The Raid
It was 3AM and the docks were as quiet as a church on Friday night. I waited in the shadows and hoped that Dolan would come through with the dogs. It hit like a thunderclap — not noise, but motion. One second the docks were dead as a confession booth, the next they were alive with the kind of chaos that only comes with a badge and a battering ram.
Floodlights snapped on like the wrath of God — beams slicing through fog and shadow, bathing the Jade Scorpion in a glare so sharp it bled.
Men in navy windbreakers, shotguns and megaphones in hand, stormed the pier like ants on a sugar trail. Dolan’s dogs — tactical boys with tired eyes and itchy fingers. You could smell the adrenaline and old cigarettes from where I crouched.
They came from every direction — behind shipping containers, down from cranes, even out of a fish truck that had been parked there since midnight.
The loudspeaker crackled:
“This is the SPD! Vessel Jade Scorpion, cut your engines and prepare for boarding! Hands where we can see ’em!”
No answer. Just the engine coughing to life like it had something to hide.
That’s when the shots started.
Not from the cops.
From the ship.
Automatic fire ripped through the silence like a zipper down the belly of the night. One of Dolan’s men dropped before he hit the dock. Another dove behind a crate shouting for backup that was already there.
And me?
I stayed in the dark, heart thumping like a drum solo at a Grateful Dead show, thinking three things:
Dolan came through.
The Jade Scorpion wasn’t going quietly.
That damn won ton recipe was either about to be seized… or sink to the bottom of the bay wrapped in fire and bullet holes.
Sometimes you chase the case.
Sometimes the case blows up in front of you.
This was feeling a lot like the second kind.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio and Lightroom Classic.
The Raid
It was 3AM and the docks were as quiet as a church on Friday night. I waited in the shadows and hoped that Dolan would come through with the dogs. It hit like a thunderclap — not noise, but motion. One second the docks were dead as a confession booth, the next they were alive with the kind of chaos that only comes with a badge and a battering ram.
Floodlights snapped on like the wrath of God — beams slicing through fog and shadow, bathing the Jade Scorpion in a glare so sharp it bled.
Men in navy windbreakers, shotguns and megaphones in hand, stormed the pier like ants on a sugar trail. Dolan’s dogs — tactical boys with tired eyes and itchy fingers. You could smell the adrenaline and old cigarettes from where I crouched.
They came from every direction — behind shipping containers, down from cranes, even out of a fish truck that had been parked there since midnight.
The loudspeaker crackled:
“This is the SPD! Vessel Jade Scorpion, cut your engines and prepare for boarding! Hands where we can see ’em!”
No answer. Just the engine coughing to life like it had something to hide.
That’s when the shots started.
Not from the cops.
From the ship.
Automatic fire ripped through the silence like a zipper down the belly of the night. One of Dolan’s men dropped before he hit the dock. Another dove behind a crate shouting for backup that was already there.
And me?
I stayed in the dark, heart thumping like a drum solo at a Grateful Dead show, thinking three things:
Dolan came through.
The Jade Scorpion wasn’t going quietly.
That damn won ton recipe was either about to be seized… or sink to the bottom of the bay wrapped in fire and bullet holes.
Sometimes you chase the case.
Sometimes the case blows up in front of you.
This was feeling a lot like the second kind.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio and Lightroom Classic.