Storm Front

CHAPTER 25

NEW YORK, New York

The elevator at Marlowe Tower rocketed its occupants sky-ward, moving them quickly toward Prime Resource Investment Group’s six-thousand-square-foot playground on the eighty-seventh floor.

“I mean, did no one seriously think about that? P-R-I-G. Their company name spells ‘prig,’ ” Xi Bang was saying.

“I’m not even a native English speaker and I noticed it.”

“Maybe it’s intentional,” Storm suggested.

“Intentionally what, though? Intentionally elitist?”

“You’re not going to launch into a rant about capitalism now, are you?” Storm asked.

And, no, she wasn’t. Not after the brief stop she and Storm had made on their way to Whitely Cracker’s office. Storm was one of those special customers that Barneys allowed to have private shopping hours, and they had taken full advantage of it. They tore through the store like impulsive children, chattering on their EspioTalk Wristwatch Communicators. Xi Bang had come away with a cutout black dress by Balenciaga, a simple yet stunning piece that had allowed her to gleefully throw her schoolgirl outfit in the trash. She paired it with a Delvaux purse that was just the right size for the sleek 9mm Taurus PT709 that had come from Storm’s Mustang.

Storm went with an Andrea Campagna chalk-stripe suit that would allow him to blend with the locals. Fortunately, it was cut broadly enough to cover both his thick chest and the shoulder holster for one of his favorite guns, a Smith & Wesson Model 629 Stealth Hunter, a modernized, slightly more surreptitious version of Dirty Harry’s gun that, just like the revolver made famous by Clint Eastwood, used .44 Magnum cartridges.

Their tack with Cracker, which they had discussed while making the remainder of their trip in, was quite straightforward: bluff their way into his office and then confront him. If they got a confession, great. If not, they would just take him into custody, either voluntarily or by force. They’d worry about the legality of it all later.

Once off the elevator, they entered through the opaque glass doors of Prime Resource Investment Group and came face-to-face with an officious receptionist. She knew full well these two well-dressed strangers did not have an appointment. Storm wasn’t worried. Thanks to Clara Strike, he knew just the right thing to say.

“Hello,” Storm said, then immediately affected an imperious air and a Middle Eastern accent. “I am Mustafa Mattar and this is my assistant, Fatima al-Fayez. We are emissaries from His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Hashem, and we demand to have an audience with this so-called Whitely Cracker at once or we will be forced to withdraw all of the money from our account.”

That neither Storm nor Xi Bang looked remotely Arab was not, at least immediately, top on the list of the secretary’s concerns. That approximately three-quarters of a billion dollars of her boss’s fund was threatening to walk out the door earned more of her attention.

“Yes, yes, of course, Mr. Mattar. Mr. Cracker is…”

“Why am I still waiting?” Storm asked, chin held high. “The prince has dispatched me here with a royal order. It is Jordanian custom and law that any emissary of the prince must be treated as if he is the prince himself. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, but Mr. Cracker stepped out for just a minute. If you could please have a se—”

“I will not have a seat. And I will not wait. I demand to know where he is this very moment.”

“I’m sorry, but if you will have a seat I can call him. He just ran to the deli across the street. I can call him and he’ll be back here…”

“The deli across the street?” Storm said. “Very well. Miss al-Fayez? We will now depart.”

Storm barged back through the glass doors, with Xi Bang close on his heels.

“Nice job there, Mustafa,” Xi Bang said, as soon as it closed. “To the deli?”

“To the deli,” Storm confirmed.

They rode back down in silence, holding hands as they did so. It wasn’t exactly in keeping with two professional members of a prince’s envoy, but Storm was fairly confident he wouldn’t need that cover again. They reached the street level, pushed through Marlowe Tower’s polished brass revolving doors, and were making their way across the street to a deli that had, appropriately, been named “DELI.”

Then Storm spied two men sitting in the window.

