Chapter 34 - Iron and Blood
The screen of the laptop didn't flash green with a transfer confirmation.
Instead, a high-pitched siren wailed from the machine’s speakers, and the screen flashed red: **SYSTEM OVERRIDE — FEDERAL RECEIVERSHIP INITIATED — GPS BEACON ACTIVE.**
From the surrounding fog, three hundred yards out across the water, blinding spotlight beams tore through the mist.
Two massive Coast Guard cutters surged out of the darkness, their sirens screaming, their heavy deck-mounted machine guns aimed directly at the trawler.
"UNITED STATES COAST GUARD! DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND STEP AWAY FROM THE VESSEL!" a voice boomed through an acoustic hailing device, echoing across the bay like thunder.
Simultaneously, from the shore end of the pier, three armored state police transport vehicles smashed through the chain-link gates, their high beams trapping Volkov and his men in a blinding crossfire of light.
Volkov didn't panic; his face darkened with murderous fury. "Kill them!" he snarled, pulling a heavy silver revolver from his coat.
Before his guards could raise their rifles, I exploded from behind the partition wall.
I didn't fire the shotgun—in the cramped wooden shed, the muzzle blast would have deafened us all. Instead, I drove the full, unyielding weight of my cast-iron skillet into the side of the lead guard’s helmet with a bone-jarring *CLANG* that rattled through the timbers. The man crashed sideways through the rotting wall, tumbling into the freezing black water below.
The second guard raised his weapon toward David.
Eleanor Vance, lying on the floor in her ruined fur coat, suddenly lashed out with both bound feet, kicking the guard’s knee from behind with a desperate, animal screech. The guard stumbled, his burst of automatic fire ripping through the ceiling, raining rotten cedar shingles down upon us.
David seized the fallen rifle, swinging the butt around in a brutal, sweeping arc that connected squarely with the guard's temple, dropping him senseless across the laptop table.
Volkov raised his revolver, his eyes fixed on my chest. "You die first, cook."
I didn't duck. I threw the broken spatula—the jagged, rusted iron tool Julian Vance had handed me to humiliate me in front of sixty people—straight at his face with the speed of an arrow.
The sharp, rusted edge sliced deep across Volkov’s cheek and eyelid.
The syndicate boss roared in agony, his shot flying wide, punching a hole through the doorframe. Before he could recover his sight, I closed the distance, grabbed his lapels, and hurled him bodily out the doorway of the pump house.
Volkov hit the wet dock boards hard, rolling to his feet, but he was already encircled.
A dozen state police tactical officers, backed by Sheriff Thomas and half the town’s auxiliary deputies, had their carbines pointed directly at his skull.
"Down! On your face! NOW!" Thomas’s voice cut through the howling wind.
May you like
Volkov looked at the rifles, then at the Coast Guard cutters closing in, and finally at me, standing in the doorway of the pump house with the cast-iron skillet in my hand and blood dripping from my knuckles.
Slowly, carefully, Sergei Volkov dropped his silver revolver onto the wet boards and sank to his knees.
