Chapter 6 - The New York Trap
The private jet touched down at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey under a heavy grey sky.
Preston walked down the airstrip steps, dressed in a dark overcoat, flanked by four armed bodyguards. A sleek black Cadillac Escalade was waiting at the tarmac gate to take him into Manhattan.
As Preston settled into the leather rear seat, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, seeing an encrypted text message from Marcus back in Chicago.
Estate secure. Denise and Mabel are in the panic room for the evening as a precaution. No movement on the perimeter.
Preston typed a quick reply: Keep them there until I confirm the meeting is clear.
The driver merged onto the highway toward the Lincoln Tunnel. The rain began to fall, slicking the asphalt as evening settled over the city.
Preston looked out the window, his mind far away from the shipping licenses. For the first time in fifteen years, his thoughts were not consumed by profit margins, syndicate rivalries, or corporate takeovers. He was thinking about a quiet woman with warm brown eyes and a three-year-old girl who called him by his first name when no one was looking.
Suddenly, the Escalade’s brakes screeched violently!
Preston was thrown forward into the front seat barrier as the heavy SUV slammed to a sudden halt inside the dark expanse of the Lincoln Tunnel!
"What the hell is happening?!" Preston’s lead bodyguard yelled, drawing his pistol.
"Blockade ahead, sir!" the driver shouted, pointing through the windshield.
Two massive commercial delivery trucks had jackknifed across all three lanes of the tunnel, completely blocking the exit toward Manhattan. Behind them, two dark sedans pulled up, trapping the Escalade from the rear!
"It's an ambush!" the bodyguard barked. "Get down, Mr. Hale!"
Before anyone could react, heavy automatic fire erupted from the rear sedans, shattering the armored rear glass of the Escalade in a hail of sparks and deafening noise!
Preston pulled a compact semi-automatic pistol from his shoulder holster, his eyes turning to cold, lethal steel. He didn't panic. He had survived three ambushes in Europe during his younger years, and he knew how syndicate strike teams operated.
"Out of the vehicle!" Preston ordered, kicking his side door open. "Move to the concrete maintenance walkway!"
Preston and his four guards scrambled out into the wet, echoing tunnel, using the heavy steel frame of the Escalade as cover as bullets pinged violently off the bodywork.
Through the rising cordite smoke, a man walked casually out from behind the jackknifed trucks ahead.
He was fifty years old, wearing a expensive fur-collared leather coat, holding a silver-plated pistol. His sharp facial features and icy blue eyes were instantly recognizable.
Dimitri Rostov.
"Preston Hale!" Rostov’s voice echoed off the curved tiled walls of the tunnel, heavy with a thick Ukrainian accent. "Did you really think I would let you reach the Maritime Board meeting?!"
Preston stepped out from behind the door, his weapon raised, his posture completely fearless. "You're sloppy, Rostov. Attacking me in a public tunnel in New York?"
Rostov laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "Public? I paid ten million dollars to the city transit authority to shut this tunnel down for 'emergency maintenance' twenty minutes ago. No police are coming, Preston. No security. Just you, me, and the fish in the Hudson River."
Rostov raised his hand, signaling his eight heavily armed mercenaries to advance.
"You took my ports," Rostov sneered. "You put my people in federal prison. And now, you die in a ditch."
Preston looked at the eight advancing men, then at his four bodyguards who were pinned behind the SUV. He knew the math was bad. He was outnumbered, outgunned, and trapped in a concrete tube beneath forty feet of water.
He reached into his pocket and tapped a silent emergency button on his satellite phone, sending an instant distress signal back to Marcus in Chicago.
"If I die tonight, Rostov," Preston said low, his voice carrying clearly over the idling truck engines, "my estate initiates the liquidation protocol. Every offshore account your syndicate owns will be wiped clean by eight AM tomorrow."
May you like
Rostov’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second, but he quickly recovered, his eyes narrowing into slits.
"Kill them all," Rostov commanded.
