Storm Front: A Derrick Storm Thriller

by Richard Castle

  Then there was Storm’s worry about the gun’s recoil knocking him off balance. A 9mm didn’t have a lot of kick, but it would give him a little push, and Storm wasn’t braced on anything.

  As it was, Storm felt his balance starting to go. Looking down at the T square then up at the photographer had disoriented him. The awareness that he was 120 feet in the air, perched on a foot-wide piece of metal, crashed into him.

  He lurched to one side, then the other. His stomach did a somersault. He was going to fall. He threw his arms out to try and steady himself, as with a tightrope walker’s rod.

  It didn’t work.

  Storm felt himself going over.

  In a last-ditch effort at saving himself, he flung himself toward the next column. He caught it with both hands, then pulled himself to it, hugging it as if it were the waiting arms of his mother. He allowed himself a moment to feel safe, then he cursed loudly when he heard something heavy striking the concrete far below.

  The Beretta. He had dropped it.

  There was no going back for it now. The photographer had gained a full story on him, and was apparently intent on going higher. Why was the man heading up? What was there to gain from that?

  There was no point in trying to ponder that strategy. Storm dashed back across the beam—to hell with being ten stories up—and reached out for the column directly below the photographer.

  Then Storm started his own climb to the sky.

  Storm was gaining on him. There was no question about that. The photographer was no slouch as a climber. And he was in nearly as good shape as Storm. But Storm was stronger and faster.

  It was just that the progress was slow. By the time they reached the twenty-fifth floor, Storm had cut the photographer’s lead in half, down to one level. By the fortieth floor, he was half a level away. Storm could feel the lactic acid building in his muscles and the rawness from where the steel was eating into his fingers, but he was thankful for the pain. It gave him something to concentrate on other than the dizzying heights they were reaching. All of London was growing small beneath them.

  By the time they passed the base of the crane, at the fiftieth floor, the photographer was a mere few feet away. It was halfway between the sixty-second and sixty-third floors that Storm was able to reach out and grab the man’s ankle with his right hand. The man kicked furiously, but Storm just squeezed harder. Slowly, carefully, Storm started dragging the man toward the sixty-second floor.

  “We can do this one of two ways,” Storm said between huge gasps of air. “The hard way or the easy way. What’s it going to be?”

  “Let go,” the photographer said. Only it wasn’t a man’s voice.

  It was a woman’s.

  “I can’t do that,” Storm said. “You and I need to have a conversation about those pictures you were taking. You’re going to tell me who you are and why you’re photographing that crime scene or I swear to you, I will throw you off this building.”

  The woman’s response was to kick some more. Storm was easing his way down toward the beam, inch by inch, dragging the woman with him. The descent wasn’t easy, especially not doing it one-handed while the other hand had to keep taming a flailing limb. But Storm was making progress. Finally, he reached the beam below him and anchored himself to it by wrapping his legs around it. He had leverage now. This would be over with quickly.

  He tugged. The woman was resisting with every bit of strength she had left, but she was tired after her long climb. She was almost in his grasp. Just a little longer. She was trying to scramble toward the outside of the column—the more dangerous side. It was a desperate attempt to get farther away from Storm and perhaps shake loose from his clutches.

  Then she slipped. She had been bucking so violently against Storm’s hold—and her forearms had grown so tired from all the effort—that her fingers failed on her, losing the handhold they had on the column.

  She fell, letting loose a high-pitched scream. Storm still had his grip on her ankle and felt his shoulder ripping away from its socket as the full weight of her plummeting body suddenly became his to bear. The only thing that saved him from having her momentum carry both of them down to oblivion was the column itself. He was on the inside part, while she was on the outside.

  They stayed there for a second—her dangling upside down, sixty-two stories up, him hanging on with all his strength. Her ski mask had fallen off, and Storm felt himself gasp as he saw her long, black hair cascading downward and recognized the cheekbones that that had been hiding underneath.

