Storm Front

The second guard laughed. The first was less amused.

“Very funny,” the man said, walking toward Storm to either kick him or help him up. “Now get u—”

Storm rolled over with the Glock pointed upward and put a bullet between the man’s eyes.

The second guard stared dumbly at Storm. The computer in his head was just a little too slow to process what was happening. By the time it clicked in, Storm had rolled to his right and pumped three slugs into the man’s face.

They were imperfectly aimed, not the neat kill shot Storm had delivered to the first man. They were enough to drop his target, but Storm wasn’t sure if they had completed the job. He leaped on the man like an angry animal, putting a knee on his windpipe and two hands across his mouth to stifle any yell or groan.

None was forthcoming. The shots had not been perfect, but they’d had their intended effect.

Storm got to his feet. The next problem was how to get back out of the room unseen without knowing who might or might not be in the hallway. He silently cursed the invention of solid doors.

Then, suddenly, it became a moot point. The sound of gunfire erupted from the south stairwell. Clara Strike had obviously resorted to doing things more noisily. There was no sneaking up on anyone anymore.

Storm burst out into the hallway, tossing the Glock to the side and yanking out Dirty Harry, happy to have its coercive powers more immediately at his disposal. He was ready to shoot anything he saw, and he didn’t have to wait long. A man appeared out of a room roughly fifteen feet away, immediately turning south, toward the noise from the melee and away from Storm.

It was a careless mistake, one the man paid for with his life. Storm pulled the trigger twice. The bullets entered the man’s back on either side of his spine. Twin explosions of red burst from his chest. He fell forward, arms splayed.

Storm went to the wall nearest him and crouched, gun still drawn, making himself as small a target as possible. He was ready to drop anyone else who appeared in the hallway. He waited, primed.

A form emerged from the south stairwell. It was too distant — and too dark — for Storm to have a decent shot at it immediately.

He watched how it moved. It wasn’t some big, Russian thug. It was Clara Strike. But it wasn’t Strike with her normal glide to her. She was hurt.

She moved up the hallway, toward Storm. He started slinking toward her, staying low with his eyes up, his right index finger still poised on the trigger.

But there was nothing more to shoot. Eventually, they worked their way until they met in the middle of the hallway, just outside the room where the Cracker family was holed up.

“Are you hit?” Storm said softly.

“Yeah. The vest took it. But, Jesus, my ribs.”

“Broken?”

“I think so,” she said.

“How many did you take out?”

“Two. You?”

“Six.”

“Show-off,” she whispered.

Eight down. So much for the theory that half would go to the airport while half remained here at base. Of the original eleven, there were either one or two left here — depending on whether they had sent one man or two to the airport to scoop up Whitely Cracker.

Storm guessed there were two. It was the safer guess — better to assume you had more resistance and be pleasantly surprised when there was less. More than likely, it was Volkov and one other man inside with the family. They would know that for whatever was happening outside, two armed men barricaded in a room with a closed door would be hard to overcome.

Storm considered his options and decided quickly on a course of action. The door was the issue. The door needed to be dealt with.

“You got any more C-4 left?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“With you?”

She quickly rooted in her flak jacket and came up with a small, rectangular piece of a substance that looked like modeling clay.

“Blasting caps?” he asked. And before he could even ask her to, she was already in the midst of producing those as well.

“Keep me covered,” Storm said.

He rose and pinched off small chunks of the C-4, molding them around the door hinges as he did so. He was guessing at how much to use, knowing that too little wouldn’t do the job but too much could harm the innocents inside. Just one more thing not to screw up.

He set the blasting caps in the clay, then motioned for Strike to retreat down the hallway with him. There was no sense in either of them taking shrapnel.

He nodded. She pressed two buttons.

The explosion was small, controlled. For a moment, Storm worried he hadn’t used enough. But then there was a crash as the door fell inward.

One of the children loosed a muffled scream. A spray of bullets, fired from an automatic weapon, greeted the demise of the door as either Volkov or his thug fired outward at anyone who might be rushing in behind the falling panel. The rounds buried themselves harmlessly in the wall on the other side of the hallway.

Storm nodded at Strike. They began working their way back toward the door, slowly, silently, guns drawn.