Chapter 6 - The Anatomy of an Execution
The space inside the anchor locker contracted into a vacuum of razor-sharp
tension. The smell of salt, blood, and sulfur was suffocating.
“Lower the gun, Mercer,” Damian said, his voice terrifyingly calm, devoid of any
inflection. He didn’t raise his rifle toward Mercer’s head. He kept it lowered
at a low-ready angle, his dark eyes locked onto Mercer’s chest.
“Why should I, Cross?” Mercer mocked, his finger twitching on the heavy
revolver’s trigger, the massive barrel never wavering from Claire’s face. “You
took my territory in Chelsea. You took my docks in Charlestown. You made me look
like a second-rate hustler in front of the Commission! And all for what? To play
white knight for a little ER nurse with pretty eyes?”
Claire felt Rebecca trembling violently against her shins, sobbing silently into
her shoulder. Claire didn’t move. Her heart was beating with a cold, rhythmic
cadence she had only ever experienced during mass-casualty code blues.
Assess the room. Assess the angles. Identify the lethal variable.
Mercer was standing seven feet above them on an industrial steel-grating
catwalk. The catwalk was suspended by two four-inch structural steel tension
cables. Behind Mercer, high-pressure hydraulic lines for the anchor windlass ran
along the bulkhead.
“Mercer,” Claire spoke, her voice surprisingly steady, slicing through the hum
of the ship’s engines.
Mercer’s eyes flickered down to her, a sneer curling his upper lip. “Quiet,
little girl. The adults are talking.”
“You’re in early-stage hepatic failure, aren’t you?” Claire said.
Mercer blinked, his smirk faltering for a fraction of a second. “What the hell
are you babbling about?”
“The sclera of your eyes. They’re jaundiced. Yellowing around the edges,” Claire
continued, keeping her gaze locked on his face, keeping his attention riveted
entirely to her. “The tremor in your left thumb. That’s asterixis. Liver flap.
You aren’t doing this for territory, Mercer. You’re dying. You have six months,
maybe less. This isn’t a takeover. This is a suicide run because you couldn’t
bear the thought of dying in a hospital bed while Damian Cross owned the city.”
Mercer’s face twisted into an expression of sheer, unadulterated fury. Claire
had struck the exact nerve that shattered his narcissistic composure.
“You smart-mouthed little b—”
Mercer shifted his weight to sneer at her.
That micro-second of distraction was all Damian Cross needed.
Damian didn’t aim for Mercer’s chest. He aimed three feet to the left, firing a
burst of high-velocity rounds straight into the high-pressure hydraulic line
above Mercer’s head.
BANG-BANG-BANG.
The steel line ruptured with the sound of a cannon shot, blasting twelve hundred
pounds of scalding, pressurized hydraulic fluid directly into Mercer’s face and
eyes.
Mercer shrieked in agony, dropping the heavy .44 Magnum as the toxic fluid
blinded him, his hands clawing wildly at his skin.
Damian was already moving. He leaped onto the lower rungs of the maintenance
ladder, hauled himself up with his uninjured right arm, and slammed Mercer
against the bulkhead. With a brutal, clinical strike of his elbow, Damian broke
Mercer’s nose, drove the heel of his palm into the man’s throat, and ripped the
black detonator and the brass padlock key from Mercer’s tactical vest.
Damian threw the key over the railing. “Claire! Catch!”
The brass key clinked against the steel floor. Claire dove for it, sliding
across the wet deck plating, scooping the key into her trembling fingers.
She jammed it into the heavy padlock binding Rebecca’s chains.
Click.
The lock popped open. The heavy steel chains uncoiled from Rebecca’s bruised
torso and clattered to the deck with a heavy, deafening rattle.
“Becca, get up!” Claire dragged her sister to her feet, slinging Rebecca’s arm
over her shoulder. “Can you walk?”
“I... I think so,” Rebecca choked out, stumbling toward the open hatch.
Above them on the catwalk, Damian had Mercer pinned over the steel railing by
his throat, hovering fifty feet above the dark, churning Atlantic water rushing
through the scuppers.
“The timer, Mercer,” Damian growled, pressing the barrel of his sidearm against
the side of Mercer’s head. “How do I disarm the C-4?”
Mercer spat a mouthful of blood onto Damian’s face, laughing through broken
teeth, his blinded eyes wild and unhinged. “You... you can’t, Cross! It’s on a
closed-circuit fail-safe! When the remote loses signal... it detonates! And I
just threw the master relay into the harbor ten minutes ago!”
Damian’s eyes narrowed. He looked down at the digital display on the remote in
his hand.
01:42.
01:41.
01:40.
Ninety seconds until twelve hundred pounds of military-grade explosive tore the
hull into confetti.
Damian didn’t waste another breath. Without a word, he shoved Mercer backward
over the catwalk railing. Mercer screamed as he plummeted fifty feet into the
pitch-black ocean, swallowed instantly by the roaring, freezing black swells.
Damian vaulted over the ladder railing, dropping ten feet down to the deck of
the chain locker, landing with a grunt that tore his surgical stitches wide
open. A fresh gush of blood soaked the front of his tactical shirt.
“Damian!” Claire cried.
“Run!” Damian bellowed, grabbing Rebecca’s other arm and practically carrying
the girl as they bolted through the watertight door into the lower corridor.
“The Black Hawk had to pull back due to deck fire! We have to reach the stern
dive platform! Marcus has the Zodiac interceptor!”
They sprinted through the flooding lower deck. The ship was already listing
heavily to port as sea cocks opened, water sloshing past their ankles, icy and
black.
Sirens screamed throughout the vessel, flashing yellow strobe lights casting
grotesque shadows against the walls.
00:45.
00:44.
They burst through the heavy double doors of the lower salon onto the stern swim
platform.
Fifty yards off the stern, Marcus was wrestling with the throttle of a
twin-engine tactical Zodiac boat, battling against the heavy six-foot swells of
the open Atlantic.
“Boss! Jump!” Marcus’s voice cut through the roar of the wind over the marine
radio.
“Ladies first!” Damian hauled Rebecca by her belt and tossed her clear into the
deep water toward the boat, where Marcus’s men immediately grabbed her arms and
hauled her gasping onto the rubber pontoon.
Damian grabbed Claire’s waist, lifting her toward the railing.
“Jump, Claire!”
“Not without you!” Claire screamed, clutching his tactical vest with both hands,
refusing to let go. “You jumped for me, Damian! I’m not leaving you behind!”
Damian looked at her, his face covered in sweat, sea spray, and blood, and in
that split second of imminent annihilation, a smile of pure, wild adoration
broke across his lips.
He wrapped his arms tight around her waist, burying his face into her hair.
“Then we jump together.”
They leaped into the void.
May you like
Mid-air, the Leviathan erupted.
A shockwave of orange fire, screaming steel, and deafening thunder ripped
through the night sky, throwing them forward like ragdolls as they plummeted
into the freezing, crushing black embrace of the North Atlantic.
