Chapter 9 - Blood on the Docks
The rain had slowed to a miserable, freezing drizzle by the time Gideon and Sarah burst through the rear kitchen doors and sprinted down the stone-paved path toward the private marina. The Chicago River churned violently against the wooden pilings, its dark, swollen waters reflecting the sickly yellow glow of the industrial docklights flickering in the distance.
Ahead of them, docked against the concrete pier, sat a sleek, militarized hydrofoil with its twin diesel engines idling at a low, vibrating hum. Two armed men in heavy black tactical gear—no insignia, just blank matte-black helmets—were dragging two small, struggling figures toward the boarding ramp.
“Maya! Lily!” Sarah shouted, breaking into a dead sprint despite the treacherous footing on the wet concrete.
“Hold your fire until we’re in position!” Gideon yelled back, his eyes scanning the surrounding shipping containers and crane gantries for secondary snipers. In his line of work, you never assumed a target was isolated; an extraction team always had overwatch.
As if on cue, the sharp crack of a suppressed sniper rifle shattered the silence, a heavy-caliber round sparking against the concrete inches from Sarah’s boot. She threw herself sideways, rolling hard behind a stack of rusted steel shipping pallets, returning fire with her Berettas toward the crane gantry overhead.
“Sniper, twelve o’clock!” Sarah called out over the roar of the river.
Gideon didn't flinch. He dropped to one knee, raised the Sig MPX, and sighted in on the two tactical operatives hauling the children up the hydrofoil’s ramp. The older girl, Maya, was kicking and screaming, biting down hard on the forearm of the operative holding her, while little Lily sobbed hysterically.
Thip-thip-thip.
The integrated suppressor on Gideon’s submachine gun coughed a trio of suppressed rounds. The first operative jerked violently as a bullet caught him in the shoulder, tumbling backward off the metal ramp into the freezing dark water of the river. The second operative froze, dropping Maya’s arm and reaching for his sidearm, but Sarah’s precise pistol fire caught him cleanly in the thigh, dropping him to his knees with a muffled curse.
“Get the girls!” Gideon shouted, pushing forward across the open concrete with his weapon trained on the hydrofoil’s open cabin door.
Maya grabbed her little sister’s hand and scrambled off the ramp, running blindly toward the stack of shipping pallets where Sarah was maintaining cover. Sarah scooped both children into her arms, pressing their faces into her chest to shield them from the flying debris as another sniper round pinged off the hull of the boat.
Gideon reached the base of the hydrofoil ramp, stepping over the wounded operative groaning on the wet metal. He kicked the cabin door wide open, his weapon raised to clear the interior.
The cabin was empty, save for a single laptop resting on the mahogany navigation console. The screen was lit up, displaying a live video feed from a subterranean medical laboratory.
And right there on the screen, staring directly into the camera with big, terrified eyes, was a four-year-old girl with dark hair and a pale, tear-stained face.
Ren.
May you like
Before Gideon could reach for the console, the laptop speaker crackled to life, and a smooth, chillingly familiar voice echoed through the empty cabin.
“Welcome to the end of the line, Gideon. If you want to see your daughter alive again, leave the waterfront and come alone to the silos.”
