Storm Front

CHAPTER 34

BACAU, Romania

Something had changed. Derrick Storm could see it in the little girl’s eyes.

Katya Beckescu was still gripping the same ratty teddy bear. She still wore the same old clothes. But she was a different child than she had been the first time Storm spied her in the courtyard at the Orphanage of the Holy Name. She ran up to him, wrapping her arms around him so fiercely she knocked away the cane that Storm had been using for the last week or so as he recovered from a pesky little gunshot wound to his calf.

Storm had spent the first part of that week in a hospital after a surgery to remove the darndest thing the doctor had ever seen: a bullet made of a wood composite that was harder than lead. In fact, it was so strong, it hadn’t shattered on impact like a normal bullet would, meaning the prospects for Storm to recover full function of his leg were quite bright.

He had spent the next part of the week in long meetings with the FAA, the TSA, the FBI, and a whole alphabet of other federal agencies who were trying to sort out what had become known as “the Flight 19 Incident.” It took repeated oaths from Captain Roy Montgomery to assure them that, yes, Derrick Storm really had been the hero. Officially, the CIA was — characteristically — quiet about the whole thing.

Storm also visited Jedediah Jones in the cubby, where the head of internal division enforcement assured Storm there really were no hard feelings; and that despite some creative differences during the thick of his last mission, there would be more missions to come. Jones accompanied those assurances with a suitcase full of cash.

Storm spent the final part of the week traveling to Beijing, where he watched Ling Xi Bang be buried with full military honors. Although the circumstances were not explained by the state-controlled Chinese media, she had been awarded the Order of National Glory, the Chinese equivalent of the Medal of Honor. Storm had been the lone Westerner in attendance at the ceremony, and Xi Bang’s aging father blinked at him through tears, wondering what an American was doing at his daughter’s funeral. But before Storm departed, the man grabbed him gently by the arm and whispered, “Thank you, Mr. Storm, for making sure her death was not in vain.”

In other news, “someone” had leaked compromising cell phone photos of Senator Donald Whitmer with a young female Senate staffer to the Washington Post. The paper had too much propriety to actually print the pictures. But it wrote a story about their existence, one that identified that Senate staffer only as “an Asian woman in a short, pleated skirt.” Within hours, Whitmer was being referred to as “Senator Sleazy” on the Internet. The senator denounced the pictures as being fakes. Then, the next day, he released a short statement explaining he would not be seeking a fifth term, so he could spend more time with his family.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department quietly closed a brief but unfruitful investigation into Whitely Cracker. Although there was no doubt in the assistant U.S. attorney general’s mind that Cracker deserved to have charges brought against him, there was a total paucity of evidence with which to bring those charges. No money had passed between Cracker and the assassin he was alleged to have hired. Without the money to follow, there was no case.

It meant that Derrick Storm had to mete out his own justice on Whitely Cracker, which he was more than happy to do. The first part of it was a personal assurance that if Cracker ever again made another trade — even for bubble gum cards — he would be visited by an avenging angel, either Storm or one of his friends, who would show Cracker no mercy. The second part was the plan Storm had had for Cracker all along, the plan he had first formulated when Carl Storm explained Operation Wafer to his son.

And now here Storm was, trying to pry a five-year-old off his legs.

“What has you so happy, little Katya?” Storm said in Romanian.

“I’m going to be adopted,” she gushed.

“I’m going to a city in your America called San Francisco.”

“What wonderful news,” Storm said as she finally released him.

“I kept hoping and hoping and hoping I’d get one mommy,” she said, beaming. “Sister Rose tells me now I’m going to get two.”

Storm just laughed. “Yes, that sounds like San Francisco all right.”

Storm bent to pick up his cane just as Sister Rose McAvoy appeared in the main entrance to the abbey. She walked slowly toward him across the courtyard. She had tears in her eyes.

“Well, Derrick Storm, you wouldn’t believe the phone call I just got,” she said, her brogue coming out choked by emotion.

“Oh?” Storm said.

“It seems some anonymous person from New York has made a fifty-million-dollar donation to the Orphanage of the Holy Name,” she continued. “He has requested that five million of it go to purchase the abbey from the diocese and that the remaining forty-five million go into an endowment that the orphanage — and only the orphanage — can draw from. It looks like Holy Name is going to be financially secure for all its days, my boy.”

“Is that so?” Storm said, as if this were news to him.

“Now, you wouldn’t have had anything to do with this, would you, Derrick Storm?” she said.

Sister Rose had ended her long walk and draped her arms around Storm’s thick torso. He could feel her old bones pressing against him through her thin skin. But her hold was still strong.

“I’m sure I didn’t,” Storm said. “You’re always telling me God answers our prayers. He must have answered yours, Sister Rose.”

“That He did. That He did. And I think I’m staring at the embodiment of those prayers right now.”

She looked up at him, her face tearstained but blissful.

“Does this mean you’re not going to be running away with me and marrying me, Sister Rose?”

“I’m afraid not, Derrick my boy. There’s work for me to do here at the orphanage.”

He sighed. “Too bad.”

And then Sister Rose reached around, pinched him on the bottom, and said with a quick, devilish grin: “You are sort of handsome, though. In a rugged way.”