Storm Front

Storm didn’t hesitate. The grappling 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.