They were having an intense conversation. One had ash-blond hair and a silver-spoon air about him. The other had an eye patch and a badly scarred face.

Storm’s grip on Xi Bang’s hand turned vise-like.

“What is it?” she said.

“It’s Cracker,” he replied. “And he’s sitting with Gregor Volkov.”

Storm let go of Xi Bang. His hand reached for the Dirty Harry Smith & Wesson.

“Wait,” Xi Bang said, grabbing his arm. “Don’t just charge in like an idiot. Let’s come up with a plan first.”

“No,” he said, shaking off her grasp. “I’ve had Volkov slip away from me too many times.”

And the part Storm didn’t need to say was It won’t happen again. This time, Volkov wasn’t merely going to escape with burns. This time, there would be no second or third or fourth act. This time, Storm was going to keep putting bullets in Volkov’s head until the man was down and would never again rise.

In some ways, the whole scene was surreal to Storm. He had chased Volkov across the continents and throughout the years, and now here he was, right in front of him, sitting in a street-side deli, like any common New Yorker, hiding in plain sight. The people ordering their bagels and grabbing their coffees on the way to the office had no idea that of the two men sitting in their midst, one was an international terrorist and the other was plotting a financial catastrophe that would make the Great Recession look like a little tiny cub of a bear market.

Storm raised his gun and took aim.

“Derrick, for God’s sake, wait…,” Xi Bang yelled after him.

But Storm was already striding across the street with the gun drawn, heedless of the traffic. His eyes and gun barrel were trained on Volkov. The moment he was sure he had a clear shot, he was going to take it. The .44 Magnum cartridge had the power to punch a bullet through the window and still have plenty enough oomph to finish the job.

A propane truck swerved out of Storm’s way, laying on its horn.

Gregor Volkov loved this part. Just loved it.

Whitely Cracker, king of the pig American capitalists, had called him in — no, ordered him in — like he was some kind of domestic servant, thinking that Volkov would gratefully and happily accept his six-million-dollar payment in exchange for the six MonEx codes.

Because, after all, who was Gregor Volkov to Whitely Cracker? Just some mouth-breathing muscle-head who was not civilized enough to attend the same operas; some two-bit thug who Cracker didn’t even want in his office, thus necessitating their meeting in a deli; some dumb Russian who would nibble on scraps even as Cracker feasted from the table above him.

Little did he know.

Little could he guess.

So Volkov was laying it out for him. Everything had changed. Volkov was now the master, and Cracker the servant. They would do with the MonEx codes what Volkov wanted — when and how Volkov said it would be done.

Volkov was enjoying himself so much, he even explained the why of it all. He had been in touch with several powerful Russian oligarchs, who had eagerly agreed to use a part of their windfall from the fulfillment of Click Theory to fund General Volkov’s coup against the den of thieves currently ruling over Moscow, crooks whose rampant corruption sapped Mother Russia of her strength. Forget the losses of the Cold War, the absurdity of the Soviet Union, and the joke that was the government that had ruled ever since. At the expense of all the other world economies, Russia would rise again, without her weakling dependents, without the crooks, and with Volkov as its militarily backed dictator.

And, yes, Cracker would play his part. It wasn’t just because of the Ruger that Volkov had hidden beneath a napkin under the table as they spoke. It was because Volkov would charge a much higher price for disobedience, one he would extract not from Cracker — at least not at first — but from his family. His lovely wife. His beautiful boy. His perfect girl.

Volkov was just getting to this part when the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood up. He hadn’t stayed alive in this world as long as he had without developing certain instincts, and one of them was a near 360-degree awareness of his surroundings.

And so he noticed things. He noticed movement. He noticed strange shapes. He noticed when a horn was blown, and that it was not just the tap-tap kind of horn a motorist sounded when he wanted to gain someone’s attention; it was the angry, heavy horn of a driver who wanted to send a scolding message.

All of these things had come together on the edge of Volkov’s consciousness, jolted him out of his conversation with Cracker, and caused him to look out at the street, where he saw Storm charging.

