Chapter 6 - THE SILO BREACH
The tear gas expanded in a thick, choking cloud.
My eyes burned with acid heat.
Coughing tore through my throat, doubling me over against the iron boiler.
Nolan pulled a tactical half-mask from his belt and slammed it over my nose and mouth.
"Breathe through the filter," he commanded.
He didn't wear a mask himself.
His eyes narrowed against the chemical smoke, his jaw set like an iron vice.
He grabbed my uninjured arm, hauling me toward the narrow steel access ladder leading down into the subterranean molasses vats.
"Marcus! Suppress the catwalks!"
Marcus didn't answer with words.
His automatic shotgun roared three times into the rafters.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Heavy buckshot shredded the tin roofing above.
A sniper on Rappel Line Two took a direct hit to the chest, plummeting forty feet down through the smoke.
He crashed onto the concrete floor with a sickening, wet thud.
Nolan shoved me down the ladder into the pitch-black tank below.
The air beneath the floor was freezing, smelling of ancient industrial syrup and stagnant groundwater.
Water was knee-deep at the bottom.
Nolan dropped down beside me, his boots splashing heavily in the sludge.
He pulled the heavy cast-iron inspection hatch shut above us, plunging us into absolute, suffocating darkness.
He clicked on a small red-filtered tactical penlight.
The narrow crimson beam illuminated the circular brick walls of the underground silo.
Ten feet across.
A drainage culvert ran through the eastern wall, barely three feet in diameter, carrying river runoff toward the Hudson.
Above our heads, high-velocity rounds began to punch through the cast-iron hatch.
PANG. PANG. PANG.
The impact vibrated through the metal ladder like hammer blows.
"Dominic has twenty men on the floor above us," Nolan whispered.
His breath was ragged from the tear gas, but his hand on my shoulder remained entirely steady.
"The culvert empties into the marina three hundred yards south."
"Can you crawl?"
I wiped the tears from my burning eyes beneath the rubber mask.
"I can crawl."
"Take the satellite phone," he said.
He shoved the rugged device into the pocket of my waitress apron.
"If we get separated, hit the red toggle on the side."
"It connects directly to a private harbor launch under the George Washington Bridge."
"What about you?" I asked, grabbing his sleeve.
"I'm not leaving you down here."
Nolan looked at me in the red light.
The scar above his eyebrow stood out stark and white against his tanned skin.
"I have an account to settle with my uncle, Olivia."
"He sold my father's shipping routes thirty years ago."
"He sold Arthur eight years ago."
"And tonight, he sold me."
He drew two fragmentation grenades from his tactical vest.
He straightened the pins with his teeth.
"When I open this culvert gate, you crawl and you do not look back."
"Nolan—"
"Look at me, Olivia."
I looked into his icy blue eyes.
They were intense, terrifying, and filled with a raw, unspoken promise that made my pulse race against my throat.
"You've survived eight years of grief and poverty," he said softly.
"You're stronger than every man in this building."
"Now get into the pipe."
He hooked his fingers into the rusted iron grating covering the drainage culvert.
With a low, guttural roar that echoed off the circular brick walls, Nolan tore the rusted iron grate from the mortar with his bare hands.
He threw the heavy grating into the water.
"Go!"
I dropped to my hands and knees in the freezing, knee-deep sludge.
I squeezed into the narrow corrugated pipe.
The cold water soaked through my uniform instantly, numbing my skin to the bone.
Behind me, the cast-iron hatch above the silo was blown off its hinges by a thermite breaching charge.
BOOM!
White-hot magnesium fire poured down into the tank like liquid lava.
Dominic's voice screamed down through the breach:
"FIND THEM! DO NOT LET THE GIRL REACH THE RIVER!"
Nolan didn't retreat into the pipe.
He stood waist-deep in the water beneath the opening.
He released the spoons on both fragmentation grenades.
"Hello, Uncle," Nolan whispered into the dark.
He hurled both canisters straight up through the flaming hatch.
BOOM! BOOM!
The double detonation shook the entire refinery foundation.
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Bricks rained down into the water.
The air pressure wave hit my back, shoving me forward through the pipe into the freezing river current.
