Storm Front

CHAPTER 33

NEWARK, New Jersey

They had taken too long. The caution in the stairwell. The steady elimination of the Russian goons. The wiring of the door. It had all been too slow. The time at which Cracker was to present himself at Newark Airport had come and gone. And now Cracker wasn’t answering repeated calls to his phone.

This had led Storm to conclusion number one: Volkov had him already.

Any thought Storm had of this ending the easy way was now over. Volkov was no idiot. If he went to the airport alone — and there were ten bodies in a factory in Bayonne testifying to the fact that he had — he would be checking in periodically with his team. They would have reported their distress or just stopped reporting altogether. Either way, he would know they had been compromised. And he would not return to the factory.

Conclusion number two: Volkov was now in the wind. From Newark Airport, he could launch himself anywhere.

So even though Cracker’s family was safe, nothing had really been settled. Volkov could go anywhere with Cracker. And, yes, he no longer could hold harm to Cracker’s family over the banker’s head. But Volkov was resourceful and knew more ways to torture a man than Storm cared to think about. The sadistic bastard would find a way to make Cracker do his bidding.

Conclusion number three: For all his effort, Storm really hadn’t done a thing to neutralize the threat.

Volkov was still just as dangerous with those MonEx codes in hand. One way or another, Cracker would do exactly what Volkov told him to do.

Storm had left Strike with the Cracker family. She was in the midst of calling the authorities as he departed. The Bayonne Police would be able to respond within minutes. The FBI would follow shortly thereafter. He no longer worried for their safety. As for the future of Storm and Strike? That would have to sort itself out some other time.

For now, Volkov and Cracker were all that mattered.

As he negotiated the tangle of ramps and roadways that led from the New Jersey Turnpike to Newark Airport, there were two scenarios going through Storm’s head.

In one, Volkov had collected Cracker and was now driving. Somewhere. Storm didn’t like that scenario. There were probably two hundred thousand black SUVs in the tristate area. Good luck finding the one with Volkov in it.

In the other scenario, Volkov and Cracker were boarding a plane to… somewhere. That scenario wasn’t much better. But at least it gave Storm something to grab on to. Volkov would surely be traveling under an alias: The man had more fake IDs than a crowd of college freshmen. But he didn’t have an alias for Cracker. That’s why it had been necessary for the man to bring his passport.

Storm called Bryan.

“What do you want now?” Bryan said in a whisper. “The credit on your Bahrain card is running out, you know.”

“I need one of the nerds to check all the airlines to see if they can find Graham Whitely Cracker V on any flights out of Newark Airport.”

“Hang on.”

While he waited, Storm reached Terminal B. He pulled Strike’s van to the curb outside the international departures area and left it there. Let the authorities sort out why a van full of surveillance gadgets and weapons was abandoned there. Maybe they’d do him a favor and shut down the airport.

As he got out, Bryan returned to the line. “He’s on Air Venezuela flight nineteen to Caracas.”

“When does it depart?”

“It was scheduled to leave Gate 53B two minutes ago. You know Venezuela is out of our—”

Storm knew he didn’t have time to listen to the rest. It wasn’t news to him. The United States had an extradition treaty with Venezuela that dated back to 1922, but it was shot full of exceptions and oddities. More to the point, the Hugo Chavez government seldom cooperated with extradition requests, particularly when the party to be extradited had the means to pay bribes. As soon as Volkov was out of U.S. airspace, he would be beyond the reach of the U.S. government. Not that the U.S. government was trying to detain him anyway, what with the way Jones was playing things. Maybe Storm could get on the phone with his new buddies at the FBI and convince them Cracker was being kidnapped. But that would take time, something he no longer had.

The fact was, there was no legal or diplomatic mechanism to prevent Gregor Volkov from slipping out of the country; no high-placed phone calls or favors called in or well-reasoned pleading with the right bureaucrat could stop Volkov or his plot. He would slide from Caracas to Moscow, or Brazil, or wherever it was he felt like going to launch a financial meltdown that would consume the world’s economies.

There was only one way to stop him now.

Brute force.

Which brought Storm to conclusion number four: He had a plane to catch.

He stuffed the phone in his pocket and sprinted into the terminal. He charged up the stairs, toward the morass of switch-backing humanity that was the security area. The line for crew and airport personnel was on the left side. Without breaking stride, Storm charged past two confused flight attendants, through the metal detector — setting it off in the process — and past a quartet of TSA employees who were so concerned about whether or not people had their shoes on that they didn’t immediately react to the most brazen security breach any of them had seen outside a training exercise.

