Chapter 7 - The Trap at Navy Pier
Navy Pier was swallowed in darkness and fog. The historic tourist attraction was completely deserted at this hour, rain lashing against the massive glass windows of the Grand Ballroom and the iron framework of the towering Ferris wheel. Beneath the commercial tourist façade lay a labyrinth of subterranean storage facilities and maritime shipping slips that had belonged to the city’s underworld for over a century.
Warehouse 4 sat at the very edge of the pier, battered by the violent waves of Lake Michigan. Inside, yellow industrial sodium lights flickered intermittently, casting long, menacing shadows across stacks of rusted shipping containers.
Antonio Marcone sat on an overturned wooden crate in the center of the concrete floor, surrounded by nearly twenty heavily armed men. He checked his gold Rolex, a cruel smile stretching across his lips.
""Midnight,"" Marcone announced to his lieutenants. ""Looks like Croft decided to save his own skin and leave his little bookkeeper to rot.""
""I wouldn't celebrate just yet, Antonio,"" a voice echoed through the vast warehouse.
The sodium lights suddenly exploded in a shower of sparks, plunging the entire warehouse into pitch-black darkness.
Before Marcone's men could even react, the glass skylights forty feet above shattered inward in an avalanche of jagged glass and rain. Three flashbang grenades detonated simultaneously, filling the cavernous space with blinding white light and deafening, concussive thunder that ripped through the ears of everyone inside.
Screams of agony and confusion erupted from Marcone's crew.
""Kill them! Fire at the catwalks!"" Marcone roared, firing wildly into the ceiling with his chrome pistol.
Muzzle flashes strobed through the darkness like violent lightning. Damian’s tactical team moved with terrifying, surgical precision. Through night-vision optics, they picked off Marcone’s perimeter guards one by one, suppressed gunshots sounding like rhythmic claps of thunder over the roaring storm outside.
Meera pressed her back against a row of steel cargo containers near the eastern loading bay, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. Damian had ordered her to stay behind the secondary breach team, but the chaos of the firefight had split the assault force.
Suddenly, a heavy boot splashed in the puddle behind her.
Meera spun around, raising her Glock with both hands just as a burly enforcer lunged from around the corner of the container, a machete gleaming in his grip.
Time slowed down to a crawl. She didn't think about spreadsheets. She didn't think about tax returns. She remembered Damian’s voice in the Racine shooting range: Sight alignment. Smooth squeeze. Don't look away.
Meera pulled the trigger twice.
The sharp cracks of the Glock echoed in the confined space. Both rounds slammed dead-center into the man's chest. His eyes went wide with shock, the heavy blade slipping from his nerveless fingers as he collapsed heavily onto the concrete.
Meera stood trembling, the barrel of her gun smoking in the cold damp air. She had taken a life. The realization threatened to buckle her knees, but before the panic could take root, a pair of strong, familiar arms wrapped around her from behind.
""I saw it,"" Damian’s voice rumbled in her ear, steady and anchor-like. ""You did what you had to do to survive. Look at me, Meera.""
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She turned, looking into his face, illuminated by the distant fires burning across the warehouse floor. His cheek was smeared with soot and blood, but his eyes were blazing with unshakeable pride.
""You're alive,"" he whispered, pressing a fierce, brief kiss to her forehead. ""Now stay behind me. Marcone is cornered at the water's edge.""
