Chapter 8 - The Ambush at the Water
Before we could reach the boarding ramp, the concrete wall beside us erupted in a hail of high-caliber sparks and shattered stone.
Julian Vance stepped onto the upper catwalk overlooking the dock, flanked by four men wearing tactical body armor and night-vision optics.
He was tall, sleek, and held a silenced submachine gun pointed directly at Dante’s chest.
"You look remarkably lively for a man who took eight inches of steel to the liver, Dante," Vance sneered, his voice echoing off the water.
"You should have let the contract pass through the yards. It would have saved your pretty little nurse from a very unpleasant burial."
Dante stepped deliberately in front of me, shielding my entire body with his broad back as blood began to seep through his fresh bandages.
"Leave the girl out of this, Vance," Dante growled, his voice carrying the authority of an apex predator even in a corner.
"She has no part in our commercial disputes."
"She knows about the heparin batches, Dante," Vance chuckled, resting his finger against the curved trigger.
"In my line of work, witnesses are just liabilities that haven't stopped breathing yet."
I looked down at my medical kit resting against my hip, feeling the heavy glass vial of concentrated paralytic agent I had pocketed from the bunker.
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I didn't think; I acted on the pure survival instinct that years of ER chaos had hammered into my nervous system.
I reached behind Dante’s waist, loaded the high-pressure pneumatic syringe used for emergency airway procedures, and lunged toward the catwalk stairs.