Finally, one of them had the wherewithal to yell, “You! Wait! Stop!”

Storm was already gone. The sign for Gate 53B told him to keep going straight. Arms and legs pumping, he blitzed by curious travelers, all of whom turned to watch this madman’s dash through the terminal. Somewhere, well behind, TSA had sounded its alerts.

Gate 53B was at the end of this terminal branch. Storm ran up to a woman who was head down in a computer screen.

“Excuse me,” he said, breathlessly. “I’m with the CIA. Did a man wearing an eyepatch just board flight nineteen?”

“Yes, sir, but that flight has already closed. If you’d like—”

Storm didn’t hear the rest. He was already charging down the Jetway.

“Hey! You can’t go down there,” the woman called after him, as if that would somehow stop him.

Storm reached the end of the Jetway. There was no airplane there, just an opening at the accordion-like end of the ramp. He dropped down to the tarmac, where he found a man in a jumper with earmuffs still fixed to his head. The man was stowing directional wands in the back of a small motorized cart.

“Excuse me,” Storm said. “I’m with the CIA. Did you just direct flight nineteen out of this slot?”

“Yeah.” He pointed to a white-and-red Air Venezuela 747 lumbering away in the distance. “That’s it right there. But you can’t be—”

Storm resumed his sprint. The aircraft had turned right out of its gate but now was heading left toward a runway. It was perhaps four hundred yards away. If Storm went straight, he might be able to catch it.

As he sped toward it, he watched the 747 come to a stop at the head of the runway. There were no other planes ahead of it. It was number one for takeoff. Storm was now three hundred yards away.

Having braked, the pilot was now calling for full power from the four Pratt & Whitney JT9D engines at his command. The plane responded immediately. A 747 was a big, heavy piece of machinery, but those Pratt & Whitneys were capable of pouring out more than fifty thousand pounds of thrust.

Two hundred yards out. Storm was still gaining on the plane, but he could go no faster. The plane, meanwhile, was accelerating. From somewhere behind him, a phalanx of TSA personnel had reached the end of the Jetway that Storm had exited. Storm dared not turn to look. But if he had, he would have seen the guy in the earmuffs pointing toward him.

A hundred yards away. Ten point two seconds of all-out sprinting. Storm was coming in at a nearly perpendicular angle. He picked the point where — he hoped — he and the plane would intersect. He aimed at the front landing gear.

With sixty yards to go he thought he might not make it. The plane was picking up speed too quickly. It was now going faster than him. At forty yards, he adjusted his course and aimed for the back landing gear. It was now his only chance.

At twenty yards, the plane was really starting to pull away. At ten yards, Storm thought his lungs were going to burst.

He closed in, leaping for the strut above the 747’s tire. His outstretched hands grasped on to the metal. His body swung to the side of the tire, then slammed into it. The downward force being exerted by the back side of the spinning tire was working to pry Storm off, but it was not yet rolling quickly enough. Storm was able to hoist himself up the strut, then into the landing gear compartment.

The scream of the engines was deafening. Storm hung on against the increasing g-forces as the plane gained speed, then was able to wedge himself against the side of the compartment, hanging on to a pair of pipes that ran along the top. And that’s where he still was as the 747 lifted off the ground.

Derrick Storm was now, quite unofficially, the last passenger aboard Air Venezuela flight 19.

The 747 ascended rapidly, first over a patch of Jersey swampland, then over the suburbs of the Garden State. Storm had found good purchase in the landing gear compartment, but he didn’t dare look around — or do anything that might cause him to lose his grip — until the wheels retracted.

When they finally did, Storm retrieved the Maglite from his jacket, turned it on, and assessed his situation. With the wheels up, there was little room for him to move around. But claustrophobia was far from his biggest problem. Climbers who ascended the world’s tallest peaks started having serious problems with oxygen deprivation above twenty thousand feet. Above thirty thousand feet, the air would become too thin to breathe and deathly cold. Storm was uncertain whether he would suffocate or freeze to death first, but he wasn’t especially keen to find out. He had read news articles about stowaways found dead in wheel wells. He had to get to a pressurized part of the aircraft before it reached that altitude. He guessed he had about twenty minutes.

He looked up at the roof above him. If there was one thing that favored him, it was that airplane engineers preferred lightweight materials, for the simple reason that a lighter plane was easier to get off the ground. Sure enough, there was only a thin layer of sheet metal over his head.