The Russian paused for exactly half a second, calmly weighing his options. Then he removed the Ruger from under the napkin and fired two perfectly aimed shots.

But not at Storm.

At the propane truck.

The resulting explosion sent a fireball mushrooming up through the canyon of skyscrapers that surrounded the lower Manhattan street. The force of the blast at first depressed the truck, then raised it in the air for a split second before sending it hurtling on its side into the storefronts across the street. At least thirty cars were lifted off their tires and scattered about like children’s toys, some on their sides, some on their roofs. A motorcycle got high enough to come to rest on top of the stoplights behind it.

Bodies were likewise strewn about. Storm, Xi Bang, and dozens of other pedestrians were thrown flat or into buildings. Drivers of cars were crushed inside their vehicles. Miraculously, the truck driver was blown clear of the cab and wound up with non-fatal injuries. Others were not so lucky.

The percussiveness of the blast had shattered every window on the block from the tenth story down, sending down a rain of glass shards that forced Storm to keep his head low.

By the time he was able to look up, Volkov and Cracker were gone. Xi Bang was already scrambling up as Storm got to his feet. He had a quick decision to make: go after Volkov or go after Cracker. He couldn’t chase both.

Cracker was a man with roots only in New York, a man with no training in how to disappear and no real place to hide. Volkov, on the other hand, was a phantom with a long history of being able to dance between raindrops without ever getting wet. Really, it was no decision: Storm had to chase the phantom.

“Cover the front,” Storm shouted over the cacophony of car alarms. “I’m going around back to get Volkov.”

“Storm, wait,” Xi Bang shouted. But she might as well have been telling rain not to fall.

Storm dashed into the alley to the left side of the deli, his revolver still firmly in his right hand. The explosion had given him at least one advantage: Anyone or anything that might have been in his way had been blown clear. He made a right around the corner of the building. The back door was still open, swinging on its hinge as if someone had barreled through it at high speed.

The alley was L-shaped, and a dead end. There was no sign of Volkov. There were also no other doors on the street level of the alley. Where could he…

Then Storm looked up, just as Volkov scrambled to the top of the fire escape of a five-story brick building. Storm squeezed off a shot, but Volkov had already disappeared over the edge.

Storm instantly assessed the situation. Beyond the brick building, there was a skyscraper the lower levels of which were an open-sided parking garage. Volkov might be bold enough — or desperate enough — to make the leap across the alley separating the two structures and clamber through one of the openings. It would be his only way out.

If Storm tried to run out of the alley and around, he’d be too late. If only he could alert Xi Bang that Volkov would be coming out of the parking garage, she could intercept him.

Then Storm looked down at the small chunk of plastic strapped to his left arm. He felt slightly ridiculous doing it, but he pressed the talk button on his EspioTalk Wristwatch Communicator.

“He’s hit the roof of the building just south of the deli,” Storm said as he raced toward the fire escape. “He’s going to jump to the parking garage on the building next door. Can you…?”

“I’m on it,” Xi Bang’s voice crackled.

“I’ll be adding pressure from behind,” Storm said, leaping up and grabbing the bottom of the fire escape.

He pulled himself up onto the ancient iron structure, then galloped up the steps three at a time, hoping that he might have a shot when he reached the roof. He reached the top just in time to see Volkov slithering over one of the concrete half walls of the parking deck.

Storm didn’t take the time to measure the alley to see if he could handle the jump. He just stuffed the gun back in its holster and hurtled himself forward. The roof was perhaps twenty-five yards wide, enough to allow Storm to reach full speed — or at least as fast as he could go in what his father would deride as “faggy Italian shoes.” At the edge of the building he leaped.

The gap was wider than he thought. And for one sickening moment, he thought he might not have enough momentum to carry him to the other side.

