Wild Storm

  THE RESULT OF MCRAE’S twenty minutes of furious jury-rigging was not anything that would geek the Star Trek crowd for its design.

  It didn’t boast any kind of sleek housing, nor did it have a handle or a trigger. To Storm’s untrained eye, it was basically a sheet of metal supporting some electronic stuff and a piece of cylindrical glass, all of which McRae had hastily soldered or taped into place. It was roughly the size of two toasters, placed end to end.

  When it came time to test the device, McRae donned dark, wraparound glasses and had Storm do the same.

  He fired it just once, activating it by briefly depressing the rubber tip on a piece of metal, bringing it into contact with another piece of metal. An intense blue beam—less striking than the one Storm had seen demonstrated in Maryland, but still quite vivid—leapt from the device and into the wall behind them.

  “Okay,” McRae said. “You’ve got yourself a laser beam.”

  “Brilliant,” Storm said, and meant it.

  “A couple of things. One, this is just a fraction of the power of the ones that I’ve been making. You’ll see there is only one crystal, as opposed to the sequence of crystals I used on the other ones. And it’s a lot smaller, made from cast-off pieces I used in some of my early testing. But if blindness is what you want, blindness is what you’ll get. This is the aperture the beam will come out of,” he said, pointing to a glass-covered slit at the front of the contraption. “The way I’ve got this set, the laser will actually spread as it propagates. That makes it less powerful, but it also makes it easier to aim. If you can get this going anywhere near a guard’s face and he doesn’t have eye protection? It’ll be like he stared directly into the sun for way, way too long. He’ll be blind for anywhere from twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

  “Terrific.”

  “But, look, you have to careful. It’s very fragile. I didn’t exactly have time to make it battle rugged, you know? And it’s also not going to last very long. I’ve got a few batteries here,” McRae said, showing Storm a plastic-covered power pack with wires coming out of it. “But this laser will drain down those batteries very quickly.”

  “How quickly?”

  “If I had to give it a SWAG, I’d say you’ve got maybe twenty-five or thirty seconds of laser time.”

  “Can you give me replacement batteries?”

  “This isn’t a kid’s remote control car,” McRae said. “I’m afraid these batteries are the only ones I have. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

  “All right, great work,” Storm said, stuffing the safety glasses into one of his pants pockets. “Now, before we head out and face the guards, we’ve got one more thing to take care of.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The promethium. I assume you still have a supply of it?”

  McRae nodded.

  “We have to get rid of it,” Storm said. “I’ve seen to it that the supply coming in here is cut off. But I want to make sure no matter what happens to us, there’s not enough left to make another laser beam.”

  “Okay. It’s over there,” McRae said, pointing toward a large metal container that looked like a refrigerator.

  “How would you recommend disposing of it?”

  “Well, extreme heat would do it. If you cook promethium at a high enough temperature—I’d have to look up the exact number, but it’s around a thousand degrees Fahrenheit—it changes the internal structure. Essentially, it turns into a big blob and ruins it for the purpose of turning it into a crystal for a laser beam.”

  “Do you have something in here that could generate that kind of heat?”

  “No.”

  “So…”

  “Or we could just pour it into this sink with hot water running,” McRae said, pointing to an industrial-sized slop sink. “This promethium is in salt form. It’ll dissolve easily in water.”

  “Why didn’t you start with that?”

  “Because I wanted to impress you with my knowledge of chemistry the same way you impressed me with your physics.”

  Storm cracked a grin. “I guess that’s fair. Where does the water go after it leaves the sink?”

  “I’ve been told it drains into the bilge tank. But right now, in this storm, I’m sure the bilge pumps are operating overtime. Essentially, we’ll be pumping this right into the ocean.”

  “All right. Let’s get that tap running.”

  It took just a few minutes for Storm and McRae, working in concert, to empty the promethium bin. For the second time in a day, Storm watched as millions of dollars worth of the planet’s rarest rare earth disappeared into a flow of water.

