Chapter 3 - The Voss Ambush
The vault smelled of mildew and old damp pulp.
Row upon row of gray metal filing cabinets lined the subterranean walls, their surfaces corroded with salt rust. Maggie swept the beam of light across the labels until she found the year: *1994–1996: Southern Tonnage & Freight.*
Her fingers tore through the files. Manifests. Smuggling slips. Bribe receipts listing harbor commissioners, police captains, and customs agents by their initials. And then, slipped into a manila folder marked *Pier 7 Discrepancies*, she found a carbon copy of a police report that had never been filed.
*Vessel: The Gilded Tern.*
*Captain: Cormac Sullivan.*
*Incident: Refusal of cargo transfer at sea. Incident suppressed by order of V. Kowalic & A. Voss.*
Taped to the inside of the folder was a handwritten note in faded fountain pen ink:
*“Cormac won’t turn the wheel. Handle it before the dawn tide. Cut his anchor line if he runs.”*
Maggie’s knees gave way. She sat down hard on the damp concrete floor, the yellowed papers clutched against her chest.
Her father hadn’t been a coward. He hadn’t looked at the floor. He had died because he refused to carry their poison into the harbor where his daughter played on the piers.
Suddenly, a loud crash echoed from the floor above.
Glass shattered. Gunshots tore through the corrugated steel walls of the warehouse—sharp, rapid, high-caliber cracks that reverberated down into the concrete vault.
Maggie jumped to her feet, shoving the folder into her coat alongside the Polaroid. She killed the flashlight and sprinted toward the stairs.
At the top of the hatch, Rafferty was crouched behind a pallet of industrial chains, an automatic pistol gripped in his bare hands. Muzzle flashes lit the far end of the warehouse in strobes of violent white.
“Get down!” Rafferty yelled, firing three measured shots down the loading bay.
“Who is it?” Maggie crawled along the slick floor, keeping beneath the shelter of the steel pallets.
“Julian Voss,” Rafferty hissed, ejecting an empty magazine and slamming a fresh one home with the heel of his palm. “My mother must have made the call the second we walked out of her dining room. She wants me dead before I can dissolve the logistics agreement.”
Two men in tactical gear advanced down the corridor between the pallets, their weapons raised. They were professionals, moving with cold, military efficiency.
“Moses?” Maggie shouted over the roar of gunfire.
“Moses is holding the rear exit,” Rafferty replied, leaning out to fire two more rounds, forcing one of the gunmen behind a rusted forklift. “We’re boxed in.”
Maggie looked around the warehouse. She had run these piers since she was seven years old. She knew the layout of Warehouse B better than the men who drew its blueprints.
“They’re flanking through the dry-dock sluice,” Maggie said, tugging Rafferty’s sleeve. “If they reach the control booth, they’ll pin us from above.”
Rafferty looked at her, his eyes blazing in the dark. “Can you get to the breaker?”
“Better,” Maggie said. “I can open the sluice gates. If the harbor basin floods the lower floor, their vans are drowned and their line of sight is cut off.”
“The manual release is under direct fire,” Rafferty said.
“Not if you give me fifteen seconds of cover,” Maggie replied, kicking off her heavy boots. She was faster in her bare socks, silent across the damp metal decking.
Rafferty stared at her for a fraction of a second, then his mouth hardened into a grim line of respect. “Go.”
Rafferty stepped out from behind the pallet, exposing himself to the shooters, and laid down a deafening volley of suppressive fire. Bullets chewed through the concrete around him, sparking against steel.
Maggie launched herself forward, sliding under a row of rusted piping like an eel darting through a reef. She reached the sluice control panel mounted to the wall, grabbed the emergency release lever with both hands, and threw her entire body weight downward.
With a groaning shriek of rusted gears, the harbor floodgates groaned open.
Ten thousand gallons of black harbor water roared through the culverts, violently sweeping into the dry dock floor. The gunmen screamed as the freezing tidal surge knocked them off their feet, sweeping their gear toward the bay.
Maggie sprang back toward Rafferty, grabbing his arm as a ricochet whistled past her ear.
“Move!” she yelled.
May you like
Together, they bolted through the side entrance into the freezing rain, tumbling into the night just as the warehouse lower deck vanished beneath the black tide.
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