Chapter 6 - The Sabotage
It was three days before the Midnight Run. The Miami sky was bruised purple with an incoming summer storm.
Elias was alone in the dry-dock bay, making final adjustments to the starboard engine’s throttle linkage. Sarah had gone home to sleep, and the rest of the crew was off for the night.
A sudden, sharp crash echoed from the front office.
Elias grabbed a heavy steel wrench from his toolbox and stepped out of the bay. The security lights in the main yard had been smashed. Three figures moved in the darkness, carrying crowbars and baseball bats.
"Thorne sends his regards, old man," the largest of the men sneered. It was one of the suited security guards from the yacht, now dressed in street clothes. "He heard you were trying to enter a museum piece into his race. He told us to make sure it doesn't float."
The thugs rushed him.
Elias swung the wrench, catching the first man in the ribs with a sickening crunch. The man went down howling. But the second thug swung a baseball bat, catching Elias in his bad knee.
The old man crumpled to the ground with a grunt of agony.
The third man kicked Elias in the ribs, sending him sprawling across the wet concrete. "Stay down, grandpa," the thug spat.
While Elias lay gasping for breath in the rain, the men moved into the dry-dock bay. Elias heard the horrifying sound of shattering fiberglass and smashing metal. They were destroying The Phantom.
They spent ten minutes wrecking the boat before sirens wailed in the distance—someone in the neighborhood had called the cops. The thugs ran, leaving Elias bleeding on the concrete.
When Sarah arrived twenty minutes later, she found her uncle sitting on an overturned bucket in the bay, staring at the ruin of their hard work. The windshield was shattered. The navigation systems Sarah had painstakingly installed were smashed. But worst of all, they had taken a sledgehammer to the starboard engine block. It was cracked.
Sarah fell to her knees, sobbing. "They ruined it. We're done, Uncle Eli. We're done."
Elias wiped a stream of blood from his split lip. His face was a mask of cold, terrifying fury. He looked at the cracked engine block.
"Marco!" Elias roared into the night, knowing the mechanic lived in the apartment above the office.
May you like
Marco came running down the stairs, seeing the devastation.
"Call the crew," Elias growled, struggling to his feet, ignoring the searing pain in his ribs and knee. "Call every mechanic, welder, and fiberglass guy in this harbor. We have seventy-two hours. We are going to weld that block, patch that hull, and put this ghost back in the water if it kills me."
