Wild Storm

CHAPTER 32

ABOARD THE WARRIOR PRINCESS

While Derrick Storm didn’t know much Swedish, he did know the word mörda. It’s a verb. Its English translation is “to kill.”

Storm heard mörda at least four times as Tilda and Laird debated what they were going to do with their new captive.

Eventually they decided to wait, for reasons Storm could not quite determine. Perhaps they wanted to let the empress, Ingrid Karlsson, give the ultimate thumbs-up/thumbs-down on his fate. Maybe Storm was to be used as a bargaining chip of some sort. Or maybe they just wanted to wait until the hurricane passed so they could dump his body without worrying about it being blown to land.

Whatever it was, Storm was soon led to the only room aboard the Warrior Princess that was designed to contain prisoners. It was the one just down the hall from Laird and the other guards, the one where Dr. William McRae had been kept for a month now.

Storm walked there with his hands still up and Laird pointing the Beretta at his back. Tilda inserted the key and opened the door.

“Get in there,” Laird said.

Storm did as he was told. The door immediately clicked behind him.

Lying on top of the covers was a man of about seventy. He was trim, with a small amount of gray hair that looked like it was overdue for a buzz cut. He was reading a book by the late, great master of medical thrillers, Michael Palmer.

As Storm let his hands drop to his side, the man asked, “Who are you?”

“Hello, Dr. McRae. My name is Derrick Storm. I’m here to rescue you.”

“You’re the man Alida mentioned,” he said, brightly. Then he considered Storm for another second. “Although, to be honest, she made it seem like you would be a little better at this whole rescue thing.”

“I admit, this is not among my finest efforts so far. But this is just a temporary setback. We’ll get you out of here somehow.”

“Mr. Storm, I don’t want to discourage you, but I’m not sure it’s possible.”

“Really? Why?”

McRae set down the book and sat up. “Because I’ve been in here for a month now and only managed to get out once. And it hasn’t been for lack of effort. The one time I got out was only because a guard slipped up and left the door open. That’s when I called Alida. But the other guards tracked me down pretty quickly. They’ve got cameras everywhere, including in this room. And I don’t know if you noticed, but that door you just came through doesn’t have a handle on the inside. That’s just one of the details that makes the room escape proof. I’ve spent a month trying to figure out something and you’ll notice I’m still here.”

Storm nodded thoughtfully. “Are you familiar with Enrico Fermi, Dr. McRae?”

“Of course I am. What does he matter?”

“Well, he was one of the leading practical physicists of his time, as you know. Good enough that he won the Nobel Prize in 1938. We’re talking about a supersmart guy. And yet when he joined the Manhattan Project, people told him his method of creating an atomic bomb was impossible, because you couldn’t get the neutrons that resulted from the splitting of one atom to then split other atoms. And if you couldn’t do that, there was no way the bomb would work. Fermi kept trying and failing, but with each so-called ‘failure,’ he was really getting closer to the solution. Fast-forward to 1942, and Enrico Fermi was the man who directed the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. How? Because he kept his belief in himself and didn’t let past failure deter him. The point is, if you work hard enough, nothing is impossible.”

“That’s a lovely speech, Mr. Storm, but—”

“Also, I’ve got C-4 strapped to my leg.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you start with that?”

“Because I wanted to give the speech first, so you’d be impressed with my knowledge of physics.”

McRae smiled. “I should have known Alida was right about you. The last time she was wrong about something was 1978, and she swore it wasn’t going to happen again.”

“She’s one of a kind all right,” Storm said. “Now let’s get out of here.”

Storm began surveying the room, assessing it in a clinical manner, going low to high, then high to low. The walls and ceilings were brushed steel, riveted into what were likely girders. He tapped it here and there. It felt thick. Certainly thicker than standard Sheetrock walls.

He pulled up a corner of the carpet to reveal a metallic subfloor. Then he went into the bathroom and gave it the same kind of inspection. The place really was designed to be a cell.

When he returned to the bedroom, he said, “You said there are cameras in here. What about the bathroom?”

“No. None.”

“Excellent. And, tell me, you must have a laboratory or workshop where you’ve been putting the lasers together.”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“Just down the hall and across the way.”

“Are there cameras in there?”

“Not that I’m aware of. They always had a man in there with me, to make sure I wasn’t sabotaging any of the equipment or doing anything else they wouldn’t like.”

“Perfect. In that case, I think you’re getting a little seasick, Dr. McRae.”

“Actually I feel fine.”

“No, trust me, you’re looking quite peaked.”

“My stomach is iron, I never get motion—”

“The guards answer when you press this button, yes?” Storm said, walking over to the intercom.

“Yes, that’s right.”

Storm hit the button, waited. A voice came promptly to the line. “Yes?”

“Dr. McRae is feeling seasick. He says he’s about to lose it. Is there any Dramamine aboard?”

“We’ll be right there,” the voice said.

Storm turned so his back was to the camera he had spied in the near corner. “When they come in, I expect seasickness. I’m talking Academy Award-worthy, you’ve-just-watched-Kevin-Costner-in-Waterworld seasickness. And it had better end with your head in a toilet, making a really nasty retching sound.”

FIVE MINUTES LATER, the door opened. There were two of them: Laird, who had the Beretta drawn, and one of the underlings, the one McRae called Delta.

