Chapter 8 - Blood on the Docks
The two operatives at the ladder didn't even have time to raise their submachine guns before Sebastian’s shots dropped them both into the grimy water of the pier basin.
“Go! Now!” Sebastian yelled, grabbing my arm and hauling me through the rusted iron gate out into the open gray light of the Manhattan waterfront.
The morning storm had cleared slightly, leaving a bitter, freezing wind whipping across the choppy gray water of the harbor. Fifty yards away, idling beside a decaying wooden pier, sat a massive, rusted cargo freighter—Slip 12. Its diesel engines thrummed with a low, bone-deep vibration, black exhaust billowing from its single stack into the bruised sky.
“Is that—is that where we’re going?” I asked, shivering violently in the heavy wool coat, the Glock still gripped white-knuckled in my hand.
“That’s our ticket out,” Sebastian said, scanning the open docks behind us. He knew Kane and his men would clear the tunnel corner any second.
We raced across the open wooden planks of the pier, the wind screaming in our ears. Just as we reached the steel gangplank leading up to the freighter’s side deck, a sharp, mechanical pop rang out from the tunnel entrance behind us.
Thwack!
A bullet splintered the wooden railing an inch from Sebastian’s hand.
“Get on the ship!” Sebastian shouted, shoving me up the gangplank.
“I’m not leaving you!” I screamed back over the roar of the wind.
“Valerie, move!”
He turned back, raising his pistol to lay down suppression fire against Kane, who had just emerged from the tunnel exit with his remaining men, spraying wild, angry rounds across the open pier.
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I scrambled up the steel ramp, burst through the heavy watertight side door of the freighter, and pressed my back against the metal bulkhead, gasping for air.
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