Chapter 10 - Blood in the Water
Heavy armor-piercing rounds chewed through the concrete roadbed, tearing up chunks of asphalt and shredding the side paneling of the bridge.
"Sniper on the river!" Rafe shouted, diving behind an overturned police cruiser.
Down on the dark waters of the East River, a military-grade assault boat was idling, mounted with a .50-caliber machine gun aimed up at the bridge span. At the helm stood a towering man with platinum-blonde hair and a jagged scar across his throat—Viktor Rostov himself.
"Nico Vance!" Rostov's voice boomed over a high-powered loudspeaker from the water. "Throw the girl over the railing with the account codes, or none of you leave this bridge alive!"
Marcella clung to Nico's coat, trembling like a leaf. "Don't let him take me, Nico! He’ll torture me! He wants the keys to the Swiss vaults!"
Nico looked at his treacherous sister, then at the burning police car beside him. The fuel tank was ruptured, gasoline pouring across the sloping roadway straight toward a drainage pipe that dumped directly into the river below.
"Rafe!" Nico shouted over the roar of gunfire. "Do you have Dad's flare gun in the emergency kit?"
Rafe grinned through the grime on his face, reaching into his tactical bag and pulling out a heavy red steel flare launcher. "Loaded and ready."
"Aim for the drainage runoff directly above Rostov's boat!" Nico ordered.
Nico stood up into the hail of machine-gun fire, firing four rapid handgun rounds at the cartel boat's searchlight, shattering the high-intensity bulb and blinding the gunner for three critical seconds.
In that window, Rafe stepped forward and fired the magnesium flare straight into the waterfall of burning gasoline cascading off the side of the bridge.
A blinding wall of liquid fire dropped sixty feet down onto the deck of Rostov's assault boat.
The boat's exposed ammunition crates ignited in a catastrophic chain reaction. A massive, deafening fireball erupted on the river, lighting up the entire New York skyline. The shockwave rattled the steel suspension cables of the bridge, sending Rostov’s burning wreckage sinking into the churning black currents of the East River.
The remaining mercenaries on the bridge threw down their weapons and surrendered as dozens of SWAT sirens converged from both sides of the span.
Marcella collapsed onto her knees on the wet road, weeping into her hands. "It's over... it's finally over..."
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Nico stood over her, his suit torn, his knuckles bloody, looking down at his sister without an ounce of warmth.
"It's over for Rostov," Nico said coldly. "For you, Marcella, it’s just the beginning of a life sentence."