McRae had closed his eyes and was on the bed, moaning.

“He’s suffering,” said Storm, summoning his inner Clara Barton. “How long until this storm blows through?”

“The worst of it has already passed,” Laird said. “It’s still going to be bad for a few more hours, but the marine forecast says the seas should be down below twenty feet by morning. That won’t budge this boat much.”

“Uhhhhh. I’m not gonna make it,” McRae moaned and launched himself into the bathroom, where he began making heaving noises.

Laird and Delta looked appropriately grossed out. “Just toss the medicine on the bed,” Storm said. “I’ll make sure he’s okay. Sometimes you just need to get it out of your system. Did he have a big dinner?”

“Two helpings,” Laird said. “Spaghetti and meatballs.”

“Eww. That is not going to look good coming back up. All right. This might be a while. I’ll hit the intercom if we need anything.”

McRae chose that moment — a brief lull in conversation — to begin a new fake assault on the toilet. Delta tossed the Dramamine on the bed then joined Laird in full retreat.

Storm went straight for the bathroom, where McRae was already reaching for the toilet handle to flush away the vomit that didn’t exist. Storm waited a moment, then returned to the bedroom to grab the medicine.

By then, the door had closed. Laird and Delta were gone. To anyone watching on the camera — if anyone even was — it would look like Storm had simply forgotten the Dramamine and now, having retrieved it, returned to the bathroom to continue his ministrations.

Instead, he shut the bathroom door, then stood up on the sink and lowered his pants. He un-taped the C-4 and studied it for a moment.

“Have you ever worked with explosives?” he asked McRae, who had stopped with the dramatics and was watching Storm.

“Not really. Why?”

“I’m just wondering how much of this stuff to use. I don’t really know the thickness of this ceiling. I want to make sure I use enough to get through it, but I need to save some for later.”

“I suggest a SWAG.”

“SWAG?”

“Yeah,” McRae said. “It stands for Scientific Wild-Ass Guess.”

Storm shrugged, broke off half his hunk of the C-4. He freed several of the blasting caps from where they were taped on his other leg, and then took hold of the wireless detonator. He molded the plastic explosive halfway between rivet lines, figuring there would be a hollow space behind it.

He fixed the blasting caps into the plastic, then climbed down off the sink. He opened the door to the shower, which was similar to the one in Tilda’s bathroom.

“In you go,” Storm said to McRae. “This is as close as we’re going to get to a bomb shelter.”

“Some blast door,” McRae said, tapping the opaque plastic on his way in. “Is this how Enrico Fermi did it?”

“No. But I’m told Robert Oppenheimer did his best thinking in the shower. So we’re probably on to something.”

Storm closed the door behind McRae. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Wait, don’t forget your high-tech ear protection,” Storm said, sticking his fingers in his ear canals. McRae followed suit.

Storm set the wireless detonator on a built-in ledge that was supposed to serve as a soap dish.

“Three, two, one,” Storm mouthed, then hit the two buttons he needed to depress on the detonator with his pinkies.

There was a whump, followed by the sound of pieces of metal crashing against other pieces of metal. It was loud, but nothing compared to the eighty-plus-mile-per-hour winds still raging outside.

Storm opened the shower door to see a gaping hole that had been blown up into the ceiling.

“Success,” Storm said.

He climbed up on the sink, stood, and chose a spot where the metal had shorn completely away from the girder — and where, therefore, there was no jagged metal to avoid. He jumped up into the ductwork above the ceiling. He wormed his way around until he was being supported by the girder and could reach down a hand for McRae.

“Come on, Doc,” Storm said.

“Where are we going?”

“To your laboratory. By my count, you’ve got about twenty minutes to make me a laser.”

“A laser? What for?”

“Because otherwise the only way I can beat these guards is by challenging them to an arm wrestling contest, and I figure they’ll just shoot me instead. But if I have a laser, I can shoot them first.”

“But—”

“Don’t say it’s impossible. It wasn’t impossible for Erico Fermi, remember?”

“No, no. It’s not that. It’s…Look, the lasers I’ve been making for these people are very powerful. Certainly powerful enough to take out any of those guards. But they’re also very large. They get taken out a bay door on the side of the workshop. They’re not especially portable.”

“That’s okay. I don’t need anything nearly that powerful or that lethal. I’ve read about laser beams being used to blind pilots. Could you make me something powerful enough to cause temporary blindness?”

McRae suddenly was wearing the look of a chef in a fully stocked kitchen who was being asked if he could whip up a little snack. “Yeah, of course I could.”

He got up on the sink and accepted Storm’s assistance up into the ceiling.

“Which way?” Storm said.

McRae pointed to the left. “Right over there would probably be good.”

The men began crawling across girders, in the tight space under the floor above them. When McRae gestured that they had reached the workshop, Storm was relieved to see a normal drop ceiling. No metal here. Storm easily stomped out one of the panels, helped McRae drop down into the workshop, and then followed him down.

“You were making up that thing about Oppenheimer and the shower, weren’t you?” McRae asked.

“Not at all,” Storm lied.

The truth was, he was mostly making up the thing about Fermi, too. But this hardly seemed like the time to mention it.

THE RESULT OF MCRAE’S twenty minutes of furious jury-rigging was not anything that would geek the Star Trek crowd for its design.