  It was Ling Xi Bang.

  Despite himself—despite all the times he had steeled himself against engaging his emotions during a mission—he still felt the sting of betrayal. Yes, he had been using her in Paris, trying to get close to her to pry secrets out of her, just as she had been using him. But hadn’t at least some of what they exchanged been real? The waltzing? The storytelling? The moonlight stroll?

  But no. It had all been a lie. It actually disgusted him, to know he had lain with someone who could unleash Volkov on innocent civilians.

  “How could you hire a man like Volkov?” Storm shouted.

  “No. It wasn’t me, I swear.”

  “Then why were you taking pictures?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with these dead bankers, just like you,” she said. “The difference is, we don’t have as cozy a relationship with the Brits, so I can’t just call up Scotland Yard and get invited to the crime scene.”

  “You’re lying,” Storm said.

  “No. Please. Think about it: Why would I take pictures if all we wanted was to have these men dead? Because I’m investigating, too.”

  The pant leg Storm was hanging on to was made of a slippery fabric. His hand was slowly sliding toward her boot. He wasn’t going to be able to keep her suspended that way much longer. Shouldn’t he just let her fall? She was an enemy operative, after all.

  But maybe there were parts of her story that made sense. And maybe, Storm admitted to himself, he wasn’t ready for his time with Xi Bang to end with one night in Paris.

  Meanwhile, she was trying to arc her body around so she could get a grip on the building and save herself. But there was only so much a human body could bend backward, even one as lithe as Xi Bang’s.

  “Nonsense,” Storm said. “We’re on to you, Agent Xi Bang—or whatever your name is. You’re engineering some kind of plot to undermine U.S. currency by—”

  “It’s not us. For the love of God, stop and think about it. Why would we want to destroy your economy? We’re your biggest investor. No one owns more American debt than China. If your currency crumbles, all that debt loses its value. We’d go bankrupt right along with you.”

  He was holding her by the boot now, and nothing more. And the boot wasn’t staying put. She was working her foot to try and keep it on, but it was slowly sliding off despite her best effort.

  “We’re every bit as concerned about these bankers as you are,” she continued. “And I can prove it to you.”

  “How?”

  “Come to Iowa with me.”

  “Iowa? What’s in Iowa?” Storm asked.

  “There’s a man in Ames I want you to meet. You can keep me in handcuffs the whole trip if you want, I don’t care. Talking to this guy will prove to you that I’m on your side. Now, please, help me up.”

  Storm decided that a Chinese agent wouldn’t be able to invent a story involving Ames, Iowa, while hanging upside down from a skyscraper. “Okay,” he said, reaching out with the hand on the other side of the column, the one that wasn’t holding the boot. “Take my hand.”

  The boot was nearly off now. Xi Bang tried to reach up and grab Storm’s free hand, curling her body into a C-shape. Her fingers were inches away from him being able to grab her and haul her to safety.

  Then the boot came off.

  Xi Bang screamed. She was free-falling spread-eagle, faceup, like a terrified snow angel.

  Storm didn’t hesitate. The grappl
ing hook. It was still on his left arm. His right hand flew to the activation button, and he aimed it at Xi Bang’s midsection.

  The line shot out at ninety-six feet per second squared, three times faster than gravity. Storm watched in fascination as the end of the line formed into a disk, seemingly out of thin air. Then, just as the Frenchman had said it would, it attached itself to Xi Bang’s catsuit, and through the miracle of whatever science Jones’s people had produced, it held firm.

  Storm grunted as the line tightened, slamming him against the column. Xi Bang swung gently fourteen stories down and landed—albeit perpendicularly—against the side of the building. Then she slowly began walking herself upward. Storm could feel the sleeve’s straps digging into his side, but they held.

  Soon, she had reached the place where Storm was clinging to the column, shimmied around, and collapsed into him, panting from exertion and terror. He enveloped her, feeling their hearts pounding against each other.

