Chapter 7 - The Saint Jude Protocol
The Saint Jude Brewery had been condemned during the Koch administration, an imposing Victorian fortress of blackened brick and broken slate that loomed over the Gowanus Canal like a dead leviathan. The city had forgotten it; the developers were terrified of the environmental cleanup costs; and the mob had used its subterranean foundations as a concrete vault for forty years.
Alex shoved the rusted iron grating aside, pulling Grace up through the mud-slicked drainage culvert into the brewery’s lower fermentation cellar.
They collapsed against a row of towering, derelict copper vats that reeked of verdigris and stagnant rainwater. Grace’s bare feet were lacerated, bleeding onto the cracked cobblestones, but she didn't utter a single sound of complaint. She reached down, tore two strips from the hem of her ruined charcoal skirt, and bound her arches with brisk, savage knots.
“Second vat from the end,” she said, her voice shaking slightly from physical exhaustion. “The access panel is behind the emergency cutoff valve.”
Alex moved quickly. He located the valve, threw his weight against it, and felt the false brickwork give way with a dry grind. Behind it lay a reinforced steel plate, its surface cold and unpitted by moisture. In the center was a single keyway surrounded by a mechanical rotary dial.
Grace knelt before the steel plate. Her hands, covered in soot and dried blood, moved across the dial with muscle memory that had been drilled into her since childhood.
*Right 34. Left 12. Right 88.*
She inserted the three-toothed brass key, turned it ninety degrees clockwise, and struck the center of the cylinder with the heel of her hand.
With a heavy, pneumatic hiss, the hydraulic seals disengaged. The door swung outward on counterbalanced hinges, revealing a ten-foot by twelve-foot bunker cut directly into the bedrock.
The interior was not dusty. It was climate-controlled, powered by a trickle generator tied into the city’s deep municipal lines.
On the walls hung row upon row of military-grade hardware: black crates of FN SCAR rifles, racks of MP5 submachine guns, sealed Pelican cases of high-explosive charges, and three large fireproof safes with digital keypads.
Alex stepped inside, letting out a low whistle of grim admiration. “Paulie Marcone was paranoid.”
“Paulie was a survivor,” Grace corrected, leaning heavily against the doorframe. “He knew that eventually, someone would come along who didn't care about the treaties, the families, or the history. He prepared for the end of the world.”
She walked toward the center safe, entered an eight-digit code on the digital pad, and pulled the heavy door open.
Inside lay three thick, bound ledgers wrapped in oilskin, along with a stack of black leather-bound USB drives and four passports with different names, all bearing Grace Parker’s photograph.
Alex stood behind her, watching as she touched the passports.
“You were going to run,” he said.
“Of course I was going to run,” she replied, not looking back. “Did you think I wanted to spend the rest of my life bringing you your dry cleaning and dodging hits from the Capello family? The moment Paulie died, I was going to trigger the asset distribution, leave the ledgers on the desk of the Federal Prosecutor, and disappear to a sheep station in New Zealand.”
“Why New Zealand?”
“Because it’s twelve thousand miles away from men who think with their sidearms.” She turned to face him, holding the oilskin ledger against her chest like a shield. “And now the Capellos have burned the warehouse. Sal DeMarco is probably already dead, Hector Ortiz is in the wind, and within six hours, the city will know that the Marcone seat has fallen.”
“The seat hasn’t fallen,” Alex said quietly.
She stared at him. “Look at me, Alex! I’m bleeding on a concrete floor in a condemned brewery. The organization is dead.”
“The organization was rotting,” Alex countered, his voice hard as iron. He took two steps toward her, towering over her in the cramped, fluorescent-lit bunker. “Paulie’s mistake was thinking he could preserve a corpse. You can’t negotiate with wolves using legal trusts, Grace. You have to feed them lead until they stop biting.”
He reached past her, grabbed two FN SCAR rifles from the rack, and slammed thirty-round magazines into their wells with twin metallic clicks.
“You wanted to keep the streets from burning,” he said, thrusting one of the rifles into her hands. “You spent eleven months keeping me clean while you kept them alive. Now they’ve brought the war to your front door.”
Grace looked down at the weapon in her hands. Her fingers, accustomed to the soft plastic of a computer keyboard, settled naturally onto the textured pistol grip and the selector switch.
“The Capellos aren't just hitting the warehouse,” she said, her voice dropping into a cold, terrifying register of calculation. “They’ll be hitting your Manhattan penthouse next, Alex. They know you’re off the board. They’ll be cutting your supply lines in Brooklyn before the morning news runs.”
“Then we don’t run,” Alex said, his eyes burning with predatory fire. “We hit their command house in Bay Ridge before they even know we survived the tunnel.”
Grace looked at the passports in the safe. Then she looked at the brass key in her pocket.
With a slow, deliberate motion, she reached into the safe, grabbed the four passports, threw them into an empty metal trash bin, and struck a road flare from an emergency kit.
She dropped the flare into the bin. The paper curled, blackened, and burst into bright orange flame.
May you like
“I hate Albany anyway,” she said.
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