Wild Storm (11 page)

But then the laser would be in Jones’s hands by the end of the day. That outcome was unacceptable to Storm. He couldn’t lose control of this situation. He had to handle this himself.

With Dirty Harry still drawn and ready to fire, Storm approached the truck in a low crouch. The wind stirred. The smell of brackish water filled his nose. From somewhere nearby, he heard the shrill cry of an osprey.

There was a stillness about the truck that was simply eerie. It was like the thing was being operated by ghosts. He was next to it now, his back flat against its side. He risked a quick glance in the cab.

Empty. For sure. He yanked the handle. The door opened. He climbed in.

The inside was remarkable only inasmuch as it kept faithfully to its pretense of being an ice cream truck. There was even a button to ring a bell that would alert children to the presence of frozen-dairy deliciousness coming near.

There was an opening between the two seats with a small door that a man would have to crouch to go through. This was the entrance to the laser area. Storm aimed at the top of it. If someone was crouched on the other side, lying in wait for him, that’s where his head would be. Storm fired.

The noise of Dirty Harry discharging in such a close space was deafening. Storm couldn’t suppress his flinch reflex. When he looked, he saw that the bullet had not penetrated the door. It had bounced off and buried itself in the dashboard on the other side.

The door was bulletproof. This was no ordinary ice cream truck after all.

Whoever was inside the trailer was now fully aware of his presence. Storm assumed they were laying an ambush for him. He couldn’t risk being in the middle of the doorframe when he opened it.

He hopped over to the driver’s seat, crouching on it. With his body out of the way, he pulled the door handle.

He half expected a bulletproof door would be locked, but it swung open easily. He three-quarters expected its opening might be greeted by a bullet coming out, but no projectiles passed. He fully expected to be met by some kind of resistance, but there was none.

Finally, he allowed himself to look in. What he saw was a marvel of engineering, for sure—a series of mirrors and crystals and engines whose purpose he could only guess. It was both exotic and beautiful, and a part of Storm wanted to spend all day studying it.

But in that moment, what he saw was not as pressing as what he didn’t see. There were no human beings inside. There wasn’t room for any amid all the machinery.

Storm had thought the laser was being operated by ghosts. It was actually being operated by remote control. The terrorists had moved the truck into place and were firing it from somewhere else. Perhaps somewhere nearby. Perhaps many miles away. Perhaps a bunker outside Jalālābād.

From overhead, Storm heard the beating of helicopter rotors getting closer.
Th
e reinforcements were arriving. Perhaps they were Jones’s people. Perhaps they were FBI.

To Storm, it didn’t matter.
Th
ey had their priorities. He had his.
We can’t be trusted, either.

He waded into the back of the truck, amid all that fancy, delicate hardware. As a lover of technology, he felt some small regret for what he was about to do. As a lover of humanity, he felt none.

He turned Dirty Harry around, gripping it by its still-warm barrel so it was less like a gun and more like a hammer. And then he started swinging.

The truck trailer was soon filled with the sound of glass shattering and metal being twisted. If his gun barrel wasn’t strong enough to destroy something, his booted foot took over. Storm took three minutes to wreck as much as he could. The helicopter was getting closer the whole time.

When he was satisfied he had reduced the guts of the weapon to a shattered mess—beyond any hope of reconstruction or even comprehension—he stepped back outside the truck and called Jones.

“Storm!” he heard. “What’s going on?”

“There’s no one inside,” Storm said. “They were operating it remotely.”

“But we have the weapon.”

“Yes and no. I think they must have been monitoring the truck and seen me coming. I heard a small charge go off inside as I was approaching,” he lied. “They sabotaged their own weapon rather than let us get it. It’s a mess inside.”

Jones took a second to absorb this information. “Well,” he said, philosophically. “I suppose we could have anticipated that. We’ll get it back here and study what’s left. In the meantime, I have another task for you. One of our agents picked up some chatter as to who might be behind this and why. But we can’t afford to compromise him. I’m hoping you can go in and, ah, extract some information.”

“Okay. Where am I going?”

“Panama.”