  “Now,” he said, “what were you saying about handcuffs?”

  CHAPTER 12

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  This was a town that was all about doing favors. Nearly a quarter century hanging around the halls of power had taught Donny Whitmer at least that much. Big favors. Small favors. You did them if you could, because you never knew when you might need to call one in.

  Like, say, when you were thirteen points down in a primary against a Tea Party candidate who apparently had every Christian in the state of Alabama ready to pull the lever for him, and you just didn’t have time to make the two thousand phone calls that would be necessary to raise the five million bucks you needed to ruin the bastard.

  You know. Times like that.

  In this case, the favor Donny Whitmer had done seemed straightforward enough. About three weeks earlier, his best donor had called him. There was an appropriations bill coming up for a vote, one of those big, messy, fifteen-thousand-word piles of slop that the Senate needed to pass to avoid yet another threatened government shutdown. The donor wanted a rider placed on the bill. Just a little rider.

  It was the kind of thing that Donny Whitmer had specialized in throughout his career. He had learned exactly how to slip them in—you always waited until the last minute—and because he was the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, he never had much problem doing it. It was how he had gotten the entire Alabama section of I-20 repaved, even though it didn’t really need it. It was how he’d funded a study of pygmy butterfly larvae at the University of Alabama, which might or might not have found ways to shunt the money to the football team. It was how Donny Whitmer had become Donny Whitmer.

  In truth, he didn’t really understand the rider this donor wanted. It was an obscure change to Federal Reserve policy, one that placed restrictions—generous ones, but restrictions nevertheless—on the amount of government bonds the Fed could sell each month.

  Why the donor was asking for it or how he would benefit was something of a mystery to Donny. But the guy had been so generous over the years, Donny didn’t pry. He called the clerk of the Senate and told him he had a little bit of language to insert into the appropriations bill. It was perhaps five hundred words long. The clerk added it without comment or question because, hey, it was the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and this was an appropriations bill.

  Donny was ready with a story for anyone who asked. He was going to make all kinds of noise about how the Federal Reserve was constantly overstepping its authority and how the entire Federal Reserve system had gotten out of whack. It was a takeoff on a favored rant among hard-core fiscal conservatives, so no one would think too hard about hearing it coming from Senator Whitmer. They would know he was facing a rugged primary challenge and think he was using this to pander to his base.

  Instead, no one asked. That was the magic of sneaking a rider in at the last second: No one even read it. Everyone had haggled themselves to death and was just ready to be done with the whole thing. The President, desperate to avert a shutdown that would tarnish his administration, had signed the bill into law at two minutes before midnight.

  Whitmer had mostly forgotten it. He had just stored it away in his forever-growing bank of favors done. And now, sooner than he ever thought he would need it, it was time to make a withdrawal.

  And hope like hell there was five million bucks in the account. He waited until his staff was gone and he had his spacious office in the Dirksen Senate Office Building to himself before he made the call. He didn’t want to risk anyone hearing what might need to happen.

  He picked up his office phone, then put it down. Cell phone. That would feel more personal. He stuck the Bluetooth in his ear. He pulled the phone out of his pocket. He dialed.

  “Well, hello yourself, young man,” Donny said, feigning warmth. Damn caller ID. You didn’t even get to say “This is Senator Whitmer” anymore.

  “I’m fine, I’m just fine,” Donny said.

  “Thank you for asking. How’re you?”

  Southern charm. Donny had lots of it.

  “Well, that’s just great to hear. And how are the wife and kids?”

  The personal touch. You had to give it the personal touch.

  “Kindergarten? Is he in kindergarten already? My, my, it seems like just yesterday I was getting that birth announcement. How time flies.”

  He was now strolling around his office. Clyde May was calling to him.

  “Readin’ already? Smart boy, smart boy. He’s just a chip off the old block, isn’t he?”

  Flattery. It gets you everywhere. God, he despised this.

