Chapter 4 - THE BLOOD ON THE BARGE
The air inside the lead SUV went instantly static with tension.
Dominic didn't hesitate. He pulled his satellite phone back out and tapped the screen with ferocious speed.
“All teams, hold positions!” Dominic ordered in a harsh whisper. “Do not breach the warehouse! I repeat, do not approach the loading dock! The building is rigged with explosives!”
He clicked the phone off, his knuckles white as he turned to Leo.
“How many men on the barge?” Dominic asked.
“From the thermal scope on the crane,” Leo reported, looking at a small tactical tablet on the dashboard, “I count three on the deck of the barge. One on top of the red container holding a remote trigger. Two more near the gangplank with assault rifles.”
Dominic looked at Maeve. His eyes held a newfound, absolute reliance on her abilities.
“Maeve,” Dominic said, his voice deadly serious. “Can you hear what the man on top of the container is saying?”
Maeve adjusted the audio surveillance headphones Leo handed her, listening through the parabolic microphone aimed at the barge.
The man on top of the container was pacing back and forth in the pouring rain, his yellow raincoat glowing under the dim deck lights. He was shouting into a satellite phone in a mixture of French and West African Lingala—a language Maeve had picked up while cleaning a refugee community center in Newark six years ago.
“We are waiting for the signal from Vincent,” the man on the barge shouted into his phone. “If the signal doesn't come by 3:10 AM, we drop the flare into the vent hatch of the container and cut the barge cables. The kid inside will suffocate before the boat drifts out to the bay.”
Maeve looked at the digital clock on the SUV’s dashboard.
It was 3:04 AM.
They had six minutes.
“He’s waiting for a call from your uncle,” Maeve told Dominic. “If he doesn't get it by 3:10, he drops a flare into the air vent of Anthony’s container and sinks the barge.”
Dominic’s face transformed into an expression of pure, demonic rage. He reached back, grabbed the gag out of Gregory Volk’s mouth, and hauled the bloody Russian forward by his collar until their noses almost touched.
“You’re going to make a call, Gregory,” Dominic growled. “You’re going to tell your man on that barge in his own language that the deal is done, that Vincent is with you, and that he needs to open that red container right now.”
Gregory coughed up blood, spitting it onto the leather seat. He let out a raspy, cruel laugh through his broken teeth.
“Go... go to hell, Rossi,” Gregory spat in broken English. “My men... they don't take orders from a phone call without the security code phrase. And I will never... never give it to you.”
Dominic pulled his combat knife back out, aiming the point directly at Gregory’s right eye. “I will carve your face into ribbons, Gregory.”
“Do it!” Gregory laughed hysterically. “Kill me! My men still drop the flare in four minutes! Your brother dies either way!”
Dominic raised the blade, his muscle flexing to strike.
“Stop!” Maeve shouted.
She grabbed Dominic’s wrist, stopping the knife an inch from Gregory’s eye.
Dominic turned a furious, lethal glare toward her, but Maeve didn't flinch.
“He’s telling the truth about the code phrase,” Maeve said rapidly, her mind working at maximum capacity. “I heard the man on the barge mention the code over the microphone ten seconds ago. It’s a Lingala proverb.”
Dominic lowered the knife slightly, his breathing heavy. “What is the proverb, Maeve?”
“Le singe ne voit pas sa propre bosse,” Maeve recited in perfect, flawless West African French. “It means: The monkey does not see his own hump.”
Gregory Volk’s hysterical laughter stopped instantly.
He stared at Maeve in utter, paralyzed horror, his mouth hanging open, his bloodshot eyes bulging as if he were looking at a ghost. He couldn't comprehend how a cleaning woman from New York knew a secret security code phrase used by mercenary dockworkers from the Congo.
Dominic didn't waste a single second.
He pulled his uncle Vincent’s phone from his pocket, dialed the satellite number for the barge commander, and hit the speakerphone button, holding the phone in front of Maeve’s face.
