9. Crossfire
Crossfire
Janice
The port looks different at night.
By day, it’s movement and noise, trucks reversing, men shouting, gulls circling over the water like scavengers with wings. At night, the same place becomes harder to read. Light pools beneath sodium lamps and leaves everything between them dark enough to hide in.
Containers sit stacked in steel rows along the commercial side of the harbor, their painted sides dulled by salt air and grime. Beyond them, the sea moves black and restless against the dock.
Steve and I are positioned on a low hill above the port, tucked behind scrubby brush and broken stone where the slope drops toward the access road. It isn’t comfortable, but it gives us a clear view of the service gate, the container yard, and the narrow lane leading toward the water.
Probably near where Cole did his recon earlier. Comfort doesn’t usually come included with surveillance. It’s rude, but consistent.
Steve lies beside me with binoculars raised, one shoulder pressed close enough to mine that I can feel the shift whenever he adjusts his angle.
His rifle rests within reach, covered, ready.
My camera is braced against a flat rock, its long lens trained on the row of containers Nikolai identified earlier.
Below us, a truck idles with its lights dimmed. Three men move around the rear doors, loading crates from the shadowed side of a storage building. They’re quick, careful, and too coordinated to be ordinary dockworkers finishing late.
“Same truck from the manifest?” Steve murmurs.
I check the plate through the lens. “Same truck.”
His jaw sets. “Bastards aren’t even changing vehicles.”
“They don’t think anyone’s watching.”
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “They’re about to have a rough night.”
A fourth man appears near the container row and gestures sharply toward the truck. Two others respond at once, pulling open the rear doors wider. For a second, I think they’re moving supplies, then a woman steps into view between them with her hands bound in front of her.
My fingers tighten around the camera.
Another woman follows.
Then another.
All three are young, wrapped in thin jackets, heads down, moving because the men around them leave no room to do anything else.
“Steve.”
“I see them.”
His voice has changed, low and flat in the way that tells me every part of him has locked onto the same target. He keys his comm with one hand. “Visual confirmation. Three women being moved from container row to truck. Stand by.”
Jax answers from somewhere closer to the eastern fence. “Hold position. I count six hostiles in your view, two more near the gate.”
“Copy,” Steve says.
I keep filming. Faces. Plates. Positions. The route from container to truck. Evidence matters, even when every instinct I have wants to get up and run downhill with nothing but rage and bad intentions.
Then headlights sweep across the access road.
A dark sedan pulls through the service gate without stopping. The guard waves it in immediately, which tells me more than a badge would have. The car rolls toward the loading area and stops hard enough that gravel spits beneath the tires.
The driver’s door opens.
Giannis Petrakis steps out.
The same polished aid official who smiled in Solace’s face and delivered her to these men.
He’s not polished now. He’s furious.
Even from this distance, I can read it in the way he slams the door and strides toward the truck, jacket flaring behind him. One of the smugglers meets him halfway, hands raised as if he’s already making excuses.
I zoom in.
Petrakis points toward the containers, then toward the truck. His mouth moves fast. The smuggler snaps something back, sharp enough that two of the others turn.
The argument spreads like flame through dry grass.
Steve lowers the binoculars slightly. “That’s Petrakis.”
“Economides already left with the two women earlier,” I say.
“Which means the port authority’s gone and the charity man’s trying to clean up the mess.”
Petrakis shoves a finger into the smuggler’s chest. The man knocks his hand away.
Everything changes.
One of the guards near the truck reaches for his weapon. Another swings toward the container row. The women flinch back, trapped between men who’ve stopped pretending this is organized.
Steve’s comm clicks once. Jax’s voice cuts through, low and grim. “They’re losing control.”
A gunshot cracks across the port.
The first round hits the side of the truck, throwing sparks off the metal.
Then the night comes apart.
Mytilene Port, Lesbos, Greece. 2330 hours
Gunfire turns the port into noise and movement.
The first shot is answered by three more, fast and ugly, muzzle flashes bursting near the truck before the sound reaches us.
The women scream and drop low beside the rear tires while the men who were loading them scatter for cover.
One dives behind the open truck door. Another fires toward the storage building without aiming properly, panic making him dangerous in a different way.
Steve’s hand closes around my sleeve and pulls me down before I’ve finished processing the angle.
A round cracks against the rock above us.
