Chapter 173: Operation Rapunzel
Inside the dark timber workshop on 98th Street, the air was thick with the foul stench of stale coal smoke, damp wool, and cheap rye whiskey. A single oil lantern hung from a rusted iron beam overhead, casting long, wavering shadows across stacks of flour barrels and heavy pine shipping crates.
Near the center of the main floor, three of Christopher Galnick’s guards sat around an overturned crate, dealing a greasy, thumb-worn deck of playing cards. In the back corner behind a heavy timber fence, two dozen young immigrant women sat huddled together on straw pallets, shivering in silence under thin wool shawls.
One of the guards, a thick-necked enforcer named Redman, stood up from the card game, his heavy leather boots thudding against the floorboards. He slouched over to the wooden pen, unlatched the iron gate, and reached in, grabbing a terrified young girl by her wool shawl and hauling her roughly toward a cot near the wall.
"Leave ’er be, Redman!" Bart, the senior card dealer, barked without looking up from his hand. "Galnick spent four days picking those broads out from the dock manifests. They’re carefully selected for the Midtown auction."
"Ah, shut your trap," Redman grumbled, holding the weeping girl firmly by her arm as she tried to pull away. "We got twenty more sitting in the back. I’ll just take a quick turn with this one. We tell Chris she fainted and got sick on the boat—he’ll never know the difference. We can easily find another broad to take her place."
Bart slammed his cards down on the crate, glaring across the room. "You’re a dead man if Chris comes back tonight and finds one of his prime goods missing or bruised. You want a skirt to mess around with, you should’ve taken one from the brothel down by the park earlier tonight instead of messing with the auction stock!"
Redman froze. He stared at Barney, his jaw working as he weighed the absolute certainty of Galnick’s brutal temper against his own impulses. He let out a harsh curse, shoved the crying girl back inside the pen, and slammed the iron latch shut.
"Yeah, fine," Redman grunted, wiping his sweating palms on his trousers. He turned toward the reinforced front timber entrance. "I’m going out to the side shed to grab another jug of beer. Any of you fellas want some while I’m at—"
BOOM!
The explosive breach charge strapped against the outer timber hinges detonated with a deafening, flash-blinding roar! The heavy oak door exploded violently inward in a cloud of orange fire, crushing Redman beneath a shower of iron hardware and shattered wood. His voice was cut off mid-sentence, snuffed out instantly under the blast wave.
Before the smoke could settle, John Caldwell charged through the ruined entryway, flanked by twenty men dressed in dark wool suits, starched high collars, and pulled-down flat caps.
"SPLIT UP! FIVE GROUPS OF FOUR!" John’s thunderous voice boomed over the ringing in the room. "SQUADS FOUR AND FIVE, SWEEP AROUND THE BACK! MAKE SURE NOT ONE RAT ESCAPES OUT THE ALLEY!"
"MOVING!" Luther yelled, taking three men and sprinting down the exterior side passage to lock down the rear fire exits.
Inside the workshop, total violence erupted. Galnick’s remaining seventeen guards scrambled frantically from their cots and card tables, grabbing Winchesters, double-barreled shotguns, and snub-nosed revolvers.
"RAIDERS! KILL ’EM!" Bart screamed, pulling a heavy .44 revolver from his belt and firing wild shots toward the door.
A guard crouching behind a stack of oak barrels racked the lever of a Winchester carbine and fired two quick rounds down the main aisle. One lead slug caught Agent Harlan square in the center of his chest!
Harlan gasped as the impact knocked him backward off his feet, his body crashing hard into a pile of grain sacks.
"HARLAN!" Orville roared, stepping around the timber pillar. Orville raised his pump-action Winchester Model 1897 shotgun, racked the brass slide with a sharp CLACK-CLACK, and slammed two heavy 12-gauge buckshot loads straight through the thin pine barrels, dropping the shooter instantly.
Orville dropped to one knee beside Harlan, grabbing his suit lapels. "Harlan! Talk to me, you hit?!"
Harlan sat up slowly, groaning through clenched teeth as he unbuttoned his wool overcoat. Snug against his shirt was a curved, three-sixteenths-inch sheet of pressed steel armor, strapped across his chest with leather harness riggings—the handmade body armor Ricky had forced every man to craft and test during training camp three months ago. The lead .44 bullet was squashed flat like a silver penny in the center of a shallow steel dent.