He took out his KA-BAR and thrust it above his head. It punctured the metal, burying itself to the hilt. Storm yanked it out, then thrust again, in a spot just to the right of the first hole he had made. The gash had now doubled in size. He jabbed again. There would eventually be a mechanic who would wonder what the hell had happened here and have to repair the mess. But Storm knew a small hole in an interior compartment would do nothing to destabilize a 747 in flight.

He could feel the plane turning, perhaps heading south — it was a little hard to have a good sense of direction in a fully enclosed metal box. It was not his concern at the moment. Working steadily over the next five minutes, he continued to perforate the ceiling. When he got about 270 degrees of his way around a jagged circle, he was able to peel a metal flap down and crawl upward through the man-sized hole he had created. He quickly reached a flat metal surface. But this wasn’t a ceiling. It was a floor — specifically, the floor to the aft baggage compartment.

Storm sheathed the KA-BAR and hoisted himself into the gap between the bottom of the airplane and the floor of the baggage compartment. Other than the occasional support beam, it was an empty space, the bottom of which curved. At the lowest point of the parabola, there were a few feet in which Storm could crawl.

Storm wriggled into the space, then flipped himself so he was now staring at the underside of the baggage compartment floor. It was made of steel, far more formidable than the aluminum Storm had just carved his way through, and it was resting on metal joists that ran the width of the plane. There would be no cutting through this with the knife. It was too thick. He pushed at it with his hand. It didn’t budge. It likely had several hundred pounds of luggage on top of it.

Storm began working his way forward. Baggage compartments were loaded back first. If there was any part of the floor without cargo on it — and Storm prayed that Air Venezuela was one of those airlines that charged a fee for checked luggage — it would be all the way forward.

It was slow going, but he inched his way until he was up against a series of supports that told him he had reached the front of the aft baggage compartment. He looked up and studied the way the floor was attached to the joists. There were steel rivets every two inches. Impossible.

Storm was not the kind of man who panicked. But he did get concerned when the situation warranted. And this was growing into one of those situations. He didn’t know, precisely, how much time had passed or how much time he had left before the under-belly of the plane became his coffin. But he knew his ears had popped twice. The plane was gaining altitude fast.

He tried to think rationally. Airplanes needed repairs. There had to be some way for an aircraft maintenance person to reach this part of the plane without carving holes in the superstructure like Storm had. He swept the flashlight on the underside of the floor.

As he did so, he had the strange feeling the plane was no longer climbing. He couldn’t tell if that was some kind of a misperception on his part. He knew for sure the aircraft was turning again. And he also knew his ears weren’t popping anymore.

Still, it was not his first dilemma. Finding a way out was. Finally, he located a rectangular-shaped hatch on the starboard side of the vessel.

Now a new problem: There was no clear way to open it. Storm recognized that it was meant to be accessed from the other side, then propped open. Still, it was a more vulnerable spot than a solid steel floor. He picked one corner and pounded it with his palm.

The first blow did nothing. So he struck again. Storm was lying on his back. He was able to generate a fair amount of upward force with his pectoral muscles and triceps. They were muscles he used often — Storm could bench press over three hundred pounds.

But after four more tries, he realized it wasn’t enough. His bench press wasn’t sufficient. Maybe his squat — six hundred and sixty pounds, last time he maxed out — would be better. He positioned himself so his feet were on one corner of the hatch, then gave it all he had.

There was a whoosh of air. The difference between the baggage compartment pressure and the outside pressure was not as great as it would be at cruising altitude, but it was still considerable.

Storm had bent the hatch fifteen degrees upward. It allowed him to see that the hatch was secured into place by several plastic catches. Now that he knew where they were, he could make short work of them. He removed Dirty Harry, slid the gun’s grip into the gap he had created, then used the barrel as a lever to pop off the remaining catches, one by one.

He had soon hoisted himself up into the baggage compartment and replaced the hatch, putting some luggage on top of it to keep it down so the plane wouldn’t further depressurize.

He shined the flashlight upward to study the next barrier facing him. The ceiling consisted of flimsy looking panels that Storm had no doubt he could punch through one way or another. He just had to get himself up there.

He went to work, perching the Maglite in a place that gave him some illumination yet also allowed him to use both his hands for his task. He began stacking some of the sturdier pieces of luggage on top of one another, creating a pyramid that would allow him to climb up.

