Chapter 9 - Marked for Elimination
The storm that had battered the Carolinas moved south, churning the brackish tidal basin outside Savannah into a boiling stew of brown water and rotting salt-marsh weeds.
By 21:00 hours, I was tucked into a blind constructed from palmetto fronds and camouflaged netting, seventy yards from Pier 14.
The air was dense with sulfur, diesel fumes, and incoming rain. Floodlights on high metal towers cast blinding cones of yellow glare across the concrete dock, leaving deep, jagged pools of shadow along the water's edge.
The Caribbean Endeavor was a two-hundred-foot panamanian-flagged cargo coaster. Its deck crane was swinging steadily, lifting unmarked green shipping crates from the back of three flatbed military semi-trucks parked parallel to the bulkhead.
Guarding the perimeter weren't standard commercial port security guards.
They wore sterile black combat shirts, tactical chest rigs, and carried suppressed Austrian submachine guns. They moved with military spacing, covering corners, checking sightlines with the mechanical precision of seasoned contractors.
"Target confirmed," I whispered into my throat mic. "Truck three is staging now. Manifest tags match the wipe-attempt file from Fort Liberty."
Through my tactical earpiece came the voice of Commander Hayes from our offshore surveillance cutter: "Federal tactical teams are forty-five minutes out, Avery. Interstate 95 is blocked with heavy accident traffic. Do not engage. Maintain visual surveillance only."
"Forty-five minutes and that ship drops lines," I countered, adjusting the focus on my spotting scope. "They're buttoning up hatch number two right now. If that ship hits international waters, those target suites disappear into Eastern Europe."
Then I saw him.
A black government Suburban pulled onto the pier, stopping near the base of the gantry crane.
The door opened.
Stepping out into the rain was not General Sterling, but an unmistakable figure whose release had never crossed my desk.
Sergeant Ryan Briggs.
His right arm was in a hard fiberglass cast, strapped tightly against his chest, but his left hand held a loaded .45 caliber service pistol. Behind him stepped three men in plainclothes—private security contractors with hardened expressions and dead eyes.
Briggs had been cut loose. Someone had pulled strings at the federal detention wing, faked a medical transfer order, and delivered him straight to the escape hatch.
"We got a rat on the perimeter," Briggs' voice drifted across the marsh, carried by a shift in the sea breeze. He was looking directly toward the treeline where I lay.
He didn't have thermal optics this time. He didn't need them.
Across the access road, a set of high-beam truck lights suddenly snapped on, illuminating my palmetto blind with three thousand lumens of white glare.
I had been sold out.
The logistics channel had eyes inside the port authority.
"Kill her!" Briggs screamed, pointing his pistol toward the brush. "Put her in the water!"
Automatic fire erupted from three positions simultaneously.
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP-THWIP.
Rounds shredded the palmetto leaves above my head, kicking up mud, splinters, and saltwater in a violent cloud.
May you like
I didn't try to crawl backward into the open marsh where bullets would catch me in the spine.
I rolled forward, dove off the five-foot concrete embankment, and plunged headfirst into the freezing, oil-slicked black water of the harbor.
