Chapter 4 - The Break in the Storm
They moved through the shadow of the rusted shipping containers like ghosts, their boots crunching softly over the snow-covered gravel.
Leo led the way, using a tactical knife to slice through the rusted chain-link fence at the rear perimeter of the pier, bypassing the main gate where the two armed guards were huddled inside a heated security booth drinking coffee.
Gavin stayed right behind him, holding a heavy tactical flashlight that double-functioned as a high-voltage stun device.
The cold off the East River was bitter, carrying the smell of salt water, creosote, and diesel fuel.
They reached the side of the white Mercedes sprinter van unnoticed. The van's rear windows were blacked out with heavy security film, but the faint sound of a woman crying could be heard over the hum of the idling diesel engine.
"...please," a woman's voice begged from inside, choked with tears and exhaustion. "Just tell me where my daughter is. I signed the papers! I gave you the research files! Just let her go!"
A man's rough voice answered with a harsh laugh. "Your kid is fine, lady. She's resting comfortably. Now sit back down before I wrap another strip of duct tape around your jaw."
Leo looked at Gavin and held up three fingers, then two, then one.
NOW.
Leo reached up, grabbed the handle of the side sliding door, unlocked it with a tactical bypass tool, and yanked the door open with violent force.
Before the guard inside could react, Leo reached in, grabbed him by his tactical vest, pulled him clear out of the van, and slammed his head against the frozen cobblestones with a sickening crack. The man went limp instantly.
The second guard inside reached for his sidearm, but Gavin stepped up into the van opening, driving his tactical stun flashlight directly into the man's neck.
A bright blue electric arc crackled in the dark. The guard convulsed violently for two seconds before collapsing backward across the bench seat, unconscious.
"Sarah!" Gavin called out softly.
The woman sitting on the floor of the van gasped, pulling herself back against the steel wall. She was in her early thirties, her face pale, her lips chapped, her hair tangled, her wrists bound tightly behind her back with heavy yellow plastic zip-ties.
"Who... who are you?!" she sobbed, backing away in pure terror. "Did Julian send you to kill me?!"
"My name is Gavin Whitmore," he said, dropping to his knees on the van floor, pulling a pair of wire cutters from his pocket. "I found Lily on Fifth Avenue three hours ago."
Sarah froze, her breath catching in her throat as if her heart had stopped beating. "Lily? Is she... oh God, is she alive?!"
"She's safe," Gavin said, clipping through the thick zip-ties on her wrists with a sharp SNAP. "She's at Mount Sinai Hospital under the care of Dr. Marcus Vance. She's warm, she's fed, and she told me to give you a message."
Sarah clutched her freed hands against her chest, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. "What... what did she say?"
"She said she counted all the way to five hundred like you told her to," Gavin whispered softly. "And she didn't move off the bench until I picked her up."
Sarah let out a choked shriek of pure, overwhelming grief and relief, slumping forward against Gavin's chest. He wrapped his coat around her thin shoulders, holding her steady as she sobbed into his jacket.
"We have to go," Leo warned from the door, looking back toward the pier entrance. "The guard in the booth just missed his radio check-in. The boat crew is starting their engines!"
On the water twenty yards away, the sixty-foot black yacht fired up its twin diesel engines with a deep, vibrating thrum that shook the wooden pier planks.
A sharp spotlight suddenly lit up from the yacht's flybridge, pin-pointing the white van in a blinding cone of white light.
"Step away from the vehicle!" a loudspeaker blared from the deck of the boat. "This is private property! Drop your weapons or we will open fire!"
"Leo, cover!" Gavin shouted, lifting Sarah into his arms and jumping out the side door of the van just as a volley of automatic gunfire ripped through the vehicle's thin metal side panels.
SPAT-SPAT-SPAT-SPAT!
Glass shattered, tires blew out with loud pops, and metal sparks danced across the dark pier as Leo fired three suppressed rounds back toward the boat's spotlight, shattering the lens and plunging the pier back into chaotic darkness.
"Run for the Range Rover!" Leo yelled, firing another volley toward the dock cleats.
Gavin didn't look back. Carrying Sarah in his arms, he sprinted through the snow toward the cut fence at the perimeter, his lungs burning with the icy air, his boots kicking up clods of frozen gravel.
They cleared the fence line just as two more security trucks tore around the corner of the alley, their high beams sweeping over the abandoned warehouse walls.
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Leo threw open the rear door of the Range Rover. Gavin slid Sarah onto the leather seat, jumped into the front, and slammed his foot down on the accelerator.
The heavy four-wheel-drive vehicle roared to life, its tires biting into the slick cobblestones, fishtailing out of the alley seconds before a hail of bullets shattered the brickwork where they had been standing moments before.
