Chapter 8 - The Price of Treason
Lucas took a single step toward the grate, a gold-plated semi-automatic pistol appearing in his hand with terrifying speed.
""Don't you dare,"" Julian roared, breaking cover.
Julian fired three rounds in rapid succession. Lucas dodged behind the engine block of the ramming SUV as Julian’s bullets ricocheted off the hood, leaving smoking gouges in the metal. The private contractors immediately opened fire, pinning Julian down behind a rack of heavy tires. Rubber shredded in explosive bursts around him.
Marcus lunged from the office doorway, hurling a high-grade industrial flare directly into the leaking gas tank of the crushed vehicle.
""Julian, move!"" Marcus bellowed.
A concussive fireball erupted inside the garage. The shockwave blew the contractors off their feet and shattered every remaining pane of glass in the structure. Thick black petrochemical smoke instantly engulfed the space, choking out visibility.
Julian didn't hesitate. He dropped into the service pit, grabbed Leo and Maya under his arms, and hauled them out into the blinding smoke.
""Marcus!"" Julian coughed through the heat.
""Go out through the drainage breach! I’ll hold them!"" Marcus yelled back, his rifle barking through the flames as he traded fire with the surviving mercenaries. ""Pier 44! Don't let Lucas reach that container before you do!""
""Marcus, come with us!"" Julian pleaded, clutching the children.
""I promised your father I'd protect the line,"" the old man shouted back, his voice swallowed by another burst of automatic fire. ""Run!""
A spray of bullets tore through the tool rack beside Marcus, and the old soldier fell back behind the iron furnace. Julian knew that hesitation meant death for his children. Swallowing the agony in his chest, he dragged Leo and carried Maya through the smoking structural breach at the back of the garage, escaping into the pouring rain of the industrial alleyway.
Behind them, the garage erupted in a secondary fuel explosion, collapsing the roof in a mountain of twisted iron and flame.
Julian didn't stop. He ran through the flooded streets, keeping to the shadows of the railway embankment. His lungs burned, his muscles screamed in exhaustion, but the image of Lucas’s cold eyes kept his feet moving.
Twenty minutes later, they reached the rusted perimeter fence of Pier 44.
The harbor was a wasteland of stacked shipping containers, towering cranes, and roaring storm winds. The salt spray mixed with the bitter rain, stinging their faces. In the center of the yard, under the glare of yellow sodium floodlights, sat a solitary blue shipping container marked with the Vance Holdings logo.
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Around it stood four guards.
And on the elevated catwalk of crane number four, a sniper rifle’s red targeting laser cut through the rain, pointing directly at the container's reinforced steel door.