  He was relieved to see it go. He was the only person who knew where to find the remaining cache of promethium. And what McRae said about ruining promethium by heating it had given Storm an idea about how he could make sure no one could ever again use that cache.

  As the last of the promethium swirled down the drain, Storm said, “Okay, let’s go,” and made for the door to the laboratory. The handle didn’t budge.

  “It’s always locked from the inside,” McRae said. “I’m sure a little bit of your C-4 stuck near the hinges would—”

  “No,” Storm said. “I want to preserve the element of surprise as long as possible. It’s time for the patient to make an appearance back in his sickbed.”

  THEY RETRACED THEIR CEILING SLINK, coming back through the hole in McRae’s bathroom.

  Once they were through the door into the bedroom, Storm made a great display of helping a hunched-over McRae back into bed. It was a show for anyone who happened to be watching on the display, yes. But it also helped Storm use his body to shield the laser from the camera without looking suspicious.

  Keeping his body between the lens and the laser, Storm went over to the intercom and pressed the button.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi. I’m sorry to trouble you again. But Dr. McRae just puked up a lung. It’s stopped for now, but he could really use some antinausea medication to make sure it doesn’t start up again.”

  “Be right there.”

  Storm put on his dark glasses. “Close your eyes,” he instructed McRae.

  The door opened. There was only one guard this time, the one McRae called Delta. Storm activated the laser, aimed it in the general direction of Delta’s face, and held the contact down for four seconds.

  Delta wailed and fell to his knees. He had not moved from the doorway. Storm set the laser down on the bed, walked over to Delta and gave him a swift kick in the head. The guard fell to the floor, face-first. Storm wrenched Delta’s arms behind his back and secured them there with his plastic hand restraints. Storm checked the man for weapons. Delta had been unarmed.

  “One down,” Storm said. “How many are there, anyhow?”

  “I’ve only even seen five. I named them after the letters of the Greek alphabet. The one you just took out was Delta.”

  “Well, in that case, we’ve got Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Epsilon. It’ll be like a regular frat party in here. Hopefully it’ll be just as much fun.”

  Storm retrieved the laser off the bed and went back to the door, where Delta’s inert form made for a very effective stop. Storm expected his attack would have been seen on the cameras and would provoke a response. He positioned himself in a place where he could see up the hallway but where his own body was not exposed.

  He waited. Thirty seconds. Sixty. Ninety.

  “What’s happening?” McRae asked.

  Storm didn’t reply, because he didn’t know himself.

  Then, finally, the door at the far end of the hallway, the one that led to the stairs, went just slightly ajar. Epsilon emerged first, followed by Beta and Gamma. They came in a low crouch, with two on the near side of the hallway and one on the far side. Their guns were drawn.

  Storm put the laser at their eye level, then brought it from arou
nd the side of the door. The men started firing the moment the device emerged, but so did Storm. And whereas their weapons needed to be aimed with great accuracy, Storm’s did not. He held down the button for fifteen seconds, making sure he hit both sides of the hallway.

  Their cries were nearly as loud as their gunfire. So was their anguished Swedish, which even a non-Swedish speaker like Storm could recognize as curses.

  They kept firing blindly. Storm heard the bullets whizzing by, hitting the walls and floor until, one by one, they began dry-firing their weapons.

  Storm took a furtive glance out the door. They were midway down the hallway, still cursing. Two of them were rubbing their eyes with their non-gun hands in a futile attempt to massage their worthless eyes back to sight. The other was groping toward his pants pockets, perhaps to find a clip to reload. Storm set the laser down, sprinted at them, his footfalls all but inaudible on the carpet.

  He choreographed his moves in his mind as he ran, and when he arrived, executed them skillfully. He took down Gamma with an elbow to the head. Beta got a kick to the face. He finished by snapping the hardest part of his forehead into the softest part of Epsilon’s temple.

  Storm began fastening plastic restraints on each downed man.

