Wild Storm (3 page)

“That wouldn’t narrow it down much,” Storm said. “No, this is our key. This spot. Everyone is talking about what happened in the air. But my bet is it was something on the ground that is responsible for this.”

“What could do that to an airplane from the ground? Some kind of surface-to-air missile?” Rodriguez asked.

“Something like that. If it was, you would think someone would have seen it. A rocket is not exactly invisible. It’s loud and bright and leaves a contrail. Can we dispatch some folks to make some gentle inquiries?”

“Got it,” Bryan said.

“Okay, so that’s getting us closer to figuring out what happened,” Storm said. “Where are we on the why?”

Bryan nodded at Rodriguez, who walked over to the large flat screen. Bryan’s jumble of flight plans disappeared with one touch from Rodriguez.

“Until someone credible claims responsibility, we’re mostly just fumbling in the dark,” Rodriguez said. “The current theory is that this is just random violence by some sick dude or dudes. No one has any clue what they want.”

“That’s not a very satisfying theory,” Storm said. “Are you sure there’s not anything the victims had in common? Maybe this was more targeted than we realize.”

“Not that we’ve been able to sort out so far,” Rodriguez said.
“
Th
ere were de
fi
nitely some heavy hitters on board all the planes.”

“Like who?”

“We’ve had the nerds at work, searching for patterns among them. Nothing has popped so far. Not sure I have anything to tell you.”

“Humor me. Give me the biggest name on each flight.”

Rodriguez shrugged. “Okay, let’s see here. Flight 312 had Pi aboard.”

A photo of an unshaven, unkempt young man with a mop for a head of hair appeared on the screen. He vaguely resembled a grown Muppet.

Rodriguez continued: “Pi is the leader of the International Order of Fruitarians, a quasi-religious group that tries to convince people that fruit is the original diet of mankind—nutrition as God intended. Really, it’s a cult. It slowly lures innocent college kids, especially unsuspecting young women, into its clutches and then eventually brainwashes them into doing things like selling flowers at the airport.”

“Maybe the father of one of these kids who lost his daughter to this nonsense decided to seek ultimate revenge and fire a rocket at the airplane the guy was on,” Storm said. “A father would go to any length to protect his daughter from a monster like that.”

Rodriguez let that pass. “Flight 76 was the cargo flight. Beyond the crew, the only passenger was a Karlsson executive named Brigitte Bildt, who had some business in the States and decided to hop aboard. She was not the company’s CEO, but she apparently ran the day-to-day operations and was also involved in a lot of its strategic decision-making.”

A photo of a middle-aged woman with blue eyes and kinky brown hair was now being projected. It appeared to be a corporate head shot—no frills, no glamming up. She had been looking at the camera with a certain gravity, almost as if she was aware of the seriousness of the way the photo would someday be used.

“Is it possible Karlsson Logistics had business enemies?” Storm asked. “Maybe it was involved in some kind of leveraged takeover that Bildt was pressing for?”

“We’re looking into all possibilities,” Rodriguez said. “Moving on, Flight 494 had a couple of bigwigs, a professional athlete, some business types. But the biggest name was Congressman Erik Vaughn.”

A new image appeared. It was the beady-eyed, puffy-faced visage of the congressman, topped with helmet hair that never seemed to move.

“Eww…am I allowed to say I hate that guy?” Storm asked.

“You wouldn’t be alone. He chaired the Ways and Means committee and he’s one of those small-government zealots. He has used his position as leverage, refusing to bring any matter involving taxation before Ways and Means unless he gets a guarantee of reduced spending somewhere. I don’t think there’s a group whose funding he hasn’t cut. The young, the old, highway funding, the whole concept of foreign aid….You can go on and on with him.”

“We’d have a long list of people who’d love to see him die in a plane crash,” Storm acknowledged.

“There were others, too. Some more famous than others. And I guess it depends on your definition of famous. One of the people on the first plane down was Rachel McCord.”

“The porn star?” Storm burst.

Rodriguez arched an eyebrow. “Gee, Storm, how did you know about her?”

“I…I…read about her in a magazine once,” Storm said. “Anyhow, what’s my job in all this? Why does Jones want me here?”

As if he had the room bugged—and, really, he probably did—a trim man of about sixty with buzz-cut iron-gray hair and steely blue eyes walked through the door.

JEDEDIAH JONES’S TITLE WAS
Head of Internal Division Enforcement. Its acronym was no accident, given that it neatly described his prevailing modus operandi.

Storm owed his existence to Jones in more ways than one. While it was Clara Strike who first discovered Derrick Storm—then a struggling private investigator who was considering changing his name to Derrick Aarons just to move it up a few notches in the Yellow Pages—it was Jones who took Storm’s raw abilities and honed them into polished proficiencies, turning Storm into a rare asset.

Their long association had been mutually beneficial in other ways as well. It had made Storm a rich man, one with a contact list of friends and sources that was even more invaluable than all the money he had amassed. And the missions that Storm had been able to complete—often against impossible odds—had been an invaluable boost to Jones’s career.

