Storm Front

CHAPTER 32

BAYONNE, New Jersey

Storm’s plan started with one basic, unassailable assumption.

Volkov was lying.

This was based on experience, intuition, and homespun common sense. It’s like Carl Storm always said: If a man like Volkov said there was a rat on the moon, don’t bring cheese.

So it was that Derrick Storm assumed that the meeting at the international terminal, the passport, the stern warnings about not utilizing the No-Fly List — it was all a ruse to make him think that Cracker was going to be smuggled out of the country to join his family in some foreign locale, where the awful deed would be done.

That, of course, meant that Cracker was unlikely to make it out of New Jersey; that his family was likely there already, holed up in the abandoned factory that Volkov believed no one knew about; that Volkov had probably set up the MonEx 4000 there and had it ready to roll.

As Storm pulled away from the used car lot, he had texted Agent Kevin Bryan: “Volkov Bayonne location still occupied?”

Shortly into his drive, Storm got the reply: “Affirmative. Infrared shows fourteen life forms in building. Helicopter now gone. Must have been a renter.”

Storm yearned to have the full support of Jedediah Jones and the nerds — not just furtive texting with one agent — but had roughed it without Jones’s resources before. He could do it again. Besides, he knew what involving Jones would look like. With two phone calls, Jones could get everything from the Green Berets to Navy Seal Team 6 dropping in on the building from all sides. It would make for dozens of chances for things to get screwed up. At least working alone, Storm thought wryly, there would only be one chance.

He got off Exit 14A of the New Jersey Turnpike Extension, letting the GPS in his phone guide him through a warren of streets with numeric names in an industrial part of town. Gentrification had come to many previously rusty parts of New Jersey, with the proximity to Manhattan driving a real estate boom that transformed places like Hoboken and Jersey City with condos and office buildings.

Gentrification had not yet found Bayonne. As it had been throughout its history, it was still a manufacturing center; unfortunately it was a manufacturing center for stuff America didn’t make anymore. So it was that many of the buildings Storm passed were either boarded up or underutilized. And, as night fell and darkness began making serious headway, what little humanity that did make use of them had gone home.

Storm finally arrived at his target location and peered at it through the gloaming. It was a two-block-long, four-story, graffiti-covered brick behemoth, riddled with grime-painted windows that tended to be more broken than whole. Some long-ago owner had done the responsible thing and had the building surrounded by a chain-link fence, to keep out squatters and vagrants. But it had not been maintained. The chain link now offered only a patchwork defense against anyone who cared to inspect the building. Whole sections of it were damaged or missing.

Tufts of weeds, some of them several feet tall, had taken over the parking lot — or at least the parts of it that weren’t covered by illegally dumped piles of debris. Storm didn’t see any vehicles, but they were probably stashed around back, lest a passing police patrol car notice them and decide to inspect further.

Storm maintained a steady speed as he passed the building for the first time. He didn’t dare pass it a second time. A Ford Fiesta driving along a street in Bayonne would not attract the attention of anyone inside the factory. But a car of any make or model driving by for a second time might cause someone to take notice. He turned down the next street and pulled to the side of the road as soon as he was sure he was out of sight.

He glanced at his watch. It had been only a half hour since Volkov issued his edict. Storm thought about the fourteen life forms inside the building. Three of them were likely Cracker’s family. That left Volkov and ten hired guns. Storm assumed that, at some point, roughly half of them would depart for Newark Airport, leaving the other half to watch over the prisoners.

That’s when he would make his move. It improved his odds — five- or six-to-one felt a lot more manageable than eleven-to-one. Especially when Dirty Harry only had six rounds in him.

He would rid the world of Volkov, save Cracker’s family, then call Cracker and divert him from Newark Airport before Volkov’s goons grabbed him. Simple.

He was about to get out of the Fiesta when he saw a woman walking along the street. She was alone, which seemed strange in this part of town — and at this time of the evening — and Storm watched her, because he was trained to watch anything unusual. With a distant streetlight behind her casting a shadow in front of her, he could only make out her silhouette. She was walking with the determined strides of a woman who knew exactly where she was going.

