Chapter 9 - The River Ambush
The fog off the Detroit River at eleven-thirty was thick as sheep’s wool, carrying the bitter, chemical stench of the Zug Island blast furnaces and the smell of sulfur from the salt mines three miles downstream.
The railway tracks behind Moretti Auto were black with grease, the steel rails covered in a thin, greasy skin of freezing mist that muffled the sound of footsteps.
Frankie stood on the roof of bay three, wrapped in her father's old heavy wool hunting coat, an industrial grease pencil tucked behind her ear and a heavy steel pipe wrench resting across her thighs. Beside her, hidden behind the corrugated steel parapet, Dante lay prone with a scoped tactical rifle, his breath pluming in short, rhythmic clouds through his dark balaclava.
Below, in the narrow alley between the garage and the rail embankment, the track switch sat cleared of its thirty years of brush.
The heavy iron lever had been greased, its brass locking pin pulled, waiting for the signal.
A low, subterranean rumble began three miles to the south—the heavy, two-stroke diesel thrum of a switch engine moving sixty tons of freight through the Delray junction without clearance lights.
Gabriel stood in the shadows of the open bay door below, wearing his dark shearling jacket, holding a low-profile tactical radio against his collar.
"Two minutes out," Gabriel’s voice came through the radio earpiece Frankie wore beneath her wool cap. "Dante, do you have the crossing?"
"Clear, boss," Dante whispered into his microphone. "Two lookouts on the Fort Street overpass. Both watching the highway. They don't have eyes on the spur."
"Francesca," Gabriel said, his voice dropping into that quiet, steady cadence that had become her anchor over the last six weeks. "Stay down when the train clears the switch. Marcone’s men will be riding the rear platform."
"I know how to duck, Costa," she whispered back into her mic. "Just make sure your boys don't put a bullet through my compressor through the back wall."
A faint chuckle sounded in her ear. "I'll replace the compressor, Moretti. Keep your head down."
The locomotive appeared through the fog like a blind iron leviathan.
It was an old EMD switcher, painted with the faded black-and-orange livery of an industrial short-line, its single headlight dimmed to a dull, amber slit that barely cut through the freezing mist. Behind it rumbled two forty-foot steel boxcars, their wheels squealing against the tight curve of the spur with a high, ear-splitting metallic shriek.
As the locomotive cleared the junction switch, the engine idled down, coasting on its momentum into the narrow slot behind Moretti Auto.
On the rear platform of the second car, three men jumped down into the gravel ballast.
One of them was Jimmy Spada, his arm in a sling from the previous week's visit, holding a compact submachine gun in his good hand. Beside him stood Dominic Marcone’s nephew, Anthony, wearing an expensive leather bomber jacket and holding an industrial bolt cutter.
"Check the doors!" Anthony hissed through the darkness. "Get the seals off before the trucks get down the alley! We have eight minutes before the junction dispatcher changes the board!"
The side door of Moretti Auto swung open with a violent, echoing crash.
Two high-intensity quartz floodlights mounted to the eaves of the garage snapped on, bathing the narrow gravel alley in ten thousand lumens of blinding, merciless white light.
"Drop the cutters, Anthony," Gabriel Costa’s voice rang out, magnified by the industrial acoustics of the brick alleyway.
Gabriel stepped out onto the gravel, flanked by four Vanguard tactical operators in heavy body armor, their rifles raised to their shoulders with laser designators painting red dots across the chests of the three men on the tracks.
Anthony Marcone blinded by the light, threw his arm over his eyes, his left hand diving into his bomber jacket. "Costa! You son of a—"
CRACK.
From the roof above, Dante fired once.
The high-caliber round took the bolt cutter from Anthony’s grip, shattering the forged steel tool into three pieces with a shower of sparks that sprayed across the gravel.
"The next one," Dante called down from the parapet, his voice completely level, "takes your wrist, kid."
Jimmy Spada dropped his submachine gun into the mud, raising his single good hand into the glare of the lights, his face gray with the terror of a man who knew he had walked straight into the mouth of a shredder.
"It’s a setup!" Spada screamed. "Dominic! It’s a setup!"
From the shadows behind the second boxcar, the third man—a broad-shouldered enforcer from Cleveland who had stayed hidden behind the wheel trucks—swung out with an assault rifle, leveling the barrel straight at Gabriel’s chest.
Frankie didn't think.
She didn't look for Dante. She didn't call Gabriel’s name.
She stood up on the icy roof of bay three, leaned over the edge of the parapet, and hurled the eight-pound steel pipe wrench with every ounce of muscle she had developed over fifteen years of turning rusted truck axles.
The heavy tool tumbled through thirty feet of air, its drop-forged jaws spinning in the glare of the quartz floodlights, and struck the shooter squarely across the side of his helmet with the sound of a bowling ball hitting an oak desk.
The man’s rifle discharged into the gravel, throwing three rounds into the frozen mud before he collapsed sideways across the rails, unconscious before he hit the ties.
Gabriel didn't even flinch.
He stepped over the fallen weapon, walked straight up to Anthony Marcone, and drove the heel of his heavy boot into the nephew’s knee, sending him crashing to his hands and knees in the freezing slush.
"Tell your uncle," Gabriel said, leaning down until his lips were two inches from Anthony’s ear, his voice quiet enough that only the boy could hear it over the idling diesel locomotive, "that Vanguard now controls the Delray switch. And if I see another Cleveland train on this corridor before the ice breaks on the river, I will deliver his head to the Detroit Port Authority in an unsealed cardboard box."
In the distance, the wail of police sirens began to rise from Fort Street—not two cruisers, but the low, synchronized wail of six state police interceptors and two federal tactical vans coming down the boulevard with their lights flashing red and blue against the low clouds.
Gabriel looked up at the roof.
Frankie was standing by the edge of the parapet, her hands on her hips, her hair whipped by the river wind, her face illuminated by the blinding white light of the floodlights.
Gabriel raised two fingers to his forehead in a slow, solemn salute.
"Nice throw, Moretti," he called up through the fog.
May you like
Frankie looked down at the men face-down in the ballast, looked at the state troopers rounding the corner of Dragoon Street, and let out a long, ragged laugh that echoed all the way to the frozen river.
"That'll be another five hundred dollars on the ledger, Costa!" she shouted down. "You owe me for the wrench!"
