Chapter 6 - The Iron Sluice
The barking of the military assault dogs tore through the subterranean vault like iron teeth dragging across concrete.
Around the curve of the tunnel, two hundred yards back, two powerful tactical searchlights sliced through the mist, their beams bouncing violently against the wet brick walls. The baying was frantic, echoing in deafening, concussive waves that made Noah bury his face into Elena’s shoulder, whimpering in terror.
"Elena! Behind the iron pillar! NOW!" Damen roared, not taking his eyes off the approaching lights.
Elena lunged behind a massive, four-foot-wide structural column of reinforced cast iron that supported the municipal railway lines overhead. She sank into the freezing water, pulling Noah beneath the surface of the wool coat, whispering frantic, desperate prayers into his damp curls.
Fifty yards down the track, the first Belgian Malinois rounded the brick abutment—a seventy-pound mass of muscle, titanium-reinforced teeth, and tactical Kevlar, sprinting through the water at thirty miles per hour.
Pfft-pfft.
Mikhail’s suppressed pistol coughed twice in rhythmic succession.
The lead dog crumpled mid-leap, its momentum carrying its body twenty feet through the churning water before sliding to a halt at Mikhail’s boots.
Before the second hound could clear the water, Damen’s .45 barked with a concussive, deafening roar that shook dust from the brick arches. The heavy hollow-point round took the beast through the shoulder, dropping it instantly.
"CONTACT FRONT! ENGAGE! ENGAGE!" a voice barked in a crisp British military cadence.
The tunnel erupted into a storm of automatic fire.
Submachine gun rounds chewed into the brick pillars, spraying jagged shards of red clay and pulverized mortar across the water. The mercenaries were moving in a three-man bounding overwatch, their tactical flashlights strobing to disorient their targets, their suppressed carbines cycling with terrifying, mechanical efficiency: Thump-thump-thump... thump-thump-thump.
Damen and Mikhail moved not like two men who had been estranged for eighteen years, but like a single, synchronized engine of war.
Damen leaned out from the right side of the pillar, firing three measured, double-action rounds that forced the lead mercenary to dive behind a rusted coal hopper. Simultaneously, Mikhail dropped to one knee in the freezing water, his pistol barking beneath the lip of the coal car, taking the second mercenary through the exposed ankle, sending the man sprawling into the black canal with an agonizing shriek.
"They're flanking through the lateral service pipe!" Mikhail yelled over the gunfire, ejecting an empty magazine and slapping a fresh one into his grip with his palm. "Damen, the sluice lever is forty feet ahead on the left wall! Pull the pins!"
"I'm not leaving you behind this iron, Mikhail!" Damen fired twice more, shattering the lens of an approaching tactical searchlight, plunging the forward tunnel into jagged shadows.
"I am not asking for your permission, little brother!" Mikhail roared back, pulling a heavy fragmentation grenade from his tactical harness with his teeth.
The scarred assassin lunged out from behind the pillar, sprinting forward directly into the crossfire, using the rusted coal hopper as a moving shield as he hurled the grenade sixty feet down the tracks.
CLINK. CLINK. BOOM.
The concussive blast within the enclosed brick tunnel was an acoustic hammer that blew the air from Elena’s lungs. A blinding flash of orange fire illuminated the water, followed by the agonizing screams of three wounded mercenaries and the heavy, terrifying sound of centuries-old brick masonry groaning under structural failure.
Damen grabbed Elena by the arm, hauling her and Noah out from behind the pillar, splashing furiously through the three-foot-deep water toward the massive iron sluice gate that sealed the drainage basin.
Mounted on the stone wall was a massive, six-foot cast-iron wheel connected to an array of heavy bronze locking pins and vertical counterweights.
Damen seized the wheel with both hands, his back muscles bunching beneath his torn shirt as he threw his entire two-hundred-pound frame into the rotation.
SCREEECH.
The rusted bronze gears shrieked in protest, sparks showering from the teeth as fifty years of river sediment cracked and broke.
CLACK. CLACK. THUD.
A series of four-inch steel pins sheared free from the wall.
A vertical iron portcullis weighing twelve tons began to slide downward on its greased tracks, its bottom edge dropping toward the canal floor like an executioner’s blade.
"Mikhail! MOVE!" Damen screamed, holding the emergency brake lever with one hand to keep the gate from locking shut prematurely.
Mikhail was twenty feet away, splashing through the rising water at a dead sprint.
Behind him, emerging from the smoke of the grenade blast, the surviving mercenary commander—a massive man in a torn tactical vest, his face blackened with soot—raised a short-barreled shotgun, leveling the heavy bore directly at Mikhail’s spine.
"Uncle Shadow!" Noah screamed from Elena’s arms.
Damen didn't think. He didn't calculate the risk.
He threw himself forward through the narrowing four-foot gap beneath the descending iron gate, his left hand lunging out, his fingers catching Mikhail’s tactical harness, violently yanking his brother forward into the mud.
BOOM.
The shotgun blast tore through the space where Mikhail’s head had been a microsecond earlier, peppering the iron gate with dozens of lead pellets.
THUD.
The twelve-ton iron sluice gate slammed into the canal floor with an earth-shaking, final crash, burying its reinforced steel teeth deep into the limestone bedrock.
A second later, the roar of the displaced Chicago River hit the other side of the barrier.
Hundreds of thousands of gallons of black river water surged against the iron plates with a concussive, deafening groan that shook the tunnel walls. Trapped on the far side, the mercenary commander’s furious shouts were swallowed whole by the rising tide, muffled into silence by twelve inches of solid cast iron.
Damen and Mikhail lay side by side in the freezing muck on the safe side of the gate, their chests heaving in ragged, synchronized gasps, water washing over their boots.
Mikhail rolled onto his back, looking up at the curved brick ceiling, a wet, bloody cough shaking his shoulders. He reached over, his gloved hand catching Damen’s wrist in an iron grip.
"You always were reckless, little brother," Mikhail rasped, a faint, bloody smile splitting his scarred face.
Damen let out a ragged, breathless laugh, wiping soot and blood from his forehead. "You're getting slow, old man."
Elena dropped to her knees beside them, pulling Noah tight against her chest, weeping tears of pure, unadulterated relief as the storm on the other side of the gate died into a muffled hum.
Noah reached out his small hand, touching Damen’s bloody cheek, then Mikhail’s scarred brow.
"We winned," the two-year-old boy whispered proudly.
May you like
Damen reached up, his calloused, soot-stained fingers gently caressing the boy’s curls, his slate-gray eyes burning with an ancient, unbreakable peace.
"Yes, little wolf," Damen murmured softly. "We won."
