Chapter 20 - The Drowning Tide
A shockwave of terror rippled through the nearest guests who overheard the words, but Valmont’s security guards had already sealed the double glass doors leading to the open decks.
Dominic’s hand slipped inside his tuxedo jacket, his fingers wrapping around the grip of his weapon. "You're suicidal, Henri?"
"Hardly," Valmont purred, waving a slender hand. "The charges are not on this yacht, my dear Dominic. They are planted aboard the *Caspian Glory*—an automated crude oil supertanker currently drifting unmanned on an autopilot collision course with the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge."
Harper’s breath hitched. "The narrows."
If an oil tanker detonated beneath the Verrazzano, the entire shipping channel into New York and New Jersey would be blocked for months, burning fuel choking the harbor, crippling the East Coast’s entire supply chain and causing untold civilian casualties.
"The detonator is linked to a biometric satellite transponder in my pocket," Valmont said, his eyes glittering with triumphant malice. "The override code is simple: Harper signs the full sovereign transfer of the Castiglione docks over to my European holding firm. Do it, Mademoiselle, or tomorrow morning, the world will watch New York drown in a sea of burning petroleum—and federal prosecutors will blame the Castiglione trust for faulty automated docking telemetry."
"You sick bastard," Harper hissed, stepping around Dominic, her eyes blazing with raw fury.
"Sign the digital pad, Harper," Valmont commanded, gesturing to an aide who presented a sleek tablet displaying the binding maritime cession. "Save your city, or rule over a smoking graveyard."
Dominic leaned close to Harper, his voice barely a breath against her ear. "The transponder is on his left hip. The moment you move, drop to the floor."
"Dominic, no—"
"Trust your partner," Dominic whispered, echoing the very words she had spoken to him at Pier 54.
Harper looked at Valmont, then looked down at the tablet. Her hand reached out as if to take the stylus.
Valmont smiled—a grotesque smirk of total victory.
In a fraction of a second, Harper flipped her wrist, sliding the ceramic blade from her thigh holster, and drove it downward into the tablet, shattering the screen into glowing sparks.
At the exact same instant, Dominic Vale moved with supernatural speed.
He drew his Colt .45, firing twice. The two Corsican guards behind Valmont collapsed instantly with center-mass hits. Dominic lunged forward, slamming his shoulder into Valmont, sending both of them crashing through the reinforced glass doors onto the wind-swept, rain-lashed aft deck.
"Lucas! Strike team, now!" Harper screamed into her concealed comm as she scrambled after them into the freezing storm.
The river was a maelstrom of black water. Rain whipped across the teak deck in blinding sheets.
Dominic had Valmont pinned against the brass railing, his forearm crushing the Frenchman’s throat, his gun pressed against Valmont’s forehead.
"The transponder code, Henri!" Dominic roared over the howling wind. "Give it to me, or I throw you into the propellers!"
Valmont, coughing blood, let out a hideous, choked laugh. He reached into his coat—not with the transponder, but with a secondary remote dead-man’s switch.
"Too late, Vale!" Valmont shrieked into the gale. "The tanker has already breached the outer harbor! Five minutes to impact!"
Valmont depressed the switch.
A deafening explosion ripped through the lower hull of the *Sovereign of the Seas*.
The deck bucked violently. The screams of hundreds of trapped guests echoed from the shattered ballroom as the megayacht began listing sharply to the starboard side, freezing Atlantic water roaring into the engine rooms.
Harper lost her footing, sliding across the slick teak toward the churning black void of the river.
"Harper!" Dominic bellowed, letting go of Valmont to dive across the tilting deck, his fingers catching her wrist just as her boots slipped over the railing.
He pulled her upward with brute, agonizing strength, hauling her back against his chest.
Behind them, Valmont pulled himself up onto the rail, a wild, lunatic grin on his bleeding face, clutching the satellite transponder.
"If I cannot hold New York... nobody will!" Valmont screamed, throwing himself backward into the dark, swirling waters of the Hudson, taking the kill-switch into the abyss.
In the distance, past the rain and mist, the colossal silhouette of the unmanned supertanker *Caspian Glory* loomed like a black mountain, steaming at full speed toward the illuminated steel arches of the Verrazzano Bridge.
On the bridge of the listing yacht, alarms shrieked. Cold water surged across Dominic’s and Harper’s boots.
Dominic held Harper against him, both drenched in rain and seawater, their eyes locked on the oncoming catastrophe.
"We have four minutes," Dominic yelled over the storm, his gray eyes burning with desperate, unbreakable resolve. "Lucas has a helicopter hovering off the bow. We either jump now and board that tanker... or we watch this city burn."
Harper looked at the raging river, then at Dominic—the man who had risked everything, bled for her, and stood beside her through every circle of hell.
May you like
She gripped his hand with iron certainty.
"Start running, Dominic," Harper commanded, her voice ringing out through the tempest. "We take the ship."