Chapter 7 - The Fire Beneath the Bridge
The concussive boom of the heavy rifle rounds reverberated between the brick walls of Morgan Towing like rolling thunder.
Matteo pinned Riley flat against the mud behind the three-ton steel vault, his heavy, muscular frame completely covering hers.
She could feel the furious hammer of his heart against her ribs, the scent of rain, gunpowder, and cedarwood suffocatingly close.
"Are you hit?" he demanded, his voice sharp and steady in her ear.
"No! Are you?"
"Clear."
Another heavy round struck the top edge of the safe, spraying lead fragments and pulverized concrete over Matteo’s soaked shirt.
Across the yard, Matteo’s four security men were returning fire with tactical submachine guns, moving in synchronized pairs toward the north perimeter wall.
Ben had scrambled beneath the chassis of a heavy Peterbilt wrecker, clutching a three-foot steel pry bar like an ancient spear.
"Ben, stay under the axle!" Riley screamed through the cacophony.
"Riley, they’ve got high ground on the rail trestle!" Ben bellowed back.
Matteo peered around the rusted corner of the safe, his amber-flecked eyes narrowing as he scanned the black iron skeleton of the railroad bridge spanning the shipping canal two hundred yards away.
Through the sheets of rain, a faint, rhythmic muzzle flash flickered from the upper maintenance catwalk of the bridge.
"It’s a single shooter with a suppressed .338 Lapua," Matteo said calmly, as if he were evaluating a balance sheet during an executive retreat. "He’s pinning us here so a breach team can flank the eastern fence."
Right on cue, the sound of wire-cutters snapping heavy chain-link rattled from the eastern tree line.
Two unmarked black Chevy Suburbans without license plates slid into the muddy service alley behind the mechanic bay, their doors already swinging open.
Six men dressed in sterile black tactical gear and Kevlar vests dropped onto the asphalt, carrying suppressed short-barrel rifles.
These were not the clumsy amateurs Julian had hired for twenty grand the night before.
These were professional corporate cleaners.
"They don't care about the land anymore," Riley realized with chilling clarity, clutching the Pelican case tightly against her chest. "They came to bury this box and everyone who knows what’s inside it."
"They’re Elena’s people," Matteo said, his teeth bared in a feral sneer. "The Moretti syndicate."
He pulled his Glock from its concealed holster, checking the chamber with a flick of his wrist.
"Riley, can you start the monster?"
Riley looked across twenty yards of open, bullet-swept asphalt toward her massive Ford F-650 flatbed.
The heavy diesel truck was still idling from when she had parked it earlier, its air brakes hissing softly through the rain.
The black Italian supercar was still securely ratcheted to the steel bed behind the cab.
"I can start it, drive it, and put it through a brick wall," Riley answered, her amber eyes burning with pure, reckless adrenaline.
Matteo looked at her, and in the middle of a hail of automatic gunfire, that dark, dangerous grin split his face.
"Get to the cab. Use the truck as a moving shield to extract your man Ben. I will clear the catwalk."
"You’re going onto the bridge alone?" Riley yelled, grabbing his soaked forearm. "He has an anti-material rifle!"
"He has an expensive rifle," Matteo corrected, leaning down until his lips almost touched her cheek. "I own the bridge."
Before she could argue, Matteo tapped his earpiece, speaking two words to his lead security operative:
"Suppressing fire. Eastern flank. Now."
The two Duca bodyguards stepped out from behind a line of scrap sedans, unleashing a sustained, deafening wall of automatic fire toward the eastern alley.
The tactical team ducked behind their Suburbans as rounds punched through the sheet metal.
"Go!" Matteo roared.
Riley didn't hesitate.
She lunged from behind the iron safe, staying low, her boots churning through the mud and gravel.
A sniper round kicked up wet gravel six inches behind her left boot, but she didn't slow down.
She hit the running board of the F-650 in a single leap, wrenched the heavy cab door open, and threw herself onto the torn vinyl driver’s seat.
The Pelican case landed with a heavy thump on the passenger floorboards.
She grabbed the floor-mounted gear shifter, slammed the heavy manual transmission into reverse, and stomped the accelerator to the floorboard.
The twin turbo-diesel engine screamed to life with forty thousand pounds of raw, torque-driven fury.
Black exhaust billowed from the chrome stacks as the ten-ton truck surged backward in a high-speed arc.
Riley cut the wheel violently, swinging the massive steel rear bumper directly over the ditch where Ben was cowering beneath the Peterbilt.
The reinforced flatbed slammed into the side of the lead tactical shooter’s SUV, caving the driver’s side door in by two feet and shoving the vehicle into the canal fence.
