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    Brain Storm
    Brain Storm
    Brain Storm
    Ebook329 pages4 hours

    Brain Storm

    By Warren Murphy, James Mullaney and Richard Sapir

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The computer world is always evolving, but now it logs on trouble for CURE. Dr. Harold Smith’s own meticulously organized neural files are covertly copied, analyzed and downloaded by an amazing new interface system. Soon all of CURE’s deepest secrets are under control of a shadow force. Not only Remo but even the Master of Sinanju have been accessed and installed. Now they are virtual puppets on a hard drive, slicing and dicing for the enemy at the touch of a keystroke. And in the next step, a super-secret organization begins experimenting with the Destroyer downloads to unleash an unimaginable threat the Fourth Reich.

    Breathlessly action-packed and boasting a winning combination of thrills, humour and mysticism, the Destroyer is one of the bestselling series of all time.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateNov 16, 2023
    ISBN9781035999552
    Brain Storm
    Author

    Warren Murphy

    Warren Murphy was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He worked in journalism, editing, and politics. After many of his political colleagues were arrested, Murphy took it as a sign that he needed to find a new career and the Destroyer series was born. Murphy has five children—Deirdre, Megan, Brian, Ardath, and Devin—and a few grandchildren. He has been an adjunct professor at Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and has also run workshops and lectured at many other schools and universities. His hobbies are golf, mathematics, opera, and investing. He has served on the board of the Mystery Writers of America and has been a member of the Private Eye Writers of America, the International Association of Crime Writers, the American Crime Writers League, and the Screenwriters Guild. Warren Murphy’s website is www.warrenmurphy.com.

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      Book preview

      Brain Storm - Warren Murphy

      Chapter One

      The thing that scared Andy Frost most that day was the parking.

      The crime rate didn’t bother him. Everyone he knew had been mugged at one time or another. Among New Yorkers, it was sort of a twisted badge of honor. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for people to invent stories of violence for the daily water-cooler competition.

      The people themselves didn’t frighten him, though the Christmas crowds had a tendency to get on his nerves. Everyone had a touch of agoraphobia at one time or another, but not Gothamites. When you were raised in a ten-story walk-up like a nest of rabbits in a squalid hutch with a hundred other human dregs screaming and pounding through the walls and ceiling and floor all hours of the day and night, you learned to live with overcrowding. You complained about it, sure.

      Constantly. But you lived with it.

      Yes, the murder rate was high. So what? Everyone died in his or her time. Here people were killed over stuff as trivial as a pair of sneakers or a leather jacket. What, they didn’t have murders in Wisconsin? Facing down the business end of a gun didn’t worry Andy. And it was a trade—a high per capita murder rate in exchange for all-night drugstores, fresh bagels on demand and the chance to see Cats or Evita or a dozen other shows seven nights a week.

      The other fearful things of everyday life in the city were too numerous to mention. You had to deal with Con Edison, rabid rats, cockroaches the size of ashtrays, greedy landlords if you weren’t lucky enough to benefit from rent control and about a million foreign cabbies who seemed to have learned their driving skills behind the wheel of a Kuwaiti bumper car.

      All of these things he could shrug off as part of living in the most exciting city in the world. If you complained about them, you were a New Yorker. If you complained about them and meant it, you were a schlemiel.

      No, none of these things bothered him anymore. But the one thing that still made Andy Frost shiver and whimper like a rain-drenched fox terrier was the parking in midtown Manhattan.

      Parking condensed every fearful element of the city. You got your ticket from an angry foreigner in a tiny booth. You drove into a drafty underground garage that stank of urine and housed more species of wildlife than the Bronx Zoo. Muggers and murderers were likely skulking behind every other parked car. And at Christmas? Forget it.

      You’d be better off leaving your car in the middle of the Triborough Bridge and walking the rest of the way in.

      Fortunately for Andy, the holidays were months away and so the crowds of people heading to work were no worse than usual. It was ridiculous, but negotiable, which was good for him since he was already running late.