It didn’t boast any kind of sleek housing, nor did it have a handle or a trigger. To Storm’s untrained eye, it was basically a sheet of metal supporting some electronic stuff and a piece of cylindrical glass, all of which McRae had hastily soldered or taped into place. It was roughly the size of two toasters, placed end to end.

When it came time to test the device, McRae donned dark, wraparound glasses and had Storm do the same.

He fired it just once, activating it by briefly depressing the rubber tip on a piece of metal, bringing it into contact with another piece of metal. An intense blue beam — less striking than the one Storm had seen demonstrated in Maryland, but still quite vivid — leapt from the device and into the wall behind them.

“Okay,” McRae said. “You’ve got yourself a laser beam.”

“Brilliant,” Storm said, and meant it.

“A couple of things. One, this is just a fraction of the power of the ones that I’ve been making. You’ll see there is only one crystal, as opposed to the sequence of crystals I used on the other ones. And it’s a lot smaller, made from cast-off pieces I used in some of my early testing. But if blindness is what you want, blindness is what you’ll get. This is the aperture the beam will come out of,” he said, pointing to a glass-covered slit at the front of the contraption. “The way I’ve got this set, the laser will actually spread as it propagates. That makes it less powerful, but it also makes it easier to aim. If you can get this going anywhere near a guard’s face and he doesn’t have eye protection? It’ll be like he stared directly into the sun for way, way too long. He’ll be blind for anywhere from twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

“Terrific.”

“But, look, you have to careful. It’s very fragile. I didn’t exactly have time to make it battle rugged, you know? And it’s also not going to last very long. I’ve got a few batteries here,” McRae said, showing Storm a plastic-covered power pack with wires coming out of it. “But this laser will drain down those batteries very quickly.”

“How quickly?”

“If I had to give it a SWAG, I’d say you’ve got maybe twenty-five or thirty seconds of laser time.”

“Can you give me replacement batteries?”

“This isn’t a kid’s remote control car,” McRae said. “I’m afraid these batteries are the only ones I have. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

“All right, great work,” Storm said, stuffing the safety glasses into one of his pants pockets. “Now, before we head out and face the guards, we’ve got one more thing to take care of.”

“What’s that?”

“The promethium. I assume you still have a supply of it?”

McRae nodded.

“We have to get rid of it,” Storm said. “I’ve seen to it that the supply coming in here is cut off. But I want to make sure no matter what happens to us, there’s not enough left to make another laser beam.”

“Okay. It’s over there,” McRae said, pointing toward a large metal container that looked like a refrigerator.

“How would you recommend disposing of it?”

“Well, extreme heat would do it. If you cook promethium at a high enough temperature — I’d have to look up the exact number, but it’s around a thousand degrees Fahrenheit — it changes the internal structure. Essentially, it turns into a big blob and ruins it for the purpose of turning it into a crystal for a laser beam.”

“Do you have something in here that could generate that kind of heat?”

“No.”

“So…”

“Or we could just pour it into this sink with hot water running,” McRae said, pointing to an industrial-sized slop sink. “This promethium is in salt form. It’ll dissolve easily in water.”

“Why didn’t you start with that?”

“Because I wanted to impress you with my knowledge of chemistry the same way you impressed me with your physics.”

Storm cracked a grin. “I guess that’s fair. Where does the water go after it leaves the sink?”

“I’ve been told it drains into the bilge tank. But right now, in this storm, I’m sure the bilge pumps are operating overtime. Essentially, we’ll be pumping this right into the ocean.”

“All right. Let’s get that tap running.”

It took just a few minutes for Storm and McRae, working in concert, to empty the promethium bin. For the second time in a day, Storm watched as millions of dollars worth of the planet’s rarest rare earth disappeared into a flow of water.

He was relieved to see it go. He was the only person who knew where to find the remaining cache of promethium. And what McRae said about ruining promethium by heating it had given Storm an idea about how he could make sure no one could ever again use that cache.

As the last of the promethium swirled down the drain, Storm said, “Okay, let’s go,” and made for the door to the laboratory. The handle didn’t budge.

“It’s always locked from the inside,” McRae said. “I’m sure a little bit of your C-4 stuck near the hinges would—”

“No,” Storm said. “I want to preserve the element of surprise as long as possible. It’s time for the patient to make an appearance back in his sickbed.”

THEY RETRACED THEIR CEILING SLINK, coming back through the hole in McRae’s bathroom.

Once they were through the door into the bedroom, Storm made a great display of helping a hunched-over McRae back into bed. It was a show for anyone who happened to be watching on the display, yes. But it also helped Storm use his body to shield the laser from the camera without looking suspicious.

Keeping his body between the lens and the laser, Storm went over to the intercom and pressed the button.

“Yes?”

“Hi. I’m sorry to trouble you again. But Dr. McRae just puked up a lung. It’s stopped for now, but he could really use some antinausea medication to make sure it doesn’t start up again.”

“Be right there.”

Storm put on his dark glasses. “Close your eyes,” he instructed McRae.

The door opened. There was only one guard this time, the one McRae called Delta. Storm activated the laser, aimed it in the general direction of Delta’s face, and held the contact down for four seconds.

