Chapter 26 - The Lion in the Crosshairs
The moment Luca’s boots hit the rusted metal planks of Dock 2, hell opened its jaws.
A blinding spotlight snapped on from the crane tower, catching Luca and his men in a circular beam of harsh white luminescence.
"Moretti!" Mateo's amplified voice boomed across the industrial yard through the facility’s loudspeaker system, distorted with static and manic satisfaction. "Right on schedule! Did you really think you could outplay me on my own ground?"
Heavy automatic gunfire ripped through the silence before the echo of Mateo's voice could even fade. High-caliber rounds chewed into the wooden dock pilings, sending splinters flying like shrapnel.
Luca dove behind a stack of industrial shipping containers, his rifle barking in sharp, disciplined three-round bursts. "Mateo! You took my house! You took my people! Step down from that tower and face me like a man, you coward!"
"A man?" Mateo laughed, the sound cold and ringing from the crane catwalk. "Your father was a coward, Luca! He traded my family’s blood for peace with the Council twenty years ago! I’m not here to fight you like a man. I’m here to butcher your legacy piece by piece!"
While the entire rail yard erupted into crossfire—grenades exploding against steel bulkheads, tracer rounds streaking red and green through the sleet—I slipped out of the icy water at the facility's blind southern edge.
My soaked combat suit was heavy, but the freezing rain kept my senses razor-sharp. I hooked my collapsible grappling hook onto the rusted lip of an overhead ventilation shaft and hauled myself up with fluid, practiced ease. Ten years of surviving in the shadows, of slipping through locked doors as a maid while cataloging security weak points, had made me a ghost.
I dropped onto the corrugated roof of the central smelting shed without a sound.
Beneath me, through the rusted skylights, I could see the medical trailer. Two guards in unmarked tactical gear stood outside the double doors, their rifles raised toward the dock where Luca was drawing all the fire.
I drew my suppressed pistol. Two muffled *thwips* hissed through the storm.
Both guards crumpled silently into the gravel.
May you like
I swung down from the roof girder, hitting the ground in a tight roll, and threw open the trailer door.
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