      The parking garage was less than a block away from the bank where he worked, and as he angled down into the musty bowels of Manhattan, Andy took a moment to quietly curse his parents. Not for the first time today, and it surely wouldn’t be the last.

      They were the reason he had the car. In fact, it was their car.

      The biggest, ugliest conglomeration of metal and plastic Detroit could produce, slapped front and back with the telltale orange-and-green Florida license plates. There was no doubt about it—if the Big Three started making cars with shark fins again, Andy’s father would be first in line to buy one.

      His parents were up on a visit with his mother’s sister and they were going to spend the day taking Andy’s aunt around town to see all the sites they had neglected to visit during their fifty-odd years of living in the Big Apple. It was an irony he had pointed out at least a hundred times during the past two days.

      They had made Andy promise he would pick them up at Rockefeller Center at five-thirty that afternoon—a feat he still had no idea how to accomplish—and his father had dropped the keys to the Buick in his hand as he went out to work that morning. And so here he was, at 9:11 a.m. on a Monday morning, already more than ten minutes late for work, driving down into some subterranean nightmare and not knowing whether or not he was ever going to see a ray of sunlight again.

      He did. In record time. Andy was up on the sidewalk and trotting along through the heavy pedestrian traffic three minutes later.

      As he jogged along, he continually checked his watch at thirty-second intervals, each time stepping up the pace a little more. Plowing through the choking throng of people, he caught a few angry glares from other pedestrians but in spite of everything that could have gone wrong, he was at the bank by twenty minutes past nine.

      In front of the massive building, Andy noticed that the gutter had been marked off with several strategically placed orange traffic cones. These were obviously set up to discourage anyone from slowing down or parking in front of the bank’s double doors.

      The sounds of honking horns and angry shouts were proof that not everyone appreciated their careful placement.

      At the center of the arrangement of cones, directly across from the glass foyer doors of the bank, a large white van sat soaking up the few feeble rays of diluted sunlight that managed to penetrate the smog and towering buildings. The van’s engine hummed softly.

      As he approached, Andy noted that the cab of the van was empty.

      Not a very wise move in New York. It was an open invitation to thieves. As he drew closer, Andy noticed the name PlattDeutsche A.G. stenciled in small black script above the door handle on the passenger’s side. That explained it. This was the new security company which for the past few weeks had been installing the bank’s new high-tech camera and vault system. Probably the van was wired to explode the minute somebody touched the door handle.

      Suddenly the door separating the cab from the rear opened, and Andy got a quick glimpse of a distinctly high-tech environment. A brief flash of computer monitors, blinking lights and men in white lab coats moving urgently around the cramped interior showed before the door was closed once more. A young man moved from the rear of the van to settle down in the vacant driver’s seat behind the leather-wrapped steering wheel.

      The man sported a mane of dirty blond hair swept carefully back onto the broad shoulders of his expensive suit, and when his gaze settled on Andy, the young mortgage officer found himself staring into a pair of the angriest blue eyes he had ever encountered. Looking at them was like peering into the eyes of a feral jaguar.

      Andy didn’t know what it was with those PlattDeutsche people, but ever since they’d shown up more than a month ago, they’d been giving everyone at the Butler Bank of New York a first-class case of the screaming-meamies.

      Andy tore his gaze away from the feral eyes of the young man and hustled through the massive bank doors.

      An hour later, Andy had settled down behind his desk on the main bank floor. He was a junior member of the bank’s mortgage team, and even though his father referred to him as a glorified teller, he still hoped that one day he would move into the upper offices of the Butler banking empire.

      As a junior officer in the banking industry, Andy generally considered his greatest misfortune to be the placement of his work space so close to the bank’s main entrance. His proximity to the front door invited gentle queries on every imaginable topic from a wide range of the Butler Bank’s many patrons. He felt that his desk was the informal information booth for the whole bank, and though he complained about it many times in the past, his supervisor had so far managed to avoid taking corrective action.

