The Lost Child On The City Bus And The Father’s Photo
CHAPTER 6: THE RIVER INTERCEPT
“Lock Number Two is three miles downstream,” Gage growled, hauling Lucas to his feet. “Hawk, get Lucas onto Bear’s bike and get him to the trauma unit at Mercy Hospital. Bear, you ride escort. I’m taking my Road Glide to the locks.”
“You can’t take on an industrial pusher tug alone, Anvil!” Bear shouted over the howling rain.
“I won’t be alone,” Gage said coldly.
He sprinted through the drainage culvert back to his motorcycle, threw his leg over the saddle, and hammered the ignition. The massive twin-cam engine exploded into life with a deafening roar that shook the river mud. Gage hit his club radio frequency, broadcasting an emergency tactical alert to the entire Iron Forge membership across Allegheny County.
“All Iron Forge units,” Gage’s voice boomed through the radio waves. “Code Black on the Monongahela River. Suspect vessel is the industrial tug Corvus Pride, pushing two chemical barges toward Lock Number Two. Target is preparing to scuttle the barges inside the lock chamber. Intercept at the lock gates immediately!”
Ten miles of river road became a blur of blinding rain, screaming asphalt, and flashing LED lights.
Gage tore down the riverfront industrial trail at eighty-five miles an hour, his knobby tires spitting gravel and coal dust as he matched the speed of the dark river. Through the curtains of rain, Gage spotted the illuminated silhouette of the Corvus Pride—a twin-screw, three-thousand-horsepower diesel river tugboat pushing two massive, flat-topped steel tank barges through the churning black waters of the river.
Ahead, the massive concrete walls and steel miter gates of Lock and Dam Number Two loomed out of the darkness, operated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
The tugboat was already entering the lock chamber, its searchlights sweeping the concrete approach walls.
Screeching to a halt on the lock access road were twelve motorcycles of the Iron Forge MC, led by Preacher and Tank. The bikers had already overwhelmed the lock security shack, disabling the two armed Corvus mercenaries stationed at the gate and alerting the lockmaster to seal the downstream gates.
Gage launched his Road Glide through the open chain-link gate, skidding to a halt on the twenty-foot-wide concrete lock wall directly above the moving barge.
Below him, standing on the flat steel deck of the lead tank barge in a heavy waterproof jacket, was Kurt Sterling. The CEO held an industrial satellite detonator in his hand, wired to three orange plastic explosive charges strapped to the barge’s underwater sea-cocks.
“Sterling!” Gage’s voice rang out from the concrete wall twenty feet above, echoing off the steel lock chambers with terrifying authority. “Drop the detonator and step away from the hatch!”
Sterling looked up, his face twisted in manic, cornered fury. “It’s too late, biker! If I go to prison, this entire city drinks poison for the next fifty years! In thirty seconds, these sea-cocks blow, and five hundred tons of chemical waste sinks to the bottom of the lock!”
Sterling raised his thumb to depress the master firing button.
Gage didn’t hesitate for a heartbeat.
He didn’t draw a gun; he unclipped the heavy thirty-foot steel recovery cable from his motorcycle’s frame, swung the forged three-pound alloy steel grab-hook in a whistling arc over his head, and hurled it through the rain with the pinpoint precision of a veteran rigger.
The heavy steel hook caught the collar of Sterling’s waterproof coat and the antenna of the radio detonator with a violent, instantaneous snap!
Gage clamped his gloved hands around the cable, planting his heavy engineer boots against the concrete curb of the lock wall, and gave an explosive, backward heave with all his strength!
The force ripped the satellite detonator from Sterling’s grip, sending the black electronic box spinning fifty feet through the air into the churning white water behind the tug’s propellers, where the massive bronze blades pulverized it into harmless plastic confetti!
Sterling lost his footing on the slick steel deck, screaming in panic as he slid across the wet plating toward the edge of the barge.
Gage leaped from the twenty-foot concrete wall, his boots landing with a deafening, thunderous CLANG on the steel deck of the barge.
He closed the distance in two strides, grabbed Sterling by the throat with one massive, calloused hand, and lifted the terrified CEO six inches off the deck, pinning him against the pressurized nitrogen manifold.
“The game is over, Sterling,” Gage snarled, his slate-gray eyes boring into the man’s soul with the cold, immovable weight of justice. “Your money couldn’t buy you an escape, and your poison won’t touch this city.”
Sterling wheezed, his face turning pale blue under Gage’s grip, his hands clawing uselessly at Gage’s tattooed wrists. “Please… don’t drop me in the river…”
“You’re not going in the river,” Gage said coldly, dropping the CEO onto the wet deck and planting a heavy boot across his shoulder blades. “You’re going to a federal penitentiary for the rest of your natural life.”
From the river banks and the lock access roads, the night sky exploded with the screaming sirens and dazzling strobes of twenty Pennsylvania State Police interceptors, three United States Coast Guard patrol boats, and tactical response teams from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Armed federal agents swarmed the barge, securing the chemical tanks, while two Coast Guard engineers safely deactivated the disarmed explosive charges.
Federal agents dragged the weeping, handcuffed Kurt Sterling off the barge in total, irreversible disgrace.
