Chapter 62 - Blood and Iron
"My kids are in that vault," Jared said, his voice dropping into a deadly, chilling register.
"Then we don't let them reach the footings," Harlan said simply, tossing Jared two spare magazines from the fallen operative’s vest. "Can you run that overhead gantry crane from the office remote?"
"I built it," Jared said.
"Then get ready to drop some iron."
The front bay doors rattled again. Victor Graves was no longer playing the role of a meticulous litigator. He stood outside in the blinding storm, megaphone in hand, flanked by his remaining four mercenaries.
"Jared!" Graves screamed over the roar of the wind. "The whole yard is ringed with thermite tape! You surrender the deed and the sub-level manifest, or I burn this shop to the ground with your children inside it!"
Jared didn't answer with words. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the industrial remote control for the twenty-ton overhead gantry crane suspended beneath the shop’s ceiling trusses, and thumbed the master rocker switch.
High above the bay floor, the massive electric winches engaged with a high-pitched whine. Suspended from the twin steel cables was a twelve-thousand-pound cast-iron stamping die Jared had hauled into the shop the previous week for resurfacing.
With a brutal flick of his thumb, Jared hit the emergency drop release.
The twelve-thousand-pound iron block plummeted through the floor of the second-story parts loft, crashing directly through the roof of the entryway just as three mercenaries attempted to breach the bay with a heavy hydraulic ram.
*CRASH-THUD.*
The concrete floor buckled. The shockwave rattled the windows of the entire facility, sending a plume of pulverized concrete dust forty feet into the air. The three mercenaries were thrown violently backward into the snow, their equipment crushed beneath six tons of solid iron.
Before Graves could react, Harlan Vance burst through the side personnel door, firing controlled bursts that shattered the windshield of the remaining Suburban.
Graves screamed in fury, firing his sidearm wildly as he scrambled backward into the snow. He reached into his tactical vest, pulling out a heavy, yellow Pelican case containing the electronic detonator for the perimeter charges.
"You think you won?!" Graves roared, blood streaming from a shrapnel cut on his forehead. "If I don't get it, nobody gets it! I’ll bury the whole damn bloodline!"
His thumb hovered over the red arming toggle.
He never pressed it.
From the ditch twenty yards away, a bruised, snow-covered figure lunged forward like a rabid animal. Melissa, screaming with pure, unadulterated hatred, slammed a rusted tire iron she had pulled from her ruined Hyundai straight into the side of Graves’s knee.
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*CRACK.*
Graves shrieked as his leg folded sideways. He tumbled into the snowbank, the yellow detonator slipping from his gloved fingers and sliding across the ice toward Jared’s boots.