      Today Andy wasn’t complaining. He had completed the bulk of his work after a mere forty-five minutes behind his desk and he was intent on frittering away the remainder of the day until it was time to retrieve his father’s car and battle his way through the insane rush-hour traffic. Most days when Andy goofed off, he had little to occupy his time save the endless shuffle of papers and an occasional trip to the men’s room, but today he had a floor show. Through the bank’s hazy tempered-glass doors, he watched the activity around the white van.

      The young blond man had remained behind the steering wheel for the better part of an hour, staring down pedestrians with his steely blue gaze. Only when another car pulled up into the cordoned area behind the van did the van driver exit the cab. He and the driver of the new vehicle stood together by the side of the large white truck. Their matching suits made them look like twins.

      Andy tore his eyes away from the sidewalk and feigned interest in a document in his hand. The columns of numbers and dry words ran together in an incoherent jumble.

      He looked back out the door. Several more men had joined the first two. They stood, glancing up and down the street nervously, as the man from the car spoke instructions to each of them in turn.

      Every now and then, one of the newest arrivals would glance toward the bank entrance. Even though Andy was certain that the glare of the late-morning sun reflecting off the black-tinted main doors would be enough to shield him from view, he nonetheless felt himself growing more nervous with each subsequent glance.

      What were those guys up to?

      His hand began to snake toward the phone, ready to alert security to the suspicious activity on the sidewalk out front, when something suddenly popped into view. Walked into view, more accurately.

      Somebody had come over from the main bank floor, positioning himself before Andy Frost’s desk and blocking his view of the men on the sidewalk. Andy leaned to one side, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was going on outside.

      Excuse me, said a precise voice that reminded Andy of his grammar-school English teacher, Mr. Henry.

      He could no longer see the men on the sidewalk. Andy leaned the other way, but his line of sight was still blocked.

      Excuse me, the voice repeated. It was somewhat nasal and parched, as if the speaker’s larynx had been soaked in a gallon of grapefruit juice and left to dry on a desert rock.

      Andy looked up, exasperated. Yes. What? he demanded.

      There is an error in my account.

      Andy rolled his eyes. Just another mindless questioner. He was going to kill his supervisor if he wasn’t moved into a cubicle soon.

      This is the mortgage desk, sir, Andy said in an icy tone.

      I realize that. But there is a discrepancy in my personal account that I wish to correct, and the lines at the teller windows are intolerably long. You seemed not to be busy.

      The group of men on the sidewalk were quickly forgotten. With as much agitation as decorum would allow, Andy stared up at the old man standing before his desk.

      Sir, I am certain that any of our tellers are more than qualified to help you with your little problem.

      Perhaps, said the older man, and I ordinarily would not mind waiting in line. But I have left my car in a nearby garage and if I do not return within the next fifteen minutes, I will be charged the day rate. I am certain it will not take you long. The old man offered Andy one of the brand-new Butler bankbooks, first remembering to remove an ancient plastic cover that was yellowed from long use.

      Andy sighed audibly. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about, what with having to pick up his parents on the busiest street in the world at the busiest time of the day, he was now reduced to checking on some old codger’s passbook. The guy had probably just forgotten to add the interest payment from the previous month. Andy didn’t want to count how many times he had seen that particular mistake when he was a teller. He snatched the bankbook from the gentleman at his desk, noticing for the first time that the old man’s skin was the color of a sickly fish belly, and started to rise from his seat.

      Andy froze in midmovement.

      Nobody move, a too cheerful voice shouted from over near the main entrance.

      Andy could see that the two men—the young blond man and the later arrival—were standing at the bank entrance. The others, a larger group, were circulating through the bank, sweeping in around the velvet-roped queue and up to the bulletproof teller windows.

      A robbery!

      Damn! Andy thought. I should have alerted the security guards.

