Page 67 of Break For Me
I hit the specialist low. Shoulder into his midsection. My right arm hooks behind his knee. The tackle drives him backward into the steel wall of the container.
The impact reverberates through the metal box like a struck bell. The pliers fly from his hand and clatter across the floor. Hisskull bounces off the corrugated wall. His legs go loose for half a second—long enough for me to get my forearm under his chin and press.
He recovers fast. His fist drives into the broken rib on my left side. The pain whites out my peripheral vision. I hold the forearm against his throat. He hits the rib again. A third time.
Each impact sends a detonation through my torso that I feel in my teeth, in my fingertips, in the ruined hand that’s clamped against his shoulder. My vision narrows. The pain becomes a sound—a high, sustained whine that fills my skull and cancels everything except the immediate physics of keeping this man’s hands away from Adrian.
Dmitri moves. I hear him—the scrape of his shoes on the steel floor, the click of the folding knife opening. He’s behind me. Adrian shouts something I can't process.
I drive my knee into the specialist’s groin. He folds. I spin.
Dmitri’s knife comes in fast—a practiced, compact thrust aimed at my kidney. I catch the blade on my forearm. The same forearm. The same laceration that Adrian has stitched three times.
The steel opens the wound along the suture line like a zipper. The pain is an old friend at this point. A familiar guest arriving at a party I stopped enjoying weeks ago.
I grab Dmitri’s wrist with my bandaged hand and squeeze. The sutures in my palm let go—I feel them pop, one after another, like stitches being cut with scissors. The blood runs between our grips. His wrist slips.
He pulls free. Resets. The knife low, blade up. He’s used knives before. He knows the second attempt is the one that kills.
The world detonates.
The explosion comes from below. The concrete floor bucks like a living thing. The container rocks on its footings, the steelwalls groaning. The single bulb swings in a wild arc that turns the shadows into a strobe.
A second explosion follows—closer, louder. The pressure wave compresses the air inside the container and pops my eardrums with a sound like tearing fabric.
The lights die. Not just the bulb—everything. The fluorescent tubes in the warehouse beyond the container. The exterior floods. The security systems. The entire electrical grid of the terminal goes dark in a single, coordinated blackout.
The breach team hit the power station.
The container is pitch black. I can't see Dmitri. I can hear him—his breathing, rapid and shallow. The rustle of his clothing as he repositions. I can hear the specialist groaning on the floor behind me. I can hear Adrian—his breathing controlled, counted. The surgeon’s rhythm holds even in total darkness.
Gunfire erupts outside. Suppressed weapons—the flat, mechanical cough of professional operators engaging targets. Return fire—louder, unsuppressed. Shouts in Russian. The heavy, percussive thud of breaching charges blowing doors off their hinges.
Dmitri moves in the dark. I hear the knife—the whisper of steel cutting air. I drop. The blade passes over my head. I grab the direction the sound came from and my hand closes on fabric. I pull him toward me and drive my forehead into where his face should be.
Contact. The bridge of his nose gives under my frontal bone. It’s the same headbutt I used on the kid in Red Hook. The mechanics are identical. The only difference is that the kid in Red Hook hadn't spent two days watching men hurt me in a steel box.
I hit Dmitri with everything I have left. His head snaps back. His body goes limp in my grip.
I let him drop. He hits the steel floor. The knife clatters away.
"Adrian."
"Here." His voice comes from my left. Close. I reach out and my hand finds his shoulder—thin, tense, the bones prominent under the borrowed suit. He’s standing. He’s intact.
"Stay behind me."
The container door screams open. Light floods in—flashlight beams, the harsh white of tactical illumination cutting through the smoke and dust.
Three figures in the doorway. Body armor. Helmets. Rifles up, the laser sights painting red dots across the interior of the container.
"Friendlies! Falcone asset and civilian inside!"
Rory’s voice comes from behind the tactical team—high, sharp. It cuts through the gunfire and chaos sharp, cutting through gunfire—Rory has spent his life making himself heard in rooms that didn’t want to listen.
"Rocco! You alive?"
"Alive is generous," I say. "But standing."