Delta wailed and fell to his knees. He had not moved from the doorway. Storm set the laser down on the bed, walked over to Delta and gave him a swift kick in the head. The guard fell to the floor, face-first. Storm wrenched Delta’s arms behind his back and secured them there with his plastic hand restraints. Storm checked the man for weapons. Delta had been unarmed.

“One down,” Storm said. “How many are there, anyhow?”

“I’ve only even seen five. I named them after the letters of the Greek alphabet. The one you just took out was Delta.”

“Well, in that case, we’ve got Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Epsilon. It’ll be like a regular frat party in here. Hopefully it’ll be just as much fun.”

Storm retrieved the laser off the bed and went back to the door, where Delta’s inert form made for a very effective stop. Storm expected his attack would have been seen on the cameras and would provoke a response. He positioned himself in a place where he could see up the hallway but where his own body was not exposed.

He waited. Thirty seconds. Sixty. Ninety.

“What’s happening?” McRae asked.

Storm didn’t reply, because he didn’t know himself.

Then, finally, the door at the far end of the hallway, the one that led to the stairs, went just slightly ajar. Epsilon emerged first, followed by Beta and Gamma. They came in a low crouch, with two on the near side of the hallway and one on the far side. Their guns were drawn.

Storm put the laser at their eye level, then brought it from around the side of the door. The men started firing the moment the device emerged, but so did Storm. And whereas their weapons needed to be aimed with great accuracy, Storm’s did not. He held down the button for fifteen seconds, making sure he hit both sides of the hallway.

Their cries were nearly as loud as their gunfire. So was their anguished Swedish, which even a non-Swedish speaker like Storm could recognize as curses.

They kept firing blindly. Storm heard the bullets whizzing by, hitting the walls and floor until, one by one, they began dry-firing their weapons.

Storm took a furtive glance out the door. They were midway down the hallway, still cursing. Two of them were rubbing their eyes with their non-gun hands in a futile attempt to massage their worthless eyes back to sight. The other was groping toward his pants pockets, perhaps to find a clip to reload. Storm set the laser down, sprinted at them, his footfalls all but inaudible on the carpet.

He choreographed his moves in his mind as he ran, and when he arrived, executed them skillfully. He took down Gamma with an elbow to the head. Beta got a kick to the face. He finished by snapping the hardest part of his forehead into the softest part of Epsilon’s temple.

Storm began fastening plastic restraints on each downed man.

“Wow. You’re good at this rescue thing after all,” McRae said, peeking cautiously from around the door to his room.

“Oh, what, this? I learned this from watching Alida attack dandelions,” said Storm.

“Those are some ugly dandelions.”

“Eh, they grow on you,” Storm said. “Come on.”

“But what about Alpha?”

“You mean Laird Nelsson? The chief of security.”

“Yes. The huge towhead.”

“My guess is that he and Tilda, the tall redhead you may have seen around the ship, are currently with Ingrid Karlsson, deciding how best to get rid of me.”

“Wait, Ingrid Karlsson? This is her boat? The Ingrid Karlsson?”

“Sure is. Why?”

He was shaking his head. “I read her autobiography, Citizen of the World.”

“Don’t tell me you really liked it and that you secretly align yourself with all its goals and aims and that now you’re going to turn on me, because that’s already happened to me once today.”

“No. It was rambling crap. I bought it out of a remainder bin for five bucks,” McRae said. “When I get home, I think I’m going to ask for my money back.”

STORM RETRIEVED THE LASER, which had anywhere from six to eleven seconds of fire time left, depending on the accuracy of McRae’s guesswork. He passed the guards again. Gamma, the one who had taken the elbow, was groaning.

Storm gave him a kick in the head as he passed. It wasn’t very sporting. But this wasn’t a game. He quickly checked each man for extra clips. Finding none, he did not bother to tear their weapons from their hands, He didn’t want an empty weapon that badly.

With McRae following him, Storm climbed the stairs, training the laser on the door at the top. Anyone who opened that door was going to get a blue blast in the face.

But no one did. They reached the top of the staircase and Storm announced, “Ingrid’s quarters are in the front of the ship. We’ll take a right out of here and walk toward the bow. Just stay behind me and watch your footing. It’s nasty out there and this deck is sort of narrow. There’s a railing, yes, but I don’t need to tell you how dim your chance of rescue is if you fall in that water. If you feel like you can’t make it, just stay here and I’ll come back for you.”

The moment Storm budged the door open, the wind caught it and pinned it back, nearly tearing it off its hinges. Storm stuck his head out. There was no one on the deck.

Bending into the full force of the gale, he began trudging forward. Each step was an effort. He had to cradle the laser like a football to prevent it from being torn from his grasp. His dark glasses were quickly covered by rain and sea spray being blown at him. He lowered them on his nose so he could peer over them, then had to squint as the full blast of the wind-driven water hit him.

He was aware McRae was struggling behind him somewhere. But when he looked back, he saw the scientist had retreated back into the stairwell. It was probably for the best. No point in getting Alida’s husband hurt.

Storm had made it approximately halfway to where he could turn toward Ingrid Karlsson’s quarters when the sizeable figure of Laird Nelsson rounded the corner.

The man McRae knew as Alpha was actually startled. He had obviously been talking with Ingrid, not manning the security cameras. He had no idea the prisoners were on the loose.

The delay gave Storm a chance to swing the bulky laser upward as Nelsson reached for his shoulder holster. Storm had the laser flat at eye level by the time Nelsson was drawing his gun.

