Storm Front: A Derrick Storm Thriller

  They lapsed back into contemplation. About a half hour later, an agent came down and said Agent Colston—the burly guy with the goatee, apparently—was grateful for their patience, but he needed a little more time to interrogate the defendant.

  Sniff wasn’t the suspect anymore. He was now the defendant.

  An hour later, Storm received a text message from Kevin Bryan’s cell phone. “A truck has departed Volkov’s Bayonne location. Will advise of further movement. You safe?”

  Storm thought about his current location and texted back: “Couldn’t be safer.”

  The reply: “Good. Stay that way.”

  Storm hadn’t expected Volkov to remain in Bayonne. He was a predator. Predators stay on the move. It’s a fact in the animal kingdom that carnivores tend to have much larger home ranges than herbivores. The equivalent could be said about the human world. Storm was just trying to think about how to use that fact against Volkov.

  He wished he could somehow harness the Bureau’s considerable muscle, but he knew too much about how they operated. They had laws to follow, jurisdiction to respect, procedure to which they adhered. Most of all, this wasn’t their investigation. They had no evidence that would justify action against Volkov. The say-so of one private investigator wouldn’t begin to do the trick.

  He was back to thinking about what he would be able to accomplish on his own, when an agent came back downstairs, invited them into the elevator, and led them to a conference room on the second floor.

  There, Agent Colston received them.

  “Thank you for staying, Mr. Cracker,” Colston said, then turned to Storm. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “Derrick Storm.”

  A smile crept across Colston’s face for a brief moment before he tamped it down. “What a coincidence. I was just chatting with a man named Carl Storm earlier this morning. Is he a relative, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps,” Storm said.

  “And what is your interest in this matter?”

  “I’m a private investigator,” Storm said, presenting his Storm Investigations business card. “Mr. Cracker has me on retainer.”

  “Fair enough,” Colston said. He pivoted his attention away from Storm. “Mr. Cracker, I have to say, it’s a little unusual to have the victim of a crime waiting in our lobby when I come in with the man we’re accusing of defrauding him. But I suppose it’s also convenient.”

  “Saves you a trip to Manhattan,” Cracker said amiably.

  “Well, yes.” Colston paused, folded his hands, unfolded them. “I guess we should start at the beginning. I’ll spare you some of the details, but I can give you a rough outline of our investigation. We got a tip that there were some financial irregularities at Prime Resource Investment Group that were worth investigating.”

  “A tip? From whom?”

  Colston again wrestled with how much to say. But, ultimately, Cracker would probably learn it anyway.

  “Actually, it was your wife.”

  “Melissa?” Cracker said, as if he had more than one wife and her identity needed to be clarified.

  “That’s right.”

  “But how did she…” he started, then he shook his head. “And to think people don’t believe me when I say she’s smarter than me.”

  “Anyhow, we got some warrants, and sure enough, we were able to find that there had been a steady drip of money out of your accounts, going back years. Like a lot of embezzlers, Mr. Sniff started out small, then got more bold as time went along and he didn’t get caught. Eventually, he figured out that you just weren’t minding the store at all, and the drip became more like a torrent. He was very sophisticated about how he did it, and it took us a while to unravel it all. But, essentially, he was robbing you blind. He has buried billions in offshore accounts, both in the Caribbean and Switzerland.”

  “I knew it!” Cracker said.

  Colston and Storm looked at him incredulously.

  “Well, okay, obviously, I didn’t know it. But I just… It’s like I was telling Mr. Storm before. I knew my trades were mostly good. It just didn’t make any sense that I was out of money. Like, a few weeks ago, I had converted some grain futures into…”

  “Mr. Cracker, if you don’t mind, I have a lot of work to do here,” Colston said.

  “Sorry, sorry. Continue.”

