Richard Castle - Storm Front

“General, with all due respect, I don’t understand why we’re doing this,” Yuri said.

“You don’t understand what?”

“Our employer is paying us generously for each MonEx code we supply, am I right?” Yuri asked. Volkov had not told his crew how generously. He was getting a million dollars per code, but he told his crew it was a hundred thousand. Each member of the five-man crew thought he was getting a decent deal — ten thousand each, with the other half going to Volkov. If any of them suspected the split was, in fact, much less fair than that, none of them dared let on.

“That’s correct,” Volkov said, feeling his anger starting to grow. He did not like being questioned by an underling.

“So why don’t we just keep supplying codes? A hundred thousand to kill a paper-pushing banker — it’s good money for easy work, is it not?”

“Shame on you, Yuri. You think so small,” Volkov said.

“How so, General?”

“Simple logic. If someone is willing to pay us a hundred thousand for a code, it must be worth more than that, yes?” Especially when he’s really paying us a million , Volkov thought.

“But maybe it’s only worth that much to him,” Yuri countered. “Maybe, we should…”

“Yuri,” Volkov said, grabbing the young man’s ponytail and jerking it backward. Yuri’s eyes grew wide as Volkov slapped a hand on his throat. “You are correct in that we may not be able to exploit these codes for our own purpose, in which case we will accept our bounty and move to our next job. But I would like to think optimistically. Don’t you want to be an optimist, Yuri?”

“Yes, General,” he choked out.

“In chess, a grand master does not just approach the game one way,” Volkov said, tilting Yuri’s head farther back. “He has many different strategies, all working at the same time. That way he is prepared, no matter what his opponent does. Do you understand this?”

“Yes, General.”

“I waste my breath on you, Yuri. Just show me what you have,” Volkov said, and released his grip, then subconsciously adjusted his eye patch, which had been knocked just slightly off center.

Yuri rubbed his neck. He did not relish what he had to say next.

“That’s the problem, General. I don’t… We don’t… We don’t have anything.”

“What do you mean? The terminal was reassembled perfectly. We took pictures. I studied the schematics myself.” The volume of Volkov’s voice crescendoed to at least a mezzo forte.

“It’s not that, General. I…”

“Is it the connection? I thought you said you had the satellites set up properly.”

“Yes, General, I do. It’s just…”

Volkov was now at forte. “Then what is the problem?”

“It’s this,” Yuri said, tilting the screen so it was directly facing Volkov.

The Russian’s one good eye scanned back and forth across the text on the screen, his confusion growing with each passing second. It was not that the letters were unfamiliar — they were from the Roman alphabet, one Volkov had long ago been taught. It was not that the words were undecipherable — it was clearly English, which Volkov spoke fluently. But the screen, when taken in its entirety, was incomprehensible. Or at least it was incomprehensible to someone who had not received extensive training in the peculiarities of the MonEx’s unique operating system. And neither Yuri nor Volkov had.

“You’ve entered the code properly?”

“Yes, General. I double-checked it twice.”

“Then what’s… what’s this?”

“I’m just not sure,” Yuri said.

“We must be able to… transfer funds out of this somehow… or… something.”

“I’ve tried, General. As you can see, the func—”

“Get out of my way,” Volkov ordered, gripping Yuri’s shirt and using it as a handle to toss him roughly from the chair.

Volkov sat, tilted his good eye at the screen, and surveyed the keyboard. Surrounding the familiar QWERTY setup were rows and columns of buttons the purpose of which he could not even guess. He typed transfer funds . The screen lit with:

[INVALID COMMAND ERROR]

Access account , Volkov typed.

[INVALID COMMAND ERROR]

Show funds , Volkov tried.

[INVALID COMMAND ERROR]

With each error message, Volkov felt his blood pressure rising. He started experimenting by hitting the strange buttons along the side. Some did nothing. Others made random, odd-looking characters appear on the screen — or strings of letters that made no sense to Volkov. Then there was the baffling series of error messages:

[IMPROPER NULL FUNCTION]

Or:

[OPERATOR VOIDED TRANSACTION]

Or:

[INTERNAL CONSISTENCY CONFLICT]

Or, more simply and most frequently:

[ACCESS DENIED]

This was going nowhere. Volkov’s anger only grew. The MonEx had not been easy to steal in the first place. It had been even more difficult to smuggle into this country and lug halfway up a mountain. He should be rewarded for this effort, not stymied by it. Volkov stood and snarled at Yuri.

“Sit back down,” Volkov ordered. “How dare you shirk your duty?”

“But, General, I…”

“You said you could make this work!”

“I thought it was Linux-based,” Yuri protested. “I didn’t know it had its own operating system. I’ve been trying to find an instruction manual, but you need to have a licensing code and we don’t—”

“Your excuses are feeble,” Volkov shouted. He was at a full fortissimo.

“General, if you could please just give me a week or two to—”

“We don’t have a week or two,” Volkov sputtered.

“We have a deadline.”

And they did. Volkov’s employer had been very explicit: Volkov had to deliver six codes, from the six bankers designated by the employer, all on a strict time line. If Volkov failed to deliver even one of them, he wouldn’t get paid a cent. He could hardly ask for more time because he was trying to figure out how to use the codes for his own illicit purposes.

“General, I…”

“Your incompetence galls me,” Volkov said.

“But, General, if—”

The remainder of the sentence never got out. Volkov yanked the Ruger from its holster, held it to Yuri’s forehead, and depressed the trigger three times in rapid succession. Ribbons of crimson shot across the room, followed by flesh that had previously been attached to Yuri.

Two other members of the crew rushed into the communications center to respond to the gunfire. They stopped short when they saw that the flowing strands of red on Yuri’s head were not, for once, merely his hair. Volkov passed by them and was on his way out of the room before he spoke.

“Yuri has decided to retire,” he said. “Get him out of here.”

“Yes, General.”

“And when you’re done with that, get packed,” Volkov said. “We have another job to do.”

“Oh,” he added, looking at the MonEx, “and find me someone who knows how to work that machine.”

FAIRFAX, Virginia

Derrick Storm crept through the late-afternoon shadows, approaching downwind from the southwest. His flight to Paris didn’t leave until that evening. He had time for one quick mission.

The target house was a split-level ranch, built in the height of the Ugly Seventies and nestled in the heart of a typical East Coast suburban neighborhood. Other houses nearby had become teardowns or candidates for additions. Not this one. It was essentially the same house it had been on the day the first owners moved in. It had been well maintained, but there was only so much nice landscaping could do to save the thing from its own basic dowdiness.