Chapter 7
Vincent Corban’s predatory grin vanished entirely. The color drained from his ruddy face, his posture stiffening as if he had been struck with an iron rod.
"You're bluffing, Bellandi," Corban growled, taking half a step backward toward his vehicle. "Customs doesn't touch my shipping lines."
"They do when the manifests carry your personal signature, Vincent," Nico replied smoothly, leaning against the limestone balustrade. "Alongside a sworn deposition from your inside contact."
Nico looked down at Marcella.
Marcella looked at Corban, tears of pure, unadulterated terror spilling down her cheeks. "Vincent... he knows. He found the USB drive. He found the audio files."
"You stupid bitch," Corban hissed, his eyes blazing with venomous rage.
Without hesitation, Corban reached inside his coat, drawing a chrome-plated .45. "Kill them all! Take the house!"
Before Corban’s weapon could clear his lapel, the quiet afternoon erupted into thunder.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
From the second-floor balustrades, the roofline, and the stone archways, Nico’s snipers opened fire with coordinated, surgical crossfire.
The three lead Corban mercenaries dropped instantly onto the white gravel, high-caliber rounds punching through their ballistic vests before they could raise their carbines. The circular driveway became an inescapable kill zone. The Suburbans’ windshields shattered into webs of white fractures, tires blew out with violent hisses of compressed air, and engine blocks cracked under heavy armor-piercing rounds.
Corban dove behind the open door of his SUV, firing blind, panicked bursts toward the upper windows. "Fall back! Get to the gate!"
"The gate is sealed, Vincent!" Rafe’s voice boomed from the perimeter wall through an industrial megaphone.
Nico did not take cover.
He walked down the center of the grand limestone stairs with slow, untouchable authority, his cigar still burning between his fingers, his customized 1911 drawn from his waistband. He did not run; he did not duck as stray rounds chipped the masonry beside him. He moved like a sovereign walking through his own garden.
A mercenary leaned out from behind the rear quarter panel of the lead vehicle, raising a rifle toward Nico’s chest.
Nico fired twice.
The two muffled cracks from his weapon were synchronized and lethal. The shooter collapsed hard against the gravel, his rifle clattering across the stones.
Nico cleared the final steps, stopping twenty paces from Corban’s vehicle.
The gunfire on the driveway died out as quickly as it had begun. Smoke drifted across the crushed stone, smelling of cordite, burnt rubber, and sulfur. Fourteen Corban soldiers lay dead or incapacitated on the gravel; the remaining six were on their knees with zip-tied wrists, pinned by the green laser sights of Nico’s perimeter guards.
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Corban was left crouching alone behind the ruined door of his Suburban, his weapon empty, his hands shaking violently as he looked out at the carnage.
"Come out, Vincent," Nico commanded softly, his raspy baritone cutting through the settling smoke. "The minister is waiting."
