Those hopes were dashed when Storm saw that the man was being preceded by a thin shaft of light that was growing brighter as he approached. He was carrying a flashlight. It was only a matter of seconds until it illuminated Storm. What happened in the seconds that followed would determine the fates of countless people.
Storm stayed still, the KA-BAR firm in his right hand. It was possible the man might not see Storm until he was close enough to attack. That was now the best scenario.
But no. When the man rounded the bend in the stairs between the second and third floors, the flashlight was pointed down at the stair treads, but some of it spilled onto Storm. First the beam struck Storm’s feet. Then it climbed up to his shins and knees. When it reached Storm’s waist, it stopped, as did the man on the stairs. He was halfway down, a full six stair treads away from Storm.
Storm didn’t wait for what came next. He threw the KABAR, aiming it just to the left of the flashlight. His thinking was that the Russian likely had the device extended in his right hand, and therefore the middle of the man’s chest would be slightly to the left.
It proved to be good thinking. The KA-BAR buried itself, blade first, between the man’s ribs, piercing his heart. The small moan that followed was quickly drowned out by the sound of his body tumbling down the stairs. He landed at Storm’s feet.
“Corporal, are you okay?” a man said in Russian from somewhere up above. Storm had spent enough time in Russia to recognize the origins of the accent. The man was from Moscow.
Storm summoned his best impersonation of a Muscovite and replied, in Russian, “I stumbled. I’m fine.”
“You’re as clumsy as an ox,” the man said.
Storm replied, “And you’re as ugly as one.”
The man laughed. Storm pulled his knife out of the dead man’s chest, then took his flashlight. It was a full-size Maglite, a big, weighty steel thing, made heavier by the four D-cell batteries that powered it. Thinking quickly, he said, “I think I bent the firing pin on my gun when I fell. I’m going to have to come back up and get another one.”
“The general won’t like that.”
“I will have to offer him my apologies,” Storm said.
“No, Corporal. Take one of mine. I’ve got two.”
“Thank you, my friend. If we will be alive, we will not die,” Storm said, pleased with himself for hauling out that old Russian saying. It seemed to settle the conversation for the moment.
Storm stripped the T-shirt shreds from his feet. He had to sound like a clumsy Russian who was unconcerned about the noise he was making as he climbed back up. He began trudging noisily upward, to the third floor then up to the fourth.
When he made it to the last bend in the stairwell before he reached the top floor, his flashlight illuminated a pair of dusty black boots. Storm quickly swung the beam upward to the man’s face, blinding him. The man reacted by turning away and shielding his eyes with his left hand. His right hand held a gun by its barrel.
“Turn that thing off,” he ordered.
“Sorry,” Storm said, complying with the order. But by that point the man’s night vision was thoroughly ruined.
“Thank you again for the gun,” Storm said as he reached the landing.
“You’re wel—” the Russian began.
But the words were cut off. Storm had swung the Maglite at the side of his head, connecting with a crushing blow. Storm caught his body before its fall could make a sound. The crack of the Russian’s skull had been loud enough.
Storm stayed at the top of the landing for a minute, to see if anyone would come to investigate the source of the sound. When he was satisfied no one had heard it — or that it had been dismissed as related to the strange car explosion — Storm tucked the Maglite into his jacket and eased away from the stairwell.
He entered the long hallway that split the two sides of the building. It had doors — or, in some cases, merely door openings — scattered at irregular intervals along both sides. Small amounts of ambient light spilled from those doorways, giving the corridor a gloomy illumination.
Storm thought back to the schematic he had studied on Clara Strike’s phone. He did not have a perfect photographic memory, but he could close his eyes for an instant and see it. From where he was standing, the hostages were in the sixth room down on the right. There were also rooms on the left to contend with. Any one of them could have men in it.
He would have to go room by room, clearing them as he went. There was no other way to do it.
He wondered briefly how Clara Strike was doing — what obstacles she was facing, whether she had made it up the staircase yet, how many hostiles she had encountered — then put those thoughts out of his mind. Strike was a big girl. She could handle herself.
He drew the Glock. He inched to the first room on the left, then rounded quickly into the doorway. No one. He crept in. It was empty, save for trash.
He was about to exit when he heard two voices coming from the hallway, talking in Russian. They were heading toward the north stairwell. If they made it there and found their colleague with the crumpled head, they would sound the alarm and this operation would instantly change.
“I hear it’s painful,” one of them was saying.
“Oh, it’s the worst,” the other assured him.
“I had a gallstone once,” the first said.
“Kidney stone is worse, the only way to—”
The sentence became muffled. They had disappeared behind the door to the room immediately next to Storm’s. He had to act fast. He took one glance out into the hallway and, when he saw it was clear, padded silently to the next room.
He paused at the door. It was windowless and made of a cheap wood laminate. It had a piston at the top that kept it closed.
It presented Storm with a conundrum. Waiting for them to reemerge and taking them out in the hallway wasn’t much of an option: The hallway ran the length of the building, meaning he — or the bodies he felled — could be spotted from some distance. At the same time, the door ensured there was no way to enter this room without the inhabitants being aware of him.
He pulled his jacket over his head and hunched over, tucking his gun in his gut. He burst through the door, moaning, immediately falling facedown on the floor in a rounded lump as the door closed behind him.
“What the…,” one of the guards started to say.
“Ohhhh, my kidney stone,” Storm groaned in Russian.
The second guard laughed. The first was less amused.
“Very funny,” the man said, walking toward Storm to either kick him or help him up. “Now get u—”
Storm rolled over with the Glock pointed upward and put a bullet between the man’s eyes.
The second guard stared dumbly at Storm. The computer in his head was just a little too slow to process what was happening. By the time it clicked in, Storm had rolled to his right and pumped three slugs into the man’s face.
They were imperfectly aimed, not the neat kill shot Storm had delivered to the first man. They were enough to drop his target, but Storm wasn’t sure if they had completed the job. He leaped on the man like an angry animal, putting a knee on his windpipe and two hands across his mouth to stifle any yell or groan.
None was forthcoming. The shots had not been perfect, but they’d had their intended effect.
Storm got to his feet. The next problem was how to get back out of the room unseen without knowing who might or might not be in the hallway. He silently cursed the invention of solid doors.
Then, suddenly, it became a moot point. The sound of gunfire erupted from the south stairwell. Clara Strike had obviously resorted to doing things more noisily. There was no sneaking up on anyone anymore.