He was nearly done when the plane suddenly lurched hard to the right, assuming a steep angle that no commercial airline pilot would ever attempt, sending both Storm and his pile of bags toppling over. Storm landed heavily, bruising his shoulder and slamming his head against something hard and metal — in the darkness, he couldn’t tell what.

The plane straightened, allowing Storm to stand for a moment. Then it tilted just as radically to the left. He fell again.

Storm had no idea what was going on. But he could hear the screams from the passengers above him.

Lying on the floor of the baggage compartment, Storm could taste blood in his mouth and feel more blood leaking from a cut in his scalp. He was woozy and perhaps concussed from the blow to the head he had suffered.

The plane was gaining altitude again, and quickly. Whoever was now at controls of this aircraft — and Storm had a sinking feeling he knew all too well who it was — wasn’t trying to impress anyone with his smooth flying.

Storm got himself to his feet and began rebuilding his luggage ladder. He was working by feel. His flashlight had rolled away and had either broken or buried itself under something. Storm couldn’t take the time to go look for it.

His tower completed, he climbed to the top, picked a ceiling tile, and hit it with a powerful upward blow from the butt of his hand. It yielded easily. There was another foot between that ceiling and the floor to the main cabin. Storm retreated back down, hoisted up one more suitcase to give him a little more height, then climbed back up.

He groped around the underside of the cabin floor. He could tell where the seats had been bolted in and, more importantly, where they hadn’t been. That was an aisle. And the aisle was where he wanted to be.

He repeated the move he had just used, giving it all his strength. The floor section was thin and no match for Storm. It buckled off the small screws that held it in place. He moved the displaced section to the side, sliding it above one of the other sections. He used the KA-BAR to cut a hole in the carpet, and hoisted himself up.

To the terrified passengers in rows 29 to 45, in the seats along the starboard side of the airplane, it was not a comforting sight: a bloody man with a knife emerging from the floor.

“It’s okay,” Storm said, reading their faces. “I’m here to save you.”

They looked unconvinced. No one spoke. They were ashen-faced.

“I’m with the CIA,” he said. “It’s what I do.”

Finally, a man in a seat near him said, “They probably need you up front.”

Storm nodded, parting the curtains on his way into the middle cabin, then proceeded into business class. He kept walking by passengers who appeared both stunned and submissive. The sound of human suffering grew louder with every forward step: moans, wails, groans. As he approached the front of the plane, his ears were joined by his nose in telling him that something was very wrong. He smelled gunpowder. And blood.

It was when he entered first class that he understood why. Storm had seen war zones in his life, and this qualified as one. There was blood splattered against the ceiling, the bulkhead, the seats, the floor. There were at least seven dead passengers, all missing parts of their heads. Several more were lying in the aisle, wounded badly. Flight attendants were hunched over them, attending to their wounds.

A dark-skinned man in pilot’s clothes was on the floor, leaning against the door to the cockpit. His close-cropped salt-and-pepper head was caked with blood. He was holding a gauze pad to the right side of his head. His name badge identified him as “Capt. Montgomery.”

Storm approached, identified himself, crouched next to the pilot, and asked what had happened.

“It started right after takeoff,” he said. “TSA notified flight control that we had a stowaway in the wheel well.”

“Yeah, that was me. Sorry about that.”

“Well, I still had to follow the flight plan for a while. You can’t just pull a U-turn in the busiest airspace in America, you know? So flight control was coming up with a new route. They were going to have me stay low and then make an emergency landing in Philly. In the meantime, they were going to have two F-18s escort me in as a precaution. But it’s not like I had squawked a seventy-five hundred or anything.”

“A seventy-five hundred?”

“Sorry, that’s the hijack code. You squawk a seventy-five hundred on the transponder and the air force knows to send in the cavalry. These were just supposed to be escorts, but not long after they showed up was when I heard the gunshot. My first officer was looking at me like What the… when one of the flight attendants called me on the intercom. She told me that some guy with an eye patch had blown one of the passenger’s heads off with a gun that was made of wood of all things. He had told the flight attendant that he was going to shoot one person every thirty seconds unless I opened the door to the cockpit. Regulations say I can’t open that door under any circumstances, but goddamn… Every thirty seconds I heard another gunshot and I… I just couldn’t…”

The man stopped, needing to compose himself. Storm glanced out the window and saw the blinking lights of an F-18 not far off the 747’s wing. Volkov hijacked the plane because he thought he had been caught, never realizing it was actually Storm’s actions that had sent the fighter jets flying.

This was not an irony that Storm enjoyed.