CHAPTER 14

PANAMA CITY, Panama

torm spent the first part of his flight studying the intelligence that had been gathered on the Emirates Four.

Not that it was much. As with the Pennsylvania Three, crash investigators had yet to make much sense out of the wreckage left on the ground.

Likewise, the victims were a scattershot cross-section of the kind of folks who might have reason to visit Dubai. Along with hundreds of little-known mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, and business travelers and vacationers, there were: Lyle Gomez, a professional golfer coming into the city for a tournament; Beth Bowling, the tennis player; Barbara Andersen, a celebrated cabaret singer; Viktor Schultz, the head of Tariffs and Trade for the European Union; Gunther Neubauer, who represented Schleswig-Holstein in the Bundestag, the German equivalent of Congress; and Adrienne Pellot, a leggy French supermodel best known for her
Vogue
cover shots.

The list went on. Until he made sense of why this was happening, all the information had the feeling of cosmic background noise, hissing on a low frequency for all eternity.

Storm soon drifted off. He was fortunate he slept well on airplanes. Lately, it seemed to be the only rest he was getting. He was jolted awake by the wheels of the Gulfstream IV touching down on Runway 03R/21L at Tocumen International Airport.

Like many of North America’s air transit hubs, Tocumen was still mostly shut down, but it was slowly coming back to life. Commercial airlines were going to begin flying again soon. Private jet travel had been cleared for anyone brave enough to attempt it.

Storm entered on his own passport—something of a novelty for him when traveling on business—and quickly cleared customs. He was on the other side, in an otherwise empty arrivals area, when he was greeted by the only other soul there, a dashing man whose features appeared to be a mix of Spanish and Mesoamerican.

“And he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet,” the man said.

“And he called his name Jedediah, because of the LORD,” Storm said, completing the passage from II Samuel.

“Greetings, Mr. Storm. Whatever you’ve been told my name is, you will call me Carlos Villante. You will remember at all times that I am the deputy director of the Autoridad del Canal de Panama. I work for a man named Nico Serrano, who is the director of the authority. And you are an American investor here to consider buying bonds issued by the authority. Are we clear?”

“Exceedingly.”

“Good. Come with me. We have much to do and little time.”

Storm followed Villante to the short-term parking area, where he walked straight for a Cadillac CTS.

“Nice ride,” Storm said. “But isn’t it a little too nice for the deputy director of a public agency?”

A knowing smile spread across Villante’s cheeks. “Have you ever heard the story of the man with the bags of sand?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Please, get in and I’ll tell you,” Villante said, gesturing toward the passenger’s side as he entered via the driver’s side.

Villante buckled his seat belt, fired up the engine, and drove out of the parking garage as he spoke. “One morning at the border, a man on a bicycle approached a customs agent with two bulging saddlebags. The customs agent opened the bags to find they were filled with sand. The agent proceeded to dig through them, sure he would find drugs or jewels or some hidden contraband. He found nothing but sand, so he had no choice but to wave the man through.

“The next morning, the man on the bicycle came back. Again, his saddlebags were filled with sand. Again, the customs agent checked them thoroughly and, again, he found nothing. The same thing happened the next morning. And the morning after that. And every morning for weeks. The customs agent was growing increasingly frustrated. He started forcing the man to empty out the bags on a table, so he could search the sand grain by grain. Then he turned the bags inside out. Then he put the bags through an X-ray machine, sure he would see something. But there was never anything more than sand.

“Finally, one morning the man on the bicycle was coming through, and the customs agent said, ‘Please, sir. I surrender. I will not report you, today or ever. But you must tell me:
what
are you smuggling into my country?’ And the man said, ‘Very well. I will tell you. I am smuggling bicycles.
’
”

Storm cracked a grin.

“So that is why I drive this car,” Villante said. “People at the authority, people all over Panama City, they think I must be taking a bribe from somewhere. And they have searched high and low trying to figure out from whom and for what. As long as they remain determined in that search, they will never see what I am really doing.”

“Good cover,” Storm said.

