Chapter 7 - The Lion’s Trap
Alexander signaled for his team to halt just outside the heavy double doors leading to the central observation deck. Peering through the reinforced glass panel, he saw a makeshift intensive care unit set up in the middle of the cavernous drydock.
In the center was a hospital bed surrounded by heart monitors, infusion pumps, and an oxygen tank. A man lay on the bed, bandages wrapping his torso and face, his chest rising and falling to the mechanical rhythm of a respirator. That was Marcus.
Standing beside the bed was Victor Kane, fifty-five, sharp-featured, wearing a tailored charcoal coat over a bulletproof vest. Three heavily armed mercenaries flanked him, their assault rifles held at the low-ready. A nervous doctor in a white lab coat stood over Marcus with a syringe in hand, trembling visibly under Victor’s menacing stare.
“Do it now,” Victor ordered the doctor. “The old man is already at the gates. I need Marcus dead so Julianna inherits the remaining board shares automatically. No more delays.”
“Victor,” Alexander’s voice boomed through the drydock, amplified by the facility’s intercom speaker.
Victor spun around, drawing a polished nickel revolver. “Alexander! Show yourself, you coward! You think sneaking through the maintenance tunnels makes you clever? You walk in here, and I put a bullet through Marcus’s brain!”
The heavy doors did not open. Instead, a flashbang grenade smashed through the high ventilation shaft above the bed, detonating with a blinding white flash and an ear-splitting crack.
The mercenaries staggered back, disoriented and blinded. In that fraction of a second, Alexander’s men breached through the side utility doors. Three suppressed shots echoed in rapid succession. The three mercenaries collapsed to the floor before their weapons could clear their hips.
The doctor dropped the syringe and threw his hands up, diving behind a metal tool chest. Victor, blinking furiously through the smoke, raised his revolver blindly toward the bed to execute Marcus.
Alexander moved with horrifying speed for a man of his years. He closed the distance in three strides, his heavy palm smashing into Victor’s gun hand. The bone snapped with a sickening crunch. The revolver dropped to the floor, and Alexander followed through with a crushing elbow strike that drove Victor into the concrete.
Alexander planted his heavy polished boot onto Victor’s shattered wrist, pressing down until Victor howled in agony.
“You laid hands on my family,” Alexander whispered, his eyes void of mercy. “You starved my granddaughter. You burned my son.”
Victor coughed blood onto the floor, his teeth stained red. Yet, through the pain, a twisted grin spread across his face. “You... you think you saved him, Alexander? Look at the bed. Look closer at your precious son!”
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Alexander turned his head toward the bandaged figure on the hospital mattress. Briggs rushed forward and ripped away the medical gauze from the patient’s face.
Alexander’s breath stopped. The man on the bed was not Marcus Vance. It was a complete stranger, comatose and brain-dead, kept alive only by machines.
