Chapter 4 - The Sound of Iron
Vincent didn't panic. Panic was an amateur’s luxury, and he had spent fourteen years surviving in the dark.
He shifted the Impala into reverse without turning on the headlights, his boot easing off the brake until the heavy sedan rolled backward along the gravel track, shielded by the high corrugated wall of a decommissioned freight terminal.
The searchlight swept past our roof, missing us by less than three feet, illuminating the swirling hail before swinging back toward the main warehouse.
Vincent pulled the car behind an overturned flatbed trailer, cut the ignition, and reached into the rear footwell. He pulled up the false bottom of the trunk liner, revealing a military-grade Pelican case sealed with heavy plastic latches.
Inside lay three suppressed submachine guns, four ceramic armor plates, and a compact electronic warfare jammer equipped with high-gain directional antennas.
He strapped a lightweight Kevlar vest over his ruined shirt, ignoring the blood soaking through the white cotton, and pulled a secondary vest over my head, tightening the side velcro straps until the ceramic hugged my ribs.
He handed me a small, heavy black cylinder no larger than a marker.
Pull the ring and drop it if anyone opens your door, he wrote on the back of a shipping invoice. Phosphorus smoke. It will blind their thermal optics for forty seconds. Run south toward the canal.
I gripped the cold metal cylinder. Where are you going?
He pointed toward the rusted catwalk running along the roofline of the central terminal forty feet above the rail yard.
They think I cannot hear them, he scribbled, his dark eyes glittering with a cold, terrifying fire. They think I am still the broken animal in the corner. They are about to discover what happens when the cage door comes off.
He checked the magazine of his rifle, racked the bolt with a sharp, oily click, and slipped out of the driver's door into the howling storm, vanishing into the shadows of the boxcars before the door had even clicked shut.
I stayed low on the floorboards, my heart pounding so loudly in my ears that I could barely hear the rain.
Fifty yards away, the two Suburbans came to a halt outside the main terminal doors. Four men in tactical gear stepped out into the hail, carrying short-barreled carbines, their faces obscured by ballistic masks.
A fifth man stepped out from the passenger side of the lead truck, carrying an umbrella and wearing a knee-length vicuña wool coat over a three-piece charcoal suit.
Julian Vance.
He looked immaculate. His silver-streaked hair was styled with salon precision, an unlit Cuban cigar clamped between his teeth, his leather gloves tapping against the gold head of a walking cane.
Beside him, staggering slightly in the mud, was a figure that made the breath catch in my throat.
Tyler.
My brother was wearing an oversized designer leather jacket that was three sizes too large for his skinny frame, clutching a silver flask with trembling fingers.
"I told you, Julian!" Tyler whined, his voice carrying clearly across the wet gravel on the wind. "She’s just a stupid girl! She doesn't know anything about microchips or computers! She probably threw the damn thing in the kitchen disposal!"
Julian didn't turn around. He raised his cane and struck Tyler across the mouth with the weighted brass handle.
The crack was sickening. Tyler collapsed into the freezing mud, clutching his split lip, whimpering like a kicked hound.
"Shut your filthy mouth, you peasant," Julian said, his voice smooth, aristocratic, and completely devoid of human warmth. "The transmitter telemetry confirmed the unit was detached cleanly with surgical instruments. Your sister didn't throw it in the disposal. She saved his life. And if Vincent reaches that council room before the clock strikes twelve, you and your father will be hanging from the cranes in Calumet Harbor by dawn."
Julian turned to the four tactical operators.
"Sweep the yard. The Impala’s transponder died within three blocks of this sector. If you find the girl, break her legs and bring her inside. If you see Vincent..."
Julian flicked his cigar into the slush.
"Shoot to kill. The council doesn't need to see a body. They only need to see his death certificate."
The four men raised their carbines and began fanning out across the rail tracks, their boot heels crunching against the wet ballast.
One of them was heading directly toward the flatbed trailer where the Impala sat hidden.
I crouched lower on the floorboards, my fingers white around the ring of the phosphorus canister, my lungs burning as I held my breath. The guard’s tactical light was five feet away, the beam bouncing off the rusted hubcaps of my car.
Three feet.
Two feet.
From high above our heads, in the dark iron rafters of the terminal roof, something whistled through the freezing air.
It wasn't a gunshot.
It was a forty-pound industrial snatch block, dropped from a rusted gantry crane forty feet in the air.
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The iron pulley struck the lead tactical operator squarely between the shoulder blades with a concussive, sickening crunch that shook the mud. The man dropped like an empty sack of flour, his weapon clattering against the rails, dead before his face hit the slush.
Before the other three guards could spin their barrels upward, the shadows descended.
