Chapter 7 - The Lion's Retribution
The Atlantic Ocean was a violent cauldron of black swells and white foam as our three Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks cut through the storm clouds five hundred feet above the water.
Below us, jutting out of the rocky cliffs of Montauk Point, sat the Blackwood Offshore Research Station. To the untrained eye, it looked like a cluster of weather-beaten concrete domes and radar dishes. But through my night-vision optics, the thermal heat signatures showed an army: thirty armed private contractors pacing the catwalks, heavy machine gun emplacements, and a two-hundred-foot industrial transport barge tethered to the deep-water dock.
“Two minutes to drop zone,” the pilot’s voice crackled through my headset.
I looked around the cabin of the lead helicopter. Twelve men, former Navy SEALs and Delta operators who had been on the Mallory payroll for a decade, sat in silent readiness. Beside me, Dante adjusted the sling on his suppressed Daniel Defense rifle.
“Boss,” Dante spoke over the tactical comms. “Marcus Vance’s personal yacht is anchored half a mile offshore. He’s on the barge. He’s supervising the loading personally.”
“He doesn't leave the dock alive,” I answered.
“Copy that.”
“Drop in five... four... three... two... GO!”
The side doors slid open, and the freezing Atlantic wind roared into the cabin. Fast-ropes dropped through the darkness, hitting the reinforced roof of the main bunker.
I was the second man down the rope. My boots hit the wet gravel roof with a heavy thud, my rifle already raised to my shoulder.
The battle for the Blackwood Institute didn't begin with warnings; it began with the absolute, devastating violence of an elite strike team unleashed with zero constraints.
Suppressed gunfire coughed in rhythmic bursts through the gale. Vance’s private mercenaries, hired guns who were used to bullying unarmed scientists and guarding corporate secrets, stood no chance against men who had fought in urban warzones. Catwalk guards dropped like cut timber before they could raise their radios.
Dante placed a shaped breaching charge against the heavy steel blast door leading down into the subterranean bunker.
“Breaching!”
*BOOM.*
The door was blown inward in a cloud of fire and pulverized concrete. We surged through the smoke, clearing the white-tiled corridors room by room.
The facility was horrific. Rows of sterile laboratory chambers, biometric cages with child-sized restraints, discarded medical equipment, and computer terminals smashed to pieces by fleeing technicians. The smell of burning hard drives and ozone filled the air.
“Sector 4 clear!” one of my operators shouted. “No sign of the package!”
“She’s on the barge!” Maya’s voice crackled through my radio from the command chopper above. “Devin! Vance is preparing to decouple the moorings! The barge is rigged with scuttling charges! He’s going to sink it!”
I didn't wait for the rest of the team. I sprinted through the blast corridor toward the sea exit, bursting out onto the lower concrete pier just as the thunder of diesel engines roared across the water.
The massive steel barge was already drifting twenty feet from the concrete bulkhead, its thick mooring lines severed. On the elevated bridge of the barge stood Marcus Vance, holding a handheld detonator in one hand and a high-caliber pistol in the other.
“Mallory!” Vance’s voice bellowed through the storm via a loudspeaker. “You’re too late! You think you’ve won because you found your brats? She’s in the lower hold! In two minutes, the sea valves open and fifty thousand tons of ocean water will take her to the bottom! If I can't have the key to that genome... nobody can!”
“Devin!” Dante yelled from behind me, raising his rifle.
“Hold your fire!” I roared. “Don't hit the hull!”
I backed up three steps, sprinted across the rain-slicked concrete of the dock, and launched my body into the empty air above the churning black water.
My fingers caught the rusted steel lip of the barge’s perimeter rail. The impact tore at my shoulder muscles, my boots dangling inches above the freezing surf that smashed against the hull. With a roar of pure adrenaline, I hauled myself over the railing, rolling onto the steel deck just as Vance’s personal security opened fire from the cargo containers.
Bullets sparked off the steel deck around me. I unholstered my .45, popped up from behind a steel winch, and put two rounds through the chest of the nearest mercenary. I grabbed his fallen assault rifle, advanced through the maze of shipping containers, and eliminated the remaining three guards with brutal, clinical efficiency.
I reached the hatch marked *Cargo Hold 1 - Cryogenic Storage.*
The heavy wheel was locked from the inside.
I pulled a high-explosive thermite grenade from my vest, slammed it onto the locking mechanism, pulled the pin, and stepped back. The grenade flared with the blinding white heat of four thousand degrees, melting the hardened steel lock into molten slag in five seconds.
I kicked the glowing hatch open and leaped down the metal ladder into the belly of the ship.
The lower hold was freezing, filled with the hiss of escaping nitrogen and the ominous, echoing groan of water already beginning to flood the lower ballast tanks through remote valves.
In the center of the hold, secured to the reinforced steel bulkhead, stood a glass-walled medical pod.
Inside, suspended in a translucent saline suspension, surrounded by humming life-support telemetry... was Priya.
Her hair floated around her face like dark silk. Her skin was pale as marble, her eyes closed in an unnatural, medically induced stasis. An IV manifold was attached to her subclavian vein, pumping fluids into her motionless frame.
My heart stopped. The world around me disappeared.
“Priya...” I whispered, stepping toward the glass, my trembling hand reaching out to touch the cold surface.
A gunshot cracked through the hold.
A bullet struck my left side, searing through my tactical vest and gouging a line of fire across my ribs.
I spun around, bringing my pistol up.
Marcus Vance stood by the emergency ladder, his designer suit soaked in rain, his eyes bloodshot and crazed, pointing a smoking revolver at my chest.
“She was mine, Devin!” Vance screamed over the rising rush of seawater sloshing around our boots. “Her mind, her research, her blood! I gave her everything! And she chose an uneducated underworld thug over me! Over human progress!”
“You didn't want human progress, Marcus,” I said, stepping toward him, completely ignoring the blood soaking through my shirt. “You were just a pathetic little coward who couldn't accept that she saw right through you.”
Vance raised the gun to fire again, his finger tightening on the trigger.
A loud *CRACK* echoed through the hold.
A bullet tore through Vance’s right shoulder from above. The revolver flew from his hand, splashing into the rising seawater.
Dante dropped down from the hatch ladder, his suppressed weapon smoking. He walked up to his older brother, his eyes cold and devoid of any familial mercy.
“D-Dante...” Vance gasped, clutching his shattered shoulder, falling to his knees in the icy water. “I’m your brother... I did this for the Vance legacy... for our family!”
Dante didn't hesitate. He swung the heavy steel barrel of his weapon, striking Marcus across the jaw with a sickening crunch that shattered the man’s cheekbone and sent him crashing unconscious into the rising floodwater.
“You’re no brother of mine,” Dante spat. He grabbed Marcus by the collar of his suit and hauled him toward the ladder. “Get her out of the pod, Devin! We’ve got ninety seconds before this ship goes under!”
I rushed to the control panel of the cryogenic pod. Maya had already transmitted the manual override sequence to my tactical tablet. I typed the eight-digit code into the keypad.
*B-O-Y-S-1-0-1-4.*
The date of our sons' birth.
With a loud hiss of depressurization, the pneumatic locks disengaged. The saline drained away through the floor grates. The glass canopy swung upward.
I reached in and lifted Priya’s limp, fragile body out of the cradle. She was light as a feather, her skin freezing cold, but as I pressed my ear against her chest...
*Thump.*
*Thump.*
*Thump.*
A heartbeat. Faint, slow, but unmistakably, miraculously alive.
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“I’ve got you,” I sobbed, tears cutting through the grime and blood on my face as I clutched her against my chest. “I’m taking you home, baby. I’m taking you home.”
***
