Chapter 9 - The Abyss Below
The maintenance catwalk was barely two feet wide, slick with grease, rain water, and algae. The river raged violently beneath us, a black, churning vortex of white-water rapids crashing against jagged granite boulders.
Julian coughed, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the steel grate, before lunging forward with a heavy combat knife he had drawn from his tactical vest. The blade flashed in the pale moonlight, slicing through the sleeve of my jacket and grazing the skin of my forearm with a fiery, white-hot sting.
I didn't flinch. Adrenaline pumped through my veins with the intensity of pure rocket fuel. When you’ve spent years dodging mortar fire and shrapnel in foreign deserts, a knife fight on a rain-slicked bridge in Virginia felt almost routine.
Julian swung again, a wild, emotional slash aimed at my throat.
I ducked beneath the arc, stepped inside his guard, and delivered a devastating front kick straight to his midsection. The impact knocked the wind out of him with a violent wheeze, but he managed to grab my jacket collar, dragging us both down onto the slippery metal grating in a chaotic tangle of flailing limbs and heavy boots.
“You should have stayed overseas, Dean!” Julian snarled, pressing his forearm hard against my windpipe, trying to suffocate me against the cold iron floor. “You’re just a pawn! A disposable infantryman playing in a billionaire’s chess game!”
“I’m not a pawn, Julian,” I choked out, my fingers tightening around his wrist, forcing the knife blade away from my face. “I’m the board.”
With a sudden surge of explosive strength born from pure fury and exhaustion, I leveraged my legs against the bridge railing, flipped us over, and pinned Julian flat on his back against the edge of the catwalk.
His boots dangled precariously over the open abyss of the roaring river below.
Up on the main bridge deck, Vance and Eli had secured Cameron Voss, who was curled up in a fetal position, sobbing hysterically while federal backup units finally sirens-blared their arrival, flooding the bridge with blinding white spotlights.
Julian stared up at me, his eyes wide with a mixture of hatred and sudden, desperate realization.
“You think locking me up changes anything?” Julian spat, blood dripping from his chin. “There are others, Dean. Men much richer and more powerful than Richard ever dreamed of. Syndicates that stretch all the way into the Pentagon. You can't kill them all.”
“I don’t need to kill them all,” I whispered, staring down into his panicked eyes. “I just need to make an example of the ones who touch my wife.”
I let go of his collar.
Julian let out a sharp gasp, slipping backward off the edge of the narrow catwalk. For a split second, his fingers clawed desperately at the rusted steel grating of the ledge, his fingernails scraping uselessly against the iron.
Then his grip gave way.
He fell through the darkness, swallowed whole by the raging, black waters of the river below, disappearing into the foam without a trace.
I stood up slowly, wiping the rain and sweat from my forehead, and walked back up the steel ramp to the main bridge deck.
Federal agents and state troopers swarmed the area, arresting the remaining mercenaries and bundling Cameron Voss into an unmarked federal van. Vance tossed me a clean towel, his face expressionless.
“Area is secure, Captain,” Vance reported quietly. “The FBI is taking over jurisdiction. General Hale is on the secure line from the Pentagon. He wants a full debrief.”
I took the satellite phone from Vance’s hand, pressing it to my ear.
“General,” I said, my voice steady against the howling wind.
May you like
“Is it over, son?” Hale’s deep, gravelly voice came through the receiver.
“The syndicate is broken,” I replied, looking out over the dark Virginia hills toward the quarry safe house where Emily was sleeping. “The war is over, General. I’m coming home to my wife.”
