Chapter 17 - The Hunt on the Frozen River
The words struck Julian harder than any bullet ever could. The world around him seemed to slow to an agonizing crawl.
*They took Lily.*
Every ounce of control, every shred of corporate civility that Julian Vance possessed was obliterated, replaced by a pure, unadulterated primal fury.
"Who took her?" Julian snarled into the comm, bursting through the lower escape hatch into the freezing Hudson Valley night. Rain and sleet lashed against his face as he sprinted along the concrete embankment toward the private marina.
"A second extraction squad," Marcus reported, the sound of gunfire and screaming sirens echoing in the background of the transmission. "They used military-grade thermite charges on the safe room door. Elena emptied her sidearm, took out two of them, and threw herself over Lily’s crib. They clubbed her unconscious, Julian. She’s bleeding, but she’s alive. Marcus’s backup team arrived sixty seconds too late. They grabbed Lily and evacuated via an unmarked black helicopter heading south-southeast."
"South-southeast," Julian repeated, his mind calculating vectors with ruthless precision. "They're heading back to the city. Or to the Sterling family estate in the Hamptons."
"Negative, boss," Marcus cut in. "Our radar tracked the transponder signature before they jammed it. The chopper isn't heading to Long Island. It’s heading straight for the Port of Newark. Terminal C."
Julian reached the edge of the marina. Below him, the dark waters of the Hudson River churned with whitecaps. A high-speed, black carbon-fiber stealth interceptor boat was roaring away from the concrete pier, its twin outboard motors spitting twin rooster tails of foam as it sliced through the midnight black water toward the open bay.
On the stern deck of the boat, illuminated by the red navigation lights, stood Sarah Vance.
She had wiped the blood from her eyes. She held a satellite phone to her ear, screaming orders into the gale, her trench coat whipping around her like the wings of a vulture. Alistair was at the helm, throttling the boat forward at maximum speed.
"They're meeting at the container docks," Julian growled into his comm. "The boat is taking them straight downriver to the bay. If they link up with the helicopter at Newark, they’ll load Lily onto a cargo freighter and vanish into international waters."
"Julian, you don't have a vessel!" Marcus shouted. "Wait for our tactical choppers to intercept!"
"There’s no time!"
Julian turned his gaze along the pier. Moored to the floating dock was a high-performance jet ski used by the facility’s security patrols—a supercharged Sea-Doo equipped with an offshore intercept hull.
Julian jumped from the eight-foot concrete embankment, landing squarely on the floating dock. He unhooked the mooring line, slapped the digital ignition switch, and fired the engine. The 300-horsepower supercharged engine roared to life with a ferocious, throaty scream.
Julian twisted the throttle to the pin.
The jet ski leaped out of the slip like an arrow launched from a compound bow, slamming into the rough river chop. Frigid spray struck Julian’s face like hundreds of needles, but he felt nothing. His vision was locked entirely onto the red taillights of the stealth boat tearing down the center of the Hudson River.
The chase had begun.
The wind howled down the valley. The black river was littered with drifting debris and navigation buoys, but Julian cut through the water with reckless precision, riding the crest of the waves, slowly closing the distance between him and his wife’s getaway craft.
On the stern of the boat, Sarah turned around. Through the spray, she saw the lone jet ski slicing through her wake.
Her face twisted in utter disbelief. "He’s still alive?!" she screamed into the wind.
Alistair looked over his shoulder from the cockpit and cursed violently. He hit a switch on the console. A concealed hatch on the stern opened, and a remote-controlled swivel turret mounted with twin machine guns deployed from the deck.
*BRRRRRRRRRTTTTT!*
A stream of tracer rounds slashed across the black surface of the river, kicking up fountains of white foam mere inches from Julian’s hull. Julian leaned hard to the left, cutting the jet ski across the boat's churning wake. The spray caught the gunfire, deflecting the thermal targeting of the automated turret.
Julian reached into his tactical belt, pulling his last surviving weapon—an incendiary magnetic breaching charge designed to blow heavy bank vaults.
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He accelerated directly into the gunfire, riding up the side of a massive river swell. As the jet ski launched airborne off the wave, hovering momentarily over the churning propellers of the stealth boat, Julian slammed the magnetic charge against the boat’s fiberglass hull.
He hit the detonator switch and leaped into the black, freezing abyss of the river.
