Chapter 12 - Blood on the Hudson
The midnight air over the Hudson River was thick with an unnatural, oppressive fog. Alexander Vance sat in the reinforced rear cabin of a custom-armored Mercedes-Maybach S680 Guard, the vehicle gliding silently along the West Side Highway toward the family's private estate in Westchester. The glass windows, three inches of laminated polycarbonate, muffled the hum of the city into a distant murmur.
Opposite him, Eleanor sat upright, a cashmere blanket draped over her knees. Despite the grueling trials of the past forty-eight hours, her silver eyes were razor-sharp, watching the dark ripples of the water below the elevated highway.
"You should be resting, Mother," Alexander said softly, adjusting the digital security feed playing on his phone. "The medical team at the clinic said your blood pressure was elevated after the press conference."
"My blood pressure has been elevated for forty years, Alexander," Eleanor replied with a dry, aristocratic chuckle. "When you spend four decades waiting for justice, adrenaline becomes your morning tea. What concerns me is not my heart. It is the silence."
In the front passenger seat, Maya Cruz didn’t laugh. Her back was rigid, her dark eyes flicking continuously between the side mirrors and the tactical radar integrated into the dashboard. She was no longer wearing the stained apron of an uptown waitress; she wore tailored charcoal Kevlar combat fatigues, a suppressed Heckler & Koch MP7 rested across her knees, and an encrypted tactical earpiece hummed in her ear.
"Colonel Cruz," Alexander noticed her tension. "Something on the scanner?"
"The traffic behind us vanished three miles back," Maya said, her voice dropping into the icy, calculated cadence of a veteran combat commander. "Port Authority didn't announce any lane closures. And the two NYPD escort cruisers assigned to our rear bumper? They went dark forty seconds ago."
Before Alexander could reach for the satellite phone, the world exploded into blinding violence.
From an overpass directly ahead, a matte-black heavy industrial flatbed truck dropped into reverse, slamming its massive steel tailgate straight into the path of the lead security SUV. The collision was catastrophic. The escort SUV detonated in a geyser of twisted steel, motor oil, and orange flame, flipping three times before skidding to a halt as a burning barricade.
"Ambush!" Maya roared. "Hard reverse! Driver, execute J-turn now!"
The Maybach’s driver, a former British SAS wheelman, threw the heavy sedan into reverse, his foot burying the accelerator. The twin-turbo V12 engine screamed as tires smoked against the wet asphalt.
Too late.
From the fog-shrouded shadows of the 12th Avenue off-ramp, two unmarked tactical vans roared into position, cutting off their retreat. Side doors slid open instantly. Six operators clad in sterile, unmarked black tactical gear and panoramic night-vision goggles leaped out. They weren't street thugs; they carried suppressed Austrian assault rifles and heavy thermite breaching charges.
*Thump-thump-thump!*
High-caliber armor-piercing rounds slammed into the Maybach’s rear windshield. The glass spider-webbed into a dense white grid, holding the impact but obscuring all rear visibility.
"Target confirmed in the primary vehicle!" a voice barked through a loudspeaker in Russian-accented English. "Take the mother alive! Erase the son and the driver!"
"Alexander, stay down!" Maya barked. Her seatbelt released with a snap. She reached into the footwell, pulling two smoke canisters and kicking open her door just as a burst of automatic fire pinged off the titanium door frame.
"Maya, you're outnumbered!" Alexander shouted, lunging forward to pull her back.
"Sir, with all due respect," Maya said, a lethal, predatory grin flashing across her face as she pulled the pins on both canisters with her teeth, "they forgot to check who was sitting in the front seat."
May you like
She rolled out into the smoke-choked highway as the battle for the Hudson began.
***
