Chapter 8 - The Siege of Newark Basin
The cold air of the Newark Industrial Basin smelled of diesel fuel, rotting seaweed, and ozone.
Rain fell in a persistent, icy mist, blurring the yellow floodlights that cast long, sickly shadows across the rusted drydock. From the interior of the black surveillance van parked half a mile downwind, I watched the thermal camera feeds broadcast by Silas’s drone hovering high above the clouds.
"Infiltration team is at the water intake," Silas reported through his headset, his fingers dancing across the monitor controls. "Boss is in the pipe. Franco is on point."
On the thermal monitor, four glowing white silhouettes slipped into the black maw of the drainage culvert beneath the concrete retaining wall. Above them, armed sentries carrying automatic rifles paced along the perimeter catwalks, completely unaware that death was crawling beneath their boots.
Inside the dilapidated administrative building at the center of the yard, the drone picked up three heat signatures. Two were standing; one was strapped to a heavy wooden chair.
"That's her," I gasped, pressing my face against the glass of the screen. "That’s my mom!"
One of the standing figures stepped forward, raising an arm. A thermal flash indicated a blow struck.
My stomach wrenched into a knot of pure agony. "They're hurting her!"
"Hold steady, Leah," the van’s security driver muttered, keeping his hand on his submachine gun while watching the side mirrors. "Mr. Moretti is thirty seconds out."
Suddenly, the night erupted.
A flashbang grenade detonated inside the basement stairwell with a muted *THUMP* that rattled the van's chassis half a mile away. Through the building's frosted windows, brilliant strobes of white light flickered, followed instantly by the rapid, rhythmic *phut-phut-phut* of suppressed 5.56mm gunfire.
On the roof, a sniper turned toward the stairwell, but before he could raise his rifle, a single shot from Franco’s suppressed rifle dropped him over the railing into the murky water below.
"Breach! Breach!" Vincent's voice crackled over the radio, laced with the roaring static of combat. "Office secured! Target Vance is retreating toward the drydock crane! Team Two, cut off the northern exit!"
Gunfire erupted across the entire yard now as Vance’s outer perimeter guards realized they were under assault. Red tracer rounds crisscrossed the darkness, ricocheting off corrugated metal walls and screaming into the night sky.
"Boss! Look out!" Franco’s voice screamed over the comms. "He’s got the detonator!"
A massive explosion shattered the eastern side of the warehouse. A wall of orange flame billowed into the rain, showering the concrete in burning debris. The radio link went dead with a deafening screech of static.
"Mr. Moretti!" I cried, grabbing Silas’s shoulder. "What happened? Where is my mom?!"
Silas frantically tapped his keyboard, trying to clear the interference caused by the blast. "The drone lost line-of-sight due to the smoke plume! Comms are jammed!"
Outside the van, the security driver suddenly cursed. "Movement on our six! We've been flanked!"
Before the driver could shift into drive, the rear doors of our van were blown inward by a shotgun blast. The concussion knocked me flat against the metal floor. Through the ringing in my ears, I saw the driver slump over the steering wheel, and Silas was violently dragged out into the rain by two men in tactical gear.
A man stepped into the smoking ruin of the van.
He was tall, wearing a tailored charcoal overcoat ruined by soot, with slicked-back gray hair and eyes that were wild with venomous desperation. Julian Vance.
"Well, well," Vance hissed, wiping blood from a shrapnel cut on his cheek. "The little rat who recognized my bug."
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He lunged forward, his gloved hand closing around the collar of my oversized Kevlar vest, and dragged me kicking and screaming out into the freezing mud.
***