As Nelsson aimed his weapon, Storm raised his safety glasses and pressed down the metal contact. A brilliant blue beam leapt from the device and struck Nelsson full in the face. Storm planned to hold down the button for four seconds.

Three seconds in, two things happened more or less simultaneously. First, the beam cut off, its battery spent. McRae’s guess had been off by one second.

Second, the bullet fired by Nelsson struck Storm. Nelsson had been aiming for center mass and his targeting was true. The bullet hit Storm’s vest just below the sternum, knocking the wind out of him and throwing him on his backside.

But, in some ways, it was the best thing that could have happened. Because it meant Nelsson’s three succeeding bullets missed high.

Storm could hear Nelsson bellowing over the clamor from the hurricane. He had brought his hand to his eyes and was furiously swiping at his face, like he could somehow clear away the effects from the laser.

When he finally figured out he couldn’t, he brought the gun back up and began firing it wildly down the deck, in the general area of where Storm had once been.

Storm had let go of the laser, ripped off the glasses and hunkered down as flat as he could against the floor. His chest felt like it had a fire spreading in it and breath was still not coming easily to him. As he began crawling forward — so he was no longer in the last spot where Nelsson had seen him — he was struggling to grab gulps of air.

Nelsson was coming down the deck toward him, in part because that was the direction the wind was taking him. Storm could tell from the way he was walking there that the man was sightless. But he was still dangerous. He was swinging the gun around and firing it sporadically.

Then suddenly he wasn’t firing. He was reaching into his pants, as if going for another clip. That’s when Storm sprung up and bull-rushed him. Storm was not eager to physically confront a man who outweighed him by at least eighty pounds. But it was either that or take his chances with fifteen more eight-gram bullets, which were capable of far greater damage.

Storm charged ahead, his speed slowed by the force of the wind. At the last moment, Nelsson seemed to become aware he was about to get tackled. He brought his hands up to defend himself, but Storm barreled into his midsection, driving Nelsson onto his back. The Beretta went flying from his hands.

Whatever thought Storm had about getting up and chasing after the gun didn’t last long. Nelsson had grabbed him and wasn’t letting go. Ingrid Karlsson’s chief of security had already figured out the essence of this confrontation: a blind man is at a significant disadvantage in hand-to-hand fighting once he’s no longer touching his opponent. But as long as he keeps contact, it’s a fairly even fight. There’s a reason blind high school wrestlers have won state titles.

Nelsson reached for Storm’s face, or where he thought Storm’s face would be. His fingers were trying to claw and gouge anything they could touch. Storm landed a punch, but it was one without much force behind it. They were too close. And yet there was no escaping. There were not many men large enough or strong enough to keep hold of Derrick Storm. But this was one of them.

Storm tried pulling away again. It was like trying to break free from an enraged octopus. He kept having to defend his face from Nelsson’s savage attacks, while trying to mount his own meager offense. He got in a few more punches, none of them very convincing.

He was so distracted by his inability to hurt Nelsson that he hadn’t fully braced himself for what came next. In one deft move, Nelsson flipped Storm over and got his hands on Storm’s throat. The enormous Swede wrapped his fingers around Storm’s neck and was squeezing, his forearms bulging.

They were now turned sideways on the narrow deck. Storm reached toward Nelsson’s sightless eyes and scratched at them. But Nelsson didn’t seem to care. He had already lost that sense.

Suddenly, Storm was losing his. Nelsson was bringing his immense weight to bear on Storm’s neck and it was staunching the blood flow to his brain. Blackness was closing in around the edges of his vision. His brain was starving for oxygen.

With every joule of energy he had left, Storm gathered his legs against Nelsson’s chest and then straightened them. It was a classic weight lifting move; for as strong as his opponent was, Storm’s squat thrust was far more powerful than Nelsson’s grip.

The huge man was propelled upward, toward the railing, which was marginally shorter than Storm’s fully extended legs. Nelsson blindly grasped for something, anything to keep him from going over — Storm’s feet, the railing, whatever. But without his eyes to guide his hands, he only succeeded in flailing at the air.

He caught briefly on the side, but his momentum kept carrying him over. Storm hopped up, raced over to the railing, and peered over. The last thing he saw of the erstwhile Alpha, Laird Nelsson, was a patch of blond hair going under a huge wave far below.

AFTER A BRIEF SWEEP OF THE DECK, Storm located the gun the chief of security had dropped.

Storm ejected the clip and gave it a hopeful inspection. It was, alas, empty.

The only thing Storm had to his advantage was that he was the only one who knew it. He stashed the gun in his waistband and continued on toward Ingrid’s quarters.

Storm took his final turn, then went inside, grateful to get out of the elements. His chest was aching and his larynx felt like someone had put it in a vise and turned the screws.

He paused to gather himself for a moment in the sitting room, the one that had Prince George of Denmark — and his bouffant of Jersey-girl hair — keeping silent guard. He thought of Brigitte and her fondness for the painting.

“Not so easy to be married to the queen after all, is it big guy?” Storm asked.

George offered no opinion on the subject, which is what had made him a good husband in the first place.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Storm said, then went for the double doors that led to Ingrid’s inner sanctum. They opened easily.