“So far,” Villante said. “Anyhow, I hope you are sufficiently impressed that I may now give you your briefing.”

“Please do.”

“Your target is named Eusebio Rivera. He lives on the seventieth-floor penthouse of Pearl Tower, one of the newest skyscrapers in the city. He is a very successful, very wealthy businessman. He is well connected among the class of businessmen who came to prominence in the years leading up to this country’s takeover of the canal and he only grew richer after it happened. But I assume Jones told you about the troubles of the expansion project and what that means for men like Rivera?”

“He did,” Storm said. “But he said it was better to let you fill me in on your encounter with him.”

Villante told Storm about his visit with Rivera on the day of the Pennsylvania Three. From his phone, Villante played a few clips of Rivera talking about Erik Vaughn. Villante was unable to bug Rivera’s apartment, but he was able to get a tap put on his work phone. The recordings had made it clear: Villante was not the only man Rivera had told about the dead congressman. He wasn’t even the only man Rivera had invited over to toast Vaughn’s death. In each case, the toast was the same: down with Erik Vaughn, up with Jared Stack.

When Villante finished, Storm said, “So he knew Erik Vaughn was dead before it was announced in the media.”

“That’s right.”

“And did you ask him how he knew this?”

“I did. He was evasive. I couldn’t press the issue without creating suspicion. The deputy director of the canal authority would not be interested in such things.”

“Of course. But you’re thinking he knows more than he’s letting on.”

“I suggested that perhaps he was involved and he responded by toasting Vaughn’s death. Ordinarily, I might have disregarded such a gesture as posturing. Men like Eusebio Rivera are always trying to make themselves seem more important than they are. But you combine that with his seemingly insider knowledge about Vaughn’s death
and
his insistence that the canal authority director, Nico Serrano, immediately go to Washington….He seemed like a man very aware of the strings he was pulling. I have not played all of the wiretaps for you, but he made sure everyone in Panama City was aware of Congressman Vaughn’s death and that they made plans to act accordingly.”

Storm nodded. They were passing through palm tree–lined streets recently made wet by a brief rainstorm. It was pushing eleven o’clock at night. Panama City was a hardworking town. The sidewalks were empty. Most of the residents had to be at their jobs in the morning and had already turned in.

“So you need me to get him in a confessional mood,” Storm said.

“I am told that’s part of your expertise.”

Storm just nodded. “How am I getting to him?”

“At this hour, he will be holed up at his penthouse in Pearl Tower.”

“What’s security like there?”

“Difficult,” Villante said. “Pearl Tower is high-end residential. The poor in Panama have come a long way since the seventies, but there’s still a pretty big gap between them and the rich. And for all the beautiful buildings you see around you, the slums are never far. It makes the rich fairly paranoid. Rightly so. They make sure they are well protected.”

“Specifics, please?”

“There’s a doorman outside the building, then a twenty-four-hour concierge just inside who eyeballs everyone who comes in. If the concierge doesn’t like what he sees, he locks down the elevators and then radios their on-site security. There are anywhere from two to four of them, depending on the hour, and they’re always armed.”

“That doesn’t sound difficult,” Storm said. “If anything, that sounds like an open invitation to—”

“I’m not finished. Rivera has his own bodyguards, who are with him at all times. He keeps a staff of six, at least two of which are always on duty. The nightmen are named Hector and Cesar. They drive for him, stick near him whenever he’s out in public. When he’s at home, they have a feed of the building’s security cameras that they keep an eye on. I have no doubt you can handle the rent-a-cops on the ground. But he’s on the top floor. You’d have seventy stories to go up, either by elevator or stairwell. They would have all the time they needed to prepare a nasty greeting for you.”

“But being as you work for Jones, you’ve already thought of a clever way around all this.”

“I have,” Villante said. “Jones tells me you like…what did he call them…toys, yes?”

A gleam appeared in Storm’s eyes. “Yes, yes I do. I like toys a lot.”

“And he tells me you’re an expert climber and that you are in good practice at the moment?”

“I am.”

“Good. Because you’ve got quite the climb ahead of you.”

