Chapter 30: Iron and Ash

The storm over the East River had reached its peak by 11:55 PM. Heavy, wind-driven rain beat down in sheets, blurring the harsh yellow floodlights of the Queens dry dock into jagged, watery smears.

The Nereid, a rust-streaked, three-hundred-foot panamax cargo ship, sat immobile in the draining lock. To any passing patrol, she looked like an abandoned vessel awaiting scrapped steel recycling. But through my thermal night-vision goggles, the ship burned red and orange with human heat.

Over forty heavily armed mercenaries were moving across the upper deck and inside the cargo holds, checking weapons crates and preparing for an insertion that would never come.

"Nadia," I whispered into my collar mic, kneeling behind a rusted shipping container twenty yards from the gangplank. Rain streamed down the matte-black tactical visor of my reinforced body armor. "Status on their comms?"

"Loop is live, Queenie," Nadia’s voice came through the encrypted ear-piece, crisp and untroubled despite the storm. "I’ve jammed their long-range satellite link to Colombia. Their local tactical radios are feeding into a digital void. They think Silvano is stepping onto the dock right now."

Beside me, Lucian checked the action on his suppressed MP5, the weapon looking impossibly sleek against his fitted black tactical gear. Even in full urban combat gear, he moved with the liquid grace of a duelist.

"Forty mercenaries," Lucian murmured, his silver eyes flashing behind his ballistic goggles as he glanced at me. "Arthur Vance spent a fortune gathering these scraps from former South American paramilitaries."

"He spent a fortune buying them a tomb," Damian rasped from my left. He carried a heavy shotgun slung across his chest and a pair of customized suppressed sidearms. He looked massive, a literal force of nature built for door-kicking and bloodletting.

Damian tapped his tactical watch. 12:00 AM.

"Clear to breach," I ordered softly. "No survivors. Arthur Vance gets a ghost ship back."

We moved as a three-point spearhead.

Damian took the point, surging up the steel gangplank with terrifying speed for a man his size. Two mercenary sentries stationed at the top of the ramp turned at the sound of boots on wet metal, but before either could raise their rifles, Damian fired twice. The double-tap of suppressed 9mm rounds sounded like crisp twigs snapping in the rain.

Both guards collapsed back onto the deck before their bodies even hit the steel floor.

Lucian and I swept past Damian, crossing the threshold onto the main deck.

A third guard stepped around the housing stack, carrying a short-barreled carbine. Lucian fluidly closed the distance, parrying the mercenary’s barrel with the heavy frame of his submachine gun before driving a knife upward under the guard’s jaw in one seamless, lethal stroke. He lowered the body without making a sound.

"Sub-deck one is clear," Lucian whispered, flicking his blade clean with a sharp snap of his wrist. "Damian, hold the engine room access. Valerie and I will breach the central hold."

"Don't take all the fun, little Queen," Damian grinned darkly behind his face mask, slinging his shotgun and dropping down the steel ladder toward the lower mechanical decks. Seconds later, muffled thuds and heavy metallic impacts echoed from below as Damian met the engine crew.

Lucian and I flanked the heavy double doors leading to the main cargo hold where Silvano’s fifteen weapon crates sat stacked alongside Vance’s primary mercenary strike force.

I held up three fingers. Three. Two. One.

I kicked the manual release bar, and Lucian hurled a flashbang through the opening.

A blinding white flash and a concussive CRACK shattered the quiet inside the hold. Before the echo could fade, we crossed the threshold, guns up, sweeping the room.

Disoriented mercenaries were stumbling back from the blinding light, reaching for rifles stacked on wooden pallets.

Lucian’s MP5 sang a quiet, rhythmic lullaby, three-round bursts dropping two men near the generator before they could clear their holsters. I stepped to his flank, my suppressed sidearm coming up, aligning sight-picture to target. I squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession, dropping a mercenary charging with a tactical blade directly into the center tile.

"Valerie, high gantry!" Lucian called out, pivoting to lay suppressing fire toward the upper catwalk.

A mercenary sniper was scrambling into position above us. I raised my weapon, compensated for the angle, and fired two rounds into his chest armor, followed by a third straight through his throat. He pitched over the railing, crashing forty feet down onto a wooden crate with a sickening crunch.

Within ninety seconds, the high-ceilinged hold fell dead silent, saved for the hiss of ruptured hydraulic lines and the rain rattling against the hull above.

Fourteen mercenaries lay motionless across the floor.

At the far end of the room, sitting atop an un-opened crate of anti-vehicle launchers, sat the primary satellite terminal Arthur Vance had provided his commander. The blue link light was pulsing desperately, trying to establish a connection to Colombia that Nadia had permanently severed.

Damian walked back into the hold, wiping blood off his tactical gloves with an unbothered expression. "The engine room is secured. Scuttling charges are set along the lower hull."

Lucian walked over to the main satellite terminal, drawing a small hardware drive from his utility belt and plugging it directly into the console.

"Nadia," Lucian said into his comms. "We have physical access to Vance's field terminal."

"Downloading their location coordinates now..." Nadia’s voice chirped in our ears. A progress bar flashed across the terminal screen: 10% ... 50% ... 100%. "Got it. I have the exact GPS coordinates for Arthur Vance’s compound in the hills of El Poblado, Medellín. Plus his private frequency."

"Patch me through to his private line," I commanded, stepping up to the terminal.

A soft dial tone sounded through the satellite console speaker, echoing through the blood-spattered hold. After three sharp rings, a smooth, refined voice answered, a voice I hadn't heard since the day he abandoned me to the Rossi family four years ago.

"Silvano?" Arthur Vance asked, his tone crisp, arrogant, and entirely calm. "Is the shipment secured? Are my men on New York soil?"

I leaned into the microphone, my voice dropping into a register of absolute, icy finality.

"Hello, Father."

Silence stretched across the line, heavy, suffocating, and absolute.

"Valerie?" Arthur’s composure faltered for the briefest second, a rare flicker of shock slipping through his tone. "Where is Silvano?"

"Silvano is dead. Your mercenaries are dead. And your ship is sitting at the bottom of the East River in approximately four minutes," I said smoothly.

Beside me, Damian clicked the detonator remote into standby mode, his dark eyes fixed on me with raw, burning pride. Lucian stood at my shoulder, his hand coming up to rest possessively over my nape, his fingers tangling softly in my hair.

"You think you’ve won something, girl?" Arthur hissed, his voice turning toxic and bitter. "You're playing a game you don't understand. The Rossi boys will discard you the second."

"The Dons didn't make me Queen, Arthur," I interrupted softly, cutting him off before he could finish. "I took the crown myself. And now, I’m coming to take your head."

Before he could reply, I hit the terminate button on the console, severing the link forever.

Damian pressed the red toggle on his remote.

A series of heavy, muffled explosions shook the deep keel of the vessel. Seawater roared into the lower compartments with the sound of a rushing waterfall.

"Time to go, Queenie," Damian said, offering me his hand.

I took it, stepping over the fallen mercenaries as Lucian escorted us back into the pouring rain. Behind us, the Nereid began her slow, majestic tilt into the dark waters of the Queens dry dock, sinking into the mud along with Arthur Vance’s foolish ambition.

We stood at the edge of the pier, watching the water swallow the last of the stern.

Lucian wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me flush against his side, his lips pressing a hot, fierce kiss against my rain-slicked temple. Damian stood at my other side, his broad chest rising and falling as he looked down at me with lethal adoration.

"Medellín awaits," Lucian whispered against my ear.

"Pack light," I replied, staring out over the black water. "We're not staying long.”