Storm Front

Access account, Volkov typed.

[INVALID COMMAND ERROR]

Show funds, Volkov tried.

[INVALID COMMAND ERROR]

With each error message, Volkov felt his blood pressure rising. He started experimenting by hitting the strange buttons along the side. Some did nothing. Others made random, odd-looking characters appear on the screen — or strings of letters that made no sense to Volkov. Then there was the baffling series of error messages:

[IMPROPER NULL FUNCTION]

Or:

[OPERATOR VOIDED TRANSACTION]

Or:

[INTERNAL CONSISTENCY CONFLICT]

Or, more simply and most frequently:

[ACCESS DENIED]

This was going nowhere. Volkov’s anger only grew. The MonEx had not been easy to steal in the first place. It had been even more difficult to smuggle into this country and lug halfway up a mountain. He should be rewarded for this effort, not stymied by it. Volkov stood and snarled at Yuri.

“Sit back down,” Volkov ordered. “How dare you shirk your duty?”

“But, General, I…”

“You said you could make this work!”

“I thought it was Linux-based,” Yuri protested. “I didn’t know it had its own operating system. I’ve been trying to find an instruction manual, but you need to have a licensing code and we don’t—”

“Your excuses are feeble,” Volkov shouted. He was at a full fortissimo.

“General, if you could please just give me a week or two to—”

“We don’t have a week or two,” Volkov sputtered.

“We have a deadline.”

And they did. Volkov’s employer had been very explicit: Volkov had to deliver six codes, from the six bankers designated by the employer, all on a strict time line. If Volkov failed to deliver even one of them, he wouldn’t get paid a cent. He could hardly ask for more time because he was trying to figure out how to use the codes for his own illicit purposes.

“General, I…”

“Your incompetence galls me,” Volkov said.

“But, General, if—”

The remainder of the sentence never got out. Volkov yanked the Ruger from its holster, held it to Yuri’s forehead, and depressed the trigger three times in rapid succession. Ribbons of crimson shot across the room, followed by flesh that had previously been attached to Yuri.

Two other members of the crew rushed into the communications center to respond to the gunfire. They stopped short when they saw that the flowing strands of red on Yuri’s head were not, for once, merely his hair. Volkov passed by them and was on his way out of the room before he spoke.

“Yuri has decided to retire,” he said. “Get him out of here.”

“Yes, General.”

“And when you’re done with that, get packed,” Volkov said. “We have another job to do.”

“Oh,” he added, looking at the MonEx, “and find me someone who knows how to work that machine.”

CHAPTER 7

FAIRFAX, Virginia

Derrick Storm crept through the late-afternoon shadows, approaching downwind from the southwest. His flight to Paris didn’t leave until that evening. He had time for one quick mission.

The target house was a split-level ranch, built in the height of the Ugly Seventies and nestled in the heart of a typical East Coast suburban neighborhood. Other houses nearby had become teardowns or candidates for additions. Not this one. It was essentially the same house it had been on the day the first owners moved in. It had been well maintained, but there was only so much nice landscaping could do to save the thing from its own basic dowdiness.

Storm moved with measured confidence. He was armed, one pistol strapped to his chest and another attached to his ankle. His intelligence on the interior of the target house was exhaustive. He knew its every crevice, from its three shag-carpeted bedrooms to its cramped kitchen to its four-shade aqua-and-white bathroom tile. He knew its vulnerabilities, its accesses and egresses, its partially obscured trapdoor. He knew how to shimmy up the storm drain and vault into one of the bedrooms on the second floor. The floor plan was practically implanted in his brain.

He stayed in what he recognized would be blind spots, invisible to any of the house’s occupants. This was what Derrick Storm had long trained himself to do: to see without being seen, to slink without notice. He was stealth personified. He was like the wind, there but forever unseen. There would be no detecting him, not even as he circled to within striking distance of the house, moving from tree to tree, ever closer to the target.

The final twenty feet from his last hiding spot to the house was open terrain. This was the most perilous part of the job. He studied the house for signs of alarm and, seeing none, paused to gather himself. Then he performed a perfect cheetah sprint to the side of the house nearest the garage.

He stopped again, listening intently for even the smallest hint that anyone inside had become aware of his presence. There was none. The rhythms of the late afternoon in this neighborhood were unchanged.