Chapter 7 - The Hostage of the Harbor
The fog in the Mystic River had the consistency of wet wool.
We approached the Charlestown naval yard not from the street, where Mercer’s pickets would have spotted our vehicles three blocks away, but from the water. Damian owned a forty-foot twin-diesel pilot boat that sat low in the gray swells, its hull painted matte black, its radar signature no larger than a commercial lobster skiff.
The engine was muffled to an idle hum as we slid beneath the rotting wooden pilings of Pier 6.
Above us, the steel superstructure of Dry Dock Three rose into the gloom like the ribs of an ancient, stranded leviathan.
“Thermal scope shows six men on the catwalks,” Nico whispered from the forward hatch, his eye pressed to a handheld optic. “Two more at the gate. There’s an office trailer set up inside the pump house. That’s where the high-frequency radio transmissions are coming from.”
“Brenda is in the trailer,” Damian said. He was checking the action on a short-barreled carbine, his face painted with non-reflective gray grease, his movements smooth, methodical, terrifyingly efficient.
He turned to me.
“You stay with the boat.”
“Damian—”
“No,” he cut me off, his voice absolute, leaving no room for medical debate or personal rebellion. “This isn't a trauma ward, Elena. This is a clearance operation. If a stray fragment hits these fuel tanks, this entire slip goes up in five seconds. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, you take the helm, throw the dual throttles to the stops, and run for the Coast Guard station at Fort Dawes. Do you understand me?”
I looked at him—really looked at him.
Under the grease and the tactical nylon, he was the man who had looked at me in a crimson dress and forgotten how to finish a telephone call about shipping containers. He was a killer, a racketeer, the absolute monarch of an empire built on shadows and intimidation.
And he had spent the last twelve hours making sure nobody put a hand on me.
I reached out, grabbed the front of his tactical vest, and pulled him down until his face was two inches from mine.
“Don't you dare get yourself killed out there,” I whispered, my voice trembling with an intensity that surprised both of us. “I’m not spending the rest of my life explaining to federal investigators why I closed your neck laceration with non-absorbable nylon.”
A slow, wolfish smile spread across Damian’s face in the dark.
He didn't speak. He reached behind my neck, pulled me against him, and kissed me.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was hard, tasting of salt, gunpowder, and the cold metal of his gear, an assertion of life in the middle of a graveyard. It lasted three seconds, but it left my blood roaring in my ears and my knees weak against the engine casing.
“Keep the engine idling,” he said, releasing me and stepping onto the slippery wooden rung of the pier ladder.
Nico followed him into the mist like a wraith.
I stood in the cockpit of the boat, the cold spray misting my face, the heavy polymer of the Glock Nico had given me resting inside the pocket of Damian’s cashmere sweater.
The silence lasted three minutes.
Then the world above me came apart.
It didn't begin with a warning. It began with the hollow, double-tap *thump* of a suppressed shotgun, followed immediately by the rapid, rhythmic chatter of Damian’s carbine. Shouts echoed across the steel floor of the dry dock—harsh, panic-stricken profanities in the flat accents of South Boston.
A body fell.
It didn't hit the water; it crashed through the corrugated tin roof of an old storage shed twenty feet above my head with a sound like a car wreck, followed by the clatter of loose tools raining into the tide.
I watched the clock on the helm display.
*Four minutes.*
*Five minutes.*
Then, from the darkness behind me—not from the pier, but from the low gangway connecting Pier 6 to the adjacent fuel barge—a voice spoke.
May you like
“Well now,” Julian Mercer said, stepping out from behind a stack of rusted lobster pots. “Isn't this just the prettiest little thing Damian Cross ever hid in his basement.”
***