"The armor plate held up," Harlan wheezed, rubbing his bruised sternum. "Ribs feel like they’re splintered, but the lead didn’t go through. I’m fine!"
"Get up then! Cover the right aisle!" Orville yelled, hauling him back to his feet.
The four-man tactical squads moved through the workshop in pairs, covering every blind angle with mechanical discipline. Where firearms were too tight, they relied on fluid, lethal hand-to-hand combat.
A broad-shouldered guard lunged out from behind a corner, swinging a heavy butcher knife directly at Clyde’s neck. Clyde didn’t flinch or leap backward. Trained extensively in Kali close-quarters blade fighting, Clyde brought his left forearm up in a tight parry, deflecting the guard’s wrist while driving his own double-edged trench knife straight under the attacker’s jawline. In a seamless movement, Clyde twisted the blade, disarmed the man, and swept his legs out from under him, letting the corpse drop to the boards before raising his Colt M1911 to cover the next doorway.
Further down the central hall, three guards had entrenched themselves behind a heavy barricade of flour sacks, pouring heavy revolver fire down the corridor and pinning down Squad Two.
"FLOUR SACKS ARE TOO THICK! WE CAN’T PENETRATE!" an agent barked from behind a brick pillar.
"USE THE PIPE!" Harlan shouted. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a heavy steel cylinder packed with black powder and iron nails—a handmade friction-fuse fragmentation grenade. Harlan struck the friction igniter against his leather belt, caught the sputtering spark, and tossed the steel cylinder over the flour sacks in a smooth, low arc.
THUD-BOOM!
The iron pipe detonated with a blinding flash, blowing the flour barrels apart and filling the corridor with a choking cloud of white dust and iron shrapnel. Squad Two stepped smoothly through the fog, delivering precise single shots to neutralize the disoriented survivors.
Inside the rear pens, the huddled immigrant women screamed in terror, clutching each other as bullets chipped the rafters overhead.
"Dio mio! Please, don’t shoot!" one girl wept in Italian, covering her face.
"Who are these men?!" another gasped in frantic Polish, pressing herself against the timber wall. "Are they the police?!"
"CLEAR LEFT!"
"CLEAR RIGHT!"
Within six minutes, the gunfire inside the main floor died down to a trickle. John Caldwell racked the slide of his trench shotgun, leading Clyde and two others down the final corridor toward the locked holding quarters at the far end of the building.
At the end of the hall stood a heavy oak door reinforced with iron straps.
"Breach it!" John ordered.
Orville stepped up, aiming his 12-gauge shotgun directly at the heavy iron hinges.
BLAM! BLAM!
The heavy lead slugs shredded the hinges. Clyde stepped forward and delivered a crushing front kick to the lock plate. The heavy door crashed inward.
𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺
Inside the room, dozens of terrified young women were huddled against the far wall behind iron cots. Standing in the center of the room was Galnick’s second-in-command, Sikes. His face was twisted in wild, frantic panic. He had grabbed a young teenage girl by her collar, yanking her up in front of his chest as a human shield while pressing a snub-nosed .38 revolver directly against her right temple.
"STAY BACK! I’LL BLOW HER BRAINS ALL OVER THIS ROOM!" Sikes shrieked, his hand shaking violently against the trigger. "I SWEAR TO GOD I’LL KILL HER!"
John Caldwell and Clyde stepped through the doorway together. They didn’t pause, negotiate, or slow their stride. Without a fraction of a second’s hesitation, both men raised their sidearms simultaneously.
CRACK-CRACK!
Two gunshots rang out as one continuous report.
Clyde’s precision shot struck Sikes’s revolver directly on the steel cylinder, shattering the gun frame and blasting the weapon right out of Sikes’s bloody fingers. In the exact same microsecond, John Caldwell’s bullet punched a clean, fatal hole straight through the center of Sikes’s forehead.
Sikes’s eyes rolled back, his knees buckled, and he dropped dead onto the floorboards.
The girl gasped, stumbling forward into Clyde’s arms, completely unharmed.
