Chapter 13 - The Siege of the River Bluffs
The first armored Ford F-350 crested the crest of the hill, its high-intensity LED light bars turning the falling snow into a blinding wall of white brilliance.
The vehicle smashed through the secondary wooden gates of St. Jude’s Retreat with a deafening splinter of pine timber and twisted iron hinges.
Behind it, two identical heavy-duty trucks roared into the gravel courtyard, spraying rooster tails of frozen slush against the stone facade of the chapel.
Hector Moretti stepped down from the passenger side of the lead truck, his heavy fur-trimmed overcoat billowing in the freezing gale.
Moretti was fifty-five years old, with silvered hair cut close to his square, brutal skull, and eyes that had watched men drown in concrete without a flicker of remorse.
In his gloved right hand, he carried a short-barreled tactical shotgun fitted with an extended drum magazine.
Eight heavily armed mercenaries in gray winter camouflage spilled out of the trailing vehicles, forming a suppression semicircle around the main entrance steps.
“Victor!” Moretti’s voice boomed across the courtyard, amplified by the natural amphitheater of the surrounding limestone bluffs.
“Come out, Victor!”
“I know you’re in there!”
“I have your mistress singing like a canary in Gary, and I have your little architect’s coordinates pinned to my satellite screen!”
The only response from the ancient stone building was the mournful howling of the wind through the eaves.
Moretti signaled with a flick of his gloved fingers toward his lead breacher.
“Take the doors down,” Moretti ordered, his voice raw with contempt.
“No survivors.”
“Leave the babies in the snow.”
“Let the cold finish what Victor’s pathetic bloodline started.”
Two riflemen advanced toward the wide stone stairs, their boots slipping slightly on the slick ice.
Suddenly, with a deafening electrical snap, the high-voltage commercial floodlights mounted on the sanitarium’s roof flared into blinding life.
The sudden, million-lumen glare struck Moretti’s men dead in the face, blowing out their night-vision optics in a haze of whiteout blindness.
From the shadow of a massive stone gargoyle atop the second-story balcony, a heavy iron decorative cross tore through the freezing air.
The three-hundred-pound slab of chiseled granite, dislodged by a hand-cranked maintenance jack, crashed directly through the cab of the lead F-350.
The roof of the truck crumpled with a catastrophic shriek of tearing metal, detonating the windshield into a thousand lethal fragments.
Before the mercenaries could adjust their aim, Victor dropped from the lower balcony railing into the deep snowbank behind them.
He carried no custom firearm, no tactical vest, and no night-vision gear.
In his hands was a four-foot heavy steel crowbar salvaged from the boiler room workbench.
Victor moved with the terrifying, explosive speed of a cornered beast that had accepted its own demise.
He closed the distance to the nearest mercenary before the man could swing his rifle barrel around.
The steel crowbar caught the shooter under the jaw with a brutal, sickening crack that sent the man spinning into the snowbank, unconscious before he hit the ice.
Victor ripped the dropped tactical rifle from the fallen man’s sling in a single, fluid motion.
He dropped to one knee, flicking the selector switch to semi-automatic as three shooters opened fire on his position.
Rounds chewed into the snowbank and ricocheted off the limestone foundations, spraying sharp chips of rock against Victor’s neck.
Victor fired four double-taps with chilling, inhuman precision.
Two shooters collapsed in the courtyard, their weapons clattering uselessly across the frozen gravel.
The remaining mercenaries scrambled for cover behind the armored engine blocks of their trucks.
“Moretti!” Victor roared over the gunfire, his voice echoing off the valley walls like thunder.
“You wanted an empire!”
“You wanted my territory!”
“Here I am, you cowardly bastard!”
Hector Moretti ducked behind the rear wheel of his truck, leveling his shotgun toward the muzzle flashes.
“Kill him!” Moretti screamed, his polished composure shattering into rabid panic.
“Pour everything into the stairs! Light the building up!”
A mercenary raised a shoulder-fired thermite launcher, aiming directly at the wooden eaves above the nursery conservatory.
Victor saw the tube elevate.
He saw the crosshairs align with the fragile glass windows where Nora and his children were hidden below.
There was no tactical cover between Victor and the launcher.
There was only fifty feet of open, bullet-riddled snow.
Victor didn't calculate the odds.
He didn't think about his survival.
He sprinted directly into the open courtyard, abandoning his defensive angle to tackle the grenadier.
A heavy round from Moretti’s shotgun caught Victor in the right shoulder, spinning him halfway around and tearing through muscle and bone.
Pain exploded behind Victor’s eyes in a blinding shower of red sparks, but momentum carried him forward.
He slammed into the mercenary with the full weight of his body just as the thermite round discharged.
The flaming projectile arced wildly off-target, detonating harmlessly against the frozen cliff face fifty yards away in a spectacular waterfall of white-hot phosphorus.
Victor rolled through the slush, his left hand pinning the mercenary’s wrist while his right elbow drove down into the man's throat, neutralizing him instantly.
Moretti stepped out from behind the truck, racking another heavy slug into the shotgun chamber.
He pointed the barrel directly at Victor’s chest from ten feet away, a twisted, victorious sneer spreading across his weathered face.
“Chicago’s most feared man,” Moretti mocked, his finger tightening on the trigger.
“Bleeding out in a ditch for a woman who ran away from you.”
A sharp, deafening crack echoed from the second-story balcony.
Not the crack of a military rifle.
It was the dry, flat bark of an old Winchester hunting rifle.
Moretti’s right knee exploded in a mist of red as the heavy lead bullet tore through his patella.
The mob boss shrieked, collapsing sideways into the snow, his shotgun flying from his grasp.
Victor looked up toward the balcony through his blurred, blood-filled vision.
Standing by the stone balustrade, her hands steady on the smoking barrel of an antique deer rifle provided by the retreat's caretaker, was Nora.
Her cream wool sweater was covered in snow, her dark hair whipped wildly by the wind.
Her eyes were cold, steady, and deadly.
Behind her, Julian Vance stood with his arm braced against her back, keeping her balanced on her wounded incision.
Nora racked the lever of the Winchester with a crisp, metallic clatter, ejecting the spent brass cartridge into the snow.
She aimed the iron sights directly between Hector Moretti’s eyes.
“Get away from my husband,” Nora commanded, her voice slicing through the gale like an executioner’s blade.
In the distance, down the winding highway below the bluff, the rhythmic, screaming wail of state police sirens and federal tactical cruisers filled the morning air.
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Dante had delivered the ledger.
The cavalry had arrived.
