
Silence answered them.
The second contractor raised a radio to his throat, his posture tensing instantly as he sensed the unnatural emptiness of the yard.
“Gianni, something is wrong,” the man began in heavily accented Italian.
He never finished the sentence.
A single suppressed shot cracked from the upper catwalk of Crane Nine, where Vincent Rizzo had climbed into the iron framework three minutes earlier.
The lead contractor’s helmet snapped backward, his body folding onto the wet asphalt like a marionette with severed strings.
Before the second man could raise his weapon, Dominic’s old guard opened fire from both flanks.
The thunder of twelve-gauge shotgun slugs tore through the night, shattering the windshields of the three trucks in a catastrophic hail of splintered glass and steel.
The engine blocks of the vehicles screamed as heavy caliber rounds punched through radiators, venting boiling steam into the torrential rain.
Mercenaries spilled from the back of the second and third trucks, returning fire with frantic bursts of automatic weapons.
Muzzle flashes illuminated the container canyons in blinding, erratic strobes.
Tracers ricocheted off the steel containers with high, metallic shrieks, showering the puddles with bright orange sparks.
A mercenary broke from behind the rear bumper of the middle truck, sprinting toward the hydraulic switchboard to trigger the floodlights.
Clara did not wait for an order.
She stepped out from behind the container, brought both hands up, aligned the iron sights of the Kimber forty-five, and squeezed the trigger twice with mechanical rhythm.
The first round punched through the mercenary’s collarbone.
The second caught him clean through the throat.
The man collapsed forward, his momentum sliding him across the slick concrete right into the base of the crane.
Dominic glanced down at Clara, his eyes wide with a mixture of shock and dark pride.
“You didn’t learn that in an accounting office, girl,” Dominic shouted over the roar of gunfire.
“My father spent three years teaching me how to clear a corridor before he let me touch a calculator, Dominic,” Clara shouted back, ejecting her spent magazine and sliding a fresh seven-round clip into the handle with a sharp slap.
“He knew who you were doing business with, even if you were too blind to see it.”
A heavy volley of fire chewed into the container wall above their heads, driving them both into a low crouch.
From behind the third truck, a massive figure stepped into the open, firing a drum-fed shotgun with one arm while shouting furious commands into a handheld transmitter.
It was Gianni Castiglione himself, a broad-shouldered monster of a man with a scarred scalp and a reputation for sadistic brutality that stretched from Newark to Philadelphia.
“Salvatore,” Gianni roared, his voice cutting through the gunfire.
“You’re too late, old man.”
“The police commissioner is already signing the seizure warrants for your docks.”
“You die tonight, or you die in an orange jumpsuit in Florence, Colorado.”
Gianni raised his shotgun to fire directly into the recess where Dominic was pinned.
From fifty feet above, Vincent Rizzo dropped from the crane ladder onto the roof of the middle truck with the sound of a falling anvil.
Before Gianni could pivot his weapon upward, Vincent’s boot caught the brute squarely in the temple, sending the three-hundred-pound mobster crashing into the side of the container.
The remaining three mercenaries threw down their rifles, raising their open hands into the pouring rain as Dominic’s veteran gunners circled them with cold, unwavering barrels.
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The entire engagement had lasted three minutes and forty seconds.
The only sounds left were the hiss of punctured radiators, the heavy patter of the rain, and Gianni Castiglione groaning in the mud as Vincent pressed a steel boot into his throat.
