Chapter 8 - The Calumet Foundry
The Calumet Iron Works was an industrial graveyard situated on the frozen, oily banks of the Calumet River on Chicago’s far South Side. Abandoned twenty years prior, its massive blast furnaces and cavernous steel-sheet halls looked like the ribcage of an ancient, slain monster.
Rain fell in deafening torrents against the corrugated iron roofs as Dominic’s G-Wagon rolled silently to a stop three hundred yards away, shielded by mountains of rusted slag.
Two minutes later, a beat-up Ford cargo van slid through the mud beside them.
Three men climbed out: Frank, a fifty-year-old bear of a man with a silver beard and a heavy shotgun; Russo, an ex-marine sniper carrying a suppressed bolt-action rifle; and Miller, a silent, broad-shouldered demolition expert carrying canvas bags of breaching charges.
They didn't ask questions. They saw Dominic, they saw Clara with the rifle across her knees, and they nodded with grim, deadly respect.
“Thermal scope shows eight tangos on the ground floor,” Russo reported, chewing on an unlit cigar. “Two snipers on the crane catwalk. And there’s an executive office up on the second-level mezzanine with heavy light. That’s where the high-value target is.”
“Mateo,” Clara whispered.
“We don't do a standoff,” Dominic said, laying out the tactical map on the hood of the G-Wagon in the pouring rain. “Russo, you take out the catwalk snipers simultaneously. Miller, you blow the south transformer to kill their industrial generators. When the lights die, Frank and I go through the blast furnace floor. Clara stays at the staging threshold with Frank’s perimeter guard.”
“Dominic,” Clara grabbed his forearm, her grip fierce. “Vincent will be up there. He knows this is his only leverage.”
Dominic loaded a fresh thirty-round magazine into his assault rifle with a sharp, mechanical clack.
“Vincent died the second he laid a finger on my sister,” Dominic said quietly. “He just doesn't know it yet.”
Russo took his position on a rusted crane tower fifty yards out. Two muffled *thwips* echoed across the river. High above the foundry floor, two bodies tumbled from the catwalk into the darkness below.
*BOOM.*
Miller’s charge detonated against the main electrical junction. The industrial floodlights illuminating the foundry instantly popped and died, plunging the five-acre facility into pitch-black shadow.
“Go!” Dominic commanded.
Dominic and Frank breached the side iron door like a storm.
The interior of the foundry smelled of sulfur, damp ash, and iron. Gunfire erupted immediately. Gunmen hired by the Moretti family scrambled behind steel pillars, muzzle flashes illuminating the swirling smoke in violent strobes.
Dominic moved with devastating, practiced precision. Every burst from his rifle found its mark. A mercenary stepped out from behind a slag cauldron—Dominic dropped him with two shots to the chest. Another lunged from a metal staircase—Frank’s shotgun tore the railing away, sending the man crashing into the concrete below.
Dominic was an unstoppable force of nature, driven by four months of grief, guilt, and vengeance. He cleared the lower floor in less than three minutes, leaving six bodies in the dust.
He reached the metal stairs leading to the suspended mezzanine office.
Suddenly, an amplified voice crackled over the foundry’s rusty PA system:
*“Dominic! Stop right there, or I blow his brains all over the glass!”*
Dominic froze on the eighth step of the metal staircase.
High above, through the shatterproof glass of the second-story office, an emergency work light flickered on.
Standing behind the glass was Vincent Corvo, his right arm in a bloody sling, his left hand holding a snub-nosed revolver pressed firmly against the temple of a tiny, crying boy.
Mateo.
The boy was wearing oversized, dirty clothes, clutching a small, torn stuffed bear to his chest, his little face streaked with tears and dirt.
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“Drop your weapons, Dominic!” Vincent screamed through the intercom, his eyes wild, feral with desperation. “Drop them, or the Castiglione bloodline ends right now!”
***