Montgomery had regained enough poise to continue: “So we opened the door. He pistol-whipped me and told me to get out of the seat. He told Roger to get out of the seat” — Storm assumed “Roger” was the first officer — “but Roger wouldn’t budge. He said something like, ‘Who’s going to fly the plane?’ And the guy just said ‘Me’ and then he shot him…. He shot him….”

Montgomery needed another moment. Storm stood and looked around for Whitely Cracker. He was three rows back in first class, huddled under a vomit-stained blanket, not looking at anyone or anything.

Storm crouched back down.

“I’m armed,” Storm said quietly. “If we can get that cabin door back open, I can end this.”

“Great. I’ve got a code that’ll open the door.”

With great effort, Montgomery stood, turning toward a narrow keypad next to the door.

“You ready?” he asked.

Storm pulled out Dirty Harry. The pilot punched some numbers.

“Okay, here goes,” Montgomery said as he hit the pound sign. Then he frowned. Nothing was happening. He typed the code in again. Still nothing. A red light was illuminated.

“Damn it,” Montgomery said.

“What?”

“He found the button that allows the pilot to deny access from the inside. We can’t get in.”

Montgomery had slumped back down. He was checking his blood-soaked gauze pad. His eyes appeared even more sunken than they had been minutes before. He was the picture of defeat.

Derrick Storm knew he could not allow himself to be beaten.

“There has to be some way,” Storm said.

“Maybe before 9/11, but not now. Those things are like bank safes.”

“Trust me when I say bank safes can be cracked,” Storm said. “What kind of lock is it?”

“It’s electromagnetic. You’re talking about something like twelve hundred pounds of holding force. Not even a moose like you could break that.”

“I don’t need to break it. Electromagnetic locks require a power supply. I disrupt the power supply, I disrupt the lock.”

“You don’t think the airlines thought of that?” the pilot said. “There’s redundancy upon redundancy in these planes. In addition to the main power supply, there’s a battery backup that lasts twelve hours. The battery is in a steel case, imbedded in the door. You’ll never get to it.”

Storm stared at the door for a long moment, as if he had Superman’s heat ray vision. Alas, he did not.

But he suddenly realized he had something that would work just as well.

He looked down at his left wrist. The phrase “Variable Frequency Dial Allows Multi-Channel Communication!” was flashing in his head.

“What frequency is the lock set at?” Storm asked.

“What…? I have no idea.”

“No problem. Do the flight attendants have a small tool kit? I’m also going to need a piece of electronics with a nine-volt battery and someone’s laptop. Ask around among the passengers.”

Montgomery summoned two of the flight attendants, who soon produced the items Storm requested.

He took one last look at the SuperSpy EspioTalk Wristwatch Communicator. “Sorry, Ling. Gotta do it,” he said, then pried off the facing.

Inside, he found a circuit board that was, in its basic premise, like the Westing house in his father’s garage. It was just a lot smaller. He went to work. Changing the toy into a device that would send out an electromagnetic pulse at the proper frequency was just a matter of pirating parts from the laptop, combining them with the transmitter from the wristwatch, and powering it with the nine-volt battery.

It just took time, which, Storm was soon to learn, they were running out of even more quickly than he thought. The problem was no longer leaving U.S. airspace. It was staying in it that could kill them.

“I don’t mean to rush you,” Captain Montgomery said. “But how’s it coming?”

“Just a little longer. Why?”

“Because an old airline pilot like me has an altimeter built into his head. Mine is telling me we’re at about eight thousand feet. And I don’t think those F-18s just off our wings are going to be very patient. They’ll get orders to shoot us down if we get much lower than five thousand feet. One of them just did a head butt.”

“A head butt?” Storm asked as he screwed a wire into place.

“It’s a maneuver they attempt with a nonresponsive aircraft. They soar vertically upward to within a couple hundred feet of your nose, trying to get you to point it back up.”

“I’m almost done,” Storm said. “While I’m finishing, I need a favor.”

“Anything.”

“Get these passengers out of first class,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when I get that door open. The fewer people to get hit by any stray bullets, the better.”

“You got it,” Montgomery said, rising to his feet. The man was clearly energized by having a sense of purpose. So Storm added one more thing:

“Oh, and Captain? Don’t go far. I’m going to need someone to land this plane after we take back control of it.”

“I like your style, Storm,” he said.

“Thanks, Captain. By the way, I never got your full name.”

“It’s Roy. Roy Montgomery.”