Riley kicked open the passenger door.
"Ben! Get in the cab! Now!"
Ben didn't need to be told twice.
The sixty-two-year-old mechanic scrambled out from beneath the axle with surprising agility, grabbed the chrome grab-bar, and hauled himself into the passenger seat, panting like a winded bear.
"Where in God’s name is the billionaire?" Ben wheezed, wiping muddy water from his gray beard.
Riley looked through the rain-streaked side mirror.
Matteo was gone from the yard.
Through the industrial glare of the floodlights, she saw a dark, agile figure scaling the rusty maintenance ladder on the southern pylon of the railway bridge.
He moved like a phantom through the steel girders, completely ignoring the rain-slick iron rungs eighty feet above the raging black water of the canal.
On the bridge catwalk above, the sniper was frantically adjusting his optic, searching for the driver of the flatbed.
He never heard Matteo coming.
A dark shape materialized out of the bridge shadows behind the shooter.
Matteo didn't fire his pistol.
He grabbed the barrel of the long rifle, wrenching it upward as a high-powered shot discharged harmlessly into the dark clouds.
In the next second, Matteo’s knee drove viciously into the sniper’s kidney.
The sniper gasped, dropping the heavy weapon, and reached for a combat blade at his tactical vest.
Matteo caught the man’s descending wrist, twisted the joint until bone snapped with a sickening pop, and drove his forearm straight across the man’s throat.
The sniper’s body went limp.
Matteo grabbed the operative by his tactical harness, lifting the two-hundred-pound man off his feet with terrifying ease, and hurled him over the iron railing into the freezing canal fifty feet below.
The splash was swallowed by the roar of the diesel engine.
Riley let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
"Good Lord Almighty," Ben breathed from the passenger seat, staring through the windshield. "That man isn't a CEO. That man is an absolute demon."
"He’s on our side, Ben," Riley said, her pulse racing with a strange, intoxicating electricity.
On the bridge above, Matteo grabbed the sniper’s dropped satellite radio from the metal grating.
He keyed the mic, speaking into the encrypted frequency used by the breach team in the yard below.
"This is Matteo Duca," his deep, calm voice resonated through the handheld radios of the three surviving tactical operatives near the Suburbans. "Your sniper is at the bottom of the shipping canal. Your corporate sponsor in Lake Forest has officially run out of money."
The surviving men in black tactical gear froze in the alleyway.
"Drop your weapons and walk out through the main gate," Matteo’s voice commanded like the judgment of God. "Or my security detail will leave your bodies in the wet concrete of the new terminal foundation."
The silence in the alley stretched for three agonizing seconds.
Then, with slow, calculated movements, the lead operative dropped his rifle into the mud.
The second and third men followed suit.
They turned without looking back, raised their hands, and walked slowly into the rain toward the main street, completely abandoning their disabled Suburbans.
Matteo descended the bridge ladder with smooth, measured steps, dropping onto the gravel of the yard.
Riley threw the truck into neutral, set the air brake with a sharp hiss, and climbed down to meet him in the center of the rain-drenched property.
Matteo walked toward her through the smoke and drizzle, his white shirt torn, his knuckles scraped and bloody, his hair plastered against his forehead.
He stopped inches from her, his dark eyes searching her face with an intensity that made the surrounding world dissolve.
"Did you lose any parts of my car?" he asked, his voice rough and low.
Riley let out a breathless, disbelieving laugh, wiping rain from her eyelashes.
"Not a single scratch on your precious paint, Mr. Duca."
Matteo stepped forward, his large, scarred hand cupping the side of her jaw.
His thumb traced the line of her cheekbone, cold skin against burning heat.
"I wasn't asking about the car, Riley."
Riley’s heart skipped an entire beat.
She stared up into his fierce, unyielding gaze, feeling the sudden, overwhelming gravitational pull that had existed between them since the moment he climbed into her truck cab.
"I'm fine," she whispered, her voice barely louder than the falling rain.
Matteo’s thumb lingered for a second longer before he turned toward the Pelican case resting on the hood of the truck.
"The ledgers in that box are enough to dismantle every corporate entity Elena controls," Matteo said, the tenderness vanishing beneath executive steel. "But paper doesn't win wars in Chicago. Power does."
"What is your next move?" Riley asked, stepping closer to his side.
"Elena has called an emergency executive council meeting at the Duca Lake Shore estate for eight o'clock tonight," Matteo said, looking toward the distant city lights glittering across the river. "She believes the sniper finished us both."
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He looked down at Riley, his eyes flashing with lethal anticipation.
"We are going to attend her dinner party."
