Chapter 11 - REIGN OF FIRE
Midnight arrived under a sky black as pitch.
The Calumet industrial corridor was an apocalyptic landscape of rusted iron towers, rotting rail cars, and murky, poisoned water.
Grain Silo 4 loomed like a concrete cathedral in the darkness.
Outside, the wind howled off Lake Michigan, whipping rain into stinging needles.
Inside the upper catwalk of the silo, Don Vincente Moretti stood surrounded by twelve armed mercenaries.
Moretti was fifty-five, thick-set, with a scarred neck and eyes like an alligator.
He checked his gold Rolex.
“Ten minutes past midnight,” Moretti grunted in a thick Sicilian accent.
“Declan Hayes is a coward.”
“He won't come.”
“He will come,” a voice hissed from the shadows.
Julian Sterling stepped into the dim light of the catwalk.
His right arm was in a heavy fiberglass cast, pinned against his chest.
His face was gaunt, his eyes bloodshot with mania.
His father’s death and the loss of his fortune had broken his sanity.
“Declan will come for the girl,” Julian snarled.
“He has a weakness for her.”
“He threw away our entire alliance for that pathetic little secretary!”
Moretti sneered at Julian.
“Your father was weak, Julian.”
“And you are weaker.”
“Once Hayes is dead, you will give me the remaining offshore access, or I will toss you into the river with your father.”
Julian’s face twitched, but he dared not answer.
Suddenly, the power cut out.
The halogen work lights illuminating the vast silo died instantly.
Total, suffocating blackness fell over the building.
“What happened to the generator?” Moretti barked, drawing his weapon.
“Generator three is offline!” a guard shouted from below.
Thwack.
A muffled gunshot.
A body collapsed against the concrete floor forty feet below.
Then another.
Thwack. Thwack.
Panic erupted among the mercenaries.
Red laser dots began dancing across the rusted steel walls.
“Breach! We have a breach!”
From the skylights sixty feet above, four stun grenades dropped simultaneously.
FLASH-BANG.
Blinding white light and deafening concussive blasts shattered the darkness.
Men screamed, clutching their ears and eyes.
Ropes dropped from the ceiling.
Hayes tactical operators slid down the lines like predatory spiders.
Suppressed automatic fire tore through the catwalks with terrifying surgical precision.
Declan Hayes led the assault.
He dropped from the primary rope onto the central steel platform.
He moved with supernatural speed.
He fired two rounds into a charging guard, stepped aside, and struck another across the throat with the barrel of his rifle.
Blood sprayed across the rusted metal.
Julian screamed in terror, scrambling backward along the narrow catwalk.
“Shoot him! Shoot him!” Julian shrieked.
Moretti fired his custom revolver wildly into the smoke.
A bullet grazed Declan’s tactical vest, spinning him slightly.
Declan didn't even grunt.
He leveled his carbine and squeezed the trigger.
The round took Moretti clean through his right knee.
The Sicilian boss collapsed with an agonizing howl, his weapon tumbling over the railing into the abyss below.
Declan advanced through the thinning smoke.
The silence returned to the silo, broken only by the groans of dying men and the steady drip of rainwater from the shattered skylights.
Liam and the Hayes team secured the perimeter.
Declan stood over Vincente Moretti.
He aimed the rifle directly at the center of Moretti’s forehead.
“Hayes...” Moretti choked, clutching his shattered leg.
“You... you can't kill me... the Commission in New York...”
“The Commission in New York approved this hit two hours ago,” Declan said coldly.
“They don't like business partners who blow up fuel pipelines in American cities.”
Declan pulled the trigger.
A single shot ended twenty years of Moretti bloodlines.
Declan lowered the weapon.
Then he heard the sound of frantic, scraping footsteps on the higher catwalk.
Julian.
Declan glanced up.
Julian was crawling toward an exterior emergency ladder that led to the river barge below.
Declan slung his rifle over his shoulder.
He climbed the iron ladder to the upper platform with slow, deliberate steps.
Julian reached the edge of the catwalk, turning around on his back.
He raised a small backup derringer with his left hand.
“Stay back, Declan!” Julian screamed, rain lashing against his bleeding face.
“I’ll shoot! I swear to God I’ll shoot!”
Declan didn't slow down.
He walked straight toward the barrel of the gun.
“You hit her,” Declan said.
Every word fell like a lead weight.
“You held her wrist until the bone bruised.”
“You starved her sister.”
“Declan, please! It was business! We grew up together!”
“You made her cry,” Declan whispered.
Declan reached out and slapped the small gun from Julian’s hand.
The derringer sailed over the railing and splashed into the dark river below.
Declan grabbed Julian by the collar of his ruined suit and hoisted him off his feet with one arm.
Julian dangled over the sixty-foot drop to the concrete basin.
“Please, Declan!” Julian wept, his legs kicking uselessly in the empty air.
“Mercy! Have mercy!”
Declan looked into Julian’s terrified, sniveling face.
He remembered Norah’s trembling hands in his office.
He remembered the foundation she had spent forty minutes applying to hide her agony.
“Mercy is for human beings, Julian,” Declan said softly.
“You’re just a disease.”
Declan opened his hand.
Julian screamed the entire way down.
May you like
The sickening impact against the concrete floor echoed through the hollow silo.
Then there was only the wind.
