Chapter 12 - Blood in the Coal Dust
By nightfall, the fog had turned into a freezing drizzle. I sat behind twelve glowing monitors in the fortified gatehouse on the Bluffs, watching the infrared perimeter cameras sweep across the waterfront. Silas, accompanied by six veteran longshoremen armed with heavy wrenches and tactical sidearms, moved like phantoms through the labyrinth of rusting cranes at Pier Twenty-Two.
On Camera 4, the feed suddenly flickered with motion. Three men in wet suits and heavy rain gear climbed out of the pitch-black water onto the rotted timber of the slipway. They carried sealed military-grade pelican cases. Before they could take ten steps toward the access road, a spotlight illuminated the coal dust around them, blinding in the midnight gloom.
"Welcome back to New York," Silas’s voice boomed over the megaphone, dripping with cold venom. "You’re trespassing on Marcone waters."
The men didn't surrender. One dropped his case, whipping out a silenced submachine gun, but Silas had fired before the barrel could rise. A single hollow-point cracked through the damp air, dropping the gunman instantly into the oily water. The other two scrambled behind a rusted coal hopper, opening fire on Silas’s flank.
From the gatehouse, my heart leaped into my throat. "Silas, behind the hopper! Second level!" I screamed into the comms headset, tracking an infrared heat signature crawling along the elevated catwalk directly above him.
"Got him," Silas replied, breathing steadily. He signaled Matteo, who triggered the slipway's automated hydraulic chute. Tons of wet, compacted anthracite coal collapsed from the overhead bins like an avalanche, burying the sniper beneath a hundred tons of black stone.
Within minutes, the third man was disarmed, pinned to the greasy pier planks with Silas’s heavy boot pressing against his throat. Silas knelt down, ripping the mask off the infiltrator. What he saw drained the color from his face. It was not a rival gangster from the old days. It was a young boy—no older than nineteen—with the unmistakable icy blue eyes of Julian Moretti, the nephew of the boss Silas had executed eight years prior.
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"The freighter... isn't carrying drugs, Marcone," the boy gasped, blood bubbling at the corner of his lip with a spiteful smirk. "It carries your blood debt. Look at the Bluffs..."
My breath stopped. On Camera 1—the main estate gate—the feed abruptly went dead into static.