Stone chips spray across my cheek.
“Down,” he snaps.
I flatten against the ground, camera clutched hard to my body as another round tears through the scrub to our left.
The shot wasn’t aimed at us. That almost makes it worse.
No one below knows we’re here, which means no one is correcting for where their bullets are going.
We’re not targets yet. We’re just unlucky geography.
Steve shifts beside me, controlled and fast, his rifle coming into position as he scans the dock through the scope. “Jax, they’re firing uphill. We’ve got rounds hitting our position.”
“Copy,” Jax answers, low and grim. “I’m pinned east of the fence. Cole’s moving to the lower access road. Women are still beside the truck.”
Another shot hits the stones behind us. The crack is sharp enough to make my teeth snap together.
“Any visual on who started it?” Steve asks.
I force myself to lift the camera enough to see through the lens.
The image wobbles before I steady it against the rock.
Below, Petrakis is crouched beside the sedan with one hand clamped to his upper arm, his suit jacket hanging open and his white shirt darkening fast. Not dead. Not down enough for my liking either.
Two smugglers are yelling across the open space, one with a pistol raised, the other waving toward the back of the truck. The words are mostly lost beneath the gunfire, but I catch enough through the directional mic clipped to the camera.
Money.
Payment.
Short.
Liar.
“This isn’t about us,” I say. “They’re fighting over money.”
“Perfect,” Steve mutters. “A financial dispute with firearms. Very civilized.”
Another burst slams into the truck, and the women curl tighter against the ground. One of them reaches for the other, dragging her closer behind the rear tire. She’s thinking. Even terrified, she’s thinking.
That keeps me filming.
Evidence, positions, faces.
Petrakis shouts something I can’t hear. A smuggler swings toward him, weapon raised, and Petrakis ducks as the round punches into the sedan window behind him. Glass bursts outward, glittering beneath the port lights.
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer bastard,” I mutter.
Steve’s mouth barely moves. “Stay with the women.”
“I am.”
The camera catches Cole’s shadow moving near the lower road, low and careful between parked machinery. Jax is still closer to the fence, blocked by the angle but feeding positions through comms. They’re trying to reach the women without drawing the whole firefight toward them.
A round strikes the rock in front of us.
This time the impact is too close.
Pain flashes across my temple as a chip of stone catches my skin. Small. Hot. Annoying.
Steve sees it instantly.
“Jan.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s not structural.”
His eyes cut to mine for half a second, furious in that quiet way of his. “Only you would triage yourself as architecture.”
“I’m very sturdy.”
Another shot cracks overhead, and he shifts over me, shielding more of my body without blocking the camera. The move is protective and practical, which is probably why I don’t argue. Much.
Below, one of the smugglers grabs the nearest woman by the back of her jacket and hauls her upright.
Steve goes very still beside me.
The rifle settles.
“Jax,” he says, his voice dropping into command. “One hostile has a hand on a woman. I’m taking the shot if he moves her toward that truck.”
“Hold if you can,” Jax says. “Cole’s almost there.”
The smuggler jerks the woman backward. She stumbles, catches herself, and swings hard with both bound hands.
Her fist catches him under the chin.
It’s messy, desperate, and absolutely magnificent.
He staggers.
Cole moves out of the shadows.
And the whole port shifts again.
Mytilene Port, Lesbos, Greece. 2340 hours
The port erupts all over again.
Cole’s movement pulls two weapons toward the lower road, and Steve fires once, controlled and sharp, forcing both men back behind the truck before either can get a clean shot. The report of his rifle punches through the chaos, different from the wild handgun fire below. Measured. Chosen.
The woman Cole was reaching for drops flat, and he drags her behind a stack of concrete barriers. Jax’s voice cuts through comms, low and urgent. “One secured. Two still exposed.”
“I’ve got the truck side,” Steve says.
He fires again.
A smuggler ducks so fast he nearly trips over his own feet. Good. Let them be afraid. Let them remember what it feels like to be watched by someone who means it.
I shift the camera, trying to keep the remaining women in frame. One is crawling now, inching toward the rear axle while another stays frozen beside the open doors, hands still bound, face turned toward the gunfire as if her mind can’t make her body obey.
“Move,” I whisper. “Please move.”
The next shot comes from the storage building.
It hits the rock in front of us at a bad angle.