From overhead, Storm heard the beating of helicopter rotors getting closer. The reinforcements were arriving. Perhaps they were Jones’s people. Perhaps they were FBI.
To Storm, it didn’t matter. They had their priorities. He had his. We can’t be trusted, either.
He waded into the back of the truck, amid all that fancy, delicate hardware. As a lover of technology, he felt some small regret for what he was about to do. As a lover of humanity, he felt none.
He turned Dirty Harry around, gripping it by its still-warm barrel so it was less like a gun and more like a hammer. And then he started swinging.
The truck trailer was soon filled with the sound of glass shattering and metal being twisted. If his gun barrel wasn’t strong enough to destroy something, his booted foot took over. Storm took three minutes to wreck as much as he could. The helicopter was getting closer the whole time.
When he was satisfied he had reduced the guts of the weapon to a shattered mess — beyond any hope of reconstruction or even comprehension — he stepped back outside the truck and called Jones.
“Storm!” he heard. “What’s going on?”
“There’s no one inside,” Storm said. “They were operating it remotely.”
“But we have the weapon.”
“Yes and no. I think they must have been monitoring the truck and seen me coming. I heard a small charge go off inside as I was approaching,” he lied. “They sabotaged their own weapon rather than let us get it. It’s a mess inside.”
Jones took a second to absorb this information. “Well,” he said, philosophically. “I suppose we could have anticipated that. We’ll get it back here and study what’s left. In the meantime, I have another task for you. One of our agents picked up some chatter as to who might be behind this and why. But we can’t afford to compromise him. I’m hoping you can go in and, ah, extract some information.”
“Okay. Where am I going?”
“Panama.”
CHAPTER 14
PANAMA CITY, Panama
torm spent the first part of his flight studying the intelligence that had been gathered on the Emirates Four.
Not that it was much. As with the Pennsylvania Three, crash investigators had yet to make much sense out of the wreckage left on the ground.
Likewise, the victims were a scattershot cross-section of the kind of folks who might have reason to visit Dubai. Along with hundreds of little-known mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, and business travelers and vacationers, there were: Lyle Gomez, a professional golfer coming into the city for a tournament; Beth Bowling, the tennis player; Barbara Andersen, a celebrated cabaret singer; Viktor Schultz, the head of Tariffs and Trade for the European Union; Gunther Neubauer, who represented Schleswig-Holstein in the Bundestag, the German equivalent of Congress; and Adrienne Pellot, a leggy French supermodel best known for her Vogue cover shots.
The list went on. Until he made sense of why this was happening, all the information had the feeling of cosmic background noise, hissing on a low frequency for all eternity.
Storm soon drifted off. He was fortunate he slept well on airplanes. Lately, it seemed to be the only rest he was getting. He was jolted awake by the wheels of the Gulfstream IV touching down on Runway 03R/21L at Tocumen International Airport.
Like many of North America’s air transit hubs, Tocumen was still mostly shut down, but it was slowly coming back to life. Commercial airlines were going to begin flying again soon. Private jet travel had been cleared for anyone brave enough to attempt it.
Storm entered on his own passport — something of a novelty for him when traveling on business — and quickly cleared customs. He was on the other side, in an otherwise empty arrivals area, when he was greeted by the only other soul there, a dashing man whose features appeared to be a mix of Spanish and Mesoamerican.
“And he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet,” the man said.
“And he called his name Jedediah, because of the LORD,” Storm said, completing the passage from II Samuel.
“Greetings, Mr. Storm. Whatever you’ve been told my name is, you will call me Carlos Villante. You will remember at all times that I am the deputy director of the Autoridad del Canal de Panama. I work for a man named Nico Serrano, who is the director of the authority. And you are an American investor here to consider buying bonds issued by the authority. Are we clear?”
“Exceedingly.”
“Good. Come with me. We have much to do and little time.”
Storm followed Villante to the short-term parking area, where he walked straight for a Cadillac CTS.
“Nice ride,” Storm said. “But isn’t it a little too nice for the deputy director of a public agency?”
A knowing smile spread across Villante’s cheeks. “Have you ever heard the story of the man with the bags of sand?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Please, get in and I’ll tell you,” Villante said, gesturing toward the passenger’s side as he entered via the driver’s side.
Villante buckled his seat belt, fired up the engine, and drove out of the parking garage as he spoke. “One morning at the border, a man on a bicycle approached a customs agent with two bulging saddlebags. The customs agent opened the bags to find they were filled with sand. The agent proceeded to dig through them, sure he would find drugs or jewels or some hidden contraband. He found nothing but sand, so he had no choice but to wave the man through.
“The next morning, the man on the bicycle came back. Again, his saddlebags were filled with sand. Again, the customs agent checked them thoroughly and, again, he found nothing. The same thing happened the next morning. And the morning after that. And every morning for weeks. The customs agent was growing increasingly frustrated. He started forcing the man to empty out the bags on a table, so he could search the sand grain by grain. Then he turned the bags inside out. Then he put the bags through an X-ray machine, sure he would see something. But there was never anything more than sand.
“Finally, one morning the man on the bicycle was coming through, and the customs agent said, ‘Please, sir. I surrender. I will not report you, today or ever. But you must tell me: what are you smuggling into my country?’ And the man said, ‘Very well. I will tell you. I am smuggling bicycles.’”
Storm cracked a grin.
“So that is why I drive this car,” Villante said. “People at the authority, people all over Panama City, they think I must be taking a bribe from somewhere. And they have searched high and low trying to figure out from whom and for what. As long as they remain determined in that search, they will never see what I am really doing.”
“Good cover,” Storm said.
“So far,” Villante said. “Anyhow, I hope you are sufficiently impressed that I may now give you your briefing.”
“Please do.”
“Your target is named Eusebio Rivera. He lives on the seventieth-floor penthouse of Pearl Tower, one of the newest skyscrapers in the city. He is a very successful, very wealthy businessman. He is well connected among the class of businessmen who came to prominence in the years leading up to this country’s takeover of the canal and he only grew richer after it happened. But I assume Jones told you about the troubles of the expansion project and what that means for men like Rivera?”
“He did,” Storm said. “But he said it was better to let you fill me in on your encounter with him.”
Villante told Storm about his visit with Rivera on the day of the Pennsylvania Three. From his phone, Villante played a few clips of Rivera talking about Erik Vaughn. Villante was unable to bug Rivera’s apartment, but he was able to get a tap put on his work phone. The recordings had made it clear: Villante was not the only man Rivera had told about the dead congressman. He wasn’t even the only man Rivera had invited over to toast Vaughn’s death. In each case, the toast was the same: down with Erik Vaughn, up with Jared Stack.