And it turned out where she was going was the right side of Storm’s car. Before Storm could do anything to stop it, she yanked the door handle and sat down next to him in the passenger seat.

“Nice ride, Storm,” Clara Strike said. “Very manly. Do you still like the color when you’re PMSing?”

Storm looked over at Strike. She was wearing a skintight top that left little question about how well her physique had held up over the last four years. And there was that perfume, knocking him senseless, as usual.

Storm smiled. Much as Clara Strike could complicate his life, he was glad to see her. Plus, it improved his odds immensely.

“It’s a bit underpowered, I grant you. Not the Ford Motor Company’s finest effort,” he said. “But it’s growing on me. I’ve decided to name her Becky.”

“If this gets out in the intelligence community, you know your reputation as America’s greatest operative is ruined. Storm gallops to the rescue in a Ford Fiesta? It doesn’t play.”

“I was in a bit of time crunch. It was the best I could do,” Storm said, then changed the subject. “How did you find me?”

“Kevin told me where you were. He thought you sounded like you needed some help. We lost our tail on Cracker after that explosion, and he hadn’t resurfaced at any of the usual locations. So I had been looking for something to do anyway. I actually sort of thought he might be with you. Or, excuse me, with Elder Steve Dunkel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints”

“He was. I sent him on an errand. Though you probably don’t need to bother following him anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Prince Hashem’s fortune is no longer in danger. Prime Resource Investment Group’s financial situation has improved rather dramatically in the last twenty-four hours or so.”

“Oh?”

“Turns out Cracker wasn’t broke after all. His accountant had been stealing from him.”

“Who? Teddy?”

“I wouldn’t call him that,” Storm said. “Apparently, he doesn’t like it very much.”

“Huh. Who knew?”

“Certainly not our pal Whitely.” Storm paused for a moment, watching as the last shred of twilight disappeared, giving way to a moonless darkness.

“That’s a nice little chunk you got out of your forehead,” she said, gingerly touching near the gouge. “You okay?”

“It’s nothing. Does Jones know you’re here?”

She didn’t answer. Storm took it for a yes.

“Maybe you should leave,” he said.

“He doesn’t know,” she said.

“Are you lying to me right now?”

“It doesn’t matter what I answer, does it? You’re not going to believe me anyway. All that matters is that I’m reinforcements, and as far as I can tell you’re not in a position to turn down help.”

“Jones is a—”

“Look, forget about Jones,” Strike said.

“Yes, I’m sure he has his agenda. Is this a big shock to you? He always does and always will. Just focus on the here and now. I’m here. You’re here. I’m know you’re not just visiting Bayonne for the scenery. Kevin told me Volkov is here. Let’s make a plan and take him out.”

He knew that for the sake of three innocent people whose lives were now in danger — to say nothing of the untold millions more who would be imperiled if Volkov was to ascend to power — Storm had to get over whatever injustices Jones might be planning.

He took a deep breath and said, “Right. A plan. As I’m sure Kevin told you, Volkov is holed up in that abandoned factory down the street.”

“Yes. And I’m assuming the only reason you haven’t swallowed your pride and asked Jones to send in a full TAC team to take him out is because you’re Derrick Storm and you have to save the world all by yourself.”

“No, it’s because there are civilians in there.”

“Oh. Kevin didn’t mention that.”

“It’s because he doesn’t know. He just knows there are warm bodies that show up on the infrared.”

“So who are the civilians?”

“Cracker’s wife and kids. Volkov kidnapped them. He’s using them as leverage to make sure Cracker does as he’s told. I worry any large-scale operation — by one of Jones’s teams, by the police, by the army, by anyone, no matter how well trained they are — will not end well for them. If Volkov is in charge, his men won’t be the type to surrender easily. And they won’t show any mercy to their captives. We have to hit them quickly and quietly and incapacitate them before they even know they’ve been hit.”

