Chapter 7 - The Hunt at Black Island
The cold-storage warehouse at Pier 42 smelled of rotten cod, rusted brine, and industrial ammonia.
Rain poured through rusted holes in the corrugated tin roof seventy feet above, dripping into greasy puddles on the cracked concrete floor. Yellow sodium vapor lights hummed loudly, casting sickly amber pools across stacks of rotting wooden pallets and abandoned shipping crates.
In the center of the cavernous space, seven-year-old Peter Prescott sat tied to a heavy steel folding chair.
His sweater was torn at the shoulder, revealing a pale, trembling collarbone. His sneakers were soaked through. A thin cut across his forehead trickled dried blood down his temple, but his small jaw was set tight.
He remembered what Roger had told Declan in the gym.
*Drop your center. Tuck your chin. You’re not trying to look tall. You’re trying to survive.*
Peter tucked his chin. He kept his knees pressed together. In his small, closed left fist, concealed beneath the frayed edge of the rope binding his wrists behind the chair, he clutched a single, crushed yellow dandelion stem that had fallen out of Minnie's bag during the struggle.
Ten feet away, Vittorio Vance stood pacing beside a rusted barrel fire.
Vance was fifty-two, sleek as an eel, wearing a bespoke shearling coat over an Italian suit that looked absurdly out of place in the derelict warehouse. His dark hair was slicked back, his thin lips pulled into an ugly sneer as he checked his platinum watch for the fourth time.
"Where is he?" Vance snarled, turning toward Renzo, who stood nearby holding an MP5 submachine gun. "It's twelve-fifteen. If Albani isn't here in five minutes, shoot the brat, bag him with twenty pounds of scrap iron, and get the boat moving."
Renzo grinned, shifting his weapon. "With pleasure, Boss."
Peter didn't cry. He looked at the shadows along the catwalks fifty feet above Vance’s head.
He knew who was in the shadows. He didn't know how he knew; he just knew that Roger had promised nobody suffocates in his house. And Peter was still breathing.
Suddenly, high above the warehouse floor, the hum of the yellow sodium lights was drowned out by a sound like a whip cracking through wet leather.
*PFFT.*
One of Vance’s sentries standing on the eastern catwalk folded forward over the railing without a sound, plunging forty feet to the concrete floor with a sickening wet thud.
Renzo spun, his weapon coming up. "Sniper! Kill the lights!"
Before any of Vance’s men could reach the electrical junction box, three flashbang grenades dropped from the darkness above.
*BANG-BANG-BANG!*
Blinding, four-million-candela light detonated across the warehouse, accompanied by a 170-decibel concussion wave that sent Vance’s men stumbling backward, clutching their ears and screaming in agony.
Peter squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his head between his knees, just as Roger had taught him to do during lightning storms.
Then the gunfire began.
It wasn't a firefight. It was an industrial culling.
Suppressed rounds hissed through the smoke with clinical, terrifying precision. Two men by the loading dock dropped before they could shoulder their rifles. Another screamed as a round took him through the thigh, followed instantly by a second round that silenced him forever.
Roger Albani dropped from the lower catwalk, landing on the hood of an abandoned forklift with barely a thud.
He moved through the smoke like a creature born of the dark. His SIG Sauer barked three times—double tap to the chest, single tap to the head. Renzo lunged forward, raising his submachine gun, but Roger closed the distance in two strides.
Roger’s left hand caught the barrel of the MP5, redirecting the burst into the ceiling rafters, while his right elbow smashed into Renzo’s jaw with bone-crushing force. Renzo’s head snapped back; before he could recover, Roger drove a combat knife through the mercenary's shoulder, pinning him against a stack of crates, and delivered a devastating knee to the man's sternum.
Renzo slumped into the grease, unconscious or dead.
Vittorio Vance scrambled backward, his shearling coat dragging in the grime, pulling a snub-nosed revolver from his pocket. He aimed the barrel straight at Peter’s head.
"DON'T MOVE, ALBANI!" Vance screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria, saliva spraying from his lips. "I'll splatter this little bastard across the floor! Put the gun down!"
Roger stopped ten feet away.
The smoke swirled around his broad shoulders. He lowered his sidearm slowly, clicking the safety on, and held it loosely at his side.
"You're out of moves, Vittorio," Roger said, his voice terrifyingly calm, devoid of any anger, devoid of any fear.
"I have the kid!" Vance shrieked, cocking the revolver's hammer with a loud *click.* "I have the leverage! You give me the drive, you give me your launch boat, and you let me walk, or the Prescott bloodline ends right now!"
Roger looked past Vance, directly into seven-year-old Peter’s eyes.
"Peter," Roger said softly.
Peter looked up, his lip trembling, but his eyes steady.
"Did you drop your center?" Roger asked.
"Yes, Mr. Albani," Peter whispered.
"Good boy," Roger murmured. "Now duck."
Peter threw his entire body weight forward, tumbling the steel chair face-first onto the concrete floor.
The split-second Vance’s aim tracked downward toward the falling child was the only split-second Roger Albani needed.
Roger’s right hand whipped forward. The tactical combat knife left his grip with blinding speed, flashing silver through the sodium light.
The four-inch carbon steel blade buried itself to the hilt in Vittorio Vance’s right shoulder, severing the brachial plexus nerve cluster.
Vance screamed in agony as his fingers went completely numb, the revolver clattering uselessly against the concrete.
Before the gun had even stopped spinning, Roger was on him.
Roger grabbed Vance by the throat, lifting the syndicate boss off his feet, and slammed him against the rusted steel hull of an abandoned boiler. Vance gasped for air, his feet kicking uselessly six inches above the floor, blood pouring down his designer coat from the knife wound.
"You took a child from a mother," Roger whispered into Vance’s ear, his voice so quiet, so cold, that Vance’s screams died in his throat.
"Albani... please..." Vance choked out, his eyes bulging with terror. "We're businessmen... we can make a deal... take the docks... take the coast..."
"I don't make deals with corpses," Roger said.
With one brutal, deliberate twist of his forearm, Roger drove Vance's head backward into the solid steel rivet of the boiler tank.
Vance went limp. Roger let go, allowing the broken syndicate boss to drop like an empty sack into the greasy puddle on the floor.
Silence returned to the warehouse, broken only by the steady drip of rain from the ceiling.
Roger turned immediately. He dropped to his knees beside the overturned chair, drawing a small utility blade from his pocket, and sliced through the ropes binding Peter's wrists and ankles in two clean strokes.
He pulled the seven-year-old up into his arms.
Peter didn't pull away. He wrapped his small, skinny arms around Roger Albani’s neck, burying his face into the damp wool of Roger's tactical sweater, sobbing so hard his entire body shook.
Roger held the boy tightly against his chest, his large hand supporting the back of Peter's head, pressing him close against his armor.
"You're safe," Roger whispered, his voice rough, burying his face in the boy's hair. "You're safe, Peter. It's over."
Peter sniffled, pulled his hand back slightly, and opened his dirty, bruised palm.
Inside was the crushed yellow dandelion stem.
"I saved Minnie's flower," Peter whispered through his tears.
Something broke inside Roger Albani's chest—a wall of ice that had stood for ten long, lonely years.
May you like
He closed his eyes, pressed his lips against Peter's forehead, and whispered, "You're the bravest soldier I've ever seen. Let's go home to your mother."
***