The men exchanged stiff salutes. Montgomery began herding passengers farther back in the plane, while Storm put his head back down in his task. He wasn’t going to tell Montgomery this, but he was only about 50 percent certain his jury-rigged gadget was going to work. The variable frequency dial only operated within a certain range. If the lock was set to a frequency outside that range — which was always possible — it wouldn’t respond to the pulse.

Storm finished around the time Montgomery had succeeded in emptying the first class cabin. The captain was slightly out of breath as he approached Storm.

“Okay. That’s done. Do you mind if I ask: What’s your plan once you get the lock to release?”

“Pretty simple: I open the door and shoot the guy flying the plane.”

“How’s your aim?” Montgomery asked.

“Pretty good. Why? Is there anything on the instrument panel that can’t be shot?”

“Yeah, pretty much all of it.”

“Then I guess I better not miss,” Storm said.

“Okay. Just remember, these babies all have cameras throughout the front part of the cabin,” Montgomery said. “It’s another thing we owe to 9/11. It lets the captain know that it’s safe to open the door.”

“In other words, he’s going to know I’m coming.”

“Yeah.”

“Great. Wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” Montgomery said. But Storm thought he noticed a small head shake as Montgomery retreated back to business class.

Storm put it out of his mind, concentrating on the tiny dial on the side of the wristwatch. He had reengineered the device so it now had several extra wires coming out of it. Two of them led to the nine-volt battery. He connected the final wire — thus turning the contraption on — switched the dial to the lowest frequency, and focused on the door.

Nothing happened. He began turning up the dial, moving steadily through the multichannel communicator’s range of frequencies. He had to go slowly. The connections in his device were far from perfect. He didn’t want to risk going too fast past the proper frequency and not delivering a strong enough pulse to trip the lock.

He was midway through the dial, not allowing himself to feel pessimistic, and still wasn’t hearing anything.

Then, three-quarters of the way up, he heard a click and a whir.

The magnets holding the lock had been released.

Storm drew Dirty Harry and depressed the handle. The door opened inward, and he pushed against it, using its bulletproof bulk as a shield. The 747 cockpit is one of the largest in the sky, and it has a short, narrow hallway leading to the two front pilot’s seats. At first, all Storm could see was the right side of that hallway.

He shoved the door farther in. His vision now extended to the end of the hallway. If they hadn’t been in an airplane, he could simply have stuck his gun hand around the crevice and started firing blindly. But, given Captain Montgomery’s warnings about the instrument panel, that seemed like a bad idea.

Volkov, on the other hand, would have no such worries. Any bullets he shot from his wooden gun — and Storm was assuming he had plenty of ammunition left — would hit less sensitive parts of the airplane. Storm was expecting to be greeted by gunfire at any moment.

But none came. He opened the door farther. He could now see half of the first officer’s seat and part of the corpse that was slumped there.

He kept pushing the door, ready to fire the moment he saw any piece of Volkov. Slowly, steadily, inch by painstaking inch, he pushed until the door was fully open.

There was no one sitting in the pilot seat.

But that didn’t mean Volkov wasn’t hiding somewhere. Storm crept in, not fully committing himself to entry in a narrow hallway — where he’d be an easy target if Volkov suddenly came at him from around the corner — but giving himself a better view. Still no Volkov.

He allowed himself a baby step. Nothing.

Another step. Still nothing.

After another step, he could now see the entirety of the space: the instrument panel, both pilots’ seats, the booster seat for a third pilot, the console, the avionics compartment — all of it.

Storm blinked, unable to believe what he was seeing.

The cockpit was empty.

Storm stayed perfectly still for a moment, almost as if he only needed to look hard enough to make Volkov appear. His mind was clicking through possibilities, but none of them made any sense. There was no door in the cockpit other than the one he’d entered through. There was no cubbyhole or space large enough to hide any man, much less one of Volkov’s width. There was no way out of the cockpit other than perhaps through the windshield, but that was intact.

Storm watched transfixed the eerie, ghostlike sight of the plane flying itself. The yoke budged itself slightly to the left, making a tiny adjustment in course per the order of the automatic pilot computer.

Storm’s reflexes were set on a hair trigger. His gun was still drawn. He reminded himself to relax his grip — holding too tightly actually slowed reaction time — but he didn’t dare move anything else.

He was starting to consider other options. Maybe Captain Montgomery had been mistaken. Maybe Volkov hadn’t really gone into the cockpit. Storm had been in the belly of the plane when that transaction occurred. Was it possible that Montgomery — who had just watched his first officer get killed and sustained a wicked blow to the head — had missed something?