He shared his thought that the thugs inside would soon split up, and his belief that that would be their best opportunity.

“We just need to get inside the building without being spotted,” Storm finished.

“The problem is there’s so much open land surrounding the factory on all sides. If they have a lookout, we’ll be spotted. If the lookout is quick with a rifle, we’ll get shot.”

The car went quiet for a minute or so. Then Strike said, “We could play it like we did in Sarajevo.”

“No good,” Storm replied, thinking back on that mission. “There’s not enough of a crosswind. And, besides, where are we going to get all the fertilizer we’d need on such short notice? This isn’t exactly farm country.”

“Good point,” she said. They lapsed into silence again. It was interrupted by Strike saying, “I’ve got flashbangs and gas masks in the van with me. There are enough windows in that place. We launch flashbangs through the windows and then move in.”

Storm was shaking his head halfway through. “Too much smoke. Too much confusion. Too much of a chance one of those kids catches a stray bullet.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Do you have night vision goggles?” he asked.

“Sorry,” she said. “That’s not part of my standard party kit.”

Another pause for contemplation. “What we need is some kind of a distraction so we can get inside the building,” Storm said. “From there we can pick them off one at a time.”

“How about an explosion? I’ve got some C-4 with me.”

“Yeah, but what are we going to blow up?”

A wicked grin spread across Strike’s face. “Well, that depends. How attached are you to Becky here?” she said, patting the dashboard.

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would. Come on.”

They didn’t need more words than that. In this world, there were two places — and, sadly, only two places — where Storm and Strike were always in perfect sync. One was the bedroom. The other was on a covert operation.

Twenty minutes later, they had wired Becky for detonation and pushed her to a run-down auto repair shop that bordered the factory to the north.

If a lookout saw them, they would just look like a husband and wife pushing their derelict car to a place where it could get fixed. They retreated north, going back to Clara Strike’s van.

There, they equipped themselves for the coming confrontation: bulletproof vests; KA-BARs, the combat knives preferred by the Marines; and some extra firepower. Strike went with a .40-caliber Colt and a 9mm Sig Sauer. Storm chose an ankle-holstered Compact Glock G38 with a silencer. It made for a nice complement to his Dirty Harry gun. Plus, he was able to grab several extra magazines. Having a few more bullets suddenly seemed to be a good idea.

“Kevin just sent a schematic to my phone based on the infrared,” Strike said, holding out a 3-D image displayed there. “This is their position a half hour ago.” She touched the phone and a new image appeared. “And this is their position five minutes ago. Obviously, this is subject to change if Volkov and some of his thugs roll out — as you suspect they will — but at least it tells us a little bit.”

Storm studied the second image, went back to the first, then returned to the second. The way Agent Bryan had colored the image, the building itself had been made largely translucent, the walls and floors appearing only as gauzy, blue outlines. Human beings appeared as blazing chunks of orange and red.

The lookouts were in different places in each image, suggesting roving patrols rather than guards at fixed stations. The hostages were on the fourth floor, in a room toward the middle of the building, and they had remained stationary. Two guards were in the room with them in each photo.

There were stairs at either end of the building, but not the middle. Whatever manufacturing the building had been constructed to accommodate had relied on a long stretch of uninterrupted assembly line. Stairs in the middle of the building had been deemed superfluous by some ancient architect. In the building’s subsequent uses, before its abandonment, those open floors had been cut up into more discrete spaces. There was now a long, straight hallway bisecting each floor, with rooms of various sizes on either side.

“Obviously we’re going to be approaching from below them,” Storm said, when he was done analyzing the floor plan. “It probably makes sense for you to take one stairwell and I’ll take the other. We’ll meet in the middle.”

“Sure. You want the north stairwell or the south?”

“North. That’s the side the explosion will be on. They’ll likely all flock to that side. I’d rather have them coming at me.”

“Always the gentleman,” Strike said, giving him a coquettish smile and a curtsy.

