Chapter 12 - The Wolf in the Sanctuary
The grand foyer had descended into an inferno of concussive flashes, smoke grenades, and deafening gunfire.
Kolov realized within seconds that his frontal assault was doomed.
The Port Authority tactical operators were descending on fast ropes from the upper rafters.
Marco’s men were sweeping down both sides of the twin staircases in disciplined flanking maneuvers.
Kolov did not waste time trying to salvage his mercenaries.
He was a feral predator who cared nothing for the lives of his soldiers.
He turned to his three remaining elite enforcers and barked a furious command in Russian.
They fired an under-barrel grenade directly into the base of the eastern hallway, blowing the interior partition apart.
Kolov and his three men plunged through the burning debris, disappearing into the residential wing.
He was not trying to escape the building.
He was heading toward the private library.
He knew the entrance to the underground bunker was located somewhere beneath the master study.
If he could take Emma, Sarah, and Leo hostage, he could still force me to call off the tactical squads.
Inside the subterranean bunker sixty feet below, the heavy steel walls hummed with the vibration of the explosions above.
Sarah Carter lay on the emergency medical cot, clutching a rosary against her chest with trembling fingers.
Lucia sat beside her, gently wiping the cold sweat from the sick woman’s forehead with a damp cloth.
In the center of the control room, Leo sat upright in his wheelchair, his eyes fixed on the digital security monitors.
Emma stood directly behind her brother, her hands resting tightly on his shoulders.
“Leo, what is happening up there?” Emma asked, her voice tight with panic.
Leo tapped three keys, zooming in on Camera Seven in the eastern corridor.
On the glowing screen, Viktor Kolov and three masked men appeared, kicking open the double doors of the library.
“They bypassed the main staircase,” Leo muttered, his youthful voice cracking with sudden dread.
“They are directly above us, Emma.”
“They are searching the floorboards for the vault release hatch.”
On the screen, one of the Russian mercenaries drew a heavy sledgehammer and smashed the antique bookcase aside.
The steel outline of the underground hatch was exposed in the center of the parquet flooring.
Kolov pointed at the steel hatch and gestured to his demolition specialist.
The specialist unslung a heavy canvas backpack and pulled out two blocks of military-grade C4 plastic explosive.
Lucia gasped, dropping the cloth into the basin with a trembling splash.
“They have breaching charges,” Lucia whispered, terror turning her skin completely white.
“If they detonate that explosive on the upper seal, the concussive pressure will crush this entire room.”
Emma stepped away from her brother’s chair, her jaw tightening with that same fierce, unyielding pride I had seen in her hospital bed.
She walked toward the emergency weapons cabinet mounted on the reinforced wall.
She turned the manual release latch and swung the metal door open.
Inside rested a standard twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun and two boxes of heavy buckshot.
Emma had never held a firearm in her entire life.
Her hands had spent fourteen months holding brooms, feather dusters, and cleaning rags.
Yet she picked up the heavy steel weapon without a second of hesitation.
She dragged the slide backward with a loud, mechanical clack, chambering a red plastic shell into the receiver.
“Emma, what are you doing?” Leo cried out, trying to grab her skirt from his wheelchair.
“Put that down!”
“You don't know how to shoot that thing!”
“I know which end the fire comes out of, Leo,” Emma answered, turning toward the heavy iron ladder leading to the upper hatch.
“Those men broke into our home in Crown Heights.”
“They beat me in an alley like an animal.”
“They almost killed our mother.”
“I am not going to sit down here in the dark and wait for them to blow this ceiling down on top of you.”
“Emma, listen to me!” Leo shouted, pointing frantically at the console screen.
“You don't have to go up there!”
“Look at the monitor!”
Emma paused on the first rung of the metal ladder and looked back at the glowing screen.
On the camera feed above, Viktor Kolov was standing over the hatch, supervising the placement of the detonator cords.
Behind him, stepping through the burning threshold of the library doors like a shadow taking human form, was Dominic Castellano.
I was entirely alone.
My suit jacket was gone, my white dress shirt was torn at the shoulder, and my face was smeared with black soot.
My Kimber forty-five was lowered at my side.
The two guards standing watch behind Kolov never heard my footsteps on the ruined parquet floor.
I closed the distance in three silent strides.
I drove the combat blade in my left hand up beneath the ribcage of the first sentry, severing his aorta before he could cry out.
As he collapsed, I raised my pistol and fired a single round through the back of the second guard’s skull.
The demolition specialist knelt over the hatch turned in horror, reaching for the submachine gun slung across his chest.
I stepped forward and kicked him squarely in the throat with the steel-toed tip of my boot.
The man crashed backward against the mahogany wall, choking violently on his shattered windpipe.
Viktor Kolov spun around, his eyes widening in pure disbelief as he saw his entire personal detail eliminated in four seconds.
He dropped his rifle, pulling a heavy serrated combat knife from his tactical harness.
The two of us stood alone in the burning ruins of my father’s library.
Above us, the flames from the roof crackled and hissed as rain poured through the open ceiling.
“Just you and me now, Castellano,” Kolov snarled, crouching into a lethal fighting stance.
“No bodyguards.”
“No police commissioners.”
“Just blood.”
I holstered my empty pistol and drew my father’s ceremonial Damascus steel blade from my inner waistband.
“I told you yesterday, Viktor,” I replied, stepping slowly across the bloody floorboards.
May you like
“A debt of blood must always be settled in cash.”
“And tonight, you are completely bankrupt.”