  “Wow. You’re good at this rescue thing after all,” McRae said, peeking cautiously from around the door to his room.

  “Oh, what, this? I learned this from watching Alida attack dandelions,” said Storm.

  “Those are some ugly dandelions.”

  “Eh, they grow on you,” Storm said. “Come on.”

  “But what about Alpha?”

  “You mean Laird Nelsson? The chief of security.”

  “Yes. The huge towhead.”

  “My guess is that he and Tilda, the tall redhead you may have seen around the ship, are currently with Ingrid Karlsson, deciding how best to get rid of me.”

  “Wait, Ingrid Karlsson? This is her boat? The Ingrid Karlsson?”

  “Sure is. Why?”

  He was shaking his head. “I read her autobiography, Citizen of the World.”

  “Don’t tell me you really liked it and that you secretly align yourself with all its goals and aims and that now you’re going to turn on me, because that’s already happened to me once today.”

  “No. It was rambling crap. I bought it out of a remainder bin for five bucks,” McRae said. “When I get home, I think I’m going to ask for my money back.”

  STORM RETRIEVED THE LASER, which had anywhere from six to eleven seconds of fire time left, depending on the accuracy of McRae’s guesswork. He passed the guards again. Gamma, the one who had taken the elbow, was groaning.

  Storm gave him a kick in the head as he passed. It wasn’t very sporting. But this wasn’t a game. He quickly checked each man for extra clips. Finding none, he did not bother to tear their weapons from their hands, He didn’t want an empty weapon that badly.

  With McRae following him, Storm climbed the stairs, training the laser on the door at the top. Anyone who opened that door was going to get a blue blast in the face.

  But no one did. They reached the top of the staircase and Storm announced, “Ingrid’s quarters are in the front of the ship. We’ll take a right out of here and walk toward the bow. Just stay behind me and watch your footing. It’s nasty out there and this deck is sort of narrow. There’s a railing, yes, but I don’t need to tell you how dim your chance of rescue is if you fall in that water. If you feel like you can’t make it, just stay here and I’ll come back for you.”

  The moment Storm budged the door open, the wind caught it and pinned it back, nearly tearing it off its hinges. Storm stuck his head out. There was no one on the deck.

  Bending into the full force of the gale, he began trudging forward. Each step was an effort. He had to cradle the laser like a football to prevent it from being torn from his grasp. His dark glasses were quickly covered by rain and sea spray being blown at him. He lowered them on his nose so he could peer over them, then had to squint as the full blast of the wind-driven water hit him.

  He was aware McRae was struggling behind him somewhere. But when he looked back, he saw the scientist had retreated back into the stairwell. It was probably for the best. No point in getting Alida’s husband hurt.

  Storm had made it approximately halfway to where he could turn toward Ingrid Karlsson’s quarters when the sizeable figure of Laird Nelsson rounded the corner.

  The man McRae knew as Alpha was actually startled. He had obviously been talking with Ingrid, not manning the security cameras. He had no idea the prisoners were on the loose.

  The delay gave Storm a chance to swing the bulky laser upward as Nelsson reached for his shoulder holster. Storm had the laser flat at eye level by the time Nelsson was drawing his gun.

  As Nelsson aimed his weapon, Storm raised his safety glasses and pressed down the metal contact. A brilliant blue beam leapt from the device and struck Nelsson full in the face. Storm planned to hold down the button for four seconds.

  Three seconds in, two things happened more or less simultaneously. First, the beam cut off, its battery spent. McRae’s guess had been off by one second.

  Second, the bullet fired by Nelsson struck Storm. Nelsson had been aiming for center mass and his targeting was true. The bullet hit Storm’s vest just below the sternum, knocking the wind out of him and throwing him on his backside.

  But, in some ways, it was the best thing that could have happened. Because it meant Nelsson’s three succeeding bullets missed high.

  Storm could hear Nelsson bellowing over the clamor from the hurricane. He had brought his hand to his eyes and was furiously swiping at his face, like he could somehow clear away the effects from the laser.