They departed the van, jogging as they went two streets up, eight blocks south, then two streets back over, allowing them to approach the factory on foot from the opposite side of where Becky was now waiting for her explosive final act.

Without a word, they crossed into the lot immediately to the south of the factory, finding shelter behind a concrete wall — all that was left of what had once been a building.

From there, they each peeked out what had once been a window, taking a brief glance at the approach to the factory — a hundred-yard obstacle course of urban flotsam.

“There?” Storm whispered, nodding at a spot where the bottom of the fence had been pried back, creating a semicircular opening perhaps two feet high, enough for any reasonably flexible person to clamber under.

“Then there,” Strike replied in the same hushed tone, using her eyes to point toward a tall pile of asphalt chunks that some paving contractor had dumped there to avoid the tipping fees at the local landfill.

“I’ll take the lead,” Storm said, gathering his legs underneath him to make the run. “If anyone here is going to get shot, it’s going to be me.”

“Storm, wait.”

“Wait?” he said, because the only noun that wasn’t in their shared dictionary was patience.

“Storm, I just…,” she started, and he saw she was having difficulty coming up with the words. “In the bar, we didn’t really… I didn’t really get the chance to say some things that have been on my mind, and…”

“Is now really the right time for this?” Storm asked, keeping his tone muted. He cast a wary eye toward the building.

“They’re not going anywhere for a little while yet. Besides, there’s never a right time with us. Our last meeting started with you pointing a gun at me.”

“Fair point,” he said, relaxing his legs, leaning against the wall, keeping one eye on the building and the other on Strike. “Okay. So what’s on your mind?”

“I guess I just… Look, I died once and didn’t tell you. You died once and didn’t tell me. I know I’m still the bad guy, because I’m the one who hit first. But I guess I was hoping we could, I don’t know, call it even. You forgive me. I forgive you. Maybe try to start fresh?”

A fresh start. With Clara Strike. Was there really such thing? Or was she the forever spider, with him as the fly?

“Clara, I don’t know, I… We have all this history, and sometimes it’s the best thing about us. Other times it’s like this lode-stone around our necks. So it’s easy to say forget it all and begin again. But, one, I’m not sure I want to forget it all — because if you make yourself forget the bad stuff, you risk forgetting the good stuff. And two…”

“Think about it,” she said before he could finish. “Just think about it before you answer, okay?”

With that, she disappeared around the wall and ran in a low creep toward the hole in the fence. He knew that he and Clara Strike would likely continue some version of their flawed, volatile relationship, one based on sex and spying and deceit. He would always welcome her back into his bed, always admire her talent as an agent. And she would always understand, better than any private citizen could, the peculiarities of his line of work.

Did that mean they had a real future? Were they too similar to ever work out in the long run? Or were they too different?

He looked down at his left wrist. He was still wearing the SuperSpy EspioTalk Wristwatch Communicator. He knew, eventually, the hurt would dissipate and he would be able to take it off. And he knew he would someday throw away the ridiculous toy, because he didn’t have a lifestyle that allowed for the collection of sentimental keepsakes.

He just couldn’t do any of that yet. He missed Ling Xi Bang. He wasn’t ready to let go. She might have been all the good things that Clara Strike was, but without the lodestone of past sins. Yes, it was a near-impossible relationship — a pair of secret agents for nations whose interests seldom aligned in this way. All he knew was that she had never betrayed him, and he had liked living with a certain version of the future where she never did.

Except now he would never get a chance to know.

Strike had taken her position behind the asphalt and was motioning for Storm to join her. Storm let a large gust of air escape his lungs. It was time to prioritize the mission. He emerged from his hiding place and made a quick, low dash toward her.

He was limping. Just not in a way anyone could see.

As trained agents, Derrick Storm and Clara Strike could stay like this for hours: coiled, waiting, ready to spring; relaxed, yet focused; fully deflated, yet one instant away from being fully pressurized. Two packages bursting with potential energy.

