Chapter 5 - The War at Pier 19
The wind howling off Lake Michigan was brutal, carrying freezing spray that turned the rusted iron railings of Pier 19 into ice.
The abandoned grain elevator towered twelve stories into the stormy night sky, a jagged concrete monolith standing like a tombstone over the black water.
My team moved in absolute silence.
We bypassed the main entrance—where Julian’s guards had positioned two heavy machine guns behind sandbags—and breached the structure through a flooded underwater drainage tunnel beneath the south dock.
Using night-vision goggles, we swept through the lower levels like ghosts.
Pfft. Pfft.
My suppressed weapon hummed twice in the dark. Two of Julian’s perimeter guards crumpled to the concrete floor without making a sound. Marcus dragged them into a dry utility closet, securing the door.
We pushed up the iron catwalks, floor by floor, clearing rooms with mechanical efficiency. By 2:00 AM, we had eliminated sixteen of Julian’s mercenaries without raising a single alarm.
When we reached the tenth floor—the massive, open-air processing room where grain used to be funneled into cargo ships—a voice echoed through the ancient industrial loudspeakers mounted on the wall.
"I always knew you were fond of dramatic entrances, Andrew!"
The sound vibrated through the steel girders.
Suddenly, floodlights snapped on around the perimeter of the room, blinding our night-vision optics. We ripped our goggles off just as gunfire erupted from the upper catwalks.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Sparks flew off the iron girders as bullets tore through the concrete pillars.
"Cover!" Marcus roared, shoving me behind a heavy steel hopper as concrete dust filled the air.
Our team returned fire, accurate single shots driving Julian’s remaining guards back behind their metal shields.
I leaned out from behind the hopper, tracking the source of the voice through the haze of smoke and dust. Standing on a high catwalk overlooking the entire floor, thirty feet above us, was Julian Vance.
He looked older, his hair streaked with silver, wearing a heavy tactical vest over a dark coat. In his hand, he held a detonator with a blinking red light.
"Hold your fire!" I yelled, my voice ringing clear through the cavernous space.
The shooting died down, replaced by the heavy thrum of the wind whipping through the broken industrial windows.
Julian leaned over the catwalk railing, a twisted, maniacal grin spreading across his scarred face. "Eight years, Andrew! Eight years I watched you sit in my chair! You took my territory! You took my reputation!"
"I took nothing!" I shouted back, stepping out from behind the steel hopper, my weapon held low at my side. "You faked your death, Julian! You ran like a coward and left your brothers to die in the street!"
"I didn't run! I evolved!" Julian screamed, his voice cracking with unhinged rage. "I built a new network! A bigger network! But every time I looked at Milwaukee, I saw your name on the buildings! Your name on the docks!"
"So you used your own wife?" I asked, taking a slow step toward the metal staircase leading up to his catwalk. "You poisoned Hannah? You sent your six-year-old daughter to beg in a grocery store just to draw me out?"
Julian laughed—a dry, soulless sound that chilled the air more than the lake wind.
"Sophie was brilliant, wasn't she?" Julian gloated. "She has my eyes. She played her part perfectly. I knew you couldn't resist playing the knight in shining armor, Andrew. You always had that pathetic flaw. You think you're a king, but you're just a sentimental fool!"
"She didn't play a part, Julian," I said, stepping onto the first rung of the metal stairs. "She was terrified. She walked three miles with forty-three cents in her hand because her mother was dying. She's a better person at six years old than you've ever been in your entire life."
Julian’s laughter stopped abruptly. His face contorted in bitter fury.
"It doesn't matter," Julian spat, raising the detonator. "You see these charges wired to the concrete pillars? This entire building is rigged with industrial thermite. In thirty seconds, Pier 19 goes into the lake—with you, your men, and every piece of evidence linking me to Vance Capital Holdings!"
"Check your receiver, Julian," Leo’s voice suddenly crackled through my earpiece.
On the catwalk behind Julian, a shadow detached itself from the darkness.
Marcus had flanked the structure using the exterior fire escape while I drew Julian’s attention.
Before Julian could press the red button on the detonator, Marcus swung his shotgun like a club, shattering Julian’s right wrist with a brutal CRACK.
Julian screamed in agony, dropping the detonator. It clattered down the metal catwalk, bouncing off the railing, and fell thirty feet through the air—landing squarely in my left hand.
Julian collapsed to his knees, clutching his broken wrist, staring down at me in absolute shock.
I caught the detonator, flipped the safety switch to OFF, and slid it into my coat pocket.
I walked up the stairs slowly, my heavy boots thudding against the metal rungs until I was standing over my former underboss.
Julian looked up at me through bloodshot eyes, panting heavily, his face pale from shock. "Andrew... please... we were brothers... remember the old days in Chicago?"
I looked down at him. There was no hatred left in my heart—only a deep, hollow disgust for the ghost of a man who had traded his soul for power.
"Brothers don't use their daughters as bait, Julian," I said softly.
I turned to Marcus. "Handcuff him. Hand him over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation along with the financial ledgers Leo recovered. Let him spend the rest of his life in a supermax facility thinking about the empire he threw away."
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"No! Andrew! Shoot me!" Julian begged, weeping as Marcus slapped heavy steel cuffs onto his wrists. "Don't leave me to rot in a cage! Shoot me like a man!"
I didn't answer him. I turned my back and walked down the catwalk, stepping out into the cold morning air as the first rays of dawn broke over the horizon of Lake Michigan.
