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They found the boat and piled in, the vessel groaning under their weight and the weight of their packs — loaded with climbing gear — and weapons.
“You sure this thing isn’t going to sink?” Pavel asked, white-knuckling the side of the boat.
“You can’t swim?” Roman asked. Pavel paled. “I’m just giving you shit. I’m sure.”
He untied the boat and reached for one set of oars while Max grabbed the other.
The boat was equipped with a small motor, but it would be safer to approach the grain terminal silently. It wasn’t just about his father’s men guarding Ruby: the Gowanus was rarely used and Roman wasn’t eager to be stopped by the Coast Guard or Port Authority.
They rowed silently downriver, the sluice of the oars through the inky polluted water the only sound, the city feeling a million miles away.
Less than five minutes later the grain terminal rose like a hulking beast in the night. Roman and Max steered the boat toward the edge of the canal, hugging it as the building grew closer.
It was enormous, rising twelve stories into the air. Once upon a time, it might have been lit, a beacon of industrialization. Now it was as dark and silent as a long-dead monster, its asymmetrical roofline making it look like it had been constructed by a drunkard on a bender.
There were two connected structures, rectangular concrete boxes covered in seeping black mold. Two towers rose higher than the rest of the building, one made of brick, and Roman saw the blueprints from the planning office in his mind, pictured the individual grain silos — fifty-four of them — inside the building, all connected by a series of moveable spouts that had directed the grain loaded onto the roof from the canal.
Once an engineering marvel, the structure was slowly sinking into the Gowanus, and Roman and Max navigated the boat carefully around the disintegrating foundation.
“This place is fucking creepy,” Pavel said as Roman reached for a crumbling wood platform.
“Comms on,” Roman said, switching on his mic and earpiece. “Let’s move.”
He and Max held the boat steady as the others disembarked. There was no point looking for a place to tie the boat. If Roman had his way — and he would — his father’s men would be dead when Roman and his team left the grain terminal with Ruby. They would make their way to the second van, parked on this side of the canal by Pavel that afternoon.
Roman was the last one out of the boat. He gave it a push and it glided silently into the canal, snatched by the darkness in seconds.
They picked their way over the crumbling foundation, a hodgepodge of decaying lumber and broken concrete, finally finding their way onto a narrow unintentional pathway created by the eroding foundation.
There was no need for words. Roman had gone over the building’s plans countless times in the past twenty-four hours, had looked at pictures of the building online until every angle of the structure was seared into his memory.
They stopped at a disintegrating wood platform, once used by the laborers at the terminal and the boat captains bringing in grain.
Roman looked up, mapping the scarred and decaying facade of the building. The street side was less dilapidated, but Roman was willing to bet his father’s men were covering what had once been the terminal’s main entrance. Approaching from the river — and from the top of the building down — would give them a greater element of surprise, an advantage that might make or break them when it came to getting Ruby out alive. It would also give them more time to get their bearings inside the building.
He didn’t want his father’s men to have time to move her — or worse — before Max got to her.
Roman decided on his first handhold and stepped toward the building. “See you up top.”
He started climbing, using the building’s eroding exterior to find handholds to the first gaping window frame. It was slow going — he had to test each divot before using it to make sure it would hold his weight — but little by little he rose into the night.
It would have been easier to send one of the men, but Roman was building his army. He couldn’t afford to rest on nonexistent laurels. He needed the men not just to follow him but to respect him. That meant showing them that he was willing to get his hands dirty, risk his life alongside theirs, even do the worst of the work if it came to it.
He looked up and spotted the factory window frame that was his target. The glass had long since disappeared. It would make a good staging ground to drop the rope for the other men.
Almost there…
He reached up with one hand to test the strength of the old wood, felt it give.
Not there.
He tried again, toward the corner of the frame.
It held.
He hoisted himself up and through the window frame, hoping he hadn’t made too much noise as he lifted himself into a large drafty room inside the silo.
He was in.