After they had spent approximately forty minutes in this condition, the event Storm had predicted took place. A black SUV with tinted windows emerged from around the back of the building and exited through one of the missing fence sections. The darkness and the distance from which they observed the vehicle made it impossible to tell how many occupants it had. It was large enough to seat eight, but Storm doubted he was going to get that lucky.

Storm looked at his watch. They were fifteen minutes from the designated rendezvous time. Newark Airport was perhaps ten minutes away. This lent credence to Storm’s suspicion: Volkov’s men planned to swoop in, collect Cracker, and return to their Bayonne base.

There wasn’t much time to wait. He nodded at Strike. She pulled a small detonator out of her pocket and held down two buttons.

Becky played her part beautifully, creating not one but two percussive explosions in rapid succession. The first was when the C-4 went off. The second was when the gas tank caught and added to the fireworks.

There was yelling from inside the building — loud, sharp voices barking orders in Russian. Storm couldn’t quite make out the full sentences, but he did note, with satisfaction, that the words seemed to express a general sense of confusion.

He held up three fingers, then two, then one. When he dropped the final finger, he and Strike burst from their hiding place, sprinting toward the building. There were no shouts of alarm, no gunshots to greet their approach. All the attention from the Russians was focused on Becky and her death throes.

Strike disappeared through the south entrance. Storm ran along the back of the building toward the north entrance, staying close enough to the brick wall that no one on the fourth floor would be able to see him without sticking his head out of the window.

He paused when he reached the northwest corner of the building, taking a cautious glance around the edge. It was clear. He whirled around the corner, then flattened himself against the brick, stealing toward the entrance with the silenced Glock in his right hand. He didn’t know if the Russians would send a man to give the exploded car a closer look, but he didn’t intend to be caught unawares.

He was halfway to the door when a man with buzz-cut brown hair appeared and began walking down the short set of brick steps that led from the building to the parking lot. His head was turned away from Storm, toward the burning car.

It was the last thing he ever saw. When the man hit the bottom step — ensuring Storm’s satisfaction that there was only one man coming to inspect the car — Storm pulled the trigger twice. The Glock emitted a soft thwump thwump. The only other sound was that of the man’s body dropping just to the right of the stairs.

Storm scampered quickly to the body, dragging it against the stairs so it would be at least somewhat out of sight. He did not look at the man’s face. This was a kind of coping mechanism he had developed years ago. While killing was occasionally a necessary by-product of Storm’s work, it was not something he relished. He learned that if he looked at a dead man’s face, it stayed with him forever. If he didn’t look, there was at least a chance he wouldn’t be seeing this Russian in his dreams for the rest of his life.

With the body at least somewhat out of the way, Storm climbed the front stairs and entered the building. It was even darker inside than it had been outside, but Storm could make out the opening to the stairwell on his left. Storm once read that World War II bomber pilots who flew night missions munched carrots to sharpen their night vision. He often did the same, and was now glad for it. It gave him an edge in this murky world.

The shouting voices from the fourth floor had stilled themselves. The only sound was now the distant crackling of a Ford Fiesta burning itself out.

Storm made the left turn and passed through the door frame — if there ever had been a door, it had been busted off its hinges and discarded. He entered the stairwell. It was windowless and made of concrete, which to Storm meant one important thing: It would be like an echo chamber. He holstered the Glock. Even silenced, it would be too loud. He could not risk drawing notice of his arrival. It could spell death for Melissa Cracker or one of her children.

To one side of the stairwell landing, in the corner, Storm could make out the dim outline of a pile of trash, probably left there by a vagrant who had once made that spot home. Storm walked over to it, feeling — and, worse, hearing — the grit of broken glass under his shoes. He crouched and groped gently around until he touched cloth. It was an old T-shirt. Perfect.

He pulled out his KA-BAR and sliced the shirt up the middle. He tied one half around his right foot, one around his left. With the cloth softening his footfalls, he started creeping up the stairs. He counted the treads as he went. It was twelve steps up to a turn in the staircase, then twelve more steps up to the landing for the second floor.

