Chapter 9 - THE CLIFFS OF BLOOD
The fog over Lake Michigan rolled in thick and suffocating as twilight surrendered to midnight.
A hundred yards off the base of the Moretti estate’s limestone bluffs, the water was like black glass.
Three black tactical Zodiac boats drifted silently through the mist, their electric outboards emitting nothing more than a faint hum. Twelve men, clad in high-tech drysuits, night-vision goggles, and suppressed carbines, checked their climbing harnesses.
At the bow of the center Zodiac stood Mikhail Petrov.
He was taller than his dead brother, leaner, with eyes that possessed the cold, unfeeling emptiness of a deep-sea predator. He held a tactical tablet displaying the thermal layout of the mansion above.
“The four children are located in the subterranean bunker,” his second-in-command whispered in Russian. “The security perimeter along the cliff edge appears unmanned. They are watching the highway gates.”
Mikhail sneered, slipping a serrated combat knife into his chest sheath. “Alejandro Moretti is arrogant. He thinks like an Italian gangster, not a soldier. We plant the C4 along the foundation, breach the bunker from the utility tunnel, and execute the boys before he realizes the cliff is lost.”
“And Moretti?”
“Leave him alive,” Mikhail hissed, his eyes burning with venom. “I want him to wake up in the ashes of his palace, surrounded by the corpses of his four little bastards. I want him to know the pain Viktor felt before he died.”
“Ready grappling lines,” the lieutenant ordered.
The pneumatic launchers hissed softly, firing four titanium grappling hooks toward the crest of the seventy-foot limestone cliff.
The hooks found purchase in the heavy rock above with a muted *clink.*
Before the first mercenary could clip his ascender to the line, the black water fifty yards behind them violently split open.
A thunderous roar tore through the fog as a twin-turbine, twelve-hundred-horsepower midnight-black interceptor boat launched over the swell.
Before the mercenaries could swing their rifles around, the twin bow-mounted M134 Miniguns aboard my interceptor opened fire.
The sound wasn't a series of gunshots; it was a demonic, continuous buzzsaw that ripped the night in two.
Six thousand rounds per minute of armor-piercing incendiary lead shredded the water, tearing the two flanking Zodiacs into confetti in three seconds flat. Fuel tanks exploded into blinding white flares, illuminating the fog and throwing burning bodies into the icy depths of Lake Michigan.
Mikhail’s Zodiac was tossed sideways by the wake. He scrambled to his feet, screaming orders through the blinding spray of water and fire.
From the deck of the interceptor, I leaped across the five-foot gap of churning water, my boots slamming down onto the rubber pontoon of Mikhail’s boat with bone-crushing force.
I didn't use a rifle.
I held a twelve-inch carbon-steel combat blade in my right hand, and the Kimber .45 in my left.
The lieutenant lunged at me with a combat knife. I sidestepped the thrust, seized his wrist, snapped the bone backward, and drove my blade upward beneath his ribcage, severing his aorta before hurling his body into the freezing surf.
Another mercenary raised his carbine, but I fired two rounds through his chest before he could clear the safety.
Within twenty seconds, only Mikhail Petrov remained standing.
The Russian commander dropped his useless rifle, drawing his heavy hunting blade with a feral snarl. Blood trickled down his temple from the boat’s collision, but his eyes were filled with pure, homicidal rage.
“Moretti!” he roared in Russian, lunging forward with a savage diagonal slash.
The blade cut through the shoulder of my tactical jacket, grazing the skin beneath.
Pain flared, white and sharp, but pain had been my companion for twenty years. It didn't slow me down. It focused me.
I caught Mikhail’s descending forearm with my left hand, arresting the blow mid-air. With my right, I drove the butt of my heavy pistol into his nose.
Cartilage exploded. Blood sprayed across his lips.
Mikhail stumbled back, his eyes watering, but he swung his blade again in a desperate, blind arc.
I ducked beneath the blade, stepped into his guard, and drove my knee into his liver. Mikhail let out a wheezing, strangled gasp as all the oxygen left his body. He collapsed onto the floor of the Zodiac, gasping for air like a landed carp.
I stood over him, my chest heaving with cold air, the Kimber .45 leveled at the space between his eyes.
Mikhail looked up through a mask of blood, his teeth stained red.
“Kill me...” he choked out, laughing weakly. “There are... there are more of us in Moscow. You cannot watch them... every hour of every day. One day... one of your boys will slip. One day, they will bleed.”
I lowered the gun.
For a split second, Mikhail’s eyes widened with confused hope.
“You’re right,” I said softly, my voice completely devoid of anger, colder than the black water beneath our feet. “A man cannot watch four sons every second of the day.”
I reached into my pocket, pulled out a small black detonator, and clicked the switch.
Three miles out in the open lake, Mikhail’s ninety-foot luxury yacht—which my harbor demolition team had boarded and rigged twenty minutes earlier—erupted into a catastrophic fireball that lit up the Chicago skyline like the fourth of July.
Mikhail watched in horror as the burning wreckage of his command ship sank beneath the black waves.
“There are no more of you in Moscow,” I said, looking back down at him. “Because an hour ago, my associates in Brighton Beach liquidated every bank account, every warehouse, and every associate tied to the Petrov name. You are the last.”
“Moretti—”
“My sons will never look over their shoulders,” I whispered. “Because I am killing the dark.”
*Bang.*
The shot echoed off the limestone cliffs, swallowed by the roar of the wind.
I turned back to my interceptor boat, holstering my weapon.
May you like
“Sink the Zodiac,” I told Carlo over the tactical headset. “And call the manor. Tell Elena to prepare breakfast for five. We have school to prepare for.”
***
