Chapter 8 - The Dockland Ambush
The war did not end in the ballroom.
Vincent Morretti had escaped the Drake in the chaos, fleeing toward his primary stronghold—the Calumet Harbor container terminal on Chicago’s south docks. It was where his remaining mercenaries had barricaded themselves with the final stockpiles of the chemical weapon, preparing to burn the evidence and flee the country by cargo freighter.
Rain lashed the steel containers as Victor’s convoy of armored SUVs slammed through the harbor gates.
The night exploded into gunfire.
Victor had tried to leave me at the estate under heavy guard, but I had refused.
"The nerve agent precursors are unstable when exposed to seawater," I had told him bluntly in the back of the SUV. "If your men shoot up those containers without knowing which valves to seal, you will release a toxic cloud that will kill ten thousand people on the South Side before sunrise. You need me, Victor."
He had looked at me with an agonizing mix of fury, fear, and profound respect before handing me a tactical earpiece and a kevlar vest tailored to fit my frame.
Now, crouching behind a towering stack of blue shipping containers as bullets ricocheted off the corrugated steel, I guided Victor’s tactical team through the complex.
"Container Charlie-Four!" I shouted through the headset, the cold wind whipping rain into my face. "The white tank with the orange hazmat placard! That's the pressurized stabilizer! Do not hit that tank!"
"Understood!" Elias’s voice crackled through the static. "Flanking left! We have Morretti pinned against the main crane!"
Victor moved like a wraith through the shipping maze, his submachine gun barking in short, deadly bursts. Every corner he cleared brought him closer to the rusted freighter idling at the dock’s edge.
Suddenly, a flare soared into the night sky, bathing the docks in a harsh, sulfurous red light.
"Hastings!"
Vincent Morretti’s hoarse voice echoed from the gantry crane fifty feet above the concrete. He was standing on the narrow iron catwalk, clutching a remote detonator in his bleeding, splinted hand. Directly beneath the crane sat a flatbed truck loaded with three massive stainless-steel chemical canisters.
"You took my business!" Morretti screamed into the wind, his sanity completely unraveling. "You took my money! But you won't take this shipment! I blow this switch, and the entire Calumet basin dies in agony!"
Victor stepped out into the open rain, lowering his weapon. "Drop the detonator, Vincent. Your men are dead or captured. Vance has already confessed. The feds have seized your accounts. It's over."
"It's never over!" Morretti shrieked. "I’ll see you in hell, Hastings!"
His thumb moved toward the red plunger on the remote.
Before he could depress the switch, a deafening crack split the storm.
Morretti’s head snapped back. A tiny red mist bloomed from his forehead, and his body tipped forward over the railing, tumbling through the empty air to land with a sickening crash onto the asphalt below.
High above on the crane's maintenance ladder, Elias lowered a heavy sniper rifle, wiping rain from the scope. "Target eliminated, Boss."
The detonator bounced across the wet concrete, sliding directly toward the hazardous chemical canisters.
"The failsafe!" I yelled, breaking into a sprint across the open dock.
"Molly, no!" Victor roared, lunging after me.
The detonator hit the steel corner of the flatbed and triggered. A high-voltage current sparked across the faulty wiring of the experimental tank valves, igniting the solvent vent line.
A hiss of green, pressurized gas began venting into the cold night air, drifting directly toward the residential neighborhoods two miles downwind.
I didn't stop. I reached the flatbed, scrambling onto the metal deck, my hands moving with blinding speed.
"Sodium bicarbonate won't stop this volume!" I screamed as Victor hauled himself onto the truck beside me. "We need to flood the catalyst bed with liquid nitrogen from the freezer unit on the crane truck! Hook the emergency coupling to the main intake!"
Victor didn't hesitate. He grabbed the heavy, frost-covered cryogenic hose from the crane truck, hauling its immense weight across the deck.
"Coupling engaged!" he shouted over the roar of the venting toxin. "Turn the valve!"
Together, our hands locked around the massive steel wheel. My knuckles were bleeding, my muscles screaming from exhaustion, but Victor’s massive strength reinforced my own.
With a roar of pure defiance against death itself, we threw our combined weight against the frozen steel.
The valve groaned, broke through the ice, and spun shut.
Liquid nitrogen flooded the catalyst chamber. Within seconds, the violent hissing ceased as the chemical mixture flash-froze into inert, crystalline slush.
The silence returned to the docks, broken only by the steady patter of cold rain on steel.
I collapsed backward against the frozen tank, gasping for air, my lungs burning, my hair plastered to my face.
Victor dropped down beside me on the wet metal deck. He was drenched, his tactical vest smeared with grease and rain, but his eyes were shining with a brilliant, uncontainable light.
He reached out, cupping my wet cheeks in his large, warm hands.
"You saved this city, Molly Higgins," he said softly, his voice trembling with an emotion he had never allowed himself to feel for any human being. "You magnificent, stubborn, beautiful woman."
I leaned into his touch, closing my eyes, and let out a breathless, tearful laugh.
"Does this mean... I get a raise from fourteen dollars an hour?"
Victor threw his head back and laughed—a rich, deep, joyous sound that echoed over the dark waters of Lake Michigan.
May you like
"Molly," he said, pulling me into a fierce, unbreakable embrace, "you own the whole damn city."
***