Chapter 6 - Blood and Secrets
The interrogation of the mercenary left behind in the courtyard took less than four minutes.
Victor held the wounded soldier by the collar against the hood of a bullet-riddled SUV while I applied pressure to the gunshot wound in his shattered knee. The man broke before I even drew my knife.
"The docks!" he shrieked, spitting blood onto the snow. "Warehouse 44! At the deepwater port! Cruz took him there! Rossi's got a medical team waiting on an unmarked freighter!"
"Why the freighter?" I demanded, twisting my grip.
"They're taking him out to international waters!" the man sobbed. "Apex Bio-Pharm... they brought mobile surgical units! They want to open the boy up! Rossi's dying of cancer... he thinks if they inject the kid's spinal fluid into his marrow, it'll cure him!"
A white-hot rage nearly caused me to pull the trigger then and there, but I shoved the man back against the hood. "Put him in the cellar. If we get Noah back alive, he lives. If my boy dies, skin him."
Within ten minutes, a convoy of six armored black Escalades was roaring down the icy interstate toward the industrial harbor.
Inside the lead vehicle, Victor sat across from me, racking the slide of an assault rifle. "Richard, Warehouse 44 is a fortress. Rossi has at least forty heavily armed syndicate guards stationed there, plus Vance’s private corporate mercenaries. If we hit the front, it’ll be a bloodbath."
"Let it be a bloodbath," I said, loading fresh magazines into my tactical vest. "Their blood, not ours."
My phone rang. It was an encrypted video call from an untraceable IP address.
I swiped the screen.
The image flickered to life. The camera was pointed inside a sterile, fluorescent-lit room with steel shipping container walls.
In the center of the frame, tied to a metal examination chair, was Noah.
His face was bruised, a deep cut splitting his left eyebrow. He was shivering, stripped down to an undershirt, with medical monitors taped to his chest and IV lines running into his thin arms. Standing beside him was Matteo Rossi—an emaciated, pale seventy-year-old monster leaning on a golden cane, his sunken eyes burning with desperate, manic greed.
"Good evening, Richard," Rossi wheezed, his voice sounding like dry leaves scraping over concrete.
"Rossi," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "You have thirty minutes to walk out of that warehouse with your hands in the air. If you do, I will give you a quick bullet through the temple. If you touch that boy again, I will keep you alive in a hole until you beg for death."
Rossi laughed—a wet, rattling cough. "Threats from a desperate man. Do you know what this boy is, Richard? You thought he was just a miracle? A stray dog you could adopt to soothe your guilty conscience?"
Rossi grabbed Noah by the chin, forcing the boy's head up. Noah glared at him with pure hatred, refusing to cry.
"His mother was Sarah Vance," Rossi sneered. "My business partner's runaway sister. William Vance spent ten years trying to synthesize cellular regeneration. Sarah was the only successful subject in the trial before she vanished with the prototype genetic strain in her womb. This boy isn't a gift from God, Richard. He is corporate property. Five billion dollars of patented genetic salvation."
"He is my son," I growled.
"He is my cure," Rossi hissed. "In twenty minutes, Dr. Vance begins the extraction. Bone marrow, spinal fluid, organ biopsies. By sunrise, my cancer will be gone, and this little rat will be dumped in the harbor. Come if you dare, Don Vale. Bring an army. You'll only arrive in time to collect his corpse."
The screen went black.
Victor looked at me, his knuckles white against his rifle. "Boss?"
I looked out the window at the looming cranes of the industrial docks cutting through the freezing winter fog.
May you like
"Call the port authority," I commanded. "Shut down the harbor traffic. Tell the coast guard that there is a terrorist threat on that vessel. And tell our men to aim for the head. No prisoners."
***
