Chapter 7 - The Ambush at the Rail Yards
The Meadowlands at ten at night were a bleak expanse of rusted iron tracks, stagnant swamp water, and towering halogen floodlights buzzing in the cold mist.
Inside the rusted corrugated hangar of Depot Nine, thirty armed men in dark tactical gear were transferring heavy olive-drab crates from shipping containers onto an idling freight train.
Viktor Petrov stood on the elevated catwalk, wearing a long leather trench coat, holding a smoking cigar, shouting orders in Russian to his crew below.
Beside him stood Senator Marcus Vance, looking nervous in an expensive cashmere overcoat, checking his watch every thirty seconds.
"Is the manifest cleared with transit dispatch, Viktor?" Vance asked anxiously. "If federal inspectors flag this train in Maryland, we are finished."
"Relax, Senator," Petrov sneered, exhaling a thick cloud of blue smoke. "The inspectors have been paid. In six hours, your cargo will be at the naval base in Norfolk."
Suddenly, the depot's massive overhead floodlights shattered in a synchronized shower of white-hot sparks.
Darkness swallowed the hangar.
The idling diesel locomotive’s engine sputtered and died with a heavy mechanical wheeze, plunging the entire facility into absolute, suffocating silence.
"What happened to the generator?!" Petrov barked, tossing his cigar onto the metal grating and drawing a customized automatic pistol.
From the shadows above the rafters, a low, smooth voice echoed across the cavernous room:
"The power grid belongs to the city of New York, Viktor. But the shadows belong to me."
Red laser sights suddenly painted the chests of twenty Bratva mercenaries on the concrete floor below.
Before Petrov could scream an order, the hangar doors blew inward with a concussive blast of breaching charges.
Lorenzo Romano’s private tactical strike team swept into the depot, moving with terrifying military precision, suppressing the mercenary guards with rapid, muffled bursts of automatic fire.
Petrov scrambled down the catwalk stairs, but Lorenzo materialized out of the smoke like an avenging wraith.
Lorenzo stepped into Petrov’s path, sidestepped a desperate shot, caught Petrov's wrist in a crushing grip, and drove his knee into Petrov’s abdomen with brutal force.
Petrov collapsed onto the concrete floor, clutching his broken ribs, gasping for air as his gun skittered across the oil-slicked floor.
Senator Vance backed against a stack of wooden crates, his hands trembling in the air as Lorenzo turned his icy gaze upon him.
"Romano... please!" Vance stammered, his teeth chattering in terror. "You don't know what you're interfering with! This is national policy!"
"No, Senator," a clear, unwavering female voice called out from the hangar entrance.
I walked forward through the clearing smoke, flanked by Dante and two federal marshals holding active arrest warrants.
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In my hands, I held the titanium drive that Uncle Mateo had preserved with his life.
"This isn't policy, Senator," I said, looking Vance dead in the eye. "This is high treason. And Uncle Mateo just closed your account."