  “Anyhow, he maintained fake books for you, for a while, anyway. Then he figured out it was actually more fun—for him—if you thought you were broke. It would not only stress you out, it would make you borrow money to try and make up what you had lost, thus putting you in an even deeper hole when he eventually pulled the plug. He wanted you humiliated as much as possible. He maintained fake account ledgers for your clients and the SEC, of course. So it took us a while to untangle it all. Eventually, we were able to establish what he was doing and how he was doing it. But it was more on the level of being able to observe general patterns secondhand. We still had to catch him in the act. So we convinced Lee Fulcher to pretend that he had a margin call and ask for all his money.”

  “That was fake?”

  “That was a trap,” Colston said. “Mr. Sniff had grown incredibly greedy. Again, he wanted to put you in the deepest hole possible. We knew that if there was a sudden demand for forty-three million dollars, it would put him into action.”

  “Because it would make him have to come up with the money?”

  “No, actually, the opposite: because it would make him steal the last little bit he could. He knew the margin call would be the thing that pushed you over the edge. This was his last withdrawal before you got closed out for good. Lucky for you, we were watching. He made his move right before the end of business yesterday. We made sure we had it fully documented, then picked him up earlier today.”

  A look of utter amazement had washed over Cracker. “Unbelievable,” he said. “So what happens now?”

  “Well, we’ve been having, ah, discussions with Mr. Sniff for the last few hours,” Colston said. “We showed him some of our evidence and presented him with two scenarios. One is where he decides to fight us. He has no assets with which to do so, because we’ve gotten a judge to freeze all his accounts. But he goes down swinging anyway. We pile on the charges, insist on consecutive sentences rather than concurrent ones, and send him to the nastiest hole of a prison we can find, where he is more than likely raped and beaten by his fellow inmates until he either dies of old age or sheer exhaustion. Or…”

  Colston allowed himself another small smile before he continued: “Or he cooperates, admits wrongdoing, returns the money he stole from you and your clients, and serves ten years in a minimum security prison for white collar felons. It may be too generous an offer, but it’s one that saves us a lot of time and resources that are better spent catching other crooks. And it makes you financially whole a lot faster than if the thing had to drag through the courts.”

  “And?” Cracker asked, leaning forward.

  “He’s waiting to sign the plea bargain documents as we speak,” Colston said. “The good news for you is that he hadn’t spent any of the money he stole. Actually, he had done quite a fine job investing it. I think you’ll end up liking the return he got for you.”

  His fortune restored, Cracker was beaming, enough that Storm was quite sure he had—at least momentarily—forgotten that he still had a sociopathic Russian on his tail.

  But after he received assurances that he would get updates from Colston and left the building, it didn’t take long for him to remember. He and Storm had made a right turn out of the Poison Pill’s parking lot, pulling onto Route 17’s three lanes of southbound traffic.

  They were no more than a half mile down the road when the bullets started flying.

  Three slugs slammed into the back of the Jaguar, making three nickel-sized holes in the bumper.

  Cracker promptly dove into the well of the passenger seat. “Someone’s shooting at us!” he yelped. “Why is someone shooting at us?”

  Storm’s only reaction w
as to press the accelerator and look in the rearview mirror for the source of the gunfire. It was a white Lincoln Mark LT pickup truck. There was a driver and a passenger, neither of whom Storm could make out, thanks to afternoon sun glare. The man shooting at them was standing on the flatbed, braced against the top of the cab. He had an AR-15, the semiautomatic, civilian version of the military M-16.

  Storm’s first thought was that it was a strange choice. The AR-15 had its uses, and there were reasons it had been the standard-issue rifle of the U.S. Army for more than four decades—it was light, accurate, easy to carry, simple in its design, and cheap to mass-produce. But it was more of a peashooter in a scenario where an elephant gun would have been a better choice. On the back of a pickup truck, Volkov could have mounted a .50-caliber M2 Browning that would have needed about thirty seconds to turn the Jaguar into a shredded heap of scrap. The AR-15’s .223-caliber round just didn’t pack the same punch.

  Then Storm figured it out: the tires. They were trying to shoot the tires, disable the Jaguar, then kidnap Cracker. They couldn’t risk killing him. He was their key to unlocking the power of those MonEx codes.

