Chapter 10 - Ambush on the Pier
The colorless halon gas came out of the ceiling diffusers in thick, freezing jets that smelled faintly of sweet chloroform.
Within ten seconds, the air in the sealed data room grew thin and sharp, starving the lungs of oxygen.
Julian grabbed the solid-state drive from the terminal console, ripping it free from the USB port and sliding it into his breast pocket.
He pushed himself away from the desk, but his legs buckled beneath him as his starved brain struggled for equilibrium.
Marin lunged forward, catching him beneath his shoulders before his skull struck the steel desk corner.
“Don't inhale deeply!” she shouted over the deafening scream of the klaxon.
“The gas displaces oxygen from the ceiling down!”
“Stay on your stomach!”
She dropped to her knees, dragging Julian across the industrial carpet toward the server room’s rear emergency exit.
The steel door was sealed by an automated magnetic lockdown, its red LED glowing solid and impenetrable.
Marin reached into her tactical pocket and pulled out the iron oxygen wrench she had used at the abandoned clinic.
She jammed the heavy iron claw into the gap between the magnetic contact plates at the top of the door frame.
She threw her entire body weight into the iron handle, using the tool as a Class One lever.
With a violent, shrieking rip of tearing copper and sparking wires, the magnetic plate broke free from the header.
The heavy fire door swung outward into the cold night air of the second-floor industrial catwalk.
Marin and Julian tumbled out onto the perforated steel decking, gasping for the freezing ocean wind as rain lashed their faces.
Below them, the cargo yard had transformed into an armed fortress.
Four black sport utility vehicles sat idling in a semicircle around the base of the gantry crane, their headlights creating an inescapable wall of blinding white light.
A dozen private security contractors in tactical gear were fanning out through the container canyons, their assault rifles raised toward the catwalk.
Standing in the center of the illuminated concrete, flanked by two towering bodyguards, was Marcus Vance.
And beside him, leaning on a heavy titanium crutch with his right leg in a fiberglass cast, stood Garrick.
Garrick’s face was twisted in psychotic, animalistic hatred as he looked up at the catwalk where Marin and Julian stood silhouetted against the emergency beacons.
“There they are!” Garrick screamed, his voice carrying over the howl of the storm.
“Kill the bastard! Kill them both!”
Automatic gunfire erupted from three positions below in a deafening, continuous roar.
High-velocity rounds tore through the corrugated siding of the administrative annex, shattering the remaining window glass into thousands of lethal shards.
Julian grabbed Marin by the shoulders, driving her down onto the steel deck of the catwalk and shielding her body with his own broad back.
A bullet grazed Julian’s left shoulder blade, tearing through his coat and opening a shallow, burning furrow across his flesh.
He did not cry out; he merely ground his teeth together until blood seeped from his gums.
“We cannot go down the stairs,” Julian shouted over the gunfire, his lips inches from her ear.
“They have every angle covered on the lower ladder.”
Marin looked across the crane structure above them.
A heavy maintenance bridge connected the catwalk to the operator’s cab of Gantry Crane Number Three, eighty feet above the pier.
“Up!” Marin shouted, pointing toward the vertical maintenance ladder that climbed the massive steel leg of the crane.
“If we reach the crane cab, we control the power grid for the southern slipway!”
They scrambled along the catwalk on their bellies, crawling beneath the hail of lead that chewed the metal railings to ribbons.
Marin reached the ladder first, climbing the rungs with fluid, athletic speed born of years pulling heavy stretchers up embankment ravines.
Julian followed directly behind her, his large boots finding each steel step through sheer, unadulterated willpower.
Every pull upward sent white-hot fire tearing through his fractured ribs, but he refused to stop.
Below them, bullets pinged off the heavy iron crane legs like vicious hail, throwing sparks into the rainy darkness.
Garrick stood on the concrete below, cursing violently as he leveled a scoped rifle at the climbing figures.
Before he could steady his aim, a sudden, blinding flash of scarlet light erupted from the black water behind the sulfur pier.
A high-intensity marine flare rocketed into the night sky, arching three hundred feet over the harbor before bursting into a descending canopy of brilliant crimson phosphorus.
The entire terminal was instantly illuminated in harsh, unforgiving scarlet glare, casting long, disorienting shadows across the yard.
At the exact same instant, the colossal, five-hundred-decibel foghorn of Silas’s skiff sounded from the darkness of the channel.
The deafening, low-frequency blast vibrated through the steel of the crane, disorienting the gunmen below and making them instinctively drop into defensive crouches.
“Silas!” Marin breathed, her heart surging with fierce hope.
The distraction gave them the ten seconds they needed.
Marin hauled herself through the trapdoor of Gantry Crane Number Three’s operator cab, pulling Julian inside and slamming the steel floor hatch shut.
She threw the heavy iron dog-bolts into place, sealing them inside the five-by-eight-foot glass and steel control booth.
Julian collapsed onto the operator’s bench, his breath coming in ragged, bloody gasps, his skin glowing ghostly white in the red flare light.
Marin immediately knelt beside him, ripping open his shirt to inspect his chest.
The decompression tube had been jostled, but the chest seal held, and his trachea remained midline.
“I am still alive, Marin,” Julian whispered, his hand catching hers with a grip that was surprisingly firm.
“Look at the console.”
Marin turned to the massive control panel that dominated the front of the cab.
Two heavy joystick levers controlled the lateral travel and hoist mechanisms of the crane's sixty-ton spreader bar.
Beside the controls was a large, yellow rotary switch labeled: Emergency Slipway Flood Gate & High-Pressure Ballast Release.
Marin looked out through the rain-streaked windshield of the cab.
Directly beneath the crane’s massive tracks lay the main concrete staging pad where Vance’s vehicles and his twelve mercenaries were gathered.
And running alongside that staging pad was the high-pressure sea-ballast canal used to balance container ships during heavy loading.
Marin’s eyes lit up with dangerous, brilliant understanding.
“Julian,” she said, her voice dropping into a steady, lethal calm.
“How much water does the Terminal Four ballast reservoir hold?”
Julian looked at the yellow switch, and a slow, ferocious smile broke across his blood-stained face.
“One million gallons,” Julian whispered.
“And the release valves vent directly across the central tarmac.”
Marin stepped up to the console, her hands wrapping around the heavy yellow rotary switch.
“Marcus Vance wanted to bury you in the harbor mud,” Marin said, looking down through the glass at the men gathering below with their rifles.
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“Let’s see how well he swims.”
She threw her full weight into the switch, turning it one hundred and eighty degrees until the circuit locked with a thunderous mechanical crash.