A HALF HOUR LATER,
Storm was already forty stories up the side of Pearl Tower.

On his hands were strapped two circular pads. Two similar pads were strapped to his knees. Using aligned carbon nanotubes—a technology that mimicked the microscopic hairs that let a gecko hang upside down with just one finger—the pads allowed him to cling to the side of the building. The pads were wirelessly linked to one another. Controls on the hand pads let Storm control when the pads gripped and when they slid. It meant that Storm could pull himself up with his hands while bracing against his knees; and then, while his hands held steady, he could slide his knees forward.

It was slow going, being that he could only go about three feet with each pull. It was unnerving, being that he had no net or harness. And it made him look like a giant inchworm.

But it made him feel like Spider-Man. Make that Elvis Spider-Man. Villante had outfitted him in a white, one-piece suit that helped him blend into the side of the building, lest any passerby alert authorities that a skyscraper was being free-climbed by a lunatic.

And for as difficult as the climbing was, the thought of being Elvis Spider-Man cheered him enough—or distracted him enough—to keep going. That, and he needed the time to scheme. Villante had given him a rundown on the apartment, its layout and its contents. He directed Storm toward the bedroom, told him where the bodyguards would likely be, and generally gave him a sense of what he would face.

But it was up to Storm to come up with an exact plan, something he had not done by the time he reached the seventieth and final floor of his ascent. He was—not for the first time—going to have to make it up as he went along.

Secured to his back was a disc-shaped object roughly the size and shape of a children’s snow saucer. It had been wrapped in white, for camouflage purposes.

That was the toy that he began putting into use when he stopped at Rivera’s bedroom window. Removing his climbing pads and letting them stay stuck to the wall of the building, he shrugged the disc off his back, unwrapped it, and placed it on the window.

He pressed a button. Without making a sound, with only the slightest shred of vibration, a diamond-tipped blade inside the disc made a full circle, leaving a clean incision in its wake. Storm yanked away the disc, which retained the circular piece of glass, and quickly attached it to one of the climbing pads still stuck to the building.

Then came the dangerous part. Or, rather, it had all been dangerous; this was simply the part that was most dangerous. If the slumbering Mr. Rivera became aware that a warm, moist breeze was suddenly blowing through a hole in his bedroom window and decided to investigate—and then, further, to alert his bodyguards—Storm might be crawling through the hole to face the barrel of a gun.

His only hope was to move quickly. He affixed the one remaining hand pad to the glass and gripped it tight. He released the kneepads and swung himself inside.

In one fluid motion, he rolled and came up with his Dirty Harry Stealth Hunter drawn, a move he had practiced many times.

Except this was not one of the times he needed it. All he heard was a man snoring thunderously.

He crept toward the slumbering figure of Eusebio Rivera, who was on his back, mouth wide open. Each inhale was met with a noise loud enough to rattle the nightstand next to his bed. Storm had never heard such a cacophonous soft palate. The exhales merely sounded like a person being strangled.

Storm reached for his back pocket and a small, plastic container that resembled a package of Baby Wipes. He pulled out a handkerchief that was slightly damp—again, like Baby Wipes—except what had made it moist was not infant-safe: it had been doused with chloroform.

He held the cloth under Rivera’s nose for exactly two inhales—enough to make sure he wouldn’t wake up for a half hour or so, not so much that he would be unconscious all night.

Satisfied that Rivera had been properly dosed, Storm rolled the man on his side. The snoring stopped—to the relief of anyone within ten floors of Rivera’s penthouse who hadn’t been blessed either with earplugs or congenital deafness.

Storm walked lightly across the deep pile carpeting to the bedroom door. Outside, he could hear a soccer game—sorry,
fútbol
game—playing softly on the television. It was a rerun of Panama’s international friendly against Costa Rica, and it sounded like the ticos were not playing well, to the great relief of Panamanians throughout the isthmus.

For all Storm knew, only one of the guards was watching the television. Or neither one of them were. Making it foolish to open the door. He wished one of the toys Jones had given him made it possible to see through walls. Opening the door without knowing the location of his opposition was foolhardy.