Chapter 7 - The Extraction at Queens
While the estate in Westchester slept under the watchful guard of thirty tactical enforcers, Adrian returned to the city with Marco and a six-man extraction team.
At 2:15 AM, three black vans pulled silently into the alley behind an abandoned meatpacking warehouse in industrial Queens. According to the telemetry extracted from Lucas’s phone, this was the primary safehouse where the Falcone family held high-value hostages.
Adrian stood in the drizzling rain, checking the digital floor plan on a tactical tablet.
“Two guards at the rear entrance, three inside the central office,” Marco reported, adjusting his night-vision goggles. “Thermal imaging shows a single heat signature locked in the refrigeration vault. Maria Reed is inside.”
“No survivors on the security team,” Adrian ordered, his voice flat as a guillotine blade. “Take the building in sixty seconds.”
The extraction was executed with terrifying, surgical precision.
A hydraulic ram smashed the rear steel door inward. Flashbang grenades detonated in blinding, ear-splitting cascades of white light, disorienting the guards before they could reach their weapons. Suppressed automatic fire neutralized the five Falcone enforcers in three rapid bursts.
Adrian strode through the shattered office, kicking open the heavy insulated door of the refrigeration vault.
Curled in the corner on a wooden pallet, shivering under a thin burlap sack, was twenty-two-year-old Maria Reed. She looked up, screaming in terror as the flashlight beam hit her face, before recognizing the man standing in the doorway.
“Mr. Moretti...?” she choked out, her voice raw from days of crying.
May you like
Adrian stepped forward, removing his wool jacket and wrapping it around her trembling shoulders. He pulled a knife from his belt and sliced through the zip-ties binding her wrists.
“Your brother made a mistake, Maria,” Adrian said gently, helping her to her feet. “But you are going home.”