      He’d known something was up earlier. If he hadn’t been distracted by the old man, Andy would have called the manager, maybe gotten the police involved. He would have been a hero, but instead he was going to become just another hostage if this thing played out the way most of these daylight robberies did.

      Worse, if he was late tonight, his dad would slaughter him.

      Andy started to sit back down, determined to remain as inconspicuous as possible and hopefully to get through this thing in one piece. That was when the sudden realization hit him. He couldn’t move.

      Andy tried forcing himself to sit down. His legs wouldn’t budge. He tried pushing them into place with his arms. He realized with a sinking feeling that his upper torso was frozen in place as well.

      Andy was locked in an awkward squatting position just above the seat of his vinyl junior-executive’s chair.

      He tried harder but found that it was no use. He was a human rock.

      And, he soon discovered, he wasn’t alone.

      As Andy’s frightened eyes darted helplessly around the bank interior, he found that the only people who seemed to be moving were the thieves. Each member of the larger group had taken up a post at every teller window, most standing directly in front of bank patrons, who for some inexplicable reason remained as motionless as statues. Not only that, but all of the normal extraneous sounds of people talking, coughing, shifting from foot to foot—indeed, all sounds save those of the robbers themselves—had ceased at the precise instant the main thief had first spoken.

      Everyone within the bank—employees and patrons alike—was as helpless as a mannequin.

      At one window, an old woman was standing too close for a robber to access the teller window. The man simply picked the woman up as if she were nothing more than a piece of wicker furniture and set her down over near the head of the line. Though her eyes darted wildly in every direction, the rest of her might have been carved in stone.

      Of course, that was an unreasonable demand, the cheerful voice of the head robber said into the silence of the frozen bank lobby. As he spoke, he moved toward the center of the lobby. The blond man remained dutifully behind, a loyal sentry at the bank entrance. For an operation of this kind to work, there has to be some movement, obviously.

      As if his words were some sort of prearranged cue, the tellers began reaching into their cash drawers and stuffing bills into bags that were handed over by the thieves. They moved like automatons, with simultaneous motions. Hands entered cash drawers, money was removed, hands entered bags, repeat. It was a flawless series of movements, seemingly more precise than the most meticulously rehearsed Broadway dance number. When the tellers were finished, they shoved the bags through the narrow slots beneath the bulletproof partitions and snapped to attention behind the windows as if awaiting further instructions.

      Watching the entire procedure from a squatting position behind his desk and unable to move a muscle, Andy, in some lucid part of his mind, was struck by the surrealism of the entire procedure. It was an eerie tableau, as if everyone inside the bank were some sort of dusty museum exhibit demonstrating modern banking techniques.

      Andy caught a hint of movement before him and shifted his eyes—which seemed about all he could move—in that direction. He had forgotten about his customer. The old man was standing stock-still before his desk, frozen like everyone else.

      Not entirely, it seemed.

      Faintly, so much so that it was barely detectable, the old man was swaying from side to side. Also, as Andy watched, there seemed to be a slight trace of movement at the tips of the man’s slender gray fingers.

      Andy’s attention was distracted in the next minute when his legs suddenly buckled. He fell roughly back into his chair, dropping the old man’s passbook to his desk blotter.

      All around the bank, patrons suddenly began to stir as if some huge unseen switch had been activated.

      Tellers backed away from their windows. Bank patrons stood nervously in place, eyeing the robbers, who seemed themselves at a loss for what to do next. The men looked suddenly panicked, as if the thought that anyone in the bank would be able to move had never occurred to them.

      For the first time, Andy noticed that none of them carried guns.

      Andy looked beyond the old man in front of him toward the street, where he fervently hoped that an NYPD SWAT team was positioned to take out the robbers. All he saw beyond the large white van was a pizza delivery truck stuck in late-morning traffic, a giant CB antenna bobbing impatiently from its roof.

      Suddenly a command cracked through the air. Okay, hold it right where you are!

      Bank security. There were three green-suited guards standing around the lobby, their guns drawn and trained toward the largest concentrations of thieves.