There was no one there, at least no one Storm could see. He recognized the room. It was Ingrid’s office, the one he and millions of others had first seen on a YouTube video, with its antique rug, its mahogany desk, and all the other near-priceless baubles arranged around it.

Through another set of double doors, from the next room, Ingrid spoke a sentence or two of testy Swedish. She started with the name Laird. Then Storm heard his own name and the word mörda again.

He could guess at the translation: Laird, are you back so soon? Have you killed Derrick Storm already?

“I’m sorry, Laird isn’t here right now,” Storm said. “He decided to take a swim. But, actually, it looked like he doesn’t do that very well. So I guess I should say Laird decided to take a sink.”

There was no reply. Storm crept cautiously farther into the room. He drew the Beretta, even though it was little more than a stage prop.

Tilda had said that Ingrid abhorred guns, but Tilda had proven to be a less-than-reliable narrator. Storm fully expected that Ingrid had a cannon waiting for him in the next room.

Or maybe she didn’t. But, in this case, Storm decided there was little danger to being wrong about assuming Ingrid was armed. At most, it would just slow him down a little. The alternative — assuming she was unarmed and being wrong — was far worse.

He reached the double doors and listened for movement. There was none. He allowed himself a quick glimpse around the edge, then withdrew. It was definitely Ingrid Karlsson’s bedroom. The dominant feature was a large canopy bed. There were also antique bureaus and wardrobes, ornate mirrors, marble statuary, and a thousand other details that Storm hadn’t been able to register in that one brief glance.

The only thing missing was Ingrid. She was obviously hiding, planning to ambush him somewhere — from a closet, from the bathroom, from behind any one of those pieces of furniture.

Storm could afford to be patient, but only to a point. He knew Jones’s teams. Middle-of-the-night and predawn raids were their specialty. Two o’clock in the morning. Three o’clock. Those were their preferred hours of operation.

It was already nearing midnight. Within a few hours, the wind would let up enough and they would be here. And then this would be their show — and, more accurately, Jedediah Jones’s show. At that point, the negotiations would begin and the only people without a seat at the table would be the families of all the people Ingrid had killed.

Storm looked around to see what he could use to create a distraction and/or provoke a reaction. He spied a vase. It was china, probably late Ming dynasty, probably worth countless thousands of dollars. He picked it up and threw it into the next room. It glanced off one of the slats of the canopy bed and onto the edge of a bureau, where it exploded into several hundred pieces.

There was no response. Storm took a chunk of ivory that had been carved into a Madonna and threw that into the room. It struck a mirror, shattering it.

Still nothing.

Storm was trying to determine his next move when, from somewhere up on deck, he heard a rhythmic sound. It was hard to make out — what with the wind still whistling through, under, around, and over every exposed crevice of the ship — but it sounded almost like a large drum beating. It started slow but quickly gained speed.

Then Storm realized it wasn’t a drum. It was helicopter rotors.

Ingrid Karlsson obviously had another way out of her bedroom. And now the former stunt-plane pilot was trying to escape by the only means available to her, hurricane be damned.

In the split second between when Storm made that realization and when he decided what to do about it, the layout of the ship appeared in his brain.

The helicopter pad was on the top deck in the aft of the ship, almost the exact opposite locale of where he was right now, in the most forward deck. The Warrior Princess was 565 feet long. He’d have to cover at least four hundred of it to reach where Ingrid was now.

Still, it wasn’t like he had a choice. If Ingrid got away from him, she had more than enough resources to disappear forever. She would never see the inside of a courtroom.

Storm sprinted out of Ingrid’s quarters and down the walkway where he had nearly had the life choked out of him. With the wind now aiding him, he flew past the door to McRae’s cell and the guard’s rooms. It was still pinned open by the wind. There was no sign of the scientist.

The rotors were getting louder now. The only thing in Storm’s favor was that it would take a minute or so for the turbines to begin pumping hard enough to allow for flight.

His legs burned as he willed them to push him beyond their maximum power. He passed Tilda’s bedroom — he would have to leave her to Jones’s people, who would surely appreciate the gift — and charged up two flights of exterior stairs on the outside of the ship. He did not look down at the waves, which had begun to subside but were still formidable mountains of water. His entire focus was on keeping his footing on the slippery steps. One stumble might cost him the time he needed to catch the chopper.

As he reached the edge of the helicopter pad, Ingrid was pulling back on the flight stick, lifting the aircraft off the ground. With one final burst of speed, Storm dashed across the last forty feet of the pad. The helicopter was now airborne. He could see the look of concentration on Ingrid Karlsson’s face as she pulled back on the stick. He knew she saw him coming. He didn’t care. At this point, he wasn’t exactly trying to sneak up on her.

Storm fixed his eyes on the helicopter skid nearest to him and timed his jump.

DUNKING A BASKETBALL requires a human being to be able to reach roughly ten feet eight inches in the air: ten feet to reach the rim, plus another eight inches to allow enough of the ball to clear the top.

By the time Storm reached the helicopter, the skid he was aiming for was eleven feet in the air.

Fortunately, Derrick Storm could dunk a basketball with room to spare. He leapt, and the outstretched fingers of his right hand grasped the slick metal bar beneath the helicopter and held tight.

The chopper lurched for a moment as Storm’s weight hit it, but it had enough lift to compensate for those extra 230 pounds. As it quickly gained altitude, the wind from the hurricane took it and pushed it back violently away from the boat.

