Chapter 5 - The Ambush
Thursday arrived under a gray, heavy sky. The air smelled of wet leaves and impending snow.
At 2:00 PM, a black armored suburban pulled out of the main gates of the Grant estate. In the rear passenger seat sat Angela, holding a secure temperature-controlled case for the experimental nerve-regen peptides we were picking up from the university research lab.
In the front passenger seat sat Dominic, armed with a suppressed automatic rifle.
And behind the steering wheel sat me.
Angela looked at me through the rearview mirror, her hazel eyes filled with quiet concern. “Andrew... you don't usually drive. What’s going on?”
“Just taking a drive with you, Angela,” I said calmly, keeping my eyes on the road as we entered the industrial warehouse corridor near the Chicago River. “You’ve been working sixteen-hour days for two months. You deserve the executive transport.”
“You’re lying,” Angela said softly. She wasn't foolish; she had lived around my security guards long enough to recognize the tension in the air. “Is it Senator Vance?”
“It’s being handled,” I replied smoothly.
As we crossed beneath the rusty iron bridge on 12th Street, a heavy construction dump truck suddenly backed out of an alleyway, blocking both lanes of traffic ahead of us.
Before I could throw the suburban into reverse, a high-performance black sedan tore out from a side street behind us, slamming hard into our rear bumper, pinning our vehicle in the narrow alleyway.
“Brace!” I roared.
Four masked men armed with military-grade automatic weapons spilled out from the dump truck and the rear sedan, opening fire instantly.
Heavy 5.56 rounds slammed against the bulletproof glass of our suburban, making deafening spiderweb cracks across the windshield.
Angela gasped, dropping to the floorboard of the back seat, clutching her medical case to her chest.
“Stay down!” Dominic shouted, unbuckling his belt and kicking his side door open. He leaned out from behind the reinforced steel door frame, laying down a disciplined, heavy burst of suppressive fire that dropped two of the attackers in the street.
I pulled my silver 1911 from my shoulder holster, slammed my foot on the accelerator, and rammed our front bumper into the rear tire of the dump truck, creating a four-foot gap on the sidewalk.
“Dominic! Cover the left!” I ordered.
I threw my door open, stepped out into the hail of gunfire, and fired three precise shots through the side window of the rear sedan, eliminating the driver before he could flank us.
The leader of the ambush—a scarred Moretti lieutenant named Frankie—realized their trap was failing. He pulled a heavy grenade launcher from his trunk, aiming it directly at the rear passenger side where Angela was cowering.
“Andrew! Right!” Dominic screamed.
Time seemed to slow down. I didn't think. I didn't calculate.
I threw my body across the rear window frame, using my own heavy Kevlar-lined suit coat and body frame as a human shield just as Frankie pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
The explosive round detonated against the reinforced rear quarter-panel of the suburban. The force of the shockwave threw me backward onto the wet asphalt. Sharp shrapnel tore through my right shoulder and thigh, burning like liquid fire.
“Andrew!” Angela screamed from inside the smoke-filled vehicle.
Bleeding heavily, I pushed myself up from the pavement on one elbow, raised my pistol with a blood-stained hand, and fired two rounds directly through Frankie’s chest. He collapsed into the gutter, dead.
The remaining ambushers, seeing their leader dead and hearing the sirens of my approaching backup fleet echoing in the distance, abandoned their weapons and fled into the alleyways.
Dominic rushed around the side of the vehicle, his automatic rifle raised, sweeping the area before dropping to his knees beside me. “Boss! You’re hit!”
“Check... check Angela,” I choked out, blood pooling under my arm.
The rear door was shoved open from the inside. Angela scrambled out onto the pavement, completely ignoring the smoke and blood. She dropped to her knees beside me, her hands instantly applying hard, professional pressure to the arterial wound in my shoulder.
“I’m fine! I’m unhurt!” she cried out, tears streaming down her face as she pressed her fingers into my wound to stop the bleeding. “You idiot! You jumped in front of a grenade for me!”
I looked up into her tear-filled hazel eyes, feeling the warmth of her hands on my cold skin, a faint smile touching my lips despite the agony in my chest.
“I told you...” I rasped softly, my vision fading around the edges, “nobody touches what belongs in my house.”
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“Hold on, Andrew! Don't you dare close your eyes!” Angela sobbed, pulling a compression bandage from her medical kit, wrapping it around my shoulder with frantic, desperate speed. “Your boys are waiting for you at home! I’m waiting for you! Stay with me!”
As the blackness claimed my sight, the last thing I felt was Angela’s warm lips pressing against my forehead, holding my hand tightly against her heart.