He made it by an arm’s length, slamming into the concrete hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Ignoring the pain, he rolled over the wall and hunched down long enough to pull his gun back out. He stood and aimed it at the nearest human target. But it wasn’t Volkov. It was a distraught-looking middle-aged man.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” he yelled, holding his hands in the air.

“Where did he go?” Storm demanded.

“I don’t know. He stole my car!” the man said.

“What do you drive?”

“A Toyota Camry.”

“Color?”

“It’s silver. Are you with the…”

But Storm was already running past him. He pressed the talk button on his toy wristwatch. “Silver Toyota Camry, coming out any second now.”

“I’ll be there,” he heard in return.

Several stories below, Storm could hear the shrieking of tires as Volkov took the tight turns of the parking garage at high speed. Storm sprinted toward the stairs in the center of the garage. Volkov was now motor-propelled, but he would have to wind his way down. At least Storm could go straight down.

As he reached the second-to-last story, he heard shots ring out. They sounded like they were coming from a 9mm. He could only hope they were finding their mark. Screams now joined with the bleeping of car alarms to create a soundtrack fit for a disaster movie.

Storm reached the first floor and ran toward the street. When he got there, Xi Bang was approaching the left rear of the Camry slowly, in a low crouch, still clutching her gun, her shoes crunching on a layer of broken glass. The street was strewn with the detritus of the explosion. Several fires had been ignited and the wailing of approaching fire trucks bounced off the concrete canyons. The acrid smell of smoke filled the air. Wounded pedestrians moaned, cowering in whatever shelter they could find.

Xi Bang ignored it all. Her entire focus was on the Camry, stopped dead in the middle of the street. It had stalled out at an odd angle. Its left front tire had been shredded. It had three bullet holes in its side and its windows had been shot out.

Storm brought his gun up, ready to pull the trigger if he saw any sign of movement coming from the inert car. He circled around so he was advancing on the left front of the car.

“Did you hit him?” Storm called, closing in quickly.

“I think so,” Xi Bang said. “I don’t know how I could have missed.”

“This is Volkov we’re talking about. It’s like trying to shoot a shadow.”

They reached the car simultaneously. It was empty. There was no sign of blood. The passenger side door was open.

“Where the hell did he go?” Xi Bang demanded.

“How should I know? I was in the garage.”

On the other side of the car, they got their answer. A subway grate had been moved aside.

“He’s gone underground,” Storm said, spying the Wall Street subway stop three blocks away. “This is the two-three line. If he tries to go east, he’d have to go under the entire East River before he got to another stop. He’ll go north, toward midtown.”

Storm holstered his gun. He pointed toward the subway stop in the distance and said, “That means he’ll try to resurface there. You come from above. I’ll come from below. We’ll squeeze him till he pops.”

The shaft that led into the ground had a ladder on its side, and Storm clambered down into the darkness as fast as he could without losing his grip. The subway was not as deep under Wall Street as it was in some parts of the system. But it was far enough down that a fall would likely be deadly.

Somewhere below him, a train was coming. Storm could feel the warm air rushing up the shaft toward him as he continued down, one rung at a time.

Finally, he reached the end of the shaft, some sixty feet down. There was still a faint light coming from the street. The tunnel itself was not lit. Storm peered down. In the dimness, he could only barely make out the track, perhaps fifteen feet below. He saw that the ladder continued down the side of the tunnel. So he could keep descending the slow way. Or he could just make the drop.

He chose the drop. He pulled his gun, then let go of the ladder.

Storm hit the ground and rolled, as he had been trained to do. He immediately swung his weapon up, ready to fire at anything larger than a rat, at any small glint of light, at anything that so much as trickled. But he had the tunnel to himself. Behind him was only blackness. Ahead, there was a faint light as the tunnel bent around to the right.

Storm started running along the tracks toward the light. If Volkov was lying in wait for him around the next turn, so be it. Thanks to his suit, he was a mostly black target against a mostly black background. He’d take his chances with being ambushed.