Storm was working out a new scenario — one involving Volkov somehow loading automatic pilot coordinates into the computer then retreating into the plane — when his peripheral vision registered movement from above him.

It was a human arm.

Storm leaped forward. Some fraction of a second later, Volkov fired.

Had these events happened in reverse order, Storm would have been dead and the world would have been put on a course toward incredible turmoil.

Instead, the bullet, which was aimed for the top of his head, continued traveling in the space where the top of his head should have been. In rapid succession, it passed near his neck, shoulders, back and butt, all body parts that had been removed from harm’s way during the course of Storm’s lunge. Then it struck one of the body parts that hadn’t quite cleared: his left calf.

Storm roared in pain just as Volkov dropped from the ceiling, where he had been splayed ever since Storm started working the dial on the transmitter. Volkov landed square on Storm’s back, pinning him to the floor of the cockpit. Storm was aware that his gun, already loose in his hand, had gone flying; and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it land in the well under the yoke, where the pilot’s feet normally go.

Volkov had dropped his own gun like it was of no further use to him — like it was out of wooden bullets? Storm guessed — and wrapped a tree trunk of a right arm around Storm’s neck. Then he clasped his right hand with his left and began squeezing with more than enough force to restrict most of the blood flow to Storm’s brain.

Storm knew he was in danger. He had perhaps forty-five seconds’ worth of consciousness left. He had to make the most of them.

There was no point trying to loosen Volkov’s grip. He’d have a better chance of prying open the jaws of a hungry shark. Storm’s only advantage was height. Volkov was ten inches shorter.

Storm struggled to his feet, lifting not only his 230 pounds but Volkov’s denser 220 — and doing it with little help from his damaged left leg. Volkov was now draped on his back like a cape, the extra weight strengthening the chokehold.

Storm started taking backward steps out of the cockpit. He needed some room to maneuver, some runway to get up some speed. Soon, he was backpedaling as fast he could, given his encumbrance, and had cleared into the first class cabin. He finished his back-stagger with a mighty back-dive toward the first row of seats. His aim was to get a hard part of the armrest to connect with the soft part where Volkov’s neck connected to his skull.

He just didn’t get enough lift with his left leg. So he missed. The backrest connected midway up Volkov’s back.

Still, the power of it — 450 pounds propelled at a moderate speed from six-plus feet in the air — was enough to momentarily loosen Volkov’s grip. Storm adroitly slipped away and the two men faced each other.

Each was in a crouch, ready to spring. Close-in fighting favored the shorter-armed Volkov. Boxing favored the longer-armed Storm. Both men knew this and were sizing each other up, trying to see how they could turn the fight to their advantage.

“I am so pleased you are here, Storm,” Volkov snarled.

“Why? You’re getting a crush on me? Don’t worry. It happens to all the girls.”

“No, it’s that I realized something when I saw you this morning,” Volkov said, then pivoted and executed a sweeping high leg kick. Storm dodged it easily.

“And what’s that?”

“I never really paid you back for these,” he said, pointing to the scars on his face. “All this time, I thought you were dead, so I figured our score was settled. But now I see you and I know you need to be punished.”

Storm grabbed a laptop computer that had been left behind by one of the passengers and threw it at Volkov. The Russian blocked it with one swipe of his paw.

“It won’t work, you know. This absurd thing you’re trying with Cracker.”

“Oh, I beg to disagree, Storm. I have some of the richest men in Russia ready to cash in on the disruptions to the market, and with the money they make, they’ll be able to fund an insurrection that would topple even the mightiest government. Those clowns who run Moscow now will have no chance. Mother Russia is meant to be ruled by a strong leader. I am that leader.”

“You’re twisted.”

“You flatter me. It’s a shame I have to kill you.”

“You’re the one who’s dying to night, Volkov.”

Volkov’s response was to lower his head, emit a banshee yell, and charge. Storm reacted with what was meant to be a devastating right-leg kick to Volkov’s rib cage. The only problem was, the launch of it meant he was standing only on his left leg. The moment the majority of his weight transferred to the wounded side, he crumpled.

Volkov, who was aiming for Storm’s midsection, ended up overshooting. The entire exchange only resulted in them swapping sides of the small clearing at the head of the first class cabin, where they were facing off.

Storm did not wait for Volkov’s next rush. He came at the smaller Russian swinging with his fists. Volkov tried to back away but was not fast enough. He was stung by a round house right, then by the left jab that followed it. Blood flowed from his nose.

