Chapter 6 - Thunder Over the Hudson
The sound became deafening.
The vibration rose through the iron hull until the steel plates sang a high-pitched metallic note. Bolts rattled in their sockets. Overhead light fixtures swung wildly back and forth.
Vaughn took the companionway ladder two steps at a time, with Seraphina clutching her fur stole and stumbling after him. The armed guards and the doctor abandoned the cage line, scrambling toward the deck to see the impossible spectacle unfolding outside.
I stepped to the edge of the wire cage. Through a small, grease-crusted porthole four feet above the waterline, I looked out into the night.
The industrial marsh had been turned into day.
Dozens of high-intensity aircraft-grade searchlights cut through the March fog, illuminating the tidal mudflats with blinding, bleached-white intensity. Twin pairs of AH-64 Apache attack helicopters hovered low over the marsh grass, their massive rotor wash whipping the dark water into frothing foam, their 30mm chain guns pointed directly down at the freighter’s bridge.
And on the shore, tearing through the concrete security barricades like they were made of wet cardboard, came the iron vanguard.
M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks.
Sixty-eight tons of depleted-uranium armor each. The ground shook with seismic force as they surged out of the tree line and over the industrial access roads, spreading out into an impenetrable tactical crescent around the slip.
One. Ten. Fifty. A hundred.
A sea of olive-drab and desert-camo iron. Two entire armored battalions, accompanied by M2 Bradley fighting vehicles, their tracks chewing the asphalt into pulverized dust.
The lead tank—a massive Abrams bearing the insignia of the Division Commander on its turret—rolled straight onto the reinforced pier. The wooden pylons groaned and snapped under the immense weight, but the tank didn't slow down. It crushed three of Ray’s black SUVs under its steel tracks like aluminum soda cans, grinding them into twisted heaps of metal before coming to a halt twenty feet from the freighter’s gangway.
The massive 120mm smoothbore cannon lowered smoothly, aligning dead center on the freighter’s wheelhouse.
Over the external loudspeaker of the lead armored vehicle, an amplified voice tore through the roar of the turbine engines.
*"THIS IS THE UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES. TO ALL PERSONNEL ABOARD THE VESSEL AT SLIP 14: DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND STEP ONTO THE DOCK WITH YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEADS. YOU HAVE SIXTY SECONDS BEFORE WE LEVEL THE VESSEL."*
On the upper deck, Vaughn was frozen. His silk bow tie was crooked, his hair whipped into chaos by the helicopter downdraft.
"This is a mistake!" Vaughn screamed against the wind, trying to wave his hands at the hovering Apaches. "I am Vaughn Kensington! My family sits on the state judiciary committee! You have breached private property!"
A sniper round cracked through the air.
The steel mast three inches above Vaughn’s head exploded in a shower of sparks. The supersonic crack threw him flat onto his stomach on the wet deck.
Seraphina shrieked, falling to her knees in her ruined silk gown, covering her ears as the deafening roar of two hundred turbine engines surrounded them on every flank.
Ray dropped his assault rifle. It clattered against the iron deck. He fell to his knees with his hands up, trembling violently. "I told you," Ray wept in terror. "I told you she wasn't normal!"
The heavy steel boarding ramp of the lead Bradley slammed down onto the dock.
A squad of combat-clad military police surged out, weapons raised, sweeping up the gangway with surgical precision.
Behind them walked General Marcus Vance.
He didn't wear a helmet. He wore his four-star service cap, his dress trench coat, and the cold, unyielding fury of an Old Testament patriarch.
The guards on deck threw their submachine guns into the water without firing a single shot. The doctor collapsed against the bulkhead, crying for his mother.
General Vance stepped onto the deck of the freighter. He didn't spare Vaughn so much as a glance as he stepped over him.
"Clear the hold," the General commanded his lead sergeant.
"Sir! Yes, sir!"
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The lower hatch was kicked open with a thunderous bang.
***