  That, Storm knew, was their vulnerability. He relished the idea of getting into a shoot-out with people who would be afraid to shoot back.

  More gunshots rang out, but this time they missed low, ricocheting off the pavement. Cars began swerving off the road to get out of the Lincoln’s way. New Jersey drivers were a hardy breed, made tough by long exposure to aggressive driving, but gunfire was a bit much even for them.

  Storm’s plan was simple: find a place to pull over where no one would get hit in the cross fire, take out Dirty Harry, and take his time picking off the three assailants. He reached into his jacket for his gun then swore loudly.

  “What is it?” Cracker asked.

  “I left my gun in the trunk,” he said.

  There could be no stopping now. And that would soon be a problem. This section of Route 17 had lights. Lots of them. So far they had been green. But that wouldn’t last.

  “Get your sorry ass in that seat and put your seat belt on,” Storm ordered.

  “But they’re shooting.”

  “Not at you.”

  “What do you…”

  “Seat belt. Now,” Storm said, jerking the wheel hard to the left to swerve around a Honda, sending Cracker sprawling into the passenger-side door. When he recovered, he complied with Storm’s command.

  “What are you going to do?” Cracker asked, his voice cracking with panic. “Do you… do you have a plan?”

  “Yes. My plan is for you to shut up.”

  Storm began weaving through and around his fellow travelers, slaloming from one lane to the next, leaving a lot of rubber on the blacktop but making sure his tires were never exposed to a clear shot from the gunman. The Jaguar was faster than the Lincoln, but in this traffic, that advantage was mitigated. He needed a clearer, light-free stretch of roadway if he was going to have a chance of outrunning their pursuers.

  Then his GPS showed that, as if sent by the gods, a large divided highway was approaching. It was labeled Route 3. Storm allowed himself half a smile. Route 3 led rather quickly to the New Jersey Turnpike. There was only one light between him and more than a hundred miles of uninterrupted highway.

  Then the light turned red.

  This being New Jersey, a few cars ran the light. But otherwise, the vehicles in front of Storm were dutifully coming to a halt. He tugged the wheel right, steering the Jaguar into the breakdown lane, laying off the accelerator but not daring to brake. He couldn’t give the thug in the flatbed of the Lincoln a closer shot.

  The traffic from the cross street was now easing through the intersection in one continuous line, feeding in from both sides, leaving only a few scant feet between each car.

  “Your secretary told me you have a classic video arcade,” Storm said as he measured the maneuver he was about to attempt. “You ever play Frogger?”

  “No? Why?”

  “You’re about to,” Storm said.

  He tapped the brake for a half second as he eyed the westbound lane, then shifted his view to the eastbound lane. More shots were coming from the Lincoln, but they were wild. An Exxon sign beside them shattered. Some flower planters exploded. Storm only prayed the drivers milling about as their gas was pumped didn’t get hit by a bouncing bullet.

  The Lincoln was closing in. And fast. If he stayed on the brake much longer, he was going to be rear-ended, probably pushing him into another car in the process. He’d be at a dead stop. If that happened, he might as well fasten Cracker into the Lincoln, then shoot himself—it would save everyone some time.

  Then he saw an opening, albeit not much of one. Maybe it was enough. Maybe it wasn’t. But the moment for further deliberation had passed. Two bullets plowed into the Jaguar’s trunk. If the shooter adjusted his aim just a foot lower, Storm would lose any choice he had in the matter. It was time to act. He jammed the accelerator to the floor. The Jaguar leaped forward.

  “Brace yourself,” Storm called out.

  Horns blared. Cracker screwed his eyes shut. Storm gripped the steering wheel as if it were his hold on life itself. He had aimed for a clearing in the westbound lane—the first lane of cars they had to negotiate—but there was no such gap in the eastbound lane. He was heading straight for the passenger-side door of a Subaru. He could see the driver’s eyes grow wide and her mouth drop to unleash a scream as she realized she was about to be speared by what appeared to be a runaway car. But Storm couldn’t adjust course without clipping another eastbound car. A collision was imminent.

