Storm Front

In some ways, the whole scene was surreal to Storm. He had chased Volkov across the continents and throughout the years, and now here he was, right in front of him, sitting in a street-side deli, like any common New Yorker, hiding in plain sight. The people ordering their bagels and grabbing their coffees on the way to the office had no idea that of the two men sitting in their midst, one was an international terrorist and the other was plotting a financial catastrophe that would make the Great Recession look like a little tiny cub of a bear market.

Storm raised his gun and took aim.

“Derrick, for God’s sake, wait…,” Xi Bang yelled after him.

But Storm was already striding across the street with the gun drawn, heedless of the traffic. His eyes and gun barrel were trained on Volkov. The moment he was sure he had a clear shot, he was going to take it. The .44 Magnum cartridge had the power to punch a bullet through the window and still have plenty enough oomph to finish the job.

A propane truck swerved out of Storm’s way, laying on its horn.

Gregor Volkov loved this part. Just loved it.

Whitely Cracker, king of the pig American capitalists, had called him in — no, ordered him in — like he was some kind of domestic servant, thinking that Volkov would gratefully and happily accept his six-million-dollar payment in exchange for the six MonEx codes.

Because, after all, who was Gregor Volkov to Whitely Cracker? Just some mouth-breathing muscle-head who was not civilized enough to attend the same operas; some two-bit thug who Cracker didn’t even want in his office, thus necessitating their meeting in a deli; some dumb Russian who would nibble on scraps even as Cracker feasted from the table above him.

Little did he know.

Little could he guess.

So Volkov was laying it out for him. Everything had changed. Volkov was now the master, and Cracker the servant. They would do with the MonEx codes what Volkov wanted — when and how Volkov said it would be done.

Volkov was enjoying himself so much, he even explained the why of it all. He had been in touch with several powerful Russian oligarchs, who had eagerly agreed to use a part of their windfall from the fulfillment of Click Theory to fund General Volkov’s coup against the den of thieves currently ruling over Moscow, crooks whose rampant corruption sapped Mother Russia of her strength. Forget the losses of the Cold War, the absurdity of the Soviet Union, and the joke that was the government that had ruled ever since. At the expense of all the other world economies, Russia would rise again, without her weakling dependents, without the crooks, and with Volkov as its militarily backed dictator.

And, yes, Cracker would play his part. It wasn’t just because of the Ruger that Volkov had hidden beneath a napkin under the table as they spoke. It was because Volkov would charge a much higher price for disobedience, one he would extract not from Cracker — at least not at first — but from his family. His lovely wife. His beautiful boy. His perfect girl.

Volkov was just getting to this part when the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood up. He hadn’t stayed alive in this world as long as he had without developing certain instincts, and one of them was a near 360-degree awareness of his surroundings.

And so he noticed things. He noticed movement. He noticed strange shapes. He noticed when a horn was blown, and that it was not just the tap-tap kind of horn a motorist sounded when he wanted to gain someone’s attention; it was the angry, heavy horn of a driver who wanted to send a scolding message.

All of these things had come together on the edge of Volkov’s consciousness, jolted him out of his conversation with Cracker, and caused him to look out at the street, where he saw Storm charging.

The Russian paused for exactly half a second, calmly weighing his options. Then he removed the Ruger from under the napkin and fired two perfectly aimed shots.

But not at Storm.

At the propane truck.

The resulting explosion sent a fireball mushrooming up through the canyon of skyscrapers that surrounded the lower Manhattan street. The force of the blast at first depressed the truck, then raised it in the air for a split second before sending it hurtling on its side into the storefronts across the street. At least thirty cars were lifted off their tires and scattered about like children’s toys, some on their sides, some on their roofs. A motorcycle got high enough to come to rest on top of the stoplights behind it.

Bodies were likewise strewn about. Storm, Xi Bang, and dozens of other pedestrians were thrown flat or into buildings. Drivers of cars were crushed inside their vehicles. Miraculously, the truck driver was blown clear of the cab and wound up with non-fatal injuries. Others were not so lucky.

The percussiveness of the blast had shattered every window on the block from the tenth story down, sending down a rain of glass shards that forced Storm to keep his head low.