  When he finally figured out he couldn’t, he brought the gun back up and began firing it wildly down the deck, in the general area of where Storm had once been.

  Storm had let go of the laser, ripped off the glasses and hunkered down as flat as he could against the floor. His chest felt like it had a fire spreading in it and breath was still not coming easily to him. As he began crawling forward—so he was no longer in the last spot where Nelsson had seen him—he was struggling to grab gulps of air.

  Nelsson was coming down the deck toward him, in part because that was the direction the wind was taking him. Storm could tell from the way he was walking there that the man was sightless. But he was still dangerous. He was swinging the gun around and firing it sporadically.

  Then suddenly he wasn’t firing. He was reaching into his pants, as if going for another clip. That’s when Storm sprung up and bull-rushed him. Storm was not eager to physically confront a man who outweighed him by at least eighty pounds. But it was either that or take his chances with fifteen more eight-gram bullets, which were capable of far greater damage.

  Storm charged ahead, his speed slowed by the force of the wind. At the last moment, Nelsson seemed to become aware he was about to get tackled. He brought his hands up to defend himself, but Storm barreled into his midsection, driving Nelsson onto his back. The Beretta went flying from his hands.

  Whatever thought Storm had about getting up and chasing after the gun didn’t last long. Nelsson had grabbed him and wasn’t letting go. Ingrid Karlsson’s chief of security had already figured out the essence of this confrontation: a blind man is at a significant disadvantage in hand-to-hand fighting once he’s no longer touching his opponent. But as long as he keeps contact, it’s a fairly even fight. There’s a reason blind high school wrestlers have won state titles.

  Nelsson reached for Storm’s face, or where he thought Storm’s face would be. His fingers were trying to claw and gouge anything they could touch. Storm landed a punch, but it was one without much force behind it. They were too close. And yet there was no escaping. There were not many men large enough or strong enough to keep hold of Derrick Storm. But this was one of them.
br />   Storm tried pulling away again. It was like trying to break free from an enraged octopus. He kept having to defend his face from Nelsson’s savage attacks, while trying to mount his own meager offense. He got in a few more punches, none of them very convincing.

  He was so distracted by his inability to hurt Nelsson that he hadn’t fully braced himself for what came next. In one deft move, Nelsson flipped Storm over and got his hands on Storm’s throat. The enormous Swede wrapped his fingers around Storm’s neck and was squeezing, his forearms bulging.

  They were now turned sideways on the narrow deck. Storm reached toward Nelsson’s sightless eyes and scratched at them. But Nelsson didn’t seem to care. He had already lost that sense.

  Suddenly, Storm was losing his. Nelsson was bringing his immense weight to bear on Storm’s neck and it was staunching the blood flow to his brain. Blackness was closing in around the edges of his vision. His brain was starving for oxygen.

  With every joule of energy he had left, Storm gathered his legs against Nelsson’s chest and then straightened them. It was a classic weight lifting move; for as strong as his opponent was, Storm’s squat thrust was far more powerful than Nelsson’s grip.

  The huge man was propelled upward, toward the railing, which was marginally shorter than Storm’s fully extended legs. Nelsson blindly grasped for something, anything to keep him from going over—Storm’s feet, the railing, whatever. But without his eyes to guide his hands, he only succeeded in flailing at the air.

  He caught briefly on the side, but his momentum kept carrying him over. Storm hopped up, raced over to the railing, and peered over. The last thing he saw of the erstwhile Alpha, Laird Nelsson, was a patch of blond hair going under a huge wave far below.

  AFTER A BRIEF SWEEP OF THE DECK, Storm located the gun the chief of security had dropped.

  Storm ejected the clip and gave it a hopeful inspection. It was, alas, empty.

  The only thing Storm had to his advantage was that he was the only one who knew it. He stashed the gun in his waistband and continued on toward Ingrid’s quarters.