Chapter 12 - The Docks
Z
The Brooklyn Navy Yard at night was a graveyard of industry, a sprawling maze of rusted dry docks, shipping containers stacked like steel monoliths, and the oily black water of the East River slapping against concrete pilings.
I parked the unmarked SUV three blocks away, in the shadow of a decommissioned crane. The rain had started again, a torrential downpour that soaked through my suit jacket in seconds.
Frank sat in the passenger seat, loading a matte-black sidearm with practiced, terrifying efficiency. He racked the slide, the metallic clack echoing loudly in the confined space of the vehicle.
“I told you to stay in the office, Frank,” I said, wiping the condensation from the inside of the windshield.
“And let you walk into a black-market fencing operation alone?” Frank snorted, tucking the weapon into a shoulder holster beneath his jacket. “You pay me too much to let you get shot by dock rats. Besides, these guys hijacked my drivers. This is personal.”
“Ryan, do you have eyes on the target?” I asked, tapping the Bluetooth earpiece in my ear.
“I’ve got satellite overhead and I’ve hacked into the yard’s perimeter security cameras,” Ryan’s voice crackled in my ear, accompanied by the frantic sound of typing. “The target is a mid-sized freighter, the Iron Wraith, docked at Pier 14. They’re loading pallets right now. And Daniel... it’s your gear. I can see the Foster Medical logos on the crates from the thermal imaging. They didn't even bother repacking it.”
“Arrogant,” Frank muttered. “They know the cops won't raid a foreign-flagged vessel without a federal warrant, and by the time a judge signs one, that ship will be in international waters.”
“Which is why we aren't using the cops,” I said, gripping the steering wheel. “How many men, Ryan?”
“I count six heavily armed guards on the pier, and another four on the deck of the ship. These aren't standard dockworkers, Daniel. They’re carrying tactical rifles. They look like private military.”
Sterling had spared no expense. He had hired a top-tier mercenary crew to execute the hijacking and manage the export. It was a flawless plan to make three million dollars in evidence disappear permanently.
“We can't take ten armed mercs in a firefight,” Frank assessed clinically, looking at the layout on his tablet. “We need a distraction. Something to draw them off the pier so we can secure the crates.”
I stared out at the rain-slicked docks, my mind racing. I was not a soldier. I was a tactician. In a boardroom, you didn't win by fighting your opponent’s strengths; you won by exploiting their blind spots.
“Ryan,” I said, a dangerous idea forming in my mind. “Can you access the gantry cranes on Pier 14?”
“The massive automated ones they use to load shipping containers?” Ryan asked. “Yeah, they’re run on a centralized SCADA network. Their cybersecurity is a joke. Why?”
“How much does a fully loaded shipping container weigh?” I asked Frank.
“About sixty thousand pounds,” Frank answered, raising an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Ryan, I want you to take control of the primary crane overlooking the Iron Wraith. Lock onto the heaviest container you can find, lift it directly over the pier where those guards are standing, and then cut the magnetic lock.”
There was a long pause on the radio. “Daniel, dropping sixty thousand pounds of steel onto a concrete pier is going to cause a localized earthquake. It’ll obliterate the dock.”
“That’s the point,” I said coldly. “Do it.”
Frank and I got out of the SUV, pulling the hoods of our raincoats over our heads. We moved silently through the labyrinth of shipping containers, sticking to the deep shadows, the torrential rain masking the sound of our footsteps.
We crept closer to Pier 14, the massive shape of the Iron Wraith looming out of the darkness. I could see the guards now. They were dressed in black tactical gear, standing idly around a forklift that was moving pallets of our stolen medical supplies toward the ship’s loading ramp.
We ducked behind a stack of rusted oil drums, fifty yards away.
“We’re in position, Ryan,” I whispered into the comms. “Now.”
High above the pier, the massive steel arm of the automated gantry crane groaned to life. The sound was deafening, a screech of metal on metal that cut through the rain. The guards on the dock immediately looked up, raising their rifles, shining flashlights into the storm.
The crane swung violently to the left, locking onto a massive blue shipping container sitting on the edge of the dock. With a mechanical whine, it hoisted the sixty-thousand-pound steel box sixty feet into the air.
“What the hell is going on?” one of the guards yelled, backing away. “Who’s operating the crane?”
The crane arm swung out over the pier, directly above the space where the guards were clustered, suspended dangerously over the concrete.
“Drop it,” I ordered.
“Dropping,” Ryan confirmed.
A loud, metallic CLANG echoed across the yard as the magnetic locks disengaged.
The container plummeted.
The impact was apocalyptic. The sixty-thousand-pound steel box slammed into the concrete pier with the force of a bomb. The ground beneath our feet violently shook, throwing me against the oil drums. A massive plume of water, concrete dust, and debris exploded into the air, blinding the security cameras and plunging the pier into utter chaos.
The guards screamed, scattering in blind panic as the shockwave knocked several of them off their feet and into the black water of the river.
“Go!” I yelled.
Frank and I sprinted out from behind the drums, charging straight into the dust cloud. The diversion had worked perfectly. The mercenaries were disoriented, coughing in the dust, their formation broken.
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We bypassed the guards entirely, sprinting directly for the forklift holding the final two pallets of trauma supplies. But as we reached the ramp, a massive figure stepped out of the dust, a tactical rifle raised squarely at my chest.
“Hold it right there,” the mercenary snarled.
