Chapter 6 - THE ROOFTOP EXTRACTION
The vault door shuddered violently.
BOOM.
A second C4 charge cracked the reinforced steel frame.
Acrid black smoke hissed through the ruptured seals.
“Two minutes, boss!” Marco shouted, racking the bolt on a tactical shotgun.
Over the radio receiver, Director Vance’s voice cut through the static:
“Extraction team is thirty seconds out.”
“Black Hawk callsign Valkyrie Four.”
“Roof access only.”
Gabriel dropped the receiver.
He walked to the weapon locker and grabbed a lightweight tactical vest.
He slipped it over Claire’s head, tightening the side velcro straps around her ribs while leaving her stomach free from pressure.
“Put your hands over your ears when we hit the roof,” Gabriel told her.
“The rotor wash will be deafening.”
“Gabriel,” Claire said, grabbing his wrist.
Her hazel eyes searched his face.
“You’re giving them everything?”
“The family business... your empire... you’re throwing it away?”
Gabriel looked down at her fingers.
“An empire is just concrete and blood, Claire.”
“You are carrying my future.”
He kissed her forehead, hard and fierce.
“Now move.”
Gabriel kicked open the emergency escape hatch set into the ceiling of the vault.
A retractable titanium ladder dropped into the room with a sharp rattle.
“Marco, take the point!”
Marco climbed first, pushing the heavy roof hatch open into the torrential rain.
Gabriel hoisted Claire onto the ladder, keeping his hands right beneath her boots as she climbed into the storm.
They broke onto the rooftop helipad.
The wind was a howling monster, whipping rain sideways across the tar-paper surface.
Manhattan was a sprawling grid of wet lights sixty stories below.
Across the rooftop, four Moretti gunmen scrambled out of the emergency stairwell, their weapons raised.
Crack-crack-crack.
Bullets chipped the concrete parapet beside Claire’s head.
Gabriel shoved her down behind the heavy elevator motor housing.
He stepped out into the open rain, firing his Sig Sauer with surgical, deadly precision.
The lead shooter spun and collapsed onto the gravel.
The second took two rounds to the center chest, falling backward through the stairwell doorway.
Then, from the dark clouds above Park Avenue, a massive twin-turbine Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter emerged.
It had no military markings.
Just a matte-black fuselage and high-intensity searchlights that illuminated the rooftop like high noon.
The helicopter hovered six feet above the helipad.
Two federal tactical operators in black body armor slid down fast-ropes onto the roof, their carbines barking as they suppressed the remaining Moretti shooters.
“MR. DELUCA! MOVE! MOVE!” an operator screamed over the deafening roar of the rotors.
Gabriel grabbed Claire by the waist, lifting her off her feet as he sprinted across the wet asphalt.
He tossed her into the open cabin of the helicopter.
Strong hands pulled her inside onto the canvas bench.
Gabriel vaulted in right behind her.
Marco dove through the door just as a line of rifle rounds stitched across the helicopter’s armor plating.
Clang-clang-clang.
“GO! GO! PULL PULL!”
The Black Hawk banked hard to the east, climbing rapidly into the storm clouds above the East River.
The gunfire on the roof vanished into the thunder.
Claire sat back against the vibration of the fuselage, her breath coming in ragged, painful gasps.
An operator handed her a thermal blanket and a headset.
She wrapped the blanket around herself, trembling from the cold and the sheer insanity of the last twenty minutes.
She looked at Gabriel.
He sat on the metal bench opposite her.
Rain was dripping from his dark hair, running down the hard cut of his jawline.
He had handed his weapon to the federal agent beside him without protest.
He was officially in federal custody.
The most feared man in New York had just surrendered his freedom for her safety.
Gabriel took the headset from his collar and put it on.
Claire plugged hers in.
“Are you alright?” Gabriel’s voice came through the microphone, clear and intimate over the roar of the turbines.
“I’m alive,” she whispered.
“The baby?”
“She’s kicking,” Claire said, a small, tearful smile breaking through her exhaustion.
“I think she hated the helicopter.”
Gabriel’s lips curved into a faint, genuine smile.
“She inherits her mother's stubbornness.”
The federal agent sitting beside the cockpit turned around.
He wore a dark suit beneath his tactical gear.
Director Vance.
Vance pulled out a clean manila envelope and laid it on the metal crate between Gabriel and Claire.
“We have safe houses in upstate New York, Gabriel,” Vance said.
“The Adirondacks.”
“Guarded by thirty federal marshals.”
“Vincent Moretti won't find you there.”
Gabriel looked at the envelope, but didn't touch it.
“Vincent isn't the only one hunting us, Vance.”
Vance’s eyes narrowed.
“Who else?”
“Nathan Brooks,” Claire spoke up, her voice cutting through the headset.
Gabriel and Vance both turned to look at her.
“Nathan?” Gabriel frowned.
“He’s an investment banker, Claire. He’s a coward.”
“No,” Claire said, her hands trembling as she pulled out her phone from her damp pocket.
The screen was cracked, but it still lit up.
A text message had arrived while they were on the roof:
FROM: UNKNOWN NUMBER
“You should have taken the cash in the grocery store, Claire.
Gabriel’s ledgers won’t save you.
I already sold your father’s old warehouse codes to Vincent.
See you at the docks.”
Claire looked at Gabriel, horror dawning in her eyes.
“Nathan was never an accountant, Gabriel.”
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“He was Vincent Moretti’s money launderer.”
“And he’s the one who set my father up ten years ago.”
