Chapter 8 - THE BLACK WATER HARBOR
The wind off Lake Michigan at 5:10 a.m. felt like liquid knives.
The rain had turned into a freezing, horizontal sleet that crusted the docks in gray rime.
Slip Nine sat hidden behind the commercial salt warehouses on the north branch of the river.
Moored to the wooden pilings was an eighty-foot tactical interceptor craft.
Matte-black.
Low-profile.
Twin turbine engines idling with a deep, chest-rattling hum that vibrated through the dock timbers.
Viktor stood on the stern deck, wearing a dry tactical drysuit, holding a short-barreled automatic rifle.
Four other operators in black helmets checked their night-vision mounts in the wheelhouse.
I stepped onto the boat's rubberized deck.
I had showered in Roman's private suite.
I wore a dark tactical fleece, water-resistant combat pants, and boots that Viktor’s men had pulled from the armory lockers.
My auburn hair was tied back in a tight, wet knot.
On the middle finger of my left hand, Roman’s platinum signet ring was heavy and cold.
"Mrs. Carver," Viktor said, extending a hand to steady me on the rolling deck.
"We have satellite telemetry on the intake crib."
"David's team arrived twenty minutes ago on a commercial tugboat."
"They've set jamming frequencies across the outer harbor."
"Can we reach them before six?" I asked, looking at my watch.
5:18 AM.
Forty-two minutes until Mark's escrow defaulted.
"This boat does seventy knots in four-foot chop," Viktor grunted, stepping toward the helm.
"We will be on their hull in twelve minutes."
The turbine throttles slammed forward.
The boat reared out of the water like a striking predator, its carbon-fiber hull slicing through the freezing waves.
The city skyline blurred into a smear of yellow and blue lights behind us.
The open lake was black as pitch.
The wind screamed through the radio antennas.
I stood beside Viktor at the navigation console, staring at the green radar sweep.
A single red blip flashed three miles east of Navy Pier.
The Harrison-Dever water intake crib.
An ancient, two-story stone-and-iron fortress sitting in forty feet of open water, built in the nineteenth century to draw clean drinking water for the city.
Its rusted iron dome rose out of the dark waves like the helmet of a sunken giant.
"Thermal scan shows eight heat signatures inside the central pump room," the radar technician called out.
"They're deploying cutting torches on the primary cable conduit."
"What about the tugboat?" Viktor asked.
"Tied to the western maintenance ladder."
"They have a fifty-caliber machine gun mounted on the tug's bridge deck."
"We go in low," Viktor commanded, cutting the interceptor's running lights.
"Silent electric drive for the final three hundred yards."
The roar of the turbines dropped to an eerie, muffled whisper.
The interceptor drifted through the freezing spray, using the four-foot swells to hide our approach.
The stone walls of the crib loomed above us, slick with green algae and ice.
The smell of wet iron, motor oil, and lake spray filled my nose.
A single yellow halogen light illuminated the tugboat's deck.
The guard behind the fifty-caliber machine gun was stamping his boots against the cold, blowing warm breath into his gloves.
Viktor raised his suppressed carbine to his cheek.
Pfft.
A single pneumatic cough.
The gunner collapsed silently over the tripod, his weapon sliding harmlessly into the rubber netting.
"Boarding team, go!" Viktor hissed.
Four operators leaped from our bow onto the tug's low deck, moving toward the iron ladder leading up the crib's stone wall.
I followed immediately.
"Mrs. Carver, stay in the wheelhouse!" Viktor called out.
"My son's future is in that room, Viktor," I said, my voice cutting through the wind.
"I'm not waiting in the dark."
I grabbed the frozen iron rungs of the ladder.
My boots found purchase on the slippery stone.
We climbed thirty feet up the sheer wall into the howling sleet.
We reached the heavy steel maintenance hatch on the second tier.
The iron door had been forced open with a hydraulic spreader, the locking bolts sheared clean off.
Inside, the crib smelled of damp limestone, ancient river silt, and burning insulation.
A deafening roar filled the space—the sound of three million gallons of lake water rushing through the intake shafts sixty feet below the floor grates.
Down the metal catwalk, fifty feet ahead, two men in gray coveralls were working over an open floor hatch.
Sparks from an oxyacetylene torch cascaded down into the dark water below.
Standing beside them, holding a ruggedized laptop connected to the fiber junction box, was David Kesler.
He wore an expensive cashmere coat over his chef's whites, a silver nine-millimeter pistol tucked into his belt.
The digital timer on his laptop screen was glowing red:
00:08:42.
Eight minutes.
"David!" I shouted through the deafening roar of the water.
My voice echoed off the curved stone walls.
David spun around, his hand diving for his pistol.
The two torch operators dropped their gear, reaching for automatic weapons resting on the cable spools.
Viktor's team fired three synchronized bursts.
Both torch men collapsed across the steel grating, their weapons clattering into the dark water shaft below.
David backed toward the edge of the open floor hatch.
His pistol was drawn, his hand trembling as he leveled it at my chest.
"Megan...?" David stammered, his eyes wild with disbelief.
"You're supposed to be in police custody!"
"You're supposed to be in an alley!"
"You forgot one detail, David," I said, stepping forward onto the metal catwalk.
I held up my left hand.
Roman's platinum signet ring caught the harsh glare of his laptop screen.
May you like
"Roman Vance didn't die tonight."
"And you don't work for him anymore."