  “Well, if that private school of his needs a little something-something, you just give ol’ Donny a call, you hear? Turns out the junior senator in your state owes me a favor.”

  Or at least she would if Donny needed her to. Thank God she wasn’t one of those uppity women senators who refused to play ball with the boys.

  “That’s mighty nice of you to notice. Sissy put me on one of them low-carb diets. I miss her cornbread something awful, but I lost ten pounds since March.”

  Yes, apparently flattery went both ways.

  “Wouldn’t that be nice. We’ll have to get the NIH to look into that,” Donny said, laughing a little too hard at a joke that wasn’t even that funny. When you got right down to it, nothing about dieting was funny.

  Finally, they were through with the necessary small talk, and Donny heard the donor say the words that could get the conversation rolling: To what do I owe the plea sure of the call, Senator?

  “Well, I’m glad you asked,” Donny said, eager to get on with it. “You may have heard, but it looks like I’m going to be facing a little primary challenge come June.”

  Little primary challenge. A euphemism if ever there were one. Donny Whitmer was facing a little primary challenge in the same way Sandy was a little rainstorm.

  “Mmm hmm, he’s one of those Tea Party assholes. Goes on and on about how he’ll never raise taxes, he’ll cut guv’ment spending, cut this, cut that, won’t compromise, won’t work with no one on nothing. Now, you know I’m a proud conservative, but we still need to be able to reach across the aisle if we want to get anything done in this town. It ain’t enough just to stick your fingers in your ears and say ‘no, no, no’ all the time. But that’s what these fellas want to do.”

  Donny listened for a moment. This whole thing had to go at the right speed. He felt like he was making good progress.

  “Yep, you know the type. And to make it worse, the sumbitch thumps the Bible every chance he gets. Now, I’m as God-fearin’ as the next man. And if you want to pray in school, I say go right ahead. But this sumbitch, he’s talking like he’s gonna get a cross stuck atop the Washington Monument. I don’t need to tell you, we can’t let these people take over the party. They got this social agenda and—”

  The donor interrupted him with enthusiastic agreement. That was good. Donny took over where he’d left off:

  “Exactly. A distraction. That’s what I always say,
too. It’s a distraction. I mean, I’m not too fond of these queers marrying each other. But we got bigger problems in this country right now than whether a couple a dykes get to say ‘I do.’ ”

  More listening. The guy was ranting a bit now, but ol’ Donny was going to let him. Donny strolled over to the putter and golf balls he kept stashed in the corner. He used the head of the putter to position a ball just right, then with a nice smooth stroke rolled it across the carpet toward a coffee table leg. The ball stopped just short of the leg. Damn it. Donny hated short putts.

  The guy finally finished, and Donny dove in with “Well, that’s what I’m saying exactly. Guys like this, they just have no understanding of… of… the sensitivity of some of these more complex issues, especially in the financial markets.”

  And then, without hesitating, without giving the guy a chance to say anything, Donny started putting the hammer down: “It’s like that rider I was able to get passed for you a few weeks ago. You remember that?”

  Yes, the guy remembered that. Of course he did.

  “Well, that’s just the kind of thing I’m talking about. You think that Tea Party sumbitch would do that for you?”

  Subtle, Donny. Subtle. But at least it redirected the donor into talking about this, ahem, little primary threat.

  “Well, it’s nothing to be too concerned about, but you never can be too careful,” Donny said. “I pay my pollster to worry about these things, and he’s doing his job, that’s for sure.”

  His job. Right. Thirteen friggin’ points of a job.

  “No, no. No one here is panicking. There’s no need to panic. It’s just these things can get unpredictable at the end. There’s an anti-incumbent wave sweeping around, and before you know it, everyone wants to just vote out whoever has been in, never mind that the person who’s in has been serving their interests faithfully for many years.”

  Finally, the sweet-sounding sentence poured out of the man’s mouth: Anything I can do to help?

  “Well, now, I’m glad you asked. I could use a little something extra for some advertising my people say will help.”