The Coastal Ambush

Rain lashed a relentless rhythm against the armored glass of our tactical transport as Briggs expertly wove through the highway, slicing past roadblocks erected by the compromised state troopers. Every mile brought us closer to the abandoned shipyard in Wilmington, Daniel Vance’s presumed location according to the NSA transponder data Briggs had intercepted.

They needed Daniel’s biometric thumbprint, an irreversible key to unlock the international escrow accounts holding the twenty-million-dollar bounty. Once those offshore funds were cleared, Sterling’s mercenary commander intended to discard Daniel’s body into the churning Atlantic.

We arrived at the perimeter of the derelict industrial shipyard, cloaked by the gathering fury of a gale-force storm. Massive, rusting cranes clawed at the black sky like skeletal giants, groaning under the violent sea gusts. Through our thermal scope, eight heavily armed contractors flickered into view, guarding the primary dry dock warehouse. At the edge of the deep-water slipway, a modified high-speed stealth interceptor boat bobbed, its powerful engines idling low.

I unholstered my suppressed tactical sidearm, a silent signal for Briggs to ascend to the high scaffolding along the northern perimeter. I became a phantom, gliding across the wet gravel, melting into the deep shadows cast by stacked steel shipping containers.

The lead contractor stood beneath a harsh exterior work light, his submachine gun slung across his chest as he glanced at his watch. I closed the distance without a whisper of sound, my combat knife finding its mark around his neck before he could even draw a breath. His body went slack in my grip, and I eased him into the darkness between two steel drums, the interior guards none the wiser.

High above, Briggs’s suppressed rifle spoke twice, its soft whispers lost to the gale, as two perimeter snipers toppled from the crane gantry. Their bodies landed with barely a thud on the wooden pallets below, their descent muffled by the roaring Atlantic surf.

I stacked up against the corrugated metal door of the warehouse, my gaze piercing through a cracked window pane. Inside, Daniel Vance was lashed to a steel chair beneath a single, naked industrial bulb, his face a swollen canvas of bruises. Standing over him was a man in dark tactical fatigues bearing South African military insignias—Colonel Van Der Bilt, Sterling’s chief enforcer.

Van Der Bilt was brutally forcing Daniel’s broken fingers onto a ruggedized biometric tablet, his voice a snarl as he demanded authorization for the wire release. Daniel, sobbing uncontrollably, pleaded for his life, whimpering that he had done everything asked of him to set Sarah up for the extraction. He’d made sure the baby was healthy, he’d endured Sarah’s family, and he deserved his share, he begged. Van Der Bilt merely laughed, a cold, hard sound, stating that fools who failed to eliminate their own mothers-in-law were liabilities, not partners. He pressed the barrel of a customized tactical pistol against Daniel’s forehead, poised to fire the instant the biometric tablet flashed green.

I kicked the heavy steel access door off its rusted hinges with a thunderous crack that reverberated through the entire warehouse. Van Der Bilt spun, firing two rounds blindly towards the doorway as his contractors scrambled to raise their weapons. My rifle answered before his second shot cleared the chamber, two armor-piercing rounds tearing through the throat of the nearest guard. The warehouse erupted into a deafening storm of muzzle flashes, ricochets shrieking off the corrugated walls.

Briggs dropped through the skylight on a tactical fast-rope, his weapon chattering on full automatic as he descended into the maelstrom. Two more mercenaries crumpled, their weapons clattering uselessly into the pooling water on the concrete floor. Van Der Bilt, using Daniel’s chair as a human shield, dragged the terrified traitor towards the rear exit that led to the boat slipway. Daniel screamed in agonizing terror as a stray round clipped his thigh, blood spurting through his torn designer trousers.

I advanced through the smoke-choked air, firing controlled two-round bursts that swiftly eliminated the remaining contractor guarding the rear corridor. Van Der Bilt shoved Daniel onto the wet wooden dock, then sprinted aboard the idling stealth interceptor, slamming the throttles. The powerful marine engines roared to life, churning the water into white foam as the vessel surged away from the slipway.

I sprinted onto the pier into the driving rain, ignoring Daniel’s pathetic cries for help behind me. I hoisted my rifle to my shoulder, tracked the fleeing interceptor through my illuminated red-dot sight, and fired at the fuel manifold. The armor-piercing incendiary round punched through the fiberglass hull, striking the pressurized marine fuel cell. A blinding orange fireball ripped through the stern of the boat, lifting the vessel out of the water in a violent shockwave. The burning wreckage drifted into the black waves, illuminating the dark harbor with a roaring curtain of fire.

I lowered my weapon, the cold rain washing the gunpowder residue from my face as I turned slowly back to the pier. Daniel Vance lay curled in a puddle of muddy water, clutching his bleeding leg, staring up at me with absolute, paralyzing terror. He wept, stammering that he was sorry, that he’d been in debt, that Arthur had forced him into the arrangement with Lord Sterling.

I walked over to him, the heavy soles of my combat boots clicking against the wet timber with slow, deliberate finality. I looked down at the man who had raised a scorching iron to my pregnant daughter’s stomach. I leaned down, whispered into his ear that his twenty-million-dollar bounty was cancelled, and zip-tied his uninjured wrist to the iron mooring ring. The tide was rising fast; by the time the state police arrived, Daniel Vance would know what true helplessness felt like.

Briggs jogged up the pier, holding Van Der Bilt’s recovered satellite communicator, which was flashing with an urgent incoming transmission. Lord Julian Sterling’s voice crackled through the speaker, demanding to know if the extraction of the child was complete.

I brought the communicator to my lips, letting the icy wind carry my words into the microphone. I told the billionaire that his dogs were dead, his pipeline was shattered, and I was coming for his yacht next.