Chapter 5 - The Tide Turns
The hum of the Ashford private helicopter vibrating against my chest felt entirely unreal.
Less than two hours ago, I had been holding a towel in the grand ballroom, terrified of losing a minimum-wage housekeeping job that barely covered my rent. Now, I was strapped into a tactical jump seat wearing a Kevlar vest over my maid's uniform shirt, flying through the dark, salt-chilled skies toward the rugged coastline of Long Island.
Alexander sat across from me in the dim cabin, checking the magazine of a matte-black sidearm with methodical precision. Marcus was up front in the copilots seat, communicating in coded bursts with two trailing tactical vans driving along the Long Island Expressway.
"You don't have to come on the ground," Alexander said over the roar of the rotor blades, looking up from his weapon. "Once we touch down near the Montauk yards, my men can handle the extraction."
"I didn't spend ten years training with my father to sit in a helicopter while someone else cleans up a mess that involves my family's history," I shouted back over the noise.
Alexander didn't argue. A faint, humorless smile touched the corners of his mouth. "Your father would probably kill me if he knew I let his daughter walk into a mafia stash house."
"My father taught me that control is everything," I replied, securing the strap on my tactical gloves. "As long as we control the approach, numbers don't matter."
The helicopter banked sharply, its landing lights cutting through the thick coastal fog to reveal the rusted skeleton of the abandoned Montauk naval shipyard. Rows of decaying corrugated-steel warehouses stretched out toward the dark, churning Atlantic Ocean. Tied up at the crumbling concrete pier sat a sleek, unmarked twin-engine motor yacht idling against the swell.
Marcus brought the chopper down in a wide, gravel-strewn clearing behind the largest warehouse, kicking up a blinding storm of dust and dry salt grass.
"We're down," Marcus announced, cutting the engines. "Thermal imaging shows three heat signatures inside the primary pier office. Julian Vance is one of them. The other two are heavily armed Volkov enforcers."
"Let's move," Alexander ordered, swinging open the cabin door.
We hit the ground in a low crouch, the damp ocean air biting sharply against our skin. The silence of the shipyard was absolute, save for the rhythmic crash of the waves against the concrete pilings and the low hum of the yacht's idling engines.
We crept toward the side entrance of the pier office—a dilapidated brick structure with cracked windows and a rotting wooden door. Marcus signaled that he and the secondary team would secure the perimeter and cut off any escape toward the water.
Alexander and I slipped through the side door into the unlit interior.
Dust motes danced in the pale beam of moonlight filtering through a skylight. In the center of the room, illuminated by the glow of an open laptop screen, stood Julian Vance. His expensive designer suit jacket was gone, his sleeves rolled up, as he frantically transferred data from a heavy military-grade thumb drive into a satellite uplink.
Standing behind him with automatic weapons drawn were two men whose faces I recognized from the surveillance photos in Alexander's office.
"Hurry up," one of the enforcers barked, his voice echoing in the hollow room. "The transport leaves in five minutes."
"I'm going as fast as the encryption allows," Julian snapped back, his hands shaking slightly over the keyboard. "The Ashford firewall was more complex than Volkov anticipated."
Alexander stepped out from the shadows of the doorway, his pistol raised and steady.
"I'm afraid your transfer has been canceled, Julian," Alexander said smoothly.
Julian spun around, his face draining white. The two enforcers instantly whipped their weapons around toward Alexander—
They made a fatal mistake. They focused entirely on the armed man standing in front of them.
They forgot about the shadow moving along the wall to their left.
I didn't hesitate. My training took over completely. I closed the distance in three silent strides, striking the first enforcer’s elbow with a razor-sharp chop that sent his weapon clattering across the concrete floor. As he wheeled around to face me, I swept his legs out, driving him down into a stack of wooden pallets.
The second enforcer raised his rifle toward me—
Before he could pull the trigger, Alexander’s sidearm barked once, the silenced round catching the enforcer’s shoulder and spinning him hard against the brick wall where he slid down unconscious.
Silence descended on the room once more, broken only by the hum of the open laptop screen.
Julian Vance stood paralyzed, his hands hovering inches above the keyboard, staring at me as if I were a demon conjured from the sea.
"It's over, Julian," Alexander said, walking forward and pressing the barrel of his pistol against the CFO's temple. "Unlock the uplink. Now."
Julian swallowed hard, his eyes darting frantically toward the door. "You think stopping me changes anything, Ashford? You think Volkov is just a local gang boss?" He let out a hysterical, breathless laugh. "The ledger was already mirrored to an external server in Zurich ten minutes ago. Even if you kill me here, the entire shipping network belongs to Moscow by sunrise."
Alexander froze, his finger tightening on the trigger.
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Before Alexander could pull it, a sharp, piercing alarm began to shriek from the laptop screen. A bold red warning banner flashed across the display, accompanied by an incoming encrypted video call from an unrecognized international IP address.
Julian smiled grimly. "Answer it, boss. That's your new partner."