He had just passed that landing and was climbing toward the third floor when his ears told him another Russian was approaching him from above. The man was descending quickly, perhaps going to check on the car, perhaps going somewhere else on patrol. It didn’t particularly matter. Point was, he was coming. And fast.

Storm retreated back to the landing. There was a door to the second floor, still on its hinges. Storm couldn’t open it without making too much noise. Likewise, he couldn’t make it all the way down to the first floor in time. The Russian would overtake him before he got there. Staying mouse quiet was just too slow.

Storm looked around the landing as best he could in the limited light. There was no place to hide. The only concealment he had was the darkness. Storm wedged himself in the corner nearer to the third floor, pressing his back against the wall, trying to make himself part of it. It was not a perfect arrangement by any means. It was merely the best he could do. His hope was that the man would be feeling his way down the stairs in the darkness and looking down at his feet, not at the wall; and that he could jump the man from behind and clamp one hand on his mouth to muffle any screams, while he used his other hand to slit the man’s throat with the KA-BAR.

Those hopes were dashed when Storm saw that the man was being preceded by a thin shaft of light that was growing brighter as he approached. He was carrying a flashlight. It was only a matter of seconds until it illuminated Storm. What happened in the seconds that followed would determine the fates of countless people.

Storm stayed still, the KA-BAR firm in his right hand. It was possible the man might not see Storm until he was close enough to attack. That was now the best scenario.

But no. When the man rounded the bend in the stairs between the second and third floors, the flashlight was pointed down at the stair treads, but some of it spilled onto Storm. First the beam struck Storm’s feet. Then it climbed up to his shins and knees. When it reached Storm’s waist, it stopped, as did the man on the stairs. He was halfway down, a full six stair treads away from Storm.

Storm didn’t wait for what came next. He threw the KABAR, aiming it just to the left of the flashlight. His thinking was that the Russian likely had the device extended in his right hand, and therefore the middle of the man’s chest would be slightly to the left.

It proved to be good thinking. The KA-BAR buried itself, blade first, between the man’s ribs, piercing his heart. The small moan that followed was quickly drowned out by the sound of his body tumbling down the stairs. He landed at Storm’s feet.

“Corporal, are you okay?” a man said in Russian from somewhere up above. Storm had spent enough time in Russia to recognize the origins of the accent. The man was from Moscow.

Storm summoned his best impersonation of a Muscovite and replied, in Russian, “I stumbled. I’m fine.”

“You’re as clumsy as an ox,” the man said.

Storm replied, “And you’re as ugly as one.”

The man laughed. Storm pulled his knife out of the dead man’s chest, then took his flashlight. It was a full-size Maglite, a big, weighty steel thing, made heavier by the four D-cell batteries that powered it. Thinking quickly, he said, “I think I bent the firing pin on my gun when I fell. I’m going to have to come back up and get another one.”

“The general won’t like that.”

“I will have to offer him my apologies,” Storm said.

“No, Corporal. Take one of mine. I’ve got two.”

“Thank you, my friend. If we will be alive, we will not die,” Storm said, pleased with himself for hauling out that old Russian saying. It seemed to settle the conversation for the moment.

Storm stripped the T-shirt shreds from his feet. He had to sound like a clumsy Russian who was unconcerned about the noise he was making as he climbed back up. He began trudging noisily upward, to the third floor then up to the fourth.

When he made it to the last bend in the stairwell before he reached the top floor, his flashlight illuminated a pair of dusty black boots. Storm quickly swung the beam upward to the man’s face, blinding him. The man reacted by turning away and shielding his eyes with his left hand. His right hand held a gun by its barrel.

“Turn that thing off,” he ordered.

“Sorry,” Storm said, complying with the order. But by that point the man’s night vision was thoroughly ruined.

“Thank you again for the gun,” Storm said as he reached the landing.

“You’re wel—” the Russian began.