More than likely, he knew, Volkov was trying to scramble away like the cockroach he was. Storm quickened his pace, keeping his knees high so he’d be less likely to stumble.

He rounded the next corner. Still no Volkov.

But there was something else. The number 2 train was coming from behind him.

Storm was unconcerned. He had noted that the tunnel had cutouts, places where workers could dive in and wait out the passing of a train. He passed by one, confident he’d be able to reach the next in time, wanting to gain as much ground on Volkov as possible.

The train was bearing down on him. He had veered over to the right side of the track. He saw a cutout on the left side but was already past it before he could react. He could feel the rush of air from the train getting closer. There was still no cutout on the right.

He was already sprinting, but he willed himself to go faster. Storm had once been timed in the 100-meter dash at 10.2 seconds, just off world-class pace. But it still wasn’t a match for a hard-charging subway train.

The train’s lights illuminated Storm from behind, casting a shadow in front of him that was growing shorter in a hurry. The engineer must have spotted Storm, because the train’s horn blared. Storm pumped his arms and legs. He could imagine few more ignominious endings: steamrolled by the number 2.

At the last nanosecond, a cutout emerged on the right side. He flattened himself into it, digging his feet into the gravel along the tracks to avoid being sucked inward. The engine ripped past with inches to spare, its passengers unaware of the man panting just off their starboard side.

The moment the train passed, Storm resumed his dash. He heard the train slowing as it approached the station, applying its brakes with a squeal. Then another sound overwhelmed it.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Gunfire. The large-caliber kind.

Storm willed himself to go faster. There were screams coming from the subway platform. Then more gunfire. Storm lost count of the number of shots. He prayed some of the reverberations were Ling Xi Bang answering. And hitting. But he wasn’t hearing her gun.

He reached the back of the train, which had stopped at the station. There was no room on either side for him to vault up to the platform. Storm swore but did not break stride. He leaped up onto the last car and opened the back door.

Inside the subway car, there were riders lying on the floor, huddled under the benches. Seeing a man with a gun made them only shrink back further. There was no blood that he could see. No one here had been hit. Storm passed quickly through the car’s open side doors, gun raised.

Out on the platform, it was bedlam. The gunfire had stopped, but the screaming had not. There were commuters splayed in every direction, hiding behind every bench, sign, and bit of shelter they could find. Some of them were groaning and clutching at parts of their bodies. At least three were prone and either dead or dying.

Storm’s eyes were just starting to make sense of it when Volkov tackled him from the side.

Storm’s legs automatically braced against the hit. Volkov had tried to take him too high. Storm dipped slightly, then straightened, sending Volkov flying to the side. Storm whirled, ready to put a bullet in his attacker and end this thing.

Then he saw it wasn’t Volkov. It was some bald, middle-aged white man in a suit, trying to play hero. The man flinched even as Storm lowered his gun.

“Stay down, damn it,” Storm snarled. “And get off me. I’m the good guy.”

Storm advanced farther onto the platform, bringing Dirty Harry back up and swiveling it across a landscape of bleeding, dying, and dead New Yorkers. There were more than a dozen of them, in varying states of distress.

Then he saw one who looked achingly familiar.

It was Ling Xi Bang. She was down on one knee, clutching her stomach, trying to raise herself. Storm rushed to her side.

“Are you hit?” Storm asked. But he already knew the answer. He could see the slick stain of wetness on her black dress.

“It’s nothing,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Lie down. Don’t fight it.”

“Just help me stand,” she said. “He went up the steps. We can still catch him.”

Storm had been around enough gunshot wounds to know Xi Bang’s was serious. He had been shot in the gut himself. The pain was like nothing he could describe. He could see the agony on Xi Bang’s face.

“Actually, forget about me. I’ll only slow you down. Just get Volkov,” she said, still struggling to get her other leg under her. She attempted to push him away, but there was no strength in her.

