Chapter 8 - Fog on the Hudson
At Pier Ninety, half a mile north of where Sophie was actually being held, a massive orange fireball suddenly erupted inside the abandoned coal terminal shed—shattering every window along the West Side Highway as Arthur Pendelton’s remote forty-three-second trap detonated on the empty dock where Dante and I were supposed to be standing!
They had never intended to trade my daughter for the documents at Pier Ninety; they had planned to incinerate both of us on arrival and keep Sophie as permanent leverage over the Moretti estate.
Instead, sixty seconds before that bomb went off, Dante’s armored Escalade had already slid to a silent, lights-off stop behind a stack of steel shipping containers at Pier Eighty-Four, less than a hundred yards from the green wooden pilings of Berth Four!
Through the pouring rain and swirling gray river fog, I saw the fifty-foot black-and-red harbor tugboat Sea Star straining against its final mooring line as white diesel exhaust poured from its twin stacks.
Down on the slick steel rear deck of the tugboat, two armed mercenaries hired by Deputy Mayor Sterling were uncoiling the heavy bow ropes to cast off into the Hudson channel.
"Look on the forward port deck by the fuel winch," Vincent whispered grimly as he handed Dante a pair of night-vision binoculars.
Lying motionless against the iron anchor chain on the front deck was the narrow man in the long gray coat—Arthur Pendelton—with two bullet holes in the center of his chest and his brown leather briefcase gone.
"Caleb Ross and Deputy Mayor Sterling just executed their own arsonist the moment they thought the Pier Ninety bomb killed us, so there wouldn’t be a living witness who could connect Sterling to the fires," Dante said coldly as he stripped off his charcoal suit jacket and checked the suppressor on his black nine-millimeter pistol.
"Stay inside this armored vehicle with the doors locked until Vincent and I clear the deck, Marissa," Dante ordered as he reached for the door handle.
"No, Dante, listen to me," I said fiercely, grabbing his forearm with both hands.
"Sophie jammed the brass latch of the forward washroom door from the inside with a crayon, and she will not unlock that door or come out for any man’s voice while she hears gunfire—if you need to get her off that boat in under ten seconds before Caleb blows the fuel bilge, she has to see my face and hear our secret bedtime code word," I told him without blinking.
Dante looked into my eyes for two seconds, saw that nothing on earth would keep a mother off that pier, and gave a single sharp nod as he strapped a high-grade kevlar vest over my sweater.
Moving like twin ghosts through the sheets of blinding rain along the blind side of the pier pilings, Dante and Vincent eliminated the two mercenaries on the dock gangway with silent, surgical precision before either guard could raise a rifle.
We slipped across the wet steel gunwale onto the rear deck of the Sea Star just as the tugboat’s main propellers churned the black river water into foam and the vessel began drifting twenty feet clear of the wooden pier!
Up in the elevated glass wheelhouse, Caleb Ross was standing behind the brass helm with a stainless-steel revolver in his right hand, angrily hammering his left fist against the locked mahogany door of the forward washroom where Sophie was hiding.
"Open this door right now, you little brat, or I will shoot this lock off the hinges," Caleb snarled inside the wheelhouse.
Dante stepped silently up the exterior iron companionway steps to the port wheelhouse window, while Vincent positioned himself at the starboard door and I crouched directly beneath the forward windshield with the sixty-thousand-lumen marine searchlight control in my hand.
On Dante’s three-finger signal, I flipped the master toggle switch of the bow searchlight and swung the blinding white beam straight backward through the wet windshield directly into Caleb Ross’s eyes!
Blinded by the sudden glare, Caleb stumbled back from the washroom door and swung his revolver wildly toward the forward glass—the exact instant Dante kicked the port wheelhouse door off its brass hinges and fired a single, pinpoint round that shattered the barrel of Caleb’s revolver out of his hand!
Screaming in pain as the gun spun across the wheelhouse floor, Caleb lunged desperately with his left hand toward a red plastic toggle switch mounted on the side of Arthur Pendelton’s stolen brown briefcase, which was bolted directly over the main diesel fuel manifold on the bulkhead!
Before Caleb could flip the manual detonator switch, Dante closed the distance in two lethal strides, drove a brutal right cross squarely into Caleb’s jaw, and slammed the corrupt manager face-down onto the steel deck plates while Vincent snapped heavy iron cuffs around his wrists!
"Ladybug, Sophie, it is Mommy and the bad man is gone," I called out clearly as I knelt beside the washroom door.
Within two seconds, the blue crayon popped out of the brass slide latch, the narrow door swung open, and my six-year-old daughter flew straight into my arms, burying her warm face against my neck while clutching her second red lollipop and a crumpled piece of yellow paper she had found inside the washroom cabinet.
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As I held Sophie tightly against my heart and kissed her forehead a hundred times, the bleeding, handcuffed Caleb Ross spat a mouthful of blood onto the steel floor at Dante’s boots and let out a manic, choking laugh.
"You are celebrating way too early, Moretti, because popping that red switch on Pendelton’s briefcase automatically triggered the forty-three-second backup timer wired into ten gallons of nitro-fuel in the bilge beneath your feet—and even if you swim out of this river alive, Deputy Mayor Richard Sterling just walked into the Grand Ballroom of The Moretti Reserve ten minutes ago with thirty federal marshals and a signed receivership order seizing every hotel and pier you own!"