But the words were cut off. Storm had swung the Maglite at the side of his head, connecting with a crushing blow. Storm caught his body before its fall could make a sound. The crack of the Russian’s skull had been loud enough.

Storm stayed at the top of the landing for a minute, to see if anyone would come to investigate the source of the sound. When he was satisfied no one had heard it — or that it had been dismissed as related to the strange car explosion — Storm tucked the Maglite into his jacket and eased away from the stairwell.

He entered the long hallway that split the two sides of the building. It had doors — or, in some cases, merely door openings — scattered at irregular intervals along both sides. Small amounts of ambient light spilled from those doorways, giving the corridor a gloomy illumination.

Storm thought back to the schematic he had studied on Clara Strike’s phone. He did not have a perfect photographic memory, but he could close his eyes for an instant and see it. From where he was standing, the hostages were in the sixth room down on the right. There were also rooms on the left to contend with. Any one of them could have men in it.

He would have to go room by room, clearing them as he went. There was no other way to do it.

He wondered briefly how Clara Strike was doing — what obstacles she was facing, whether she had made it up the staircase yet, how many hostiles she had encountered — then put those thoughts out of his mind. Strike was a big girl. She could handle herself.

He drew the Glock. He inched to the first room on the left, then rounded quickly into the doorway. No one. He crept in. It was empty, save for trash.

He was about to exit when he heard two voices coming from the hallway, talking in Russian. They were heading toward the north stairwell. If they made it there and found their colleague with the crumpled head, they would sound the alarm and this operation would instantly change.

“I hear it’s painful,” one of them was saying.

“Oh, it’s the worst,” the other assured him.

“I had a gallstone once,” the first said.

“Kidney stone is worse, the only way to—”

The sentence became muffled. They had disappeared behind the door to the room immediately next to Storm’s. He had to act fast. He took one glance out into the hallway and, when he saw it was clear, padded silently to the next room.

He paused at the door. It was windowless and made of a cheap wood laminate. It had a piston at the top that kept it closed.

It presented Storm with a conundrum. Waiting for them to reemerge and taking them out in the hallway wasn’t much of an option: The hallway ran the length of the building, meaning he — or the bodies he felled — could be spotted from some distance. At the same time, the door ensured there was no way to enter this room without the inhabitants being aware of him.

He pulled his jacket over his head and hunched over, tucking his gun in his gut. He burst through the door, moaning, immediately falling facedown on the floor in a rounded lump as the door closed behind him.

“What the…,” one of the guards started to say.

“Ohhhh, my kidney stone,” Storm groaned in Russian.

The second guard laughed. The first was less amused.

“Very funny,” the man said, walking toward Storm to either kick him or help him up. “Now get u—”

Storm rolled over with the Glock pointed upward and put a bullet between the man’s eyes.

The second guard stared dumbly at Storm. The computer in his head was just a little too slow to process what was happening. By the time it clicked in, Storm had rolled to his right and pumped three slugs into the man’s face.

They were imperfectly aimed, not the neat kill shot Storm had delivered to the first man. They were enough to drop his target, but Storm wasn’t sure if they had completed the job. He leaped on the man like an angry animal, putting a knee on his windpipe and two hands across his mouth to stifle any yell or groan.

None was forthcoming. The shots had not been perfect, but they’d had their intended effect.

Storm got to his feet. The next problem was how to get back out of the room unseen without knowing who might or might not be in the hallway. He silently cursed the invention of solid doors.

Then, suddenly, it became a moot point. The sound of gunfire erupted from the south stairwell. Clara Strike had obviously resorted to doing things more noisily. There was no sneaking up on anyone anymore.

Storm burst out into the hallway, tossing the Glock to the side and yanking out Dirty Harry, happy to have its coercive powers more immediately at his disposal. He was ready to shoot anything he saw, and he didn’t have to wait long. A man appeared out of a room roughly fifteen feet away, immediately turning south, toward the noise from the melee and away from Storm.

