Chapter 4 - THE SUBTERRANEAN RAM
The headlights bore down on us like two twin suns.
The roar of the supercharged V8 engine echoed off the low concrete ceiling.
Sixty miles an hour.
Fifty yards away.
No cover except the row of parked sedans to our left.
“Run!” Matteo barked.
He didn't run away.
He grabbed my coat collar, hauling me sideways into the narrow gap between a Bentley and a reinforced concrete support pillar.
The armored Suburban hit the Bentley’s rear quarter-panel at full speed.
CRUNCH.
The sound of folding sheet metal was like an artillery shell detonating in an enclosed room.
The Bentley spun ninety degrees on its tires, slamming into the concrete pillar two feet above our heads.
Glass rained down over my back.
The impact threw the Suburban sideways, its front axle buckling under the collision.
Steam and anti-freeze hissed from the ruptured radiator in a blinding cloud of white vapor.
The driver’s door of the Suburban kicked open.
A man tumbled out, wearing a tactical vest and a balaclava.
In his hands was an automatic shotgun.
Matteo leaned over the hood of the crushed Bentley.
He fired two hollow-point rounds directly through the steam.
The shooter grunted, his shotgun discharging into the ceiling, before he collapsed against the front tire.
Matteo didn't stop to check the pulse.
He grabbed the dead man’s tactical belt, stripping two spare magazines and a military-grade radio.
The radio was crackling with a live voice.
Dominic’s voice.
“Squad Two, report. Is the car crushed?”
Matteo picked up the hand mic.
He keyed the transmitter.
“Your driver missed, Dominic.”
A sharp intake of breath sounded over the static.
Five seconds of dead silence.
Then, Dominic let out a low, venomous laugh.
“You always were hard to kill, Matteo.”
“Like a cockroach in a cellar.”
“I am coming up the ramp,” Matteo said.
His voice was terrifyingly level.
“Come ahead, boss,” Dominic sneered.
“The harbor police have already surrounded the building.”
“I reported an active shooter on the executive floor.”
“Your fingerprints are on the vault safe.”
“And your little waitress friend is listed as your primary accomplice.”
The radio went dead.
Matteo threw the plastic mic onto the asphalt.
He turned to me.
His face was streaked with black soot, his charcoal shirt torn open at the chest, revealing the bandage I had taped over his ribs four days ago.
The white gauze was seeping dark red again.
“He sold the docks to the Morettis,” I said, clutching the snub-nosed revolver in my left hand.
“Worse,” Matteo said.
He reached inside the dead shooter’s tactical vest and pulled out a laminated manifest.
It bore the seal of the United States Department of Homeland Security.
“He didn't just sell the docks, Clara.”
“He framed my shipping line for weapons smuggling.”
“Three containers of surface-to-air missiles are sitting at Pier 4 right now.”
“With my personal signature on the customs declaration.”
My medical instincts kicked in.
I looked at his chest.
The blood was soaking through his shirt in a spreading circle the size of a saucer.
“You’re hemorrhaging internally,” I told him, stepping into his space.
“Your suture line tore during the elevator drop.”
“I have two hours,” he said coldly.
“You have forty minutes before your thoracic cavity fills with blood and collapses your left lung!”
I grabbed his lapel with my left hand.
I forced him to look at me.
“I didn't pull you out of that alley dumpster just to watch you bleed out in a parking garage, Matteo Rossi.”
Matteo stared down at me.
His amber eyes softened by a fraction of a millimeter.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips.
“You have your mother’s temper, Dr. Vance.”
“My mother was an orthopedic surgeon,” I snapped.
“She would have used a bone saw on you thirty minutes ago.”
He took my good hand.
His fingers were burning hot with fever.
“There is an auxiliary tunnel behind the transformer room,” he said.
“It leads to the subway maintenance tracks on the Blue Line.”
“Can you run two miles in those boots?”
I looked at my scuffed black service shoes.
“I can run three if it means putting a bullet in Dominic Vane.”
Matteo’s smile widened, sharp and lethal.
“Good girl.”
He led the way toward the heavy iron fire door at the back of the bay.
Before we reached the threshold, the overhead sprinkler system engaged with a high-pitched alarm scream.
Torrential, freezing water rained down from the ceiling.
And through the pedestrian entrance from the street, six men in tactical body armor fanned out in a synchronized sweep.
May you like
Laser sights cut through the falling water.
Three green dots locked onto Matteo’s chest.
