Storm Front

But then Volkov passed right by the seats where he and Cracker had been sitting.

Storm’s second thought: He was fleeing back to the passenger cabins.

But then Volkov stopped short of business class.

Storm was reacting too slowly, thinking too slowly. Both of his thoughts had been wrong and his left leg was now dragging badly behind him.

Volkov was going not for a gun or for a passenger, but for the emergency exit door on the side of the plane. He yanked away the seal around it and then grasped it in both hands.

It came away easily. They were at low enough altitude that the change in pressure was not significant, however the wind was now whipping into the cabin through the opening. Thousands of feet down, the earth sped by.

Storm realized, too slowly, the advantage Volkov now had: a forty-pound steel weapon. He had hefted it so he was gripping the bottom of the door and he was coming fast at Storm.

Storm was trapped midway down the aisle — a sitting duck. If he stood there, he was going to get bashed. And he couldn’t retreat fast enough on his gimpy leg to be able to elude Volkov.

He had no choice. He dropped his shoulder and barreled forward.

The move caught Volkov off guard. He brought the door viciously down on Storm but hit only the meaty parts of Storm’s back and shoulder. Storm was on him too fast.

The two men landed heavily, rolling on the ground. They hit up against the wet bar in the back of first class, then lurched toward the now-open emergency door. Storm was trying to work his hands into Volkov’s face, aiming to further injure his eye. Volkov was reaching for Storm’s leg, looking for the gunshot wound, attempting to sink his fingers into it.

Both men were bellowing and snarling, partly because of the pain they were suffering, partly because of the pain they were inflicting, partly because this had become something deeply instinctual. They were two organisms battling for their very survival, calling on the deepest parts of their energy reserves, doing whatever they could to mete out maximum punishment to the other.

They kept switching who was on top, although, to a certain extent, it didn’t matter. Neither the top man nor the bottom man seemed to have any advantage, just different ways to gouge, scratch, punch, kick, or grab the other.

Then, suddenly, that changed. Volkov was on top and Storm was so intent on going at the man’s eye, he didn’t do a good enough job playing defense. Volkov managed to get both his hands around Storm’s neck, and the brutal Russian was squeezing with every nanogram of strength he had. Storm realized with sickening certainty that he was going to lose this fight — and his life.

Dots were appearing at the corner of his vision. Then the darkness began closing in. The image — Volkov hunched on top of him, sneering sadistically — was quickly going to become pinprick-sized, then disappear altogether. Storm had mere seconds left.

He did not know exactly where he was on the floor. He sensed he was dangerously close to a whole lot of rushing wind, which meant he was near the edge, but he could no longer be cautious.

With the last ebb of effort he could summon, he heaved himself toward the open door.

As he rolled, his right foot — the one that still had some feeling — hit one side of the opening. Then his right hand the other side. Volkov, whose hands were still clenched tight around his opponent’s neck and who had drawn his knees underneath him, was not nearly as wide. He was, in fact, something of a ball.

A ball that Storm had successfully aimed right at the middle of the door opening.

Now it was just a matter of momentum. Storm had something to stop his — the sides of the door. Volkov did not. He was still traveling, only there was no longer an airplane underneath him.

For a brief moment, as his sneer was replaced by a look of sheer terror, he tried to keep his clutch on Storm’s neck. But as his body tumbled fully through the opening and started a drop that was as inevitable as gravity, he lost the angle he needed, and therefore lost his grip.

The last thing Storm saw of Volkov was his writhing figure growing small as it plummeted through the night sky to the hard ground many thousands of feet below.

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.