Chapter 10 - Ambush at the Meadowlands
The heavy rain had turned the Hackensack Meadowlands into an endless expanse of gray marsh, rusted industrial tanks, and drowned cattails.
The Route 3 connector was slick with road film and diesel exhaust as Lucas Brooks navigated the armored black Suburban through the midday traffic.
In the back seat, Maya Stone sat between two heavily armed Carter security operatives, clutching her canvas backpack to her chest.
Her knuckles were white, her eyes darting nervously toward the gray concrete barriers flying past the tinted windows.
"We’re seven miles from the Lincoln Tunnel," Lucas said into his tactical headset, his eyes scanning the rear-view mirror.
"Rear security vehicle, keep your spacing tight. Don't let any commercial box trucks slip between us."
"Copy that, Lucas," the chase vehicle responded through the static.
Suddenly, a massive orange dump truck loaded with crushed gravel cut across three lanes of traffic from an industrial exit ramp ahead.
The heavy vehicle did not brake.
It swung its steel bed sideways, jackknifing across all four eastbound lanes with an ear-shattering screech of locked pneumatic tires.
"Brace!" Lucas roared, slamming his foot into the heavy ceramic brake pedal of the Suburban.
The three-ton armored vehicle skidded across the wet asphalt, stopping fifteen feet from the crumpled side of the dump truck.
Before the chase vehicle behind them could reverse, a second commercial flatbed truck plowed directly into its rear bumper, crushing the trunk and spinning the SUV into the concrete median barrier.
"Ambush!" Lucas yelled over the radio channel, his training kicking in within a millisecond.
"Position three! Cover the girl!"
From the side doors of two nondescript white vans parked on the highway shoulder, eight men in tactical vests and balaclavas emerged with automatic carbines.
A deafening hail of high-velocity rifle fire erupted across the elevated causeway.
Bullets hammered the reinforced ballistic glass of the Suburban with the sound of a thousand steel hammers striking an anvil.
The outer layer of the windshield cracked into a web of white crystalline fracture lines, but the thick polycarbonate inner lining held.
"Stay down on the floorboards!" Lucas shouted, turning to push Maya’s head down beneath the level of the armored door panels.
Maya let out a piercing scream as bullet fragments sparked against the steel frame of the window six inches from her ear.
Forty miles to the east, inside the Hudson Street penthouse, Andrew Carter was standing before a bank of illuminated wall-mounted tactical monitors.
A high-frequency red strobe began flashing across the center screen, accompanied by an urgent digital ping that shattered the quiet room.
Cindy leaped from the leather sectional, ignoring the excruciating pain in her ribs as she limped to Andrew’s side.
On the main screen, the GPS beacon of the lead Suburban was frozen red on the Route 3 Hackensack overpass.
Audio from Lucas’s open headset filled the penthouse speakers with a chaotic symphony of screaming engines, breaking glass, and continuous automatic gunfire.
"Carter! We're pinned on the Route 3 bridge!" Lucas's voice shouted over the static.
"Two heavy trucks blocking the egress! Multiple shooters with fifty-five-six armor-piercing rounds! The glass won't hold more than two minutes!"
"Andrew!" Cindy cried out, her fingernails digging deep into his forearm as she stared at the flashing red beacon.
"Maya! They're going to kill her!"
Andrew did not panic.
His eyes turned into two burning coals of pitch-black fury, but his mind operated with the cold, crystalline geometry of a master chess player.
"Cindy, look at the screen," Andrew commanded, his voice steady, low, and completely commanding.
Cindy blinked back her tears, forcing herself to look at the tactical map of the Meadowlands corridor.
"You organized the port logistics for our western fuel depot in Secaucus," Andrew said, his fingers flying across the auxiliary control keyboard.
"What is the quickest access route from the river barge slipway to the eastern bridge abutment?"
Cindy’s mind, trained by three years of managing the most complex supply chain in the eastern seaboard, cut through the fog of terror.
"The railroad spur," she gasped, her finger pointing at a thin black line on the satellite overlay.
"The abandoned Erie Lackawanna freight line runs directly beneath the Route 3 overpass! There’s an emergency maintenance ramp behind the concrete recycling plant!"
"Good," Andrew said.
He tapped his private security channel, connecting to the Carter tactical compound at Pier 40.
"This is Carter. Mobilize the quick-reaction strike team. Launch the heavy interceptor boats across the Hudson to the Secaucus canal."
Andrew turned away from the console and grabbed his heavy tactical jacket from the leather bench.
"Where are you going?" Cindy asked, her voice trembling as she reached for his hand.
Andrew looked at her, his jaw set like carved granite.
"I told you no one touches your family," Andrew said.
He pulled a customized automatic shotgun from the concealed wall safe beside the door, racking the heavy steel bolt with a terrifying metallic clack.
"I am going to get your sister, Cindy. And when I come back, Frank Romano will wish he had died forty years ago."
He pressed his lips firmly against her forehead, leaving her in the safety of the glass fortress as the elevator doors closed between them.
May you like
Out on the Hackensack overpass, the ballistic glass of the Suburban finally gave way under a focused burst of heavy rifle fire.
Lucas Brooks fired his nine-millimeter weapon through the shattered gap, dropping the nearest Romano gunman onto the wet pavement, but his ammunition was down to his final twelve rounds.
