Chapter 22
A biting, sulfurous fog rolled off Lake Michigan, swallowing the sprawling skeletal frames of abandoned gantry cranes. The industrial shipping yard looked like an iron cemetery, its cracked asphalt slick with rain and black grease. High-intensity halogen searchlights swept the outer perimeter from elevated watchtowers, casting harsh white beams across concertina wire.
At the eastern gatehouse, two Falcone sentries stood shivering under a corrugated tin awning, assault rifles slung across their chests.
"Damn lake breeze," one muttered, flicking a cigarette into a puddle. "You think the boss was right? Marcus went completely dark after midnight. If Ryan actually walked through the front door of that mansion, nobody’s surviving."
"Ryan’s one man," the other sneered, though his eyes darted nervously into the fog. "We’ve got forty heavy shooters and claymores on the road. Nobody breaches this yard."
Before the man could exhale his next breath, a shadow materialized behind him.
A gloved hand locked around his jaw, wrenching his head with a sickening snap. In the exact same heartbeat, Victor surged from the mist, driving a tactical blade upward through the second sentry’s rib cage, catching the falling body before it struck the gravel.
Ryan stepped over the corpses without breaking stride. He held a suppressed submachine gun in his left hand, his night-vision optic pulled down over his sharp dark eyes. He keyed his tactical comms with a single tap. "Kill the grid."
Half a mile away, Ryan’s electronic warfare unit fired a directed electromagnetic burst into the facility’s primary transformer.
The entire shipyard plunged into pitch-black silence. The halogen spotlights died with a sharp electric pop, leaving only the dull patter of rain against rusted steel. Panic erupted instantly. Shouts in Italian and broken English echoed across the container stacks as men fumbled for tactical flashlights.
"Breach," Ryan whispered.
May you like
He moved like a phantom through the labyrinth of shipping containers. When three armed guards rounded a steel corner with tactical lights blazing, Ryan didn't seek cover. He fired three suppressed double-taps in fluid succession. Muzzle flashes flickered like dying embers in the mist. Three bodies collapsed into the mud, lifeless before their weapons touched the ground.
A heavy machine gun post on an elevated catwalk opened up, tracers chewing through the container walls. Ryan dove beneath a rusted flatbed trailer, rolling to his feet behind the gunner’s blind spot. He pulled a fragmentation grenade from his tactical belt, pulled the pin, and banked it off the steel crane column. The blast tore through the catwalk, raining twisted metal and silenced opposition onto the asphalt below. The perimeter was broken.