And yet there was always tension between the men. Jones knew he could never fully command Storm, who prioritized many things—his own moral code, his sense of patriotism, the welfare of his friends and family—over his orders from Jones.

And Storm, likewise, knew where Jones’s loyalties lay. And it wasn’t in their tenuous relationship. For all Storm had helped him achieve, for all the times Jones had deployed substantial resources to save Storm, Jones lacked sentimentality toward him. After a botched mission in Tangier, Morocco, Jones had faked Storm’s death, leading the world to think he had perished for four long years, not caring about the impact it had on Storm’s loved ones. What’s more, Storm knew that if it ever became expedient to have his death become real, Jones wouldn’t hesitate. He would leave Storm bleeding in a river full of piranhas if it benefited CIA goals or Jones’s sometimes-warped ideas about what was best for the country.

“Is he up to speed?” Jones asked, not bothering to immediately acknowledge Storm.

“As up to speed as any of us are at this point, sir,” Bryan said.

“Excellent,” Jones said, finally turning to his protégé. “Do you have a vehicle here?”

“Yes.”

“Great. We’re going to ask you to ditch it for the time being. Where you’re going, you’re not going to be Derrick Storm, and I don’t want you driving some souped-up hot rod, even if it is wrapped in a bland coating.”

“All right. Who am I and where am I going?”

“Not far. To Glen Rock, Pennsylvania.”

“That’s the Flight 76 crash site.”

“Correct. And it’s also where the National Transportation Safety Board has set up its investigation into what took that plane down. The NTSB will take its sweet time figuring it out, following all their policies and procedures and then coming out with a report in a couple of months outlining what they think might have happened. We don’t have a couple of months. I want to know what they know before they know it.”

“Why Flight 76?”

“One, because it’s as good a place to start as any figuring out what happened up there,” Jones said. “Those flatfoots from the FBI allowed this to happen on their turf and we’re going to stick it up their ass by cleaning up the mess for them.

“And, two, because the woman who owns the plane, Ingrid Karlsson, is a friend of mine. She’s been an aide to me and this agency on numerous occasions. She’s asked me for a favor and I don’t want to disappoint her.”

Storm looked for telltale signs of artifice from Jones, even though the man was too cagey to give them with any frequency. Still, Storm knew Jones didn’t do favors without the promise of a significant return. Storm wondered what it was this time—or if he’d ever find out.

There was never just one layer with the Head of Internal Division Enforcement.

“Okay,” Storm said. “And I’m guessing you have a plan for me beyond waltzing into an NTSB-secured crash site and asking them to show me their underwear?”

“Of course,” Jones said. “Follow me.”

CHAPTER 4

THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, South of France

he rug was from the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire, a perfect and near-priceless specimen restored to a glory not seen since Suleiman I himself last walked on it. Resting on top of it was a desk made from rare, Cuban mahogany, harvested from an old-growth rain forest and hand-carved by a master artisan who toiled for a year on its intricacies. Perched on that was a ringing phone, connected to a network of satellites that guaranteed users global coverage, from the peaks of Antarctica to the icy reaches of the North Pole.

The woman answering it was Ingrid Karlsson, who might have been fifty—only her birth certificate knew for sure—and who might have been the world’s richest woman. Much as with her age, she would neither confirm nor deny speculation.

“Yes?” she said, and then listened to several minutes of excited jabbering on the other end of the line.

When the voice stopped, Karlsson said, “She’s dead? Are…are you sure? There is no mistake?”

She waited for the reply, then said only “thank you” before ending the call.

She sat perfectly still for a moment. Her gray-blue eyes stared straight ahead. Her near-black hair, which was chopped in straight bangs across her forehead, fell in shimmering strands down to her shoulders. Swedish by birth, a resident of Monaco for tax reasons, she had written a book—half memoir, half polemic—entitled
Citizen of the World
. Nevertheless, she retained the trademark stoicism of her homeland in the face of tragic news.

She pressed a button on the desk. In Swedish, she said, “Tilda, come in here, please.”

A statuesque redhead, dressed in brief shorts and a form-fitting knit top, appeared in the door.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“One of our planes has crashed in the United States,” she said. “Brigitte is dead.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We must make a video. We will share it with the press and on the Internet.”

Tilda’s head tilted as she hesitated. While once a common request, this was now unusual. But she recovered with, “Yes, ma’am. Right away.”

Tilda disappeared. Karlsson bowed her head, thinking of Brigitte, thinking of all they had achieved together. Ingrid Karlsson was the only child of a man who bequeathed her a modestly successful Swedish shipping company when she was in her twenties. Over the ensuing three decades, Ingrid had taken it and—one ambitiously leveraged acquisition at a time—turned it into the world’s largest privately held logistics company, an empire that included a massive fleet of container ships, planes, trucks, and railroad cars. All told, Karlsson Logistics had a presence in sixty-two countries and on four continents.

