Chapter 34 - A Feast for the Jackals
The main assembly hall of the foundry was a cathedral of rust, fire, and death.
Dozens of muzzle flashes flickered from the high overhead cranes, pinning Julian and his fireteam behind a row of rusted slag vats. Ricochets whined through the air like angry hornets, sparks showering down as high-caliber rounds tore into the iron machinery.
"Clara! Take the eastern catwalk!" Julian shouted over the deafening cacophony of automatic fire. He popped out from behind cover, firing controlled bursts from his assault rifle that dropped two snipers positioned on the overhead gantry. "I’ll draw the heavy fire! Go!"
Clara didn't hesitate. She scrambled up the maintenance stairs, dodging a hail of bullets that tore through the sheet-metal wall inches from her head.
Below her, in the center of the vast, hollow chamber, a makeshift staging area had been erected around the entrance to the subterranean dry-dock.
Sitting in a high-backed leather chair, looking like an emperor reigning over a kingdom of rot, was Don Luciano.
He was dressed in an impeccably tailored three-piece charcoal suit, entirely unbothered by the carnage raging fifty feet away. Beside him stood a massive titanium travel case, wired into a portable satellite terminal.
And in a secure, padded ballistic bassinet resting on a steel work table right beside the detonator... lay the baby.
The child was crying, the small, desperate wails piercing through Clara’s soul even over the roar of the gunfight.
"Luciano!" Clara’s scream wasn't human. It was the roar of a mother whose child was within reach of a predator.
Luciano slowly turned his ruined, scarred face toward the catwalk. A grotesque smile stretched his withered lips.
"Ah, the little dove arrives!" he shouted over the gunfire, his voice amplified by the foundry's acoustics. "You have your mother's temper, Clara! But do you have her cowardice?"
He reached down, his leather-gloved hand picking up a heavy steel detonator switch connected to thick coils of military-grade C4 plastered all along the structural support columns of the dry-dock.
"One step down those stairs, little girl," Luciano warned, his thumb hovering directly over the red arming toggle, "and I collapse the ceiling into the canal. Your precious little heir will sleep at the bottom of the bay before you can even touch her cheek."
Across the hall, the gunfire abruptly ceased.
Julian and Constance emerged from the smoking corridor, their weapons raised, but frozen in place as they saw the explosive charges wired around the bassinet. Julian’s chest was heaving, a graze across his temple leaking a steady ribbon of crimson down his cheek.
Constance stepped forward, her shotgun lowered, her face pale.
"Let the child go, Luciano," Constance said, her voice dropping into a desperate plea she had never once uttered in her life. "Take the ledger. Take the bearer bonds. Take every cent in Zurich and Liechtenstein. It’s all yours. Just give her to Clara."
Luciano let out a dry, rattling chuckle that devolved into a harsh, coughing fit. He wiped his mouth with a silk handkerchief, flecks of dark blood staining the fabric.
"You always were short-sighted, Constance," Luciano rasped, his eyes burning with madness. "Money? Do you really think a dying man cares about paper in a Swiss bank? I spent thirty years locked in the prison of my own rotting flesh! I watched you build a paradise on my bones!"
He pointed the gold-plated revolver directly at the crying infant in the bassinet.
May you like
"I don't want your money, my sweet wife," Luciano snarled, his finger tightening on the trigger. "I want to watch the Valente dynasty die before my heart stops beating!"
***
