Chapter 7 - The Skybridge Siege
The freight elevator shaft was a vertical canyon of grease-blackened steel, whistling drafts, and roaring fire from the lower floors.
Julian anchored the high-tensile climbing rope to the primary structural I-beam with three heavy steel carabiners. With clinical efficiency, he strapped Leo securely against my chest using a padded tactical harness, wrapping a heavy Kevlar blanket over the boy’s head and shoulders to protect him from sparks and debris.
"Keep your eyes closed, little fox," Julian whispered, kissing the top of Leo's head through the blanket. "Daddy is right behind you."
Daddy.
The word hung in the cold, smoky air like a sacred vow.
"Go!" Damen shouted from the elevator landing, firing his submachine gun in controlled, three-round bursts down the corridor to suppress the lead Russian scouts who had just breached the master suite.
Julian locked his descender onto the twin lines, grabbed me around the waist with his left arm, and kicked off into the void.
The descent was a breathless, terrifying blur of whistling wind and rushing concrete walls. Julian controlled our friction with his gloved right hand, his boots barking rhythmically against the steel guide rails as we plummeted through the dark. Above us, the muzzle flashes of Damen’s weapon lit the top of the shaft in strobe-like bursts of yellow flame.
Ten seconds later, Julian slammed his boots onto the narrow metal grating of the twenty-fourth-floor service staging platform.
He unclipped us in a single fluid motion, shoving me behind the reinforced concrete corner of the skybridge corridor just as Damen dropped onto the grating beside us, his face blackened with soot, his shoulder bleeding where a ricochet had grazed the meat of his arm.
"They're right behind us!" Damen gasped, slapping a fresh magazine into his submachine gun. "Petrov himself is leading the second wave!"
The twenty-fourth-floor skybridge was a two-hundred-foot enclosed glass walkway suspended three hundred feet above the city streets, connecting the Cross Tower to the adjacent commercial banking plaza. Outside, the freezing rain had turned into a blinding flurry of winter sleet, blurring the city lights into smeared halos of red and white.
"Move!" Julian commanded, taking point with his suppressed tactical pistol raised.
We sprinted across the polished marble floor of the skybridge. Leo was whimpering now, terrified by the deafening cracks of gunfire echoing behind us, his tiny hands clutching my blouse through the Kevlar wrap.
"Almost there, baby," I whispered, my lungs burning, my legs screaming with exhaustion. "Mommy’s got you. Daddy’s got you."
We were halfway across the glass bridge when the far double doors—the entrance to the banking plaza—blew inward with an ear-splitting detonation.
BOOM.
A shockwave of shattered tempered glass and acrid gray smoke ripped through the walkway, knocking Damen to the floor and sending me sprawling against the exterior railing.
Stepping through the ruined doorway was Alexei Petrov.
He was a giant of a man, six-foot-five, wearing an expensive wool coat over tactical body armor, holding a heavy Russian assault rifle. Flanking him were four masked operatives carrying combat shotguns.
"Julian Cross!" Petrov’s booming, accented voice echoed through the shattered bridge, accompanied by the howl of the freezing wind tearing through the blown-out windows. "The ghost himself! How touching! The whole family gathered for the execution!"
Julian stepped in front of me and Leo, his body completely shielding us from the mercenaries' line of fire. He didn't raise his weapon. He knew the math: four shotguns at fifty paces against two handguns meant instant suicide.
Damen scrambled to his feet, blood dripping from his grazed shoulder, stepping up beside his brother. For the first time in their lives, the two Cross brothers stood shoulder to shoulder, their backs straight, their amber eyes blazing with identical, lethal defiance.
"Let the woman and the child cross the bridge, Alexei," Julian said, his voice terrifyingly calm despite the freezing wind whipping his coat. "This is between our syndicates. You want the vault codes? I have them memorized. Every account. Every routing number. Let them walk, and I'll give you everything."
Petrov threw his head back and laughed—a cruel, booming sound that sent chills down my spine.
"You think I'm an idiot, Julian? The child is the bloodline! The boy’s retinal scan is the secondary key to the Swiss trusts! I take the boy, I take the codes, and I throw both of you off this bridge to decorate the pavement below!"
Petrov raised his rifle, aiming directly at Julian's chest. "Drop your weapons. Now. Or I put a round through the girl's head first."
Julian didn't drop his weapon.
Instead, he slowly reached his left hand behind his back, tapping my knee twice in a distinct, rhythmic pattern.
One, two.
It was the signal he had taught me four years ago in Seattle—the signal that meant: Hit the floor and don't look up.
Julian met Damen's eyes for a fraction of a second. Damen gave a nearly imperceptible nod.
"You're right about one thing, Alexei," Julian said softly.
"What is that?" Petrov sneered, tightening his finger on the trigger.
"You should have stayed in Moscow."
Julian's hand whipped forward, not with a gun, but with a high-intensity military flashbang grenade he had pulled from his tactical harness.
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BANG.
A blinding, five-million-candlepower burst of white light and a deafening, hundred-and-seventy-decibel concussive roar ripped through the enclosed glass bridge.