      The leader held his hands high above his head. I’m certain that this is just a misunderstanding, sir, he said tightly. He tried to force the cheerfulness of a moment before, but the words sounded terse. He glanced impatiently out toward the parked van. Andy noticed that he wore a hearing aid.

      Shut up! the head of the Butler Bank security force ordered. Down on the floor, hands behind your heads! Now!

      The man looked back from the door, eyeing the guard balefully. Do you have any idea how much this suit cost? he asked. He shot another glance toward the bank entrance. The traffic seemed to be picking up. The pizza truck had moved a car length down the street.

      Down! Now!

      The robbers were beginning to comply. They dropped to their knees, all the while watching their leader expectantly. The man refused to move an inch.

      The pizza truck drove away.

      Andy felt an odd tingling sensation at the back of his head.

      It was a sort of tickle, as if someone had brushed his neck with a feather. The sensation made his ears itch.

      The robber turned victoriously back toward the guard. With a boldness that was surely suicidally motivated, the man strode purposefully up to the guard and, wrapping his fingers around the barrel of the gun, tugged the weapon from the guard’s out-stretched hand. The guard didn’t react, didn’t move an inch.

      With obvious relish, the robber tucked the gun back into the guard’s holster. Frozen once more, the other two security men watched helplessly as the same procedure was repeated with them.

      Andy tried to move but realized that he, too, was immobile. All around the bank, patrons and employees alike were once again rooted to wherever they stood.

      Bags of money in hand, the robbers clustered around their leader in the center of the lobby. Some people were staring stonily off in other directions, but most were looking in the general direction of the thieves, their eyes darting helplessly from side to side. Drool leaked from one man’s parted lips.

      The lead thief grinned triumphantly around the lobby of the bank.

      And now, with your kind assistance, gentlemen… With a nod from their leader, the thieves began to circulate through the frozen crowd.

      This was it. They were going to start killing people. Or worse.

      All thoughts of his dreaded commute were banished from Andy’s mind as one of the thieves—a sinister-looking man in his forties—approached his desk. He reached into the money bag he had taken from one of the teller windows and, stuffing his hand deep inside, proceeded to remove a handful of bills. As the young mortgage officer watched in disbelief, the thief stuffed the wad of bills into the pocket of the old man in front of Andy’s desk. Moving on, he found a patron who was standing nearer the door and went through the same motions.

      Eyes straining to catch every movement at the limits of his peripheral vision, Andy saw the other thieves stuffing money into satchels and jacket pockets. 

      While they seemed to carry out this task grudgingly, their leader performed it with unreserved joy. One bank patron was dressed in only jeans and a T-shirt, but the gang leader carefully wrapped up a tight roll of crisp new fifty-dollar bills and tucked it neatly into the pocket of the man’s torn shirt.

      Oddly the Butler Bank employees seemed to be the only ones who were left out of this bizarre redistribution of wealth.

      When all was done and the bags were once more empty, the thieves clustered back around their leader.

      There was something cultured, almost regal about him. He raised his hand in a casual gesture that would have made the Queen of England feel as if she’d just rolled off the back of a turnip truck.

      Ladies and gentlemen, he called happily to the crowd. My name is Lothar Holz, and you have just been privileged to witness the premier nonlaboratory test of PlattDeutsche, America’s Dynamic Interface System.

      Andy felt the strange sensation at the back of his head return. He realized immediately that he could move. All around the bank, patrons and employees alike were coming to the same conclusion. The guards were in the process of unholstering their weapons once more, but Andy saw that the bank president, Clive Butler, trailed by a clutch of VPs, had entered the lobby from the rear elevator and was now circulating among the crowd, calming concerns and exhorting employees not to succumb to panic.

      A smattering of applause went up around the man who identified himself as Lothar Holz, led by the blond man at the door and the rest of the robbers. They were joined in their enthusiasm by Clive Butler and the other executives. With the urging of the suits from upstairs, it wasn’t long before

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