Storm Front

CHAPTER 26

LANGLEY, Virginia

Jedediah Jones would have been pulling his hair out, if only he had any to pull.

As it was, he looked like a cross between a stressed-out CFO and an irate customer service representative. He was talking on a wireless telephone headset — an ergonomics expert at the CIA said it was better for his neck — at a volume that was seriously threatening nearby ear drums.

As he ranted, he paced around the cubby, pounding on any table that didn’t hold a quarter-million-dollar piece of spy equipment. The nerds were keeping their attention buried in their computer terminals. Eye contact might provoke him further.

“Eighteen dead,” he shouted. “Eighty-seven wounded. A hundred seventy people hospitalized. I don’t even want to know how many millions in damage. Do you have any regard for private property at all?”

The man on the other end of the line said nothing. Derrick Storm had watched Ling Xi Bang’s body get loaded into a New York City medical examiner’s truck a mere half hour before. He was not in the mood to answer rhetorical questions.

“On top of that, I’ve got a propane company saying one of our agents blew up their truck. Do you want to explain to me why that was tactically necessary?”

Still nothing from Storm. Rodriguez and Bryan kept trying to dodge Jones as he rampaged around. Occasionally, they would hand him a piece of paper that he would look at then throw on the floor — which was already littered with things he had spiked.

“I’ve got the NY goddamn PD saying it’s going to send me a bill for a crane to get a motorcycle out of a traffic light,” he continued. “A crane! How did a motorcycle get in a goddamn traffic light?”

Jones stooped down and picked up something he had previously discarded.

“Then I’ve got the NYPD asking me why I brought a helicopter into restricted airspace so close to the Freedom Tower. I would have told them I didn’t know, except I was worried that would make me sound like even more of an idiot than I already did.”

The helicopter. Storm finally figured it out: That must have been how Volkov made his exit.

“A carjacking… a firefight in the streets of Manhattan… a subway platform full of shot-up civilians… all this and Volkov got away? Storm, what the hell happened this morning?”

Storm was sitting on a bench in a park in lower Manhattan. He was still wearing a good portion of the fluid that Xi Bang had bled out on him. It had started to dry and congeal, making his pants rigid. His hands and face were a mess of blood smears; some of it was hers, some his, from the glass cuts he had suffered. To anyone passing by, he must have looked like a deranged killer. It had not occurred to him to let any of this bother him yet. At the moment Jones had called, Storm had been looking at a tree, wondering how it was that the tree — a stupid, nonsentient piece of greenery — was allowed to still be alive and photosynthesizing while Ling Xi Bang was dead.

“Storm, are you going to say anything?” Jones demanded.

“Mistakes were made,” he said, quietly.

“You bet your ass mistakes were made. And the first mistake was hiring you. Do you have any explanation for this incompetence?”

“No.” At least none that he felt like giving Jones.

“And, I’m sorry, what the hell were you doing in New York City anyway? I thought you were in Iowa.”

“There was a change of plans.”

“And when were you going to inform me of this change of plans?”

“There wasn’t time.”

“I see. And when were you going to inform me of… Get me that surveillance camera footage again.” Jones interrupted himself to bark at one of the nerds, who complied with his request. “I’ve got some footage here that makes it look like you’re in cahoots with a Chinese agent, the Asian woman you intercepted in Paris. You want to tell me what the hell is going on with that?”

“No.”

“You know that’s not our deal. If you need help, you come to me. I’ve got all the manpower we need. I can’t have you triangulating in outside help, especially the Chinese, fer chrissakes. Are you still working with her?”

Storm was only barely paying attention to his boss. The moment he mentioned the “Asian woman,” Storm’s thoughts went to that moment when he spied Volkov inside the deli. That’s where it all went wrong, and there was no doubt about whose fault it was. She had asked him to wait before charging in. She had told him they should make a plan. Don’t just charge in like an idiot… Derrick, for God’s sake, wait… How long would it have taken for two smart agents to come up with a workable plan? Three minutes? Two?