It was a careless mistake, one the man paid for with his life. Storm pulled the trigger twice. The bullets entered the man’s back on either side of his spine. Twin explosions of red burst from his chest. He fell forward, arms splayed.

Storm went to the wall nearest him and crouched, gun still drawn, making himself as small a target as possible. He was ready to drop anyone else who appeared in the hallway. He waited, primed.

A form emerged from the south stairwell. It was too distant — and too dark — for Storm to have a decent shot at it immediately.

He watched how it moved. It wasn’t some big, Russian thug. It was Clara Strike. But it wasn’t Strike with her normal glide to her. She was hurt.

She moved up the hallway, toward Storm. He started slinking toward her, staying low with his eyes up, his right index finger still poised on the trigger.

But there was nothing more to shoot. Eventually, they worked their way until they met in the middle of the hallway, just outside the room where the Cracker family was holed up.

“Are you hit?” Storm said softly.

“Yeah. The vest took it. But, Jesus, my ribs.”

“Broken?”

“I think so,” she said.

“How many did you take out?”

“Two. You?”

“Six.”

“Show-off,” she whispered.

Eight down. So much for the theory that half would go to the airport while half remained here at base. Of the original eleven, there were either one or two left here — depending on whether they had sent one man or two to the airport to scoop up Whitely Cracker.

Storm guessed there were two. It was the safer guess — better to assume you had more resistance and be pleasantly surprised when there was less. More than likely, it was Volkov and one other man inside with the family. They would know that for whatever was happening outside, two armed men barricaded in a room with a closed door would be hard to overcome.

Storm considered his options and decided quickly on a course of action. The door was the issue. The door needed to be dealt with.

“You got any more C-4 left?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“With you?”

She quickly rooted in her flak jacket and came up with a small, rectangular piece of a substance that looked like modeling clay.

“Blasting caps?” he asked. And before he could even ask her to, she was already in the midst of producing those as well.

“Keep me covered,” Storm said.

He rose and pinched off small chunks of the C-4, molding them around the door hinges as he did so. He was guessing at how much to use, knowing that too little wouldn’t do the job but too much could harm the innocents inside. Just one more thing not to screw up.

He set the blasting caps in the clay, then motioned for Strike to retreat down the hallway with him. There was no sense in either of them taking shrapnel.

He nodded. She pressed two buttons.

The explosion was small, controlled. For a moment, Storm worried he hadn’t used enough. But then there was a crash as the door fell inward.

One of the children loosed a muffled scream. A spray of bullets, fired from an automatic weapon, greeted the demise of the door as either Volkov or his thug fired outward at anyone who might be rushing in behind the falling panel. The rounds buried themselves harmlessly in the wall on the other side of the hallway.

Storm nodded at Strike. They began working their way back toward the door, slowly, silently, guns drawn.

More probing gunfire erupted sporadically from the room. The men inside were smart enough to know an invasion was coming. They were just hoping they were lucky enough to guess when.

Storm crouched when he reached the door frame. Strike stayed up.

He held up a fist, then a finger. He wagged the finger to the right. Then he held up two fingers and wagged them to the left. This was a code he and Strike had established long ago. It meant he’d take the assailant on the right, she’d take the one on the left.

Then Storm did a three-two-one countdown with his fingers. When he dropped the last finger, he rolled into the door frame and assumed a shooting position.

His eyes instantly took in the scene. The family was clumped in the middle of the room, huddled against one another, bound and gagged with duct tape. Hovering over them to the right was a man pointing an AK-47. Storm killed him with one shot.

From above him, Storm heard the report from Strike’s gun. Then he saw she had taken out her man as well.

The last two men were dead. And that might have been a cause for great celebration, except neither of them was wearing an eye patch.

Volkov wasn’t there.

“Fuck,” Storm said.

“What’s wrong?” Strike asked.

“I should have brought cheese after all.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Just something my father once shared with me.”

“I don’t underst—”

“Volkov said he would be at Newark Airport, and he is. For once in his life, he actually told the truth.”