"Easy, girl. You’re safe now," Clyde said softly, gently guiding her toward the corridor. "All of you, get up! Grab your coats, we’re getting you out of here!"
Suddenly, an agent came sprinting into the rear corridor from the front entrance, breathless and covered in gunpowder soot.
"BOSS! WE GOT TROUBLE OUT FRONT!" another agent yelled. "Galnick’s local crew from the neighborhood—reinforcements are pouring out of the tenement houses down Christie Avenue and 55th! They heard the gunfire!"
John’s face hardened. "Get these women on their feet! HURRY ’EM OUT!"
John rushed the escort squad to lead the terrified women out through the front entrance. As they reached the doorway, John peered out into the street.
Crouched behind iron stoops and turned-over delivery crates directly outside were Squads Four and Five, maintaining a furious line of suppressive rifle and pistol fire down both ends of 98th Street. Down the block, fifteen to twenty local gang members were shooting back from dark alleyways and window frames. Their return fire was wild and inaccurate due to their lack of formal training and the pitch-black night, but the sheer volume of lead pinned the front sidewalk down, blocking the main intersection at Christie and 55th Avenues.
"THEY’VE GOT THE MAIN CROSSING BLOCKED!" an agent shouted over the deafening crackle of gunfire. "WE CAN’T WALK THE GIRLS THROUGH THAT FIRE!"
John scanned the opposite side of the narrow street. Directly across from the workshop sat an abandoned junkyard behind a high corrugated iron fence, secured by a heavy iron chain and padlock.
"CLYDE! TAKE THAT GATE!" John roared.
Clyde sprinted across the street under covering fire from Squad Four, pressed his 12-gauge shotgun barrel directly against the iron padlock, and blew the lock mechanism to splinters! He kicked the corrugated gate open, revealing an overgrown yard filled with rusted wagon wheels and iron scrap that cut straight through the block toward 99th Street.
"THIS YARD LEADS OUT TO 99TH STREET!" John shouted to the squad inside. "GO THROUGH HERE! MOVE! MOVE!"
Squad Three rapidly escorted the weeping women across the street, pushing them through the open junkyard gate away from the crossfire.
Once the last girl was safely inside the yard, John, Clyde, and a small three-man rear guard stood at the junkyard entrance, checking the perimeter.
"YARD IS CLEAR!" John bellowed back toward the street barricades. "SQUADS FOUR AND FIVE! BREAK CONTACT! FALL BACK THROUGH THE YARD, NOW!"
Squads Four and Five began leapfrogging backward in tight pairs, keeping up a steady rhythm of suppressive fire against the gang members down the block before sprinting across the street into the junkyard. Clyde slammed the heavy iron gate shut behind them and jammed a steel pipe through the handles to delay pursuit.
"RUN FOR LEWIS AVENUE!" John commanded.
The entire group sprinted down the narrow lane of 99th Street, turning hard onto Lewis Avenue toward the dark treeline of Louis Simeon’s Park on 101st Street. Behind them, Galnick’s reinforcements were forced to kick through the locked junkyard gate, losing precious minutes in the dark maze of rusted iron scrap while the rear guard turned and fired continuous burst volleys down the lane to keep them back.
As they burst into the dark shadows of the park, three massive, enclosed Mack delivery trucks were idling beneath the oak trees, their canvas flaps pulled back.
The lead driver leaned out of his cab window, waving his cap frantically. "OVER HERE! WE WERE GOING TO FETCH YOU! LOAD ’EM IN!"
"UP YOU GO! HURRY!" John shouted, helping the women climb rapidly up into the high wooden beds of the enclosed truckbeds.
The twenty agents piled in right behind them, pulling the heavy rear flaps shut and securing the iron latches.
Without waiting a second longer, the three enclosed trucks slammed their gears, roared to life, and accelerated down three completely different exit roads—one turning north toward the river, one heading west and the third plunging south.
Five seconds later, Galnick’s winded reinforcements burst out of Lewis Avenue into the park, gasping for breath, guns raised—only to find an empty, quiet park ringed by dark trees.
Over three-quarters of their neighborhood crew had been wiped out or wounded in the brutal firefight and chase, and the street syndicate was left standing in the night with empty hands, cursing furiously into the dark as the tail lights of the three trucks vanished into the night.