  Then at the last second, he nudged the wheel to the right. He squeezed past with inches to spare. Storm let out a rebel yell as they charged toward Route 3, now totally unimpeded.

  Behind him, he could hear the crunching of metal as the Lincoln T-boned the Subaru.

  Storm only hoped that, because neither car was going too fast, the drivers would be okay. He was not a deeply religious man, but he uttered a quick prayer.

  Storm kept the gas pedal to the floor until they reached the left-hand exit that led to the highway. As they wound around the ramp onto the highway, he eased up on the speed, relaxing his grip on the steering wheel.

  Cracker looked like he was going to faint. He started doing some strange breathing exercise. Storm was about to tell him to stop—it was annoying—but then decided to let the man huff and puff. It was better than having to hear him talk.

  Storm kept one eye on the road, one eye on his rearview mirror. As soon as they straightened out and reached the merge, he accelerated. A welcome sign told him the exit for the New Jersey Turnpike was a mere three-quarters of a mile on the right.

  “So was that… was that Volkov?” Cracker asked.

  “You got anyone else in your life who might have reason to shoot at you?”

  “If I had gone bankrupt? Yeah, a horde. But not now. He’s the only one.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  “So what are we going to…”

  “Shit,” Storm said.

  “What is it?”

  The pickup had reappeared in his rearview mirror. Its front grille plate was bashed in and its front bumper was missing, but it was otherwise intact. Its engine must have had enough torque to power it through the wreckage.

  The only blessing was that it appeared the shooter had been thrown from the…

  Never mind. He was reestablishing his position, with his arms draped over the top of the cab. He must have seen the accident coming and saved himself by hunkering down in the flatbed.

  “What’s going on? Tell me,” Cracker said.

  “Your friends are back.”

  He was able to join the southbound lanes of the New Jersey Turnpike without sustaining any more fire from the Lincoln, but by now it was late afternoon. No one was going anywhere at much more than the speed limit. Storm could use the breakdown lanes to pass, but he didn’t dare use them to travel: They were a minefield of shredded t
ruck tires and other debris. He’d be too likely to blow a tire.

  In those conditions, he couldn’t open up any ground on the Lincoln. If anything, the driver of the pickup was taking more chances in his passes, not caring if he clipped the occasional car’s bumper, and therefore was gaining slightly on them. The guy with the AR-15 was taking potshots. Even if he was too far away to be able to reliably hit a fast-moving, weaving target, it was tempting fate to let him keep blasting away. Eventually, one of those bullets was going to find its target. Storm was just grateful none of the other cars had been hit. In truth, not many of them seemed to even notice the gunfire. An AR-15 muzzle blast was easily mistaken for a backfiring muffler.

  Storm’s brow furrowed. Running away was frustrating him, and not just because it wasn’t working. He wanted to feel like he was doing something proactive to improve his situation. His current course of action was too passive. Storm hated passive.

  “What do you have in this car?” he asked.

  “What do you mean, like weapons?”

  “That would be a good start.”

  “Well, I’ve got a mini Swiss Army Knife on my key chain.”

  “A two-inch stainless steel blade and a nail file. They might as well surrender to us now. Anything else?”

  “Nothing. I’m a hedge fund manager, not a soldier of fortune.”

  Storm sighed. This was the problem with amateurs. You had to spell out everything for them. “No, I mean, what else do you have in this car? I want you to list every single item in this car that isn’t bolted down.”

  “Uh, okay, let’s see,” Cracker said, turning around to catalogue the contents of his backseat. “I’ve got my tennis bag… a six-pack of Poland Spring water… a CD case… a bottle of Macallan I was going to give to a buddy of mine at the club… my daughter’s car seat… a cigar case and… That’s it. Except for what’s in the glove compartment.”

  Storm felt like he was rescuing a six-year-old. “And what’s in the glove compartment, Whitely?”

  “Uhh, let’s see… Some napkins… aspirin… a tire gauge… my insurance and registration… and, oh, that’s where I put my sunglasses!”