Chapter 6 - Smoke and Mirrors
The Long Island City warehouse was a sprawling, rusted brick monolith sitting directly on the murky, oil-slicked banks of the East River. It served as Dante’s primary distribution hub for contraband, counterfeit currency, and smuggled firearms. Tonight, however, it looked like an armed encampment. Four black SUVs were idling by the loading bays, and roughly two dozen armed enforcers milled around barrel fires in the freezing drizzle, smoking cigarettes and laughing loudly.
They thought they had won. They thought Alesandro Duque was hiding behind his security glass, paralyzed by the sudden exposure of his greatest, most vulnerable secret.
They were wrong.
From the shadows of an abandoned lumber yard fifty yards across the tarmac, Alesandro lowered his night-vision binoculars. Beside him crouched Viktor, checking the magazine of a suppressed submachine gun with mechanical efficiency.
"Front entrance is heavily fortified," Viktor whispered, his breath pluming white in the damp air. "At least twelve men with automatic weapons. They’ve got motion sensors rigged along the perimeter fencing."
Alesandro handed the binoculars back without looking away from the glowing windows of the warehouse office on the second floor. "We don't go through the front."
"The water gate?"
"The roof," Alesandro corrected, his voice flat and steady. "Dante is sitting in his office counting his chickens. He expects us to negotiate through intermediaries by morning. He doesn't expect a tactical insertion through his own skylight."
"And if he’s got hostages inside?"
"Then we make sure he joins them before he has time to draw a breath," Alesandro muttered, standing up from his crouch. "Move out."
The infiltration was swift, silent, and brutal. Within four minutes, the exterior guards were neutralized without a single gunshot, hauled into the shadows of the loading containers before they could even hit the asphalt. Viktor cut the perimeter power grid with a portable EMP charge, plunging the outer yard into total darkness, while Alesandro scaled the rusted iron fire escape like a shadow.
The glass of the roof skylight didn't shatter; it yielded quietly to a diamond-tipped glass cutter. Alesandro slipped through the opening like a ghost, landing silently on the concrete catwalk directly above Dante’s private office.
Below him, through the wire-reinforced glass panels of the office roof, he could see Dante—a thick-necked, arrogant man with slicked-back gray hair and an expensive tailored suit—laughing as he poured a glass of amber whiskey.
"The kid is the golden ticket," Dante was telling his lieutenant, a scarred enforcer named Rico. "Once we squeeze Duque for the docks, we take the Zurich accounts. And if he tries to play hero? We send the baby back to him in a basket. Let's see how cold his heart is then."
Alesandro didn't wait to hear the rest.
May you like
He raised his boot and smashed clean through the reinforced glass ceiling of the office.
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