Chapter 11 - Ambush at Pontchartrain
Three days after the takedown in Algiers, the city of New Orleans was calm, but
the final loose ends of Don Vance’s network were still writhing in the shadows.
A rogue cell of Vance’s hitmen—mercenaries who had escaped the federal net—knew
that their only leverage against Lorenzo Moretti was my younger sister, Lily.
They struck at dusk.
Lily was being transported from her private boarding school in Mandeville across
the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in an armored Moretti sedan, escorted by two
security vehicles.
I was riding in the command SUV alongside Lorenzo and Baron when Matteo’s radio
exploded with static and panicked shouts:
“Ambush at mile marker fourteen! Two semi-trucks boxed us in! We’re taking heavy
fire from the elevated roadway!”
My heart stopped. “Lily!”
Lorenzo slammed his foot on the accelerator of our modified pursuit truck, the
supercharged engine roaring as we blew past the Causeway toll plaza at over one
hundred and ten miles per hour.
The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway stretched twenty-four miles across open, dark
water, the setting sun painting the lake in streaks of bloody crimson.
Ahead, black smoke billowed into the evening sky.
Two massive commercial flatbeds had jackknifed across the two-lane highway,
pinning Lily’s armored sedan against the concrete guardrail. Six masked gunmen
in tactical gear were laying down suppressing fire with automatic rifles,
attempting to breach the armored glass of her car with sledgehammers and
thermite torches.
“Hold on!” Lorenzo roared.
He didn't slow down. He aimed the heavy, reinforced steel push-bar of our SUV
straight at the rear axle of the blocking flatbed.
CRUNCH!
The impact was deafening. Our six-ton armored truck smashed through the trailer,
spinning the semi-truck forty-five degrees and clearing a path straight to the
ambush site.
Lorenzo leaped out of the truck before it had even fully stopped, his rifle
raised.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Three precise, single shots dropped the gunmen with the thermite torches before
they could turn their heads.
The remaining three shooters scrambled for cover behind the concrete barrier,
returning fire with frantic bursts that chipped concrete into the lake below.
Baron burst from the rear passenger door like a black missile, his ears flat,
his fangs bared.
He cleared the hood of a shattered escort vehicle in a single, magnificent leap,
tackling the lead mercenary over the guardrail and plunging with him into the
dark waters of Lake Pontchartrain thirty feet below.
“Baron!” I screamed, jumping out of the truck with my Sig Sauer drawn.
I ran to the edge of the crushed guardrail, leaning out over the churning water.
Far below, Baron was swimming furiously toward an exposed concrete piling,
dragging the screaming mercenary by his tactical harness against the current
until the man lost his grip and was swept into the bayou tides.
Behind me, Lorenzo stepped forward, firing two controlled rounds that eliminated
the final ambushers with surgical finality.
The bridge fell tomb-silent.
I sprinted to the door of the armored sedan. The reinforced glass was cracked
into spiderweb patterns, but the titanium deadbolts held.
I yanked the door open.
A sixteen-year-old girl with dark hair and wide, terrified brown eyes threw
herself into my arms, weeping hysterically.
“Evelyn! Oh God, Evelyn!”
“I’ve got you, Lily,” I wept, burying my face in her hair, holding her so
tightly I could feel the violent trembling of her ribs. “You’re safe. I’ve got
you.”
Lorenzo walked up to the open door, lowering his rifle, looking down at us with
an expression of fierce, unshakeable protectiveness.
Lily looked up through her tears, staring at the towering, lethal Don. “Is... is
he the man Father owed money to?”
I smiled through my tears, shaking my head.
May you like
“No, Lily,” I said softly, looking up into Lorenzo’s warm silver eyes. “This is
the man who saved our lives.”
