Chapter 13 - The Poisoned Syndicate
Before Norah could reach for the manifest, the blast of a boat horn shook the container walls.
Through the narrow opening of the crate doors, the harbor vanished behind a wall of white phosphorus smoke. The dull *crack-crack-crack* of high-caliber sniper fire tore through the fog, followed immediately by the sickening thud of Sebastian’s perimeter guards hitting the metal floor outside.
"Ambush!" one of the survivors shouted before his voice was cut short by automatic fire.
Sebastian moved with animal speed. In one motion, he swept the black diamond ring and the manifest off the workbench, shoved Norah down behind the cast-iron frame of the jeweler's desk, and dropped to one knee, drawing his secondary weapon.
"Stay flat!" he shouted over the deafening racket of bullets punching through the corrugated steel walls of the container.
Rounds ripped through the thin sheet metal above their heads like paper, sending sparks and jagged splinters of paint showering over them. Norah curled her body against the iron desk, clutching her tool kit against her chest.
"They aren't trying to capture us!" she yelled over the gunfire. "They're sinking the container!"
Sebastian glanced toward the open doors. Outside, through the billows of thick smoke, three armored tactical vehicles had blocked the exit of the pier. Men in unmarked black tactical gear were advancing in a wedge formation, sweeping the interior with assault rifles.
"They already have what they needed," Sebastian said, ejecting an empty magazine and slapping a fresh one home. "They needed the box opened. They used us as the key."
"Not yet they don't," Norah said.
Her fingers worked feverishly inside her roll. She didn't carry weapons, but a jeweler's bench was essentially a miniature chemical laboratory. She pulled out two small, amber glass vials—nitric acid and ethanol—substances she used for testing the purity of vintage gold and cleaning solder flux.
"What are you doing?" Sebastian asked, firing two controlled bursts out the doorway, dropping the point man of the advancing team.
"My grandfather taught me something else," Norah said, her face pale but her hands dead steady. She uncapped the nitric acid and emptied half of it into a heavy brass cleaning cup, then pulled a small jar of powdered antimony from her kit. "If you mix concentrated nitric acid with powdered antimony and expose it to a spark, it doesn't just burn. It produces a dense cloud of antimony trioxide smoke."
"Poisonous?"
"Paralyzing to the eyes and lungs," she said, capping the mixture with a piece of cotton cloth. "Give me your lighter."
Sebastian didn't question her. He pulled an engraved silver Zippo from his pocket, flicked the flint, and handed the flame to her. Norah touched the wick to the cloth, threw the brass cup toward the container entrance, and dropped flat.
A split second later, a brilliant, blinding violet flash lit the doorway, followed by an impenetrable wall of acrid, yellow-gray smoke that rolled outward against the wind, pouring directly into the path of the advancing mercenaries.
Coughs, gagging screams, and chaotic blind firing immediately erupted outside.
"Move!" Sebastian roared, grabbing Norah’s arm and pulling her up.
They bolted through the chemical fog, Norah holding a wet handkerchief to her mouth, Sebastian leading the way with terrifying precision. He moved like a ghost through the blinding smoke, firing three times into the shapes stumbling through the vapor. Two men went down before they even realized their vision had been seared shut.
They broke through the perimeter, heading toward the rusted service stairs leading down to the water canal.
Behind them, a voice amplified by a loudspeaker cut through the chaos of the harbor, smooth, cultured, and chillingly familiar to Sebastian Romano.
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"Welcome home, Sebastian," the voice echoed across the gray water. "Leave the girl and the ring, and I might let you die in the same city as your father."
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