He had no idea whose throne he was sitting on.
“You hear me?” the enforcer barked, shifting his weight to grind my face harder against the asphalt. “Marcus owns this port.”
I took a slow, agonizingly shallow breath. The pain in my right shin was throbbing with a sickening rhythm, the bone deeply bruised or fractured from the heavy steel wrench. But I needed to compartmentalize the pain. I needed to let him think he had total control.
“I hear you,” I grunted, letting my voice sound weak and broken. I relaxed my muscles, letting my body go completely limp against the freezing pavement. It was an old survival trick. When you stop resisting, the aggressor naturally eases their grip just a fraction of an inch, confident in their absolute dominance.
It worked.
Feeling me go slack, the young man chuckled, slightly relaxing the agonizing pressure on my twisted wrists. He kept his knee on my spine, but his posture shifted, his focus pulling back slightly to admire his own handiwork.
That fraction of an inch was all I needed.
With agonizing slowness, ignoring the screaming protests of my left shoulder, I slid my left hand down my side, inching my fingers toward the deep pocket of my heavy denim jeans. The movement was imperceptible, masked by my labored breathing.
My rough fingers brushed against cold metal. I curled my hand around the heavy, antique gold pocket watch I had carried for over forty years.
It was a beautiful piece, an heirloom engraved with elaborate scrollwork. But underneath the antique gold casing, it had been heavily modified a decade ago by the best electronics engineer in the Pacific Northwest. Inside the watch was an encrypted radio-frequency transmitter, linked directly to an old, dormant satellite relay.
I managed to pull the watch half an inch out of my pocket. My thumb felt for the subtle groove along the side. I pressed down, feeling the heavy mechanical click as the casing sprang open.
Inside, where the clock face should have been, a small green microchip glowed faintly in the shadows of my pocket. Below it was a single, recessed red button.
I took a deep breath, resting my thumb over the button.
I pressed it.
A tiny, almost inaudible electronic hum vibrated against my leg as the signal transmitted.
“Giao thức 50,” I whispered into the wet concrete, the Vietnamese words feeling heavy and strange in my mouth after a decade of silence. Protocol 50. I switched to English, my voice steady, cold, and entirely devoid of the weakness I had shown seconds before. “Lock down the entire port. Total wipeout.”
The young man above me froze. For two full seconds, the only sound on the pier was the distant crashing of the ocean waves against the pylons.
Then, he burst into laughter.
It was a sharp, mocking sound, full of genuine amusement. He let go of my right wrist, reaching down and violently yanking my left arm up, snatching the gold pocket watch out of my fingers. He held it up to the gray light, inspecting the antique engraving and the glowing chip inside.