Volkov tried to get in underneath the punches so he could bear hug Storm and turn this into the wrestling he preferred, but Storm fended him off with an uppercut that opened a wound over Volkov’s eye.

Both men retreated for a moment. Had this been a heavyweight prizefight, Storm would have scored solid points on all judges’ cards. It’s just that no scorecard could account for the gunshot wound to Storm’s calf.

The men were now on opposite sides of the cabin, each breathing heavily, each struggling with his wounds. Volkov’s good eye — the one not patched over — was beginning to swell shut. Storm was losing feeling in his left leg and didn’t know how much longer the limb would continue to respond to his commands.

Both knew the fight was coming to an end. Each thought he would be the winner.

Volkov’s eyes were darting around. He backed farther away, and Storm thought he was working up room to come at him headlong. Instead, he ran at Storm, then cut quickly to his left down the aisle.

Storm’s first thought: He was going for another gun he knew he had hidden in his carry-on luggage.

But then Volkov passed right by the seats where he and Cracker had been sitting.

Storm’s second thought: He was fleeing back to the passenger cabins.

But then Volkov stopped short of business class.

Storm was reacting too slowly, thinking too slowly. Both of his thoughts had been wrong and his left leg was now dragging badly behind him.

Volkov was going not for a gun or for a passenger, but for the emergency exit door on the side of the plane. He yanked away the seal around it and then grasped it in both hands.

It came away easily. They were at low enough altitude that the change in pressure was not significant, however the wind was now whipping into the cabin through the opening. Thousands of feet down, the earth sped by.

Storm realized, too slowly, the advantage Volkov now had: a forty-pound steel weapon. He had hefted it so he was gripping the bottom of the door and he was coming fast at Storm.

Storm was trapped midway down the aisle — a sitting duck. If he stood there, he was going to get bashed. And he couldn’t retreat fast enough on his gimpy leg to be able to elude Volkov.

He had no choice. He dropped his shoulder and barreled forward.

The move caught Volkov off guard. He brought the door viciously down on Storm but hit only the meaty parts of Storm’s back and shoulder. Storm was on him too fast.

The two men landed heavily, rolling on the ground. They hit up against the wet bar in the back of first class, then lurched toward the now-open emergency door. Storm was trying to work his hands into Volkov’s face, aiming to further injure his eye. Volkov was reaching for Storm’s leg, looking for the gunshot wound, attempting to sink his fingers into it.

Both men were bellowing and snarling, partly because of the pain they were suffering, partly because of the pain they were inflicting, partly because this had become something deeply instinctual. They were two organisms battling for their very survival, calling on the deepest parts of their energy reserves, doing whatever they could to mete out maximum punishment to the other.

They kept switching who was on top, although, to a certain extent, it didn’t matter. Neither the top man nor the bottom man seemed to have any advantage, just different ways to gouge, scratch, punch, kick, or grab the other.

Then, suddenly, that changed. Volkov was on top and Storm was so intent on going at the man’s eye, he didn’t do a good enough job playing defense. Volkov managed to get both his hands around Storm’s neck, and the brutal Russian was squeezing with every nanogram of strength he had. Storm realized with sickening certainty that he was going to lose this fight — and his life.

Dots were appearing at the corner of his vision. Then the darkness began closing in. The image — Volkov hunched on top of him, sneering sadistically — was quickly going to become pinprick-sized, then disappear altogether. Storm had mere seconds left.

He did not know exactly where he was on the floor. He sensed he was dangerously close to a whole lot of rushing wind, which meant he was near the edge, but he could no longer be cautious.

With the last ebb of effort he could summon, he heaved himself toward the open door.

As he rolled, his right foot — the one that still had some feeling — hit one side of the opening. Then his right hand the other side. Volkov, whose hands were still clenched tight around his opponent’s neck and who had drawn his knees underneath him, was not nearly as wide. He was, in fact, something of a ball.

A ball that Storm had successfully aimed right at the middle of the door opening.

Now it was just a matter of momentum. Storm had something to stop his — the sides of the door. Volkov did not. He was still traveling, only there was no longer an airplane underneath him.

For a brief moment, as his sneer was replaced by a look of sheer terror, he tried to keep his clutch on Storm’s neck. But as his body tumbled fully through the opening and started a drop that was as inevitable as gravity, he lost the angle he needed, and therefore lost his grip.

The last thing Storm saw of Volkov was his writhing figure growing small as it plummeted through the night sky to the hard ground many thousands of feet below.