Chapter 11 - Blood on the Timber
Julian moved like a ghost through the labyrinth of shipping containers.
The roar of the Atlantic storm and the low thrum of the yacht's diesel engines swallowed the sound of his footsteps. The rain was freezing, plastering his dark hair to his forehead, running into his eyes, but his focus was absolute. Every heartbeat inside his chest sounded like a heavy war drum.
He peered around the steel corner of a blue container.
Marcus was checking his gold wristwatch, gesturing impatiently to the boat’s captain in the wheelhouse. "Cast off the bow lines!" he shouted over the wind. "We're out of time! If the coast guard cutter clears the harbor mouth, we’re trapped in the bay!"
"Sir, the manifest isn't cleared!" the captain shouted back from the bridge.
"I don't give a damn about the manifest! Cast off!"
In Marcus’s grip, the travel incubator rested on a deck table. Inside, through the condensation on the plastic dome, Julian could see the tiny, fragile form of Maya, her chest fluttering erratically beneath her monitors. An orange battery warning light on the unit’s control panel had begun to pulse—twenty minutes of auxiliary power remained.
Julian looked at the three armed guards on the pier. Two were untying the thick mooring lines from the iron bollards; the third stood at the foot of the gangway, his submachine gun slung across his chest, lighting a cigarette beneath the overhang of a crane.
Julian stepped out from the shadow.
Phut.
The guard with the cigarette collapsed instantly into the harbor, his splash swallowed by the churning tide.
Before the other two men could register the sound, Julian closed the distance, firing twice in rapid succession. The heavy suppressed rounds struck the second guard in the chest, dropping him across the wooden deck.
The third guard spun, drawing his sidearm, but Julian collided with him at full speed, driving the man backward off the pier. Both plunged into the freezing, turbulent ocean water.
The shock of the black salt water was like a million needles plunging into Julian’s flesh. The heavy current dragged at his wool coat, pulling him downward toward the razor-sharp barnacles covering the wharf pilings.
Beneath the surface, the contractor fought like a mad dog, his fingers clawing for Julian's throat. But Julian had ceased to be a businessman hours ago. He was a father whose child was dying forty feet above his head.
Julian drove his thumb hard into the man’s eye socket. The contractor choked on salt water, his grip slipping as his lungs flooded. Julian kicked off the concrete piling with both feet, clawing his way upward toward the surface of the harbor.
He broke the water gasping, coughing out brine, grabbing the rusted iron rungs of the maintenance ladder attached to the pier.
He pulled himself onto the slippery deck boards, shivering violently, his muscles screaming. His pistol was gone, lost to the depths of the ocean.
Above him, the yacht’s horn blared—a deep, vibrating roar. The heavy nylon stern line snapped taut as the vessel began to back away from the slip.
May you like
Julian sprinted down the pier, his boots slipping on the wet wood.
As the gap between the concrete wharf and the yacht’s swim platform widened to ten feet, Julian gathered every ounce of strength remaining in his battered body and leaped out into the freezing void.