The call connected on the second ring.
A harsh, impatient voice answered in Lingala-infused French: “Vincent? Is the paper signed? Where is Gregory?”
Maeve didn't hesitate. She deepened her voice slightly, adopting the authoritative, dry, unbothered tone of an elder female coordinator from the West African shipping syndicates in Marseilles:
“The paper is signed,” Maeve spoke into the phone in flawless, accent-perfect Lingala-French. “Gregory is securing the cash at the main office. The monkey does not see his own hump. Open the red container immediately and bring the boy to the dock. We are arriving now.”
Silence hung on the line for two agonizing seconds.
The man on the barge spoke back, his voice instantly relaxing into compliance: “Understood, ma'am. Code confirmed. Opening the container now.”
The line went dead.
Through the rain-streaked windshield, Dominic and Maeve watched as the man in the yellow raincoat on top of the barge lowered his road flare, slipped his remote trigger into his pocket, and gestured to the two guards below to unlock the heavy steel doors of the red shipping container.
Dominic turned to Maeve, his eyes burning with an intense, overwhelming admiration that went far beyond business.
“Leo,” Dominic whispered, his voice steady as granite. “Take the snipers. Clear the barge.”
POP! POP! POP!
Three synchronized, suppressed sniper rounds shattered the night air.
On the deck of the barge, the three mercenaries collapsed instantly into the dark river water without making a sound.
“Move in!” Dominic shouted.
The three SUVs roared forward, tearing past the explosive-rigged warehouse, swerving onto the gravel riverbank, and coming to a screeching halt directly beside the barge gangplank.
Dominic threw his door open and sprinted across the wet wooden planks of the barge, his gun drawn, with Leo and three guards right behind him.
Maeve stepped out of the SUV, stepping into the cold, pouring rain, her heart pounding as she watched Dominic reach the red shipping container.
Dominic grabbed the heavy iron locking bars of the container, threw the doors wide open, and stepped inside.
A moment later, Dominic emerged from the dark metal box, supporting a tall, dark-haired twenty-four-year-old young man who was coughing violently, his hands bound with duct tape, but completely alive and unharmed.
It was Anthony Rossi.
Dominic pulled his younger brother into a fierce, desperate embrace, burying his face into Anthony’s shoulder as the rain poured over them both. Anthony sobbed with relief, clutching his older brother’s jacket.
Standing on the muddy riverbank in her soaked blue cleaning uniform, Maeve let out a long, shuddering breath, her knees finally giving out as she sat down on a dry wooden crate beneath the awning of the dock.
She had done it.
She had saved a man’s life with words learned in the dark corners of a city that had ignored her whole life.
Dominic walked down the gangplank, holding his brother by the arm. He instructed Leo to take Anthony to the medical SUV, then walked straight over to where Maeve was sitting on the wooden crate.
He didn't care about the rain. He didn't care about his custom suit being ruined.
He knelt down on the wet gravel in front of her, precisely as she had knelt beside his bloodstain six hours ago, and looked up into her tired, grey eyes.
“You saved my brother’s life, Maeve,” Dominic said, his voice raw with genuine emotion.
“I just translated the words, Mr. Rossi,” Maeve said softly, shivering slightly in the cold air.
Dominic reached out, taking her cold, wet hands in his warm palms.
“No more cleaning floors, Maeve,” Dominic said, his voice carrying the weight of an unshakeable oath. “No more fifteen dollars an hour. No more working in the dark for people who don't see you.”
Maeve looked at him, feeling an incredible, overwhelming warmth spread through her chest despite the freezing rain.
“What am I going to do then?” she asked gently.
May you like
Dominic smiled—a real, powerful, breathtaking smile that lit up his dark features.
“You are coming to work for me,” Dominic declared. “As my personal advisor, my chief of intelligence, and the mouth of the Rossi empire. Because a boss who can’t hear the world around him is just a dead man waiting for his uncle to buy his coffin.”
