Chapter 7 - Sins of the Old Guard
The Exchange was not a bank.
It was an underground communication bunker beneath an abandoned subway terminal
near Wall Street.
Built in the 1960s as a Cold War continuity hub, the Salvatore family had bought
it for cash during the city’s bankruptcy in the seventies.
Thick blast doors lined with lead shielded the room from any electronic
surveillance.
Racks of black servers hummed in the chilled, air-conditioned air.
I sat at a multi-monitor workstation, my fingers flying across a mechanical
keyboard.
The hard drive was connected via a high-speed optical bridge.
Lines of green code streamed across my screens like digital waterfalls.
Dominic stood behind me, wearing a fresh black shirt over his heavily bandaged
shoulder.
He held a paper cup of black coffee in his hand.
He set a second cup beside my keyboard.
“Drink,” he said.
“I don't need coffee,” I muttered without looking away from the monitors.
“You’ve been awake for thirty hours, Elena. You're running on pure adrenaline.”
I took the cup.
It was bitter, scalding hot, and hit my bloodstream instantly.
“I’m into Julian’s primary partition,” I announced.
On the central screen, an interactive map of Long Island lit up.
A pulsing red beacon moved eastward along the Long Island Expressway at eighty
miles per hour.
“He’s in a three-car convoy,” I said.
“Armored Suburbans. He’s taking the southern route toward Montauk Harbor.”
Dominic leaned over my shoulder.
His hand rested on the back of my chair.
I could feel the heat radiating from his chest.
“What about the yacht?” he asked.
“The Viper,” I read from the registry.
“One hundred and forty feet. Custom plating. Equipped with satellite comms that
can wipe his domestic servers remotely the second he steps on board.”
“Can you brick the yacht’s engines from here?” Dominic asked.
“Julian’s engineers aren't stupid,” I replied.
“The ship’s propulsion system is completely air-gapped from the internet.”
“Then we have to stop him before he reaches the slipway,” Vincent said, racking
the slide of an automatic shotgun in the corner.
“We can't catch him from behind,” I pointed out.
“He has a twenty-mile lead on us. By the time your Maybach clears Queens, he’ll
be boarding.”
Dominic smiled a cold, predatory smile.
“Who said we’re taking a car?”
I turned around in my chair.
“What do you mean?”
Dominic tapped his radio.
“Frankie. Spin up the bird on the rooftop of 40 Wall Street.”
“You have a helicopter?” I asked.
“I have two,” Dominic replied.
“Julian thinks he owns the sky because he bought a few crooked cops.”
Dominic grabbed a tactical vest from a steel rack on the wall and pulled it over
his injured shoulder with a sharp wince.
He strapped a spare magazine into the front pouch.
“It’s time to show Julian Vance who actually owns this city.”
He looked down at me, holding out a secondary sidearm—a customized SIG Sauer
P226.
“Are you coming, Elena? Or do you want to wait here for the news report?”
I pushed back from the desk, took the gun from his hand, and checked the
chamber.
May you like
“I’ve waited ten years to watch Julian Vance burn, Dominic.”
“I’m not watching it on television.”
