Chapter 69 - Fire on the Pierhead
Arthur Vance hadn't retreated into the trees.
He had sent his men back, but he had moved in the blind spot beneath the embrasure, closing the distance in absolute silence. His face appeared in the gap, his grey eyes burning with vicious, triumphant malice as he shoved his shoulder against the iron, his cane jammed down into the lower jamb to keep the locking bar from falling.
"Did you really believe," Arthur whispered, his teeth bared in a feral grin, "that a girl who flipped burgers for five years could out-negotiate the man who bought the state supreme court?"
Behind him, the two mercenaries lunged out of the darkness, their heavy tactical boots thundering against the wet stone.
"Hannah, push!" I screamed, throwing my entire weight against the iron door, my shoulder screaming as the steel edge bit into my muscle.
Hannah didn't push.
She lay on the concrete floor, curled in the fetal position, her hands over her ears, her eyes squeezed shut, paralyzed by the same helpless, pathetic selfishness that had governed every single day of her life.
"Push, you coward!" I roared at her.
Arthur's hand slipped through the gap, the black pistol swinging around toward my chest.
From the shadows against the wall, Julian moved.
He didn't use a weapon. He had nothing left. With a ragged, inhuman roar of pure adrenaline, Julian threw his six-foot-two frame across the concrete, slamming his good shoulder directly into the blast door.
The impact crushed Arthur’s arm against the iron frame.
The gun fired. The bullet ricocheted off the concrete ceiling with a deafening screech, throwing hot sparks across my neck, but Julian didn't let up. He threw his weight again, his face twisted in agonizing pain, the gauze across his shoulder turning entirely black with bursting blood.
Arthur howled in pain as the heavy iron door sheared two of his fingers against the jamb, his pistol dropping from his ruined hand and clattering onto the concrete floor at my feet.
I didn't hesitate.
I snatched the pistol, shoved the muzzle through the six-inch gap, and pulled the trigger three times into the dark.
A scream tore through the night outside.
Arthur tumbled backward onto the wet gravel, clutching his leg, rolling down the slippery incline toward the cliff’s edge.
The two mercenaries hesitated, their tactical lights flashing across their fallen employer, then back to the bunker door where an automatic weapon was barking back at them. In the confusion, a deep, foghorn blast rolled across the cove from the water below.
It wasn't the tactical cutter.
A monstrous, steel-hulled eighty-foot oyster dredge broke through the mist at the edge of the pier, its twin spotlights blazing with blinding, five-million-candlepower halogen light.
On the high bridge, an old man in oilskins leaned out the window, a heavy twelve-gauge shotgun rested over the sill, and Caleb’s voice roared through an amplified loud-hailer that rattled the spruce needles from the branches:
*"GET OFF MY COVE, YOU CITY BASTARDS!"*
May you like
The deck-mounted high-pressure fire monitors on the oyster dredge roared to life, shooting two thousand gallons of seawater per minute in twin devastating torrents, blasting across the pier, sweeping the mercenaries, their equipment, and the remaining Zodiacs into the churning black foam of the low tide like matchsticks.
---