To say Storm was hanging on for dear life was no mere expression. He was now over the frothing Strait of Gibraltar, dangling by one hand. Back when he had a dry suit and a buoyancy compensator — and a grappling hook to lift him out of it when the time came — he could handle the sea’s rage. In nothing more than Laird Nelsson’s borrowed clothing, he stood no chance of surviving until morning.

As the helicopter pitched and bucked, Storm managed to swing his left hand onto the skid. He started trying to pull himself up, but it was not easy. Whether Karlsson was intentionally flying wildly — like a rodeo steer trying to kick off its rider — or whether the hurricane made her fly that way, the effect was the same.

Under ordinary circumstances, Storm could rip off twenty or thirty pull-ups without much strain. In these conditions, it was a Herculean task just to do one.

But slowly, finally, he got himself up. It helped that Ingrid had finally secured the helicopter and that it was under better control; she now had a better feel for the stick as she ascended into steadier, more predictable winds — as opposed to the gusts that bounced chaotically off the huge waves.

Storm expected she would continue climbing, perhaps even until she was above the hurricane. Altitude was definitely her friend, Storm’s enemy. Helicopters had a ceiling above which the air got too thin for the rotors to maintain their lift, but it was a high one. Ingrid just might go for it.

Instead, she did the last thing Storm expected: she flew back over the ship, traveling beyond its bow so she was actually out in front of it. She was flying lower, plunging back into turbulence that could kill them both if she crashed. Storm could not guess what she was up to.

Then she began circling around, and he figured it out: she was flying straight toward the top of the Warrior Princess’s superstructure. She was going to bash Storm against some piece of it. Perhaps the tallest part, a large smokestack located three-quarters of the way back.

Storm’s arms were wrapped around the skid, but his legs were still hanging down. He redoubled his efforts to pull himself up as the helicopter plunged toward the ship. He wrapped one leg up and over, and then the other.

Hazarding a glimpse above him, Storm saw the chopper’s cargo door. Its handle was his goal, perhaps his only salvation, depending on how good Ingrid’s aim was.

He managed to get himself in a sitting position, his legs straddling the skid, one hand braced against the belly of the chopper. It got him closer to the door handle, but it was still out of reach.

The chopper was now directly over the bow of the ship and, with the wind pushing it, was closing in on the smokestack at a murderous speed. There was no more time for caution. He had to make a jump for the handle, which meant he had to get his feet on the skid.

At that point, he’d essentially have nothing to hang on to. He could lean a little into the side of the chopper, but was mostly relying on his balance. This was like urban surfing, only it was at a difficulty level even a reckless suburban Washington, D.C., kid had never attempted.

Gripping the skid with both hands, Storm placed his feet behind him somehow, then underneath him, before standing fully. He braced himself against the helicopter’s fuselage, for what little help that was. If Ingrid had chosen that moment to roll right, Storm would have plunged to his death on the deck below.

But, with her aim set on the smokestack, she flew straight. She was now mere yards away from it.

At the last possible second, Storm jumped for the handle. He felt its rounded metal and closed both hands around it, using it to hoist himself off the skid just as Ingrid rammed it into the smokestack.

The air was filled by the shrieking of metal hitting metal, then of the skid being ripped away. The helicopter spun crazily, rotating 480 degrees and nearly losing control. Storm was now hanging on by the door handle alone.

And the handle was no longer stationary. The door to the chopper had swung open. Storm’s head, outstretched arms, and shoulders were slammed against the side of the helicopter. Storm reacted the only way he could: by gripping tighter as he absorbed the impact, like a wide receiver who is about to be mashed by an onrushing strong safety but somehow hangs on to the ball.

Ingrid was again gaining altitude. The door started swinging closed. Storm shook off the effects of what was likely a minor concussion, and unhooked his right hand from the door handle. He used it to grab whatever he could on the inside of the helicopter before the door slammed shut.

His hand hit what felt like netting of some kind. Storm grasped it. His right arm was now keeping the door open. He stayed like that for a few seconds — half in the helicopter, half outside it — until, to his horror, the door started coming off its hinge. The joint was not designed to hold the weight of a fully grown man, swinging around on it like a jungle orangutan.

As the screws popped out one by one, Storm lunged desperately into the bay of the helicopter. He gripped the leg of a passenger seat against the back wall of the chopper and placed his legs inside as well.

The door was still swinging back and forth, banging around until it sheared off for good. Storm did not bother to watch it fall into the sea below. He was panting hard, grateful for the solid floor of the helicopter.

He did not stay there long. He had just gotten to his hands and knees when Ingrid, having set the chopper on hover and activated the autopilot, emerged from pilot’s chair.

She had an ugly sneer on her face. In her left hand was a dagger. It had a blade ten inches long that was curved and cruel and lethal.

CONVENTIONAL FIGHTING WISDOM says it is actually quite difficult to kill someone with a knife. It requires the ability to overpower one’s opponent, and even then it’s hard work. Stabbing victims will often have dozens of knife wounds, and what kills them is not any one of them — it’s the blood loss.

Then again, conventional fighting wisdom didn’t have to face an enraged Swedish woman of Amazonian proportions in a hurricane-tossed helicopter.

Ingrid did not hesitate to begin her attack. She slashed at Storm’s head, missing only because Storm rolled out of the way at the last nanosecond.

