A Bloody Storm Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  About the Author

  Also Available from Hyperion

  Also by Richard Castle

  Castle on DVD

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ten miles outside Oxford, England

  Present day

  Flames from the engine licked across the Vauxhall’s undercarriage and raced like a firecracker fuse toward gasoline squirting from the sedan’s ruptured gas tank.

  Derrick Storm was fifty yards away when the tank exploded, causing an ear-punishing explosion that sent the car’s steel carcass flopping into the air before it came crashing down.

  Only moments earlier, Storm had deliberately driven the speeding Vauxhall off the highway into the stone wall of an abandoned farmhouse, sending his passenger, a Croation vixen named Antonija Nad, through the windshield. She had been pointing a pistol at Storm at the moment of impact. Now her lifeless body was limp in the grass beside the burning car.

  Storm had cheated death thanks to a seat belt, a driver’s air bag, the car’s crumple zone, and Nad’s foolishness in not buckling up and in assuming that no one would be crazy enough to nosedive into a wall at nearly a hundred miles per hour.

  Storm wasn’t sure if his partner, FBI Agent April Showers, had been as fortunate as he was.

  She’d been a passenger in a Mercedes-Benz that Storm was chasing. Its driver, Georgi Lebedev, was supposed to be taking Showers and a Russian oligarch to a hospital emergency room. She had been shot in her right shoulder. Ivan Petrov had been gut-shot.

  Rather than driving to an emergency room, Lebedev had turned in the opposite direction, eventually pulling off the highway onto a dirt road and stopping under a grove of English oaks.

  “April!” Storm yelled, as he hurried toward the parked sedan some forty yards away. He was moving as fast as a thirty-year-old man, who’d just survived a crash, could. His knees threatened to buckle. His entire body ached. Blood trickled from his ears. His skin shined with sweat and smelled of fuel and motor oil.

  “April!” he hollered again.

  Blood.

  He could now see it splattered inside the Mercedes’s windows. Storm tightened his grip on the semiautomatic pistol that he’d retrieved from Nad’s corpse.

  Whose blood was he seeing? And why had someone inside the vehicle opened fire on a fellow occupant?

  Ignoring the shrill ringing in his ears and his shocked senses, Storm struggled to make sense of it all. The stunning and now dead Nad had been chief of security in charge of protecting her wealthy boss. Even in Storm’s confused state, he realized that Nad had betrayed Ivan Petrov. So had Lebedev, who was the wounded Petrov’s oldest and dearest friend. Gold—lots of it—had turned both of them into modern day Judases.

  Storm didn’t care about the gold. Only rescuing Showers. Assuming she was still alive. Assuming it was not her blood that he was now seeing.

  Even though he was in top physical shape, by the time Storm reached the sedan, he was gasping for breath. He grabbed the car’s latch, raised his handgun, and jerked open the driver’s door.

  The top half of Lebedev’s body fell out. Half of his skull was missing.

  That explained the blood.

  Storm leaned into the car for a better look.

  Showers was in the passenger seat, with her head leaning against the passenger window. She was clutching her Glock in her left hand.

  “April!” Storm called.

  She didn’t respond.

  Grabbing Lebedev’s belt, Storm pulled the dead man’s body from the car and slipped onto the blood-covered driver’s seat. He touched Showers’s neck and found a pulse. But it was weak.

  The touch of his fingers caused Showers to open her eyes. She gave him a faint smile.

  “I knew you’d come for me,” she whispered. “I knew Nad wasn’t clever enough to kill you.”

  “Hold on! I’ll get you to the hospital,” Storm said. Glancing over the front seat, Storm looked onto the dead eyes of Petrov. There was a bullet hole in his forehead, as well as his earlier chest wound.

  Storm started the car’s engine.

  “Wait,” Showers sputtered. “The phone. Get it!”

  “What phone?”

  “Lebedev’s.”

  Stepping from the car, Storm found the phone in Lebedev’s jacket. Since he was out of the vehicle, he quickly opened the car’s rear passenger door and grabbed Petrov’s elephantine legs. Someone had shot a bullet into Petrov’s foot. Storm pulled the three-hundred-pound carcass from the Mercedes, leaving smeared blood on the leather seat.

  Two lifelong friends, now killer and victim, lying next to each other under the oaks.

  Back in the driver’s seat, Storm jammed on the car’s accelerator, causing the sedan to rocket from under the trees.

  “April! You can’t fall asleep!” he snapped. “Stay awake!”

  “Sure thing,” she replied unconvincingly. