Chapter 58 - The Armada of Sycamore Lane
By 4:00 AM, the assault on Harbor House had been completely crushed. Seven of Drake's operatives were disarmed and locked in the estate’s holding cells; the rest had fled back toward the docks.
Caleb stood on the rain-swept bluff, his radio headset crackling with static.
Beside him stood Evelyn, her coat pulled tight against the gale.
"Drake knows his ground assault failed," Evelyn said, watching the amber running lights of the *Leviathan* bobbing menacingly three miles offshore in the tempestuous swell. "He will try to slip anchor and escape back into international waters before dawn."
"He won't make it past the reef," Caleb said, picking up the microphone of the high-output marine transmitter.
He keyed the open channel—the private emergency frequency Eleanor Vance had paid to maintain across every maritime union on the Atlantic for half a century.
"This is Caleb Vance, commanding Harbor House," his voice boomed across the Atlantic radio waves, reaching every vessel anchored from Long Island Sound to the Jersey Flats. "Calling all captains of the Atlantic Independent Fleet. The sovereign flagship *Leviathan* is attempting to illegally transport national reserves out of American jurisdiction. My mother, Eleanor Vance, calls upon her old guard."
For thirty seconds, there was only the hiss of white noise and the howling of the wind.
Then, a gravelly voice broke through the speaker:
*"Tugboat 'Iron Maiden', Captain Miller reading you loud and clear, Caleb. Eleanor kept my family fed through the '74 strike. We're firing up our twin diesels now."*
Another voice cut in:
*"Commercial Trawler 'Saint Jude', Captain O'Malley here. We've got six deep-sea netters ready to throttle up from Staten Island. Where do you want us, son?"*
*"Harbor Patrol Escort 402, standing by for Vance orders."*
*"Bay Ridge Fuel Barges responding. We're cutting our lines now."*
Caleb looked out over the pitch-black waters of the bay.
May you like
One by one, through the dense fog and driving rain, hundreds of navigation lights began to flicker to life. Tugboats, deep-sea salvage cutters, heavy commercial barges, and private pilot vessels—an entire working-class armada of over eighty ships—pulled out from their slips, converging in a tight, impenetrable semicircle around the massive steel hull of the *Leviathan*.
The giant monster was trapped in the shallows of the people it had sought to enslave.
