Read A Bloody Storm: A Derrick Storm Short for Free Online Page A

was five feet, five inches tall and about 120 pounds. She had short black hair and a firm, no-nonsense grip. Even though she was a native of Uzbekistan, she spoke with a proper British accent.
    “Grab your gear and get in,” she said. “I’ll drive you to our staging area, to where the others are waiting.”
    “Did you study in England?” he asked as they were driving from the airfield.
    “The Soviets didn’t allow us to travel when I was a child. But all of our schools relied on English textbooks. That is why we speak with an accent. The audiotapes we heard were from London. I speak three other languages, and there is not a trace of a British accent in my voice then. Only when I speak English do I sound British.”
    She glanced at him and said, “You will stick out when we go into remote mountain areas. You don’t look like men here. People will think you are a Russian, and everyone here hates Russians because they tortured us for decades.”
    “I’ll wave an American flag.”
    “Tell them you are from American television. We love American TV here. If you want to get women excited, tell them you are from
Dancing with the Stars
and are thinking about making a dance competition in Uzbekistan. You will be a hero!”
    “Thanks for the pointers,” he said. He noticed the scar that cut across her cheek. It was illuminated by the dash lights as they drove through the night’s blackness. She noticed that he was looking at it.
    “What do you think of my decoration?” she asked. “A little memento. Here they always cut a woman on her face. That way, every day when she looks in the mirror, it reminds her of what they can do, of their power. And everyone who sees her knows that it is dangerous to associate with her.” The car hit a bump that caused them both to bounce in their seat as Dilya turned off the main highway onto what looked to Storm like a cow path that would guide them up a mountain.
    She said, “You’ve never been tortured?”
    “Only by former girlfriends”
    The Range Rover arrived at a one-room farmhouse with rough stone walls and a wooden roof. It was completely isolated from any neighbors. Dilya parked and explained, “The American inside is called Casper and the Russian is called Oscar. I will introduce you.” He followed her through the wooden front door.
    A bespectacled man glanced up from a table where he was studying a map. Storm recognized him as Oscar. On the other side of the room, sitting on the edge of a bed, smoking a cigarette, was Casper.
    Oscar stood, Casper didn’t. Oscar spoke. Casper glared.
    “You must be Steve,” the ex-Soviet geologist said.
    “Nice to meet you, Oscar,” Storm replied. He glanced at Casper and said, “We meet again.”
    “Hello,
Stevie
,” said Casper, accenting his name in manner that was clearly meant to belittle.
    The last time they had met, Casper had had black hair. Now it was completely white and pulled back into a ponytail. He’d added a new tattoo to his collection. This one was on his right arm and showed a skull with a snake coming out of one eye and a knife jabbed into the other.
    “Thought you got killed in Tangiers,” Casper said, ignoring Jedidiah Jones’s rules about revealing anything about past missions.
    “Disappointed?”
    Casper sneered. “All I know is that Tangiers went bad and I heard you were the reason.”
    “It did go bad,” Storm replied, “and I was thinking that you might have had something to do with that.”
    Casper rose from the bed, and Storm saw a U.S. Marine Corps Ka-Bar knife on his belt. The two men locked eyes as Storm readied himself for a fight.
    “I lost good people in Tangiers,” Casper said. “Good men who shouldn’t have died.”
    “I ended up on the floor with my gut riddled with bullets, while you were miles away sitting in a bar nursing a beer,” Storm replied, “so don’t lecture me about casualties.”
    “This really isn’t the time or place for you two to argue,” Oscar said in a