Chapter 3 - The Cold Generators of Berth 9
The heavy steel gates of abandoned Berth 9 gave way with an ear-splitting screech as the reinforced bumper of the lead Suburban rammed the iron chains.
Six tactical spotlights mounted on the roof racks flared to life, cutting through the dense fog and illuminating the flooded basin of the drydock.
Standing on the rusting steel catwalk forty feet above the black water were eight men in unmarked dark foul-weather gear, armed with tactical carbines. Beside them sat two commercial high-pressure industrial pumps, thrumming with a rhythmic, concussive roar as they sucked water out of the sunken hull resting in the mud below.
The hull was ancient.
A massive, unpainted steel industrial barge, its plates caked in twenty-seven years of zebra mussels, river sludge, and green algae.
Painted across the rusted bow in faded white stencil was the designation:
FALCONE MARITIME — BARGE 42.
"Drop your weapons!" Frank bellowed through the vehicle's external loudspeaker, backed by twenty of Lorenzo's elite operators whose red laser sights painted the catwalk in intersecting geometric lines.
The eight contractors froze. They recognized the black falcon crest on the armored fenders. Nobody fired a shot. They dropped their carbines onto the grated catwalk, locking their fingers behind their heads.
Lorenzo stepped out of the Maybach, his long navy wool coat unbuttoned against the driving rain, his leather shoes silent against the muddy concrete of the slipway.
He walked to the edge of the pit, looking down into the drained cargo bay of the barge.
The auxiliary pumps had cleared the water down to the steel deck plates.
At the center of the main hatch was a heavy iron locking bar—not welded by maritime standards, but chained and secured with two industrial hardened-steel padlocks.
Beside the hatch lay an acetylene cutting torch, its hoses running to two pressurized gas tanks on the walkway.
"They were trying to cut through the hatch tonight, Don Lorenzo," Roberto reported, stepping out from the shadows of the crane housing, holding a disarmed contractor by the scruff of his neck. "Victor Cross gave them forty-eight hours to burn through the bulkhead and extract whatever was inside before the harbor commission opened the dredging contract."
Lorenzo walked down the iron ladder into the dripping, subterranean chill of the barge's belly.
The air smelled of stagnant river bottom, rusted iron, and something else—faint, ancient, and terrifyingly sweet.
The smell of a mass grave.
Lorenzo took the heavy iron crowbar from Frank’s hand.
He wedged the steel tip beneath the rusted chain of the primary hatch.
With a single, violent heave of his broad shoulders, his syndicate tattoos straining against his dress shirt, Lorenzo snapped the corroded iron links.
The heavy steel hatch swung open with a hollow, echoing groan.
Lorenzo directed his high-powered tactical flashlight into the dark void beneath the deck.
The beam of white light sliced through the rising mist, illuminating the bottom of the cargo hold.
Lorenzo stopped breathing.
Resting along the floor of the hold, covered in silt and river gravel, were twelve commercial steel shipping containers, each stamped with the seal of the United States Treasury Department:
FEDERAL EMERGENCY BULLION TRANSFER — 1999.
And surrounding the containers, huddled together against the reinforced bulkhead beneath the locked hatch, were twelve sets of human remains.
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Twelve union dockworkers, their work boots and corroded brass belt buckles still intact, their finger bones worn down to the knuckle where they had clawed at the solid steel ceiling trying to escape the rising water twenty-seven years ago.
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