Chapter 15 - Scorched EarthPort of Miami. 11:30 PM.
The shipping containers stacked along the docks formed a steel labyrinth. It was the perfect chokepoint for smuggling, and the Cortez cartel had controlled Pier 9 for almost a decade.
Tonight, a shipment of fifty million dollars in cash—the combined profits of their Midwest operations—was being loaded onto a freighter bound for Veracruz. It was Mateo Cortez's desperate attempt to consolidate his assets after my raid in Chicago.
He thought he was moving fast. He didn't realize I was already two steps ahead.
I sat in the shadows of a crane operator's cabin, eighty feet above the pier, watching the ants scramble below. Through my thermal sniper scope, I counted twenty heavily armed sicarios patrolling the loading zone. They were nervous. They had heard the whispers from Chicago.
They were waiting for a ghost.
I chambered a heavy .338 Lapua Magnum round into my suppressed sniper rifle.
The first target was the floodlight operator on the eastern watchtower. I exhaled slowly, letting my heart rate drop to a slow, steady rhythm.
Squeeze.
The suppressed rifle kicked against my shoulder with a heavy thud. Two hundred yards away, the floodlight shattered into a shower of sparks, plunging half the pier into darkness.
"Contact!" a cartel guard screamed in Spanish below.
Before the echo of his voice faded, my second shot took him square in the chest, throwing him violently backward into a stack of wooden crates.
Panic erupted on the docks. Sicarios began firing blindly into the darkness, their muzzle flashes illuminating the steel containers. They were shooting at nothing, wasting ammunition in a desperate bid to feel safe.
I didn't stay in the crane. A sniper's nest is a tomb once compromised. I clipped my harness to a steel cable and rappelled eighty feet to the ground in less than three seconds, landing silently in the shadows of the containers.
I switched to my MP7. Close-quarters combat. My element.
I moved through the steel maze like a shadow. I wasn't just clearing the area; I was dismantling it. Three sicarios rounded the corner, their rifles raised. I didn't slow down. I slid across the wet concrete, firing a rapid burst that dropped all three before they could pull their triggers.
I reached the primary loading bay. The heavy pallets of cash—stacks of shrink-wrapped hundred-dollar bills—were sitting on the forklift, ready to be loaded onto the ship.
Guarding the money was Cortez's top enforcer in Miami, a massive, heavily scarred man holding an automatic shotgun.
He saw me step out of the shadows. He pumped the shotgun, a feral grin spreading across his face.
"El Fantasma," the enforcer growled. "Cortez sends his regards."
He fired.
The buckshot tore through the air, but I was already moving. I vaulted over a metal crate, the concrete wall behind me exploding into dust. As I landed, I tossed a frag grenade directly under the forklift.
The enforcer’s eyes widened in sheer panic. He didn't care about me anymore; he cared about the money. He dove toward the pallets, trying to shield the cash.
Boom.
The explosion rocked the pier. The forklift was blown into the air, a fireball of shrapnel and burning diesel fuel.
But it wasn't just the machine that burned.
Fifty million dollars in dirty cartel cash erupted into a blizzard of green confetti and ash, raining down over the Miami docks like burning snow. The enforcer lay dead in the wreckage, his empire turned to cinders in less than ten seconds.
I stood in the fiery glow of the burning money, my face completely devoid of emotion.
I pulled out the encrypted satellite phone.
"Echo-Actual," I said over the roar of the flames.
May you like
"Go ahead, sir."
"Miami is clean. The cartel's treasury is ash." I watched a burning hundred-dollar bill float past my boot. "Pull the extraction team. I’m heading to Mexico."
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