The press had taken to calling her “Xena: Warrior Princess,” for her aggressive business style, Amazonian stature, and more-than-passing resemblance to the 1990s cult television icon. She detested the nickname at first, then warmed to it when she realized it was meant as a sign of respect, a symbol of her strength and success.

And the success had been considerable. Her estimated wealth, which started in the many millions, burgeoned into the billions. She freely shared her riches with her employees, both her personal staff, to whom her loyalty was fierce, and her corporate workforce, which enjoyed salaries and benefits beyond what any publicly traded company could offer.

Brigitte had been her most trusted executive during the last decade and a half. More than just a right hand, she was treated like a partner, even though Ingrid retained sole ownership of the business. There was even talk—since neither was married—that the two may have been more than just colleagues. But that was only speculation.

What was known was that Brigitte Bildt had increasingly become the public face of Karlsson Logistics, the one who held the press conferences and opined in the media on matters of importance to the company.

It was a role ceded to her willingly by her boss. During her younger years, Ingrid had enjoyed her prominence. She reveled in the nightlife of Monaco. She flew stunt planes at air shows. She played polo better than most of the men at charity benefit matches. It was all to the delight of the paparazzi, who could always sell another photo of a real-life warrior princess to the tabloids.

But she also used her celebrity as a kind of pulpit to preach a message of free trade, international cooperation, and global thinking. She spoke for groups of policy makers and for academics, saying that governments that meddled in the markets or tried to enforce national boundaries—whether through force or through oppressive tariffs—were merely standing in the way of history. She envisioned a world map without lines on it. She had once funded a conference of geographers who presented papers speculating on the death of the nation-state as an organizing construct. “One day,” she told them during her opening remarks, “we will all be citizens of the world.”

But through the years, she had grown weary of the spotlight, of journalists who would rather gossip about her sexuality than tackle important issues, of being a target for the kind of criticism that came with such high visibility. Her social life became more private, centering on smaller gatherings with thoughtful friends or valued associates. She had lost her appetite for fame.

Her final gesture of withdrawal from public life was to commission a yacht, pouring a reported $1 billion of her fortune into its construction. She named it
Warrior Princess
and signed the shipbuilders to aggressively worded nondisclosure agreements.

Rumors of its grandeur were legion. Even the Russian oligarchs were said to ooze jealousy over its alleged specifications: a mix of gas turbine and diesel engines said to deliver more than one hundred thousand in total horsepower; a triple-reinforced hull that was both bulletproof and bombproof; luxuries that included a full-size cinema, a library, private gardens, a swimming pool, a full discotheque, and a 5,200-square-foot master suite; and a superstructure built to withstand the pounding of a Category 5 hurricane. Aerial photographs of the 565-foot-long vessel tended to be from a distance. No one had ever photographed the inside.

Nevertheless, Ingrid Karlsson was going to give the world a small glimpse of it now. Tilda had returned with a high-definition video camera attached to a tripod, which she set in front of the desk.

“Are you ready, ma’am?” she asked.

Ingrid nodded. Tilda zoomed in on her boss, then pushed a button.
Th
e small red light on the front of the camera illuminated.

“I lost a loved one today,” she began. “And I am aware, on this most horrible of days in the world’s history, that I am not alone. My heart shatters at the loss of Brigitte Bildt, my valued colleague, my best friend, my North Star. But my heart shatters also for the many thousands who share in my suffering.”

She bowed her head for a moment, then continued: “Right now, we can only speculate as to who is responsible for this senseless act. We can only guess as to what ideology or religion compelled them to murder innocent hundreds and what goals they hoped to accomplish with this slaughter. Perhaps soon we will have more details, but already—in our shattered hearts—I am sure we all understand the root cause of this tragedy.

“It is us. It is our desire to live as petty, warring tribes rather than as citizens of the world. It is our tendency to focus on the tiny streams of our differences rather than on the great oceans of our similarities. It is our corrosive belief that one country or one God or one belief is greater than another. It is our governments, which focus on their narrow agendas rather than on peace and prosperity for all.”

Her voice was rising now. “We cannot continue in this reckless manner. It remains my fervent hope that someday, the wrongheadedness of our twenty-first-century thinking will perplex schoolchildren in the same way we today are bewildered by ancient astronomers who believed the world was flat.”

She paused, lowered her gaze to the desk in front of her, then looked back at the camera. “But I am not speaking to you today simply to offer meek words. The wolf has snatched our children, our husbands, our mothers. It is time to find the wolf and destroy it. Toward that end, I would like to offer a bounty of fifty million dollars to any individual or group who captures the person or persons responsible for this attack.

“To the perpetrators of this horrible act, I say: you will be found. You will be brought to justice. There is no hole you can hide in, no tree that is tall enough, no den my wealth cannot penetrate. I will personally spare no expense to see that you are found. And I will aid any corporation, government, group, or individual who requires my resources or assistance to achieve this goal.

“I do this for Brigitte. And for all the shattered hearts in the world.”

She offered the camera one more steely glance.

And then it melted. The Amazonian warrior princess—the woman whose toughness and determination had built an empire—bowed her head and wept.