Chapter 5 - AMBUSH IN THE WAREHOUSE
The second shot tore through the wooden chair where Daniel Price was sitting.
Daniel went limp instantly, a dark hole blooming through his forehead.
He was dead before his chin hit his chest.
Anthony stood frozen in the open light, paralyzed by the sheer concussive noise of the rifle fire.
"Move, you idiot!" Sarah screamed.
She lunged from behind the dumpster, caught Anthony by the collar of his expensive coat, and dragged him violently behind the iron barrier.
A third high-caliber round sparked off the concrete where Anthony’s foot had been a half-second earlier.
The concrete chipped away in violent shards that stung their faces.
"Down! Stay down!" Sarah commanded, pinning Anthony to the floor with one knee.
Anthony was hyperventilating, his hands clawing at his face.
"They're shooting at us! They're actually shooting at us!"
"Shut up and breathe through your nose," Sarah snapped.
Vincent leaned against the dumpster, his weapon drawn, his eyes blazing with cold fire.
"Salvatore," Vincent muttered through gritted teeth.
"The old bastard sold the family to the Castigliones."
"We analyze family treason later," Sarah said.
She tapped her earpiece.
"Bravo Two, report!"
Her surviving contractor answered from behind a stack of wooden pallets twenty yards to the east.
"Bravo One is down, armor compromised. Multiple shooters on the catwalks."
"At least four hostiles with suppressed carbines."
"They have thermal optics. They are moving to flank us from the southern loading bays."
"Understood," Sarah said.
She reached into her tactical vest and pulled two smoke canisters.
She looked at Vincent.
"Do you have a backup magazine?"
Vincent pulled two spare magazines from his inner pocket and snapped them onto the table.
"Twelve rounds each."
"Give one to your brother," Sarah ordered.
"He doesn't know how to shoot," Vincent said.
"He's going to learn in the next ninety seconds, or he's going to die in this warehouse," she retorted.
Sarah shoved the magazine into Anthony’s trembling hands.
"Listen to me, Anthony," she said, grabbing his face and forcing him to look directly into her eyes.
Her voice was shockingly steady, acting like an anchor in the storm of gunfire.
"Keep your head low. If someone rounds that container who isn't wearing my contractors' gray patch, pull the trigger until the gun stops making noise."
"Do you understand me?"
Anthony swallowed hard and nodded frantically.
"Yes. Yes, Captain."
"Good."
Sarah pulled the pins on both smoke canisters with her teeth and hurled them across the open floor.
Thick, white chemical smoke billowed out instantly, filling the central aisle of the warehouse with an impenetrable fog.
Above them, the catwalks erupted with automatic rifle fire.
Rounds tore through the corrugated metal walls, sending deafening clangs echoing through the rafters.
The shooters were firing blind into the smoke.
"Bravo Two, suppress the eastern catwalk on three," Sarah whispered into her comms.
"One. Two. Three."
Bravo Two leaned around his pallet and opened fire with a burst of controlled, suppressed rounds.
A man screamed high above them.
A body tumbled through the safety railing and crashed violently onto the concrete forty feet below.
"Move!" Sarah shouted.
She grabbed Vincent’s arm and hauled him forward through the smoke corridor.
They moved low, using the shadows of the heavy shipping containers for cover.
Two armed men in dark tactical gear emerged from the smoke five paces ahead.
They carried short-barreled rifles with infrared lasers cutting through the fog.
Sarah did not hesitate.
She raised her sidearm and fired three double-taps in rapid succession.
Both hostiles collapsed instantly, their weapons clattering against the floor.
Vincent stepped past them, his own weapon raised.
A third shooter appeared from behind a forklift, raising a submachine gun toward Sarah’s exposed side.
Vincent fired twice.
The rounds struck the shooter in the neck and chest.
The man dropped to his knees, choked on his own blood, and collapsed forward into a puddle of oil.
Vincent looked down at the dead man’s wrist.
Tattooed across the knuckles was the three-pointed crown of the Castiglione cartel.
"Daniel was telling the truth," Vincent said, his voice deadly calm.
"Salvatore brought the Sicilians into my city."
"We have sixty seconds before their secondary perimeter closes the gates," Sarah warned.
She knelt beside the fallen shooter and ripped a tactical radio from his combat vest.
The radio was chattering with panicked Italian and English voices.
"Target is moving toward the drainage exit! Cut off the canal!"
Sarah switched the radio off.
"They know the layout," she said.
"This terminal belongs to the family," Anthony said from behind them, his voice shaking but coherent.
"There’s an old stormwater drainage canal beneath bay four."
"It leads out to the public culvert beneath the expressway."
Sarah looked at Anthony with a flicker of approval.
"Can you lead us there in the dark?"
"I used to hide there when I was twelve," Anthony said.
"Take point," Sarah ordered.
"If you run into trouble, drop to the floor."
Anthony took the lead, keeping his body low against the concrete foundations.
They moved through a narrow service hallway behind the old boiler room.
The sound of boots and shouting echoed behind them in the main warehouse.
The mercenaries were sweeping the smoke, discovering their dead.
Anthony stopped at a heavy cast-iron floor grate covered in rusted chains.
"Here," Anthony whispered.
Vincent stepped forward, wedging the barrel of his spent weapon beneath the rusted padlock.
With a surge of adrenaline, he wrenched the metal until the corroded bolt snapped with a dull crack.
Together, Vincent and Anthony hauled the heavy iron grate upward.
A black, foul-smelling tunnel descended into the darkness below.
"Bravo Two, fall back to secondary extraction," Sarah transmitted into her comms.
"Negative, Lead," the radio crackled with static.
"Bravo Two is pinned. I'm taking the access road. Get the principal out."
The line went dead with the sound of a distant grenade detonation.
Sarah’s face hardened.
She had lost two good men in less than twenty minutes.
"Down," Sarah said, pushing Anthony into the darkness.
Vincent looked at her for a split second.
"Sarah—"
"Down, Vincent. Now."
Vincent dropped into the drainage pipe.
May you like
Sarah stepped in behind them, reached up with one arm, and pulled the heavy iron grate back into its frame.
They were plunged into absolute, suffocating darkness just as the boots of the mercenary sweep team pounded onto the concrete floor directly above their heads.
