Chapter 8 - The National Guard Barrier
The concussive crack of the high-caliber round still rang in the enclosed cabin of the Suburban as Dominic’s reflexes took over.
In a fraction of a second, his massive frame surged upward, forcing Elena flat onto the floorboard beneath the dashboard with his left arm while his right arm shoved all four boys down into the footwell behind the front seats, covering their small bodies with the heavy, Kevlar-lined seat cushions.
"STAY DOWN!" Dominic roared, the sound tearing from his throat like thunder.
Through the spiderwebbed ballistic glass, the blinding white glare of the fifty-thousand-lumen searchlight washed over the vehicle.
Advancing down the center of Commercial Street was not a police cruiser. It was an M1117 Guardian armored security vehicle, painted in desert camouflage, bearing the insignia of the Massachusetts National Guard. Mounted to its rotating roof turret was a heavy Browning M2 .50-caliber machine gun, its massive barrel tracking the Suburban's radiator with mechanical indifference.
"This is Colonel Thomas Vance!" an amplified, metallic voice boomed from the armored vehicle’s external public address system. "Under executive order from Governor William Sterling, the City of Boston is placed under emergency martial declaration! Turn off your engine and exit the vehicle with your hands raised, Dominic Moretti! Any resistance will be met with lethal tactical force!"
Elena’s face was pressed against the rubber floor mat, her heart hammering violently as she clutched Leo’s small hand. "Dominic... the National Guard?! Sterling mobilized the military?!"
"Sterling didn't mobilize the Guard," Dominic snarled, his eyes narrowing to lethal slits as he assessed the armored vehicle through the cracks in the glass. "Thomas Vance is Salvatore Vane’s brother-in-law. A corrupt reserve colonel who commands the regional logistical armory in Quincy. Sterling gave Vance an emergency executive signature to deploy a rogue unit under the guise of an anti-terror drill."
In the front seat, Marco had his combat shotgun resting on the doorframe, his teeth bared in a feral grimace. "Boss, my twenty men can lay down a suppression spread with the rifles, but small arms won't pierce that Guardian's armor plate. If that fifty-cal opens up, it will cut this Suburban in half."
"They don't want to cut the truck in half, Marco," Dominic said coldly, his mind calculating angles with mathematical precision. "The children are inside. If Vance kills the direct heirs on live surveillance, the legal trust dissolves into the state treasury. He needs the boys extracted alive to force the probate signature."
Dominic turned his head toward the floorboard where his sons were huddled.
All four boys were silent now, their small bodies shaking, but none of them were crying. Lorenzo, the youngest by four minutes, was holding his father’s silver wristwatch, his tiny fingers stroking the cold metal as if it were a talisman.
"Leo," Dominic spoke softly, his voice dropping into that deep, calming register that instantly anchored the room.
The six-year-old looked up, his dark brown eyes wide and steady. "Yes, Daddy?"
"Do you trust me, son?"
"Yes, Daddy," Leo whispered without hesitation.
"I need you to be the commander of your brothers for the next sixty seconds," Dominic said, reaching down to press his thumb against the boy’s cheek. "You hold their hands. You keep your heads between the floorboards. Whatever noise you hear outside, you do not look out the window. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir," Leo said, his little jaw squaring in an exact, miniature mirror of his father’s posture.
Dominic looked at Elena.
Her hazel eyes were shining with tears, but her expression had turned to pure, unyielding granite. She reached up, her trembling fingers tangling into his damp black hair, pulling his face down to hers, pressing her lips fiercely against his mouth in a kiss that tasted of rain, copper, and twenty years of unspoken devotion.
"Bring us home, Dominic," she whispered against his lips.
"I will," he promised.
Dominic didn't open his door.
He climbed over the center console into the driver's seat, shoving the crushed windshield glass forward with his bare forearm. He reached beneath the steering column, pulling a hidden toggle switch marked with an emergency red cap—the auxiliary nitrous-oxide purge for the custom supercharged 6.2-liter engine.
He didn't put the truck in reverse.
"Marco!" Dominic barked. "Tell the cement truck driver to blow his air horns on my mark!"
Fifty yards ahead, the M1117 Guardian armored vehicle halted, its fifty-caliber barrel adjusting its elevation to aim directly at the Suburban’s engine block.
"FINAL WARNING, MORETTI!" Colonel Vance’s voice crackled through the storm. "STEP OUT OR WE FIRE!"
"Mark!" Dominic roared.
The seventy-ton cement truck blocking the rear of the alley detonated its twin industrial air horns in a deafening, continuous blast of concussive sound that shook the brick walls of the warehouses.
The National Guard gunner in the turret flinched, his focus momentarily pulled toward the massive wall of iron to his flank.
In that exact microsecond, Dominic slammed his boot down onto the accelerator and flipped the red nitrous toggle.
The Suburban’s engine didn't roar; it screamed like an erupting jet turbine.
Nine hundred horsepower hit the all-wheel-drive transmission instantly. The three-ton armored truck surged forward across the wet asphalt at eighty miles an hour, not veering, not seeking cover, rocketing straight down the center of the narrow alley directly toward the front bumper of the armored Guardian.
Colonel Vance’s face appeared in the armored vision block of the military vehicle, his jaw dropping in sheer, disbelieving horror as he realized Dominic wasn't trying to escape.
Dominic was using his three-ton truck as a missile.
Ten yards before impact, Dominic didn't brace. He didn't close his eyes. He yanked the steering wheel four inches to the left, catching the low, sloped steel prow of the military vehicle with his reinforced steel bull-bar at a precise thirty-degree deflection angle.
KABOOM.
The concussive kinetic collision was apocalyptic.
The Suburban’s heavy steel frame didn't crumple; it acted as a wedge against the military vehicle's higher center of gravity. The sheer momentum lifted the twelve-ton Guardian off its front wheels, flipping the military armored vehicle completely onto its side in a screeching, catastrophic slide of sparks and tearing iron that smashed it into the brick foundation of the warehouse.
The Suburban spun three times across the wet intersection of Commercial Street, tires smoking, before coming to a rest against the curb of the harbor pier, its radiator hissing steam into the rain, its engine still rumbling.
Dominic kicked his door open into the storm, stepping out onto the wet pavement, his Sig Sauer drawn and smoking in his hand.
The National Guard vehicle lay crippled on its side, fuel leaking from its ruptured tanks, Colonel Vance trapped inside the crushed turret.
Sirens wailed in the distance—not the rogue units of the city, but the heavy, multi-tone wails of forty vehicles from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Hostage Rescue Team, descending on Commercial Street from the expressway.
Leading the federal convoy was an armored command Suburban, bearing the seal of the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts.
Stepping out from the passenger seat was not a federal agent.
It was an elderly woman with silver hair pulled into an immaculate chignon, wearing a tailored navy overcoat, leaning on an ivory-headed cane.
It was Maria Moretti—Dominic’s biological mother, the matriarch who had supposedly died of a stroke twelve years ago in Naples.
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The old woman walked through the rain, stopping five paces from Dominic, her dark eyes identical to his, looking at the bruised don with an expression of cold, sovereign triumph.
"You always did know how to drive a truck, Dominic," Maria said, her voice smooth as crushed velvet. "Now... let me meet my four grandsons."