He hopped to his feet and immediately assumed a crouch, both hands out in front of him. Ingrid was no idiot. Yes, the knife gave her an edge — as it were — but Storm had advantages in size, strength, and speed. She had to stay out of his grasp.

Storm feinted to his right, seeing if Ingrid would go after him in that direction and get herself off balance; but she didn’t go for the fake. He lunged for the knife, but she stepped back, then countered by stabbing toward his belly. Storm narrowly dodged it.

She brought the dagger high and chopped downward. Storm tried to step back but ran into the far side of the helicopter. He brought his arms up to shield himself. Ingrid’s knife opened a gash in his right forearm. She slashed again. Another wound, this time near his elbow.

Storm planted his left leg and kicked with his right, catching Ingrid in the solar plexus and propelling her backward into the other side of the narrow chopper, the side closest to the door. From that distance, about ten feet, they considered each other for a brief moment.

“Jones and I had a deal,” Ingrid said through ragged breath.

“I’m sure you did,” Storm said. “It doesn’t apply to me.”

“You’re a fool. Don’t you see that by trying to stop me you’re standing in the way of history? Nations and the lines they scrawl across the globe are going by the wayside. The governments of the world are impediments to a better way of life for all humanity.”

“Why don’t you let humanity decide that for itself?”

“Because most people are too stupid to know what’s good for them,” she snarled. “They need a real leader who can show them the way. I’m that leader.”

“You’re deranged.”

“What? You think your American president is really someone who can make the planet a better place the way I can? You think your vice president or your secretary of state can do it? I was thinking about it when I ordered Air Force One to be shot down, how very un-tragic that crash would be. A plane full of the world’s most powerful leaders, and yet there wasn’t one person who could really make progress happen the way I can. It’s just a shame that turned out to be a fake. You Americans would have eventually seen I was doing you a big favor.”

“Don’t you see the fallacy of your approach? Revolutions don’t happen because one person believes something. That’s how you get despots. Revolutions happen because thousands and millions of people come to believe something. You can’t force your version of the future on people.”

“You just don’t get it,” she said. “Your vision is clouded.”

“No, it’s actually working perfectly. And where I see you heading next is jail.”

“That will never happen,” she said, before following her assertion by charging at Storm, who deftly eluded her.

The result was nothing more than a switching of sides. From behind him, he could feel the rush of air from the opening where the cargo door had once been.

He crouched again, ready for Ingrid’s next charge, which came quickly. But this time, Storm held his ground. As she closed in on him, he grabbed the blade of the knife with his left hand, roaring as it sliced his palm. But the pain had a gain: he managed to grab her left wrist with his right hand.

From there, it was just a question of using her momentum against her. Like a seasoned bullfighter, he shuffled his body to the side at the last possible second.

Suddenly, there was nothing separating Ingrid from the outside of the helicopter but moist tropical air. She hurtled into the space behind Storm and began the sickening drop into the sea hundreds of feet below.

All that saved her was that Storm had not relinquished his grip on her wrist. As she fell, he dropped to his belly, spreading his legs out wide to give him some purchase on the floor of the chopper and not get carried out the door himself.

For a few seconds, Ingrid just dangled high above the waves, her legs kicking pointlessly. The skid on that side of the helicopter had been shorn off by the earlier collision with the ship’s smokestack. There was nothing for her feet to find. She soon stopped struggling and hung there, with Storm keeping a tight grasp on her.

She still had the knife in her right hand. The way Storm was gripping her, the interior of his right wrist was fully exposed. The ulnar and radial arteries on his wrists — the one suicidal people will try to sever — bulged.

At more or less the same moment, both Storm and Ingrid knew what she was going to do.

“Ingrid, don’t do it,” Storm yelled.

Ingrid was looking up at him with pure hatred.

“Ingrid, there’s no way you’ll survive the fall or the swim,” he pleaded. “I might or might not die, but there’d be no question what would happen to you. You’d be dead.”

She curled her lip, showing him her teeth. There was a lot of noise at that particular moment. The driving rain. The crackling wind. The churning rotors. But Storm could still very easily make out the words that came out of Ingrid Karlsson’s mouth:

“It is my nature,” she said.

The knife flashed toward Storm’s wrist.

“No,” he bellowed.

He blocked the knife with the back of his left hand. The knife point plunged in for a moment, then hit some bone. The unexpected resistance caused Ingrid to lose her grip on the weapon. It quickly disappeared into the sea below.

Storm began the slow process of pulling her up. He was bleeding, and the wounds would require stitches. But none of them was fatal.

The only fatality was Ingrid’s twisted ambition. Storm got her up into the chopper. She struggled a little, but ultimately, for all her fitness, she was a fifty-something-year-old with limited strength and energy. Storm subdued her easily.

Straddled atop her, he used his plastic restraints to bind her hands, then her feet. She yelled and cursed as Storm trussed her up, but eventually she quieted. Storm located some rope and tied her to one of the back-passenger chairs, lest she get any ideas about throwing herself out the open bay.

Storm located the chopper’s first aid kit and dressed the worst of his wounds until they at least stopped bleeding.

Then he settled into the pilot’s seat and began flying them toward The Hague.

The chief clerk at the International Court of Justice would be more than happy to receive Storm’s passenger.