Instead, her blood was on his hands literally and figuratively: first, because he hadn’t listened to her very sensible commands, and then because he had placed her directly in the path of a wild sociopath. She had told him she didn’t often do fieldwork. She didn’t have the training to take on a beast like Volkov. He never should have made her do it.

“Damn it, answer me: Are you still working with her?”

“It’s a moot point,” Storm said.

“I don’t even want to know what that means. I probably don’t want to know anything about what happened this morning. But I do have to ask about another report I got, something about you traipsing through a homicide scene? According to one of our station agents, there’s an NYPD detective named Nikki Heat who thinks you’d make a great suspect if only she could figure out how to make you one. Maybe I should just turn you over to her?”

Storm had no reply. He was absentmindedly opening and closing his left hand. He had jammed one of the fingers when he made the leap into the parking garage. He was working it to make sure it wasn’t broken. His ribs were also starting to stiffen up from when he slammed into the concrete. It didn’t matter. The physical pain was a distant tickle compared to what he was feeling emotionally.

“Actually, you want to know what’s a moot point? You and this case,” Jones continued.

“As of this moment, you’re fired. Go back to snorkeling or knitting or whatever the hell it was you did while you were dead. You’re officially dead again.”

“What’s going to happen to Whitely Cracker?” Storm asked.

“That’s none of your concern.”

Storm sat up, actually engaging in the conversation for the first time. “How can you say it’s none of my concern? I’ve developed rock-solid intelligence that Whitely Cracker has masterminded a plot to engineer a financial catastrophe. First, he bribed a senator to implement a change to Federal Reserve policy, then he unleashed Volkov on six innocent men and their fam—”

And then Storm stopped himself. The moment he said the name “Whitely Cracker,” Jones should have asked what Whitely Cracker had to do with this. He should have fussed and fumed and acted like Storm was tossing in a random name from some other part of the universe. Storm hadn’t told Jones about Cracker being the money behind Donny Whitmer’s new PAC; nor had Storm told Jones he saw Cracker and Volkov sitting together in the deli. Jones shouldn’t have known the two were connected.

But he did. Of course he did. Clara Strike had been performing blanket, round-the-clock surveillance on Cracker for two months. She would have told Jones what she saw and heard. Maybe Strike hadn’t put together the bigger picture of what was going on — she wouldn’t have had the context to know the significance of much of it — but Jones had all the information about what was happening.

And he didn’t care. Sure, he wanted to know more about what Cracker was up to. That’s why he hired Storm in the first place. Maybe he wanted to use it as leverage against Cracker. Maybe he wanted to have dirt on Donny Whitmer, the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee chairman. Maybe he had some other agenda that Storm couldn’t even fathom yet, because there were other pieces at play.

But punishing the guilty? Righting the wrong? The morality of it all? That was never Jones’s concern. Not then. Not ever — unless it served some other purpose of his. That people were killed, lives were ruined, and hearts were broken? That was all collateral damage to Jones, an unfortunate but necessary byproduct of a larger war.

“So you’re saying Whitely Cracker will not face any criminal charges for ordering the deaths of six men and the slaughter of their families,” Storm said.

“I’m not saying that,” Jones said. “I’m saying we’re going to deal with him my way. Not yours.”

“Do you have him in custody?”

“No.” Jones still fumed. “He’s in the wind. But right now that is the least of your worries. The only thing that matters right now is that you have been compromised and therefore this is over for you. Drop it. Now.”

“Fine,” Storm said, calmly. “There’s a little dive shop in the Caymans that I’ve been hoping to visit.”

“Storm,” Jones said, ominously. “I’m serious. You are off this case. You are finished. I’m not protecting you anymore. I’m not covering for you. You get yourself in trouble, you’re completely on your own, you understand? As of this moment, you are a private citizen acting on his own. I’ll pay you for your work through nine A.M. this morning and reimburse you for your expenses. But that’s it. You’re done. Do you hear me? Storm? Storm, answer me.”

But Jones was talking to himself. Storm had already ended the call. He had work to do. A maniac needed to be stopped. Justice needed to be served.

Besides, he had made a promise to a dying friend that he did not plan on breaking.