Storm knew that if he abandoned Xi Bang and gave chase there was a chance he could catch up to Volkov. The bastard had perhaps a minute lead, but he was on an island with only so many means of escape. Storm could hunt him down, then put him down.

That’s when he saw that Xi Bang’s leg had been hit, too. It was why she couldn’t get back on her feet. There was a pool of red underneath her, and it was spreading fast.

“You’re losing too much blood,” Storm said, keeping his tone measured, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “We need to stop the bleeding.”

“Just leave me.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Storm said. He had already put one arm around her shoulder. He slid his other arm under her legs, cradled her for a moment, then gently laid her flat.

Moving quickly, he removed his jacket, then his shirt, tearing off a strip with one powerful jerk. He located the wound on Xi Bang’s leg. It was just above the knee, on the inner part of the thigh. That explained all the blood. The femoral artery ran along that side. The bullet must have hit it. Storm tied a tourniquet midway up the thigh, tying it as tight as his considerable strength would allow.

“I couldn’t take the shot,” she was saying, half in a whisper, half in a moan. “There was a woman behind him. She had a child. I would have hit…”

“Shhh,” he said. “I know.”

“He grabbed this old lady and—” She interrupted the sentence with a small howl of pain. “He was using her as a shield.”

Storm tore off another strip of his shirt, then folded the remainder into a makeshift pad. He secured the pad with the strip. It was the best he could do until professionals arrived.

Then he moved on to the stomach wound. The bullet had left a neat hole in the dress. He needed to assess what was underneath. Working as gingerly as he could, he began tearing the dress from the hem up.

“Hey,” she said, weakly.

“Stop being fresh.”

“Some guys will do anything for a little peep show,” he said.

When he finally reached her abdomen, he was glad that she was looking up at the ceiling and not at his face. Otherwise, she would have seen the grim expression that came over him. Her stomach was bad. Worse than he’d thought. The bullet had torn into her and expanded on impact. The wound was a gaping hole that revealed her shredded insides. Storm could barely even identify the organs whose mangled remains he was seeing. Even if she were on the operating table in the most state-of-the-art hospital room in the world, with a team of the best surgeons ready to dive in, Storm wasn’t sure if she could be saved.

On the floor of the Wall Street subway stop, it was hopeless. The only question was how many minutes of suffering she had left. Maybe ten. If she was unlucky.

“I’m cold,” she said.

“I know,” Storm said, grabbing his suit jacket and wrapping it around her as a blanket.

He slid his right arm underneath her, cradling her in his arms. All he could do now was try to make her feel comfortable.

“Is this what dying feels like?” she asked.

“Shhh…,” he said. “Just relax. You’re not going to die.”

It was a lie. He knew it. He sensed she did, too.

“I love you,” she said.

“I know. I love you, too.”

Even though he said it mainly to comfort her, it was not without feeling. Somewhere, in the back of his heart, in the part that had resisted hardening through all the missions and all the years, he knew that it might even be true.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Shh.”

Storm could hear the beating of helicopter rotors coming from the street. Was it a Medevac landing? No. Not possible. Helicopters weren’t permitted in this part of New York City. Besides, there were enough hospitals within a short ambulance ride that Medevacs were unnecessary. Why would a helicopter be landing on the streets of Manhattan? Storm pondered it for a brief moment, until he became aware that Xi Bang was talking.

“You’re going to get him, right?” she was saying.

“You’re going to get Volkov.”

“Yes, honey. Of course.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said again, more weakly. Her body was starting to convulse. The wound on her leg had already soaked Storm’s makeshift field dressing. It was now a race to see which would kill her first: blood loss or multiple organ failure.

“That night in Paris,” he said. “Dancing in the street with you. I was serious when I said we would dance to that song at our wedding.”

“Mmm…” was all she could say.

But he could see that it had brought a smile to her face. And so, as the last embers of life flickered out of Ling Xi Bang, Derrick Storm held her tightly in his arms and sang her “The Vienna Waltz.”

It had been their first dance. And now it would be their last.