The night is warm in the fading heat of the springtime sun. In the distance, I can hear the gentle and continuous roar of moving water. Somewhere, a lonely tug moans its warning call, and a buoy dings out the beats like a fast-paced boxing match. I had been here before.
I had the taxi drop me off about five blocks away from the docks so I could take some time to case the area. Even this late in the day, the area still bustled with activity: shipments being loaded on and off, containers being moved from place to place. Commerce, the lifeblood of America. But there was one particular commodity of trade on which I meant to place something even more certain than taxes: death. Death to Valkyr, once and for all, and death to whoever had decided to become its new delivery boy.
I knew only to find Pier 13, the unluckiest Pier on the lot. I took to the roofs, scaling a warehouse a couple of blocks from my destination. I stop for a moment, reaching the top, and gaze up at the roof of the world: black velvet peppered with a million diamonds. I'd feel sentimental, if I were capable anymore.
The Pier is also bustling. To the normal passerby, it would look like any other busy crew getting their goods locked up and loaded as fast as was safe. But I knew the secret beneath the play-acting, and the plot smelled like milk left five days in the sun.
The freighter carried the name Nemesis, and the title fit the grim-colored hulk like a glove. Goons crawled over it's surface like worshipers making offerings to some dark god, filling its cavernous orifices with green blood.
Maybe I ought to go back and get Father Roy. This place could use an exorcism.
I slide back to the street and stick to the shadows, gain ground foot by foot, getting closer to my target. I scope the goons more closely, and wince: most of these guys are legit dock workers, probably with no idea what it is they're loading, just doing what they've been hired to do. That's both good and bad: good, because they're not all hired security, and won't be risking their necks for someone else's merchandise; bad because that put a lot of innocents in the way of what I had to do. Had to separate the wheat from the chaff, and I'd have to do it from the inside.
I walk out boldly, putting on my best teamster scowl of a guy who's spent too much time hauling other people's crap, and grab a crate from a push cart, hefting it onto my shoulder and heading for the gangplank. No one stops me, no one asks me what I'm doing there. Just another working-class hero.
"Hey! Hold up!" Damn.
He's a big one, Sumo's American cousin. All muscle, little fat. I fight not to gulp in anticipation of a knuckle entree to the mouth.
"You're not on Tony's crew...but, I know you, don't I? What ship ya work on?"
"I, uh...did a lot of work on the Charon last year." Well, it wasn't technically a lie.
"Oh yeah...ok. Well, catch ya later." He stomps off to whatever he was doing. I turn back to where I was going. My heart keeps on pounding.
I reach the top of the walkway and I'm hit by the cool breeze from the harbor, unblocked by the weight of the ship. There's a briny smell to it, and for a second I'm back at the Jersey shore. Summer. Michelle. Old ghosts brightening the darkest of nights. Needed to clear the area. I drop the crate. I raise my gun high.
The first gunshot makes them stop. The second makes them turn. The dockworkers stare up at me.
"Scram!!" punctuated by a third bullet singing New York, New York over the harbor behind me. Wheat from the chaff. The wheat flees, the chaff cocks one into their chambers.
Two pound up the gangplank towards me, pulling out Ingrams and spraying wildly. I duck low and kill the two birds with a lead stone slicing through a railing chain, upsetting the plank and sending the goons dropping twenty feet straight down into hard wooden pier. I'd burned that bridge. Hopefully there'd be another leading me off this canoe when all was said and done.
I look towards my destination: the conning tower, and access from there to the bowels of the ship. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, burn the ship or sink it, but first I had to find the last link in this particular food chain. Three more goons appear from behind shipping containers, wanting to play survival of the fittest.
The one nearest me is running with his Mac-10 held straight out like he's in a jousting match. I run towards him, sidestep, and let his momentum slam his neck into my raised elbow. I hear the crush of his larynx as he's pitched backwards, the Ingram falling from his hand. I catch it, and spin.
And arc of hot lead spreads out like a ripple in a pool, catching the other two Mr. Smees in its wake. One catches three in the upper chest and goes down. The other catches one in the shoulder. He doesn't go down, just gets mad. He does a magic trick and suddenly a sawed-off shotgun appears in his hand. He does another trick and makes a crate beside me disintegrate in a shower of splinters. He shot from the hip and missed. I raise the Ingram and take my time. So long, sailor.
I do a quick search of the jouster and find an extra magazine for the Ingram and, of all things, a grenade. I'll never understand the attraction of keeping high explosives jammed into your front pocket. Must not be getting enough stimulation down there at home he has to threaten himself with an explosive orgasm at work. Some people.
I jog another 20 feet near my goal, and almost trip over a trapdoor in the deck that swings open. I look down and see three snarling goons stamping up a ladder towards the surface. The lead one looks up and grits his teeth, raising his gun and trying to steady it. I smile. I pull the pin. I drop them a present.
"Have fun hot-boxing it, boys!" I kick the trapdoor shut and bend to lock it in place, just as the screams start and the death egg cracks its shell. The steel door muffles the sound of the explosion, but I can still hear the bloody chunks flopping around as I step away. Hope someone has a hose on this dingy. They're going to need it.
I'm nearly there, at the base of the tower, looking up at the light boiling out from its windows. The dark deliverer was up there, he had to be. I ready myself, and ascend. I step through the doorway, and I see stars. Not the pretty diamonds on the black sky, but the stock of a shotgun sparkling my vision as it rams into my forehead. I fall to one knee.
The flashes and pops in my vision cover the black shoes I'm staring at, and I picture the dark king raising his boomstick level with my skull for one, final, knock-out punch. But the seconds tick by, and I'm wondering why I'm still alive. And then I know the answer all too clearly.
"Bah, tovarisch, I knew it would be you. They have pitted us against each other, da? I...am sorry."
The sting of betrayal hurts worse than the pressure of the barrel against my temple. I close my eyes, and wait for the big bang.
(Is this the end of our hero? Stay tuned for the next exciting installment! . . . .well, that kinda implies that it's not the end of our hero, now don't it? Ah, hell, just gimme a week to hack out the next part *grumbles something about "anticlimatic"* -CM)