Chapter 13 - The Warehouse on the Main
The industrial port on the southern bank of the Main River smelled of diesel exhaust, brackish water, and decaying iron. Fog rolled off the river in thick, sulfurous waves, swallowing the bases of the massive rusted cargo cranes that lined the docks.
Nathan drove with the Suburban’s headlights extinguished, navigating by night-vision optics. In the passenger seat, I checked the slide of my Sig Sauer P320,chambering a nine-millimeter round with a crisp mechanical snap.
"Thermal scan is clear," Nathan said quietly, tapping the dashboard monitor. "No heat signatures on the perimeter. But that doesn't mean anything with Arthur. He taught the unit how to defeat thermal blankets in eighty-four."
We parked behind a stack of rotting shipping containers fifty yards from Warehouse 9. The building was a cavernous corrugated-steel hangar, its roof partially collapsed, its glass windows long ago shattered by vandals and winter storms.
"Stay five paces behind me," Nathan instructed, unholstering his weapon. "If this is an ambush orchestrated by Bradley's European contacts, we don't bunch up."
We moved through the rusted personnel door on the eastern wall, stepping onto cracked concrete littered with gravel and broken glass. Inside, the darkness was absolute, save for shafts of pale moonlight filtering through the broken ceiling.
"Nathan," a voice called out.
The sound came from the high catwalk forty feet above us. It was dry, raspy, and entirely devoid of fear.
Nathan raised his weapon instantly, tracing the sound. "Step into the light. Hands where we can see them."
A soft, gravelly chuckle echoed off the steel girders. "Still using the stance I taught you at Fort Bragg, nephew. A little too wide in the hips. Leaves your center of mass vulnerable to a low ricochet."
Footsteps clicked against the iron rungs of an access ladder. A figure descended deliberately, moving with the quiet efficiency of an operator who had spent half a century moving through the dark.
When his boots hit the concrete floor twenty paces from us, he stepped into the moonlit square.
The breath left my lungs in an agonizing rush.
He was seventy years old, his hair stark white and cut close to his scalp. A jagged scar ran from his left temple down into the collar of his weathered canvas jacket—the clear remnant of an aviation crash. But the broad shoulders, the straight nose, and the penetrating gray eyes were unmistakable.
"Hello, Little Bird," Arthur Vance said, his voice trembling slightly for the first time.
I lowered my weapon, my hands shaking. "Thirty years, Dad. Thirty years in the dirt while Richard took everything you owned. Everything we had."
"Richard took a ghost's shadow, Claire," Arthur said, taking two slow steps forward. He didn't raise his hands; he just looked at me with an agonizing mixture of pride and grief. "If I had come home after Panama, Richard would have killed you and your mother before the week was out."
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"You were a full colonel in JSOC!" Nathan barked, his gun still trained on his uncle's chest. "You had the ear of the Joint Chiefs! You could have crushed Richard with one phone call to the Pentagon!"
"Not in eighty-nine, Nathan," Arthur replied, turning his gaze toward his nephew. "Because Richard wasn't acting alone. He was the field courier for the Aegis Directorate. And the man who signed the order to shoot down my helicopter in Colón... was sitting in the Secretary of the Army's office."
