Richard Castle - Wild Storm

It was finally dawning on Storm that there was no one else here. There was no cavalry, no bloodthirsty true believers coming to the leader’s aid. It was just the guard — who wasn’t going to be an issue — and Ahmed.

Well, them and the Tin Man. But Storm didn’t think the Tin Man would put up much of a fight. No heart.

Mostly, Storm couldn’t believe his luck: a Medina Society leader, ripe for the taking.

All he needed was some patience.

He leaned back down against the latticework and watched as, one by one, the lights in the house went out. Then the floodlights followed suit. He removed the AK-47 from his back. He would not need to lay down a heavy blanket of fire against just one man.

Storm’s eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness again and he began formulating his plan. Eventually, the leader — convinced that the Tin Man had been the cause of the false alarm — would fall back asleep. Storm just needed to be able to get into the house without tripping off all that sound and fury.

What kind of system was it? Knowing was the key to defeating it. Back in his days as a private eye — when he was barely scraping out enough business to cover the rent on his tiny strip-mall office — one of the services he offered his clients was consulting on alarm systems. Another one was defeating alarm systems so he could snoop in his target subjects’ homes, not that he advertised that particular offering in his literature.

He was not the world’s foremost expert on the subject. But he knew enough to get by. In his mind, he replayed the scene of himself opening the door. It had happened so fast the first time. But by concentrating on it, he began to slow it down. Each replaying got just a little longer. Details that he had missed the first time began to pop out, almost like a form of self-hypnosis.

Once he got the picture moving slowly enough, Storm caught what he was looking for: there were two pressure sensors in the doorframe, one just above eye level, the other down around his shins. He knew well enough how they worked. They were nothing more than small semicircles of plastic attached to springs. As long as they remained depressed, the alarm system believed the door was still closed. When the springs extended, the system knew the door had opened.

He just needed to keep them down. Back in his private eye days, he used chewing gum, tape, Silly Putty — whatever he had available. He just didn’t happen to have any of those things on him at the moment.

Then he remembered the eucalyptus tree that the cargo truck was parked under. Still moving cautiously, Storm crept around the other side of the porch. Then he made the sprint to the tree, running until he was on the opposite side of the trunk from the house.

He searched for old cuts and scratches in the tree, found several, and began pulling off the gum that had hardened there. He stuffed it in his mouth, where he began working it so it wasn’t quite so stiff. It tasted terrible — Wrigley’s had nothing to fear from untreated eucalyptus gum — but the consistency was right. He waited until he had a decent-sized mouthful of the goo, then moved back toward the house.

All was again quiet. The only thing that had changed about the house from the first time was that the Tin Man was now lying forlornly on his side. Storm crept up the steps, across the porch. He opened the screen door, then turned the handle on the main door.

But this time, he didn’t shove. He slowly nudged it partway open, then held it there with one hand. He bit off a hunk of eucalyptus gum and with his other hand, wedged a lump of it over the top sensor. It held nicely.

He repeated the maneuver with the lower sensor. Gingerly, he opened the door just a little further, so that now the entire doorjamb was exposed. He used the remaining gum in his mouth to completely cover both sensors, packing them tightly so there would be no chance their springs would extend as the gum dried.

He opened the door the entire way. The alarm did not go off. Storm exhaled. He took one step into the house and closed the door behind him.

His eyes were already well accustomed to the dark, but they had not yet focused on the dim recesses of the foyer when he heard one of the more unmistakable noises in the modern world. It resonated straight from its source to some deep, reptilian part of Storm’s brain. It was an authoritative chuck followed by an even more convincing chick .

It was the sound of a shotgun slide being racked from about fifteen feet away.

THE SAWED-OFF SHOTGUN is the most effective short-range antipersonnel weapon ever devised by man. In addition to the massive force of fire, its multitude of projectiles spread upon exiting the muzzle, meaning it only needs to be aimed in a very general sense. There is no such thing as surviving a shotgun blast from point-blank range without significant — and, most likely, terminal — injuries.

The only thing that saved Derrick Storm’s life was that pumping a shotgun requires two fully functioning arms. And Ahmed, with only one, had to brace the shotgun stock against the floor in order to rack the slide before bringing the muzzle back up.

That small delay, no more than two seconds in duration, was all Storm needed. As Ahmed brought the gun back up and fired, Storm was diving to his right. The deadly blast of pellets sailed over his head and to his left, hitting only the air where Storm had once been standing and then the door behind him.

Storm rolled and came up with Dirty Harry drawn, as he had trained himself to do. From the light of the quarter moon that leaked in the small windows, he could make out Ahmed pumping the shotgun, ejecting one cartridge and loading the next one. He again was bracing it against the floor as he performed this maneuver. Storm didn’t give him the chance to fire it again. He aimed for the man’s left shoulder and squeezed the trigger.

The impact from the bullet spun Ahmed in a counterclockwise direction. He fell back and to his left, slamming into the wall before ending up on the floor. The shotgun was still within his grasp, but Ahmed didn’t have a working arm with which to reach for it.

Storm covered the ground between them in three strides. He kicked the shotgun across the room, then went for a light switch.

The room was bathed in a sallow glow. Storm went over to Ahmed, who was desperately struggling to get into a sitting position. But it was difficult without either arm to prop himself up. The pain from the wound had to be excruciating, yet the man did not make a sound.

Blood was already soaking his nightgown. If only to speed things up, Storm reached under the man’s armpits and propped him against the wall. He yelped in agony.

Storm pointed the gun at his large nose.

“Please, please don’t,” Ahmed whimpered, then got his first good look at Storm. “You’re…you’re the man from the desert today. You’re the one who shot all my men.”

Storm did not reply. He reached down and tore away Ahmed’s sleeve, exposing his badly mangled left shoulder. Dirty Harry had made a neat mess of it.

“Please, sir, please,” Ahmed was rambling from somewhere above his two ruined arms. “What is it you want? Do you want the promethium? You can have it. It’s still in the truck. Please, sir, whatever harm I have done to you, I beg your forgiveness. Perhaps we can make an arrangement of some kind? I have a lot of money. It is yours for the asking. Just, please, let me live.”

Storm ripped the sleeve into two long strips. “Your ulnar artery is severed,” he said calmly. “You’re already in shock. If I don’t stop the bleeding, in ten minutes your blood pressure will start to fall rapidly. In twenty, you’ll probably be dead. I’m making a tourniquet right now, but I’m only using it if you tell me exactly what I want to hear.”