Chapter 11 - The Race Through Iron and Ash
The black Mercedes Sprinter roared out of the subterranean service garage of the Plaza Hotel like a guided missile.
Tires screamed in protest against the wet asphalt of 58th Street, spraying plumes of dirty water across the sidewalk.
Behind them, the flashing red and blue strobe lights of dozens of Federal Bureau of Investigation tactical cruisers illuminated the mist.
Inside the vehicle, the tension was thick enough to suffocate a grown man.
Sophie sat on the edge of the steel bench, her knuckles white as she gripped the edges of the tactical console.
Her midnight-blue silk velvet dress was smeared with soot and torn at the shoulder, but she didn't care.
Her mind was trapped in the concrete basement in Red Hook, seeing her little brother’s innocent hazel eyes wide with terror.
"How long, Marco?" Sophie demanded, her voice vibrating with an agonizing intensity that cut through the roar of the twin-turbocharged engine.
Marco, gripping the steering wheel with veins bulging along his forearms, slammed the accelerator to the floorboard.
"Eight minutes if I run every red light between here and the Brooklyn Bridge, Miss Dubois," Marco shouted back over the siren blare.
"The bridges are jammed with evening gridlock, but I’m taking the lower commercial transit bypass."
Alessandro stood in the center of the cabin, bracing himself against the ceiling rail as the vehicle banked violently around a corner.
He had stripped off his tuxedo jacket, revealing the shoulder holsters and the tactical assault vest strapped across his broad chest.
He was reloading high-capacity magazines with mechanical, terrifying speed, slapping them into the pouches across his chest.
His face was completely devoid of human warmth, a statue of ancient Roman wrath carved from pure granite.
"Dante is not an ordinary physician," Alessandro said, his low voice cutting through the panic like a blade.
"Before he took his medical oath, he served twelve years as the chief tactical combat medic for the Italian special operations command in Mogadishu."
"The bunker has independent power, blast doors, and three months of filtered oxygen."
"If Dante had even forty seconds of warning, Franco Russo’s animals will have to dig through twelve inches of hardened Swedish steel to touch the boy."
Alessandro picked up the satellite comm-link headset, pressing the high-frequency channel toggle.
"Dante, do you copy?" Alessandro spoke into the mic, his tone steady, commanding, and uncompromising.
Static hissed through the speaker, followed by the dull, rhythmic thud of distant explosions vibrating through the frequency.
Then came a harsh, ragged breath.
"Alessandro..." Dante’s voice came through, strained, coughing from heavy smoke.
"Uncle!" Alessandro barked.
"Report status!"
"Russo brought... two commercial thermite breach charges..." Dante wheezed, the sound of semi-automatic rifle fire crackling in the background.
"They bypassed the outer blast doors by detonating the support columns in the old rum fermenting vats above us."
"The ceiling in the main triage bay collapsed."
"I took a piece of rebar through the shoulder, but I am mobile."
Sophie lunged forward, grabbing Alessandro’s arm, her heart stopping in her throat.
"Where is Leo?" Sophie cried into the microphone.
"Dr. Dante, where is my little brother?"
"He is with Maria... in the secondary sub-vault beneath the fermentation stills," Dante answered, his voice growing faint before catching with fierce determination.
"I locked them in with the manual deadbolts."
"The air filtration is holding, but Russo’s men are cutting through the inner vault hinges with industrial plasma torches."
"They have six or seven minutes before the door yields."
"I am holding the stairwell with Henri’s old diplomatic hunting rifle."
"Hurry, Alessandro... my ammunition is down to twelve rounds."
The transmission abruptly severed into a screech of electromagnetic interference.
"Hang on!" Marco roared from the front cabin.
The armored van mounted the concrete curb of the FDR Drive, smashing through a row of orange construction barrels and rocketing down the closed lower ramp toward the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Manhattan skyline blurred past the reinforced windows in a streak of glittering gold and dark gray rain clouds.
Sophie looked down at her hands, which were shaking uncontrollably with a mother’s terror.
Alessandro dropped down on one knee in front of her, his large, calloused hands closing firmly over her cold fingers.
The warmth of his touch was like an anchor dropped into a raging storm.
"Look at me, Sophie," he ordered softly.
Sophie lifted her tear-filled eyes, meeting the bottomless black depths of his gaze.
"Leo will live," Alessandro whispered, each word carved in unbreakable stone.
"I gave your father my sacred word on his deathbed that I would protect his bloodline with my life."
"I have broken many laws in my thirty-two years on this earth, but I have never broken an oath."
"We will reach that distillery, we will tear Franco Russo’s throat out, and you will hold your brother again."
Sophie searched his dark, lethal face and saw no hesitation, no fear, only an absolute, unyielding devotion that shook her to the core of her soul.
She squeezed his hands back with all the strength left in her body.
"Give me a rifle, Alessandro," she said, her voice dropping into a cold, lethal register that matched his own.
"I am not waiting in the car while you fight for my family."
"I’m going in with you."
Alessandro stared at her for a heartbeat, seeing the warrior spirit of the Dubois ancestors burning behind her tears.
He didn't argue.
He didn't patronize her.
He turned to the weapons locker bolted to the bulkhead and pulled out a shortened, customized tactical shotgun with a red-dot holographic sight.
He checked the shell feed, chambered a heavy tungsten slug, and placed it directly into her arms.
"Keep the stock tucked tight against your shoulder," Alessandro instructed, his thumb brushing against her cheek.
"The recoil is heavy, but at ten paces, it will punch through any body armor Russo’s scum are wearing."
"Boss!" Marco shouted as the van rocketed off the Brooklyn exit ramp, tires smoking against the wet pavement.
"Red Hook shipping district!"
"Two hundred yards out!"
Through the front windshield, Sophie saw the industrial graveyard of Red Hook looming against the black waters of the bay.
Plumes of thick, oily black smoke poured from the roof of the collapsed nineteenth-century brick distillery.
Three black Cadillac Escalades were parked haphazardly across the rubble-strewn loading dock, their hazard lights blinking erratically in the darkness.
Muzzle flashes lit up the shattered second-story windows like deadly strobes.
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The siege of Red Hook was underway.
And time had just run out.
