Chapter 46 - Blood on the Hudson
Sophia slammed the heavy steel breaker lever downward with all her weight.
A blinding shower of electrical sparks erupted from the breaker box as three hundred amps shorted directly into the main transformer, plunging the entire warehouse block into impenetrable, pitch-black darkness.
Simultaneously, the high-caliber sniper rounds punched through the brickwork and glass windows above them, pulverizing the plaster where Sophia had stood seconds earlier.
"Move!" Miller roared.
He fired two controlled bursts toward the warehouse skylight, shattering the wired glass panels and dropping heavy iron chains into the center of the loading floor.
From the front bay doors, four private military contractors clad in night-vision gear and suppressors breached the entryway with tactical precision. The suppressed crack of their submachine guns spat tongues of muted flame into the shadows.
Sophia didn't cower. The terror that had paralyzed her for the past twenty-four hours crystallized into a white-hot, razor-sharp fury. She rolled behind a heavy industrial forklift, snatching a discarded steel pry-bar from the concrete floor.
A mercenary in night-vision goggles swept past her hiding spot, his rifle raised toward Miller’s muzzle flashes across the bay.
Sophia lunged from the shadows. With the full rotational force of her body, she brought the steel bar down against the operative's knee, snapping the joint with a sickening, wet crack. As the man buckled with a muffled scream, she drove the pointed claw of the pry-bar into the side of his helmet, disorienting him, and wrestled the sidearm from his thigh holster.
She didn't hesitate. She fired twice into his chest plate at point-blank range, the kinetic shock dropping him cold against the oil-stained floor.
"Sophia!" Miller yelled from the rear loading dock.
He was pinned behind a stack of shipping pallets, his Glock slide locked back on an empty chamber. Two operatives were flanking his position from the right, their laser sights intersecting on his chest.
Sophia leveled the dead contractor's Sig Sauer. In the flickering gloom of the electrical fire burning in the corner, she breathed out, centered the sights on the lead flanker, and squeezed the trigger.
Three rounds. The first struck the lead contractor's shoulder; the second took him through the throat. He crumpled backwards into a heap of rusted sheet metal.
The second contractor spun to face her, but Miller had already closed the distance. Using his empty pistol as a blunt weapon, Miller hammered the steel slide into the operative's jaw, hooked his leg, and threw him over the edge of the loading dock into the black, churning waters of the East River twenty feet below.
"The service van!" Miller shouted, clutching his side where a grazing round had torn through his ribs. "The keys are in the ignition!"
They burst through the rear bay doors into the driving sleet. A beaten-down, unmarked Ford Econoline sat parked beside the bulkhead. Sophia threw Miller into the passenger seat, leaped behind the wheel, and threw the transmission into reverse, smashing through the chain-link gate and fishtailing out onto the slick asphalt of Commercial Street just as the remaining Suburbans rounded the corner.
In the rearview mirror, Sophia watched the warehouse erupt into a ball of orange fire as the punctured gas line ignited.
She looked down at her hands on the steering wheel. They were covered in grease, rainwater, and blood.
May you like
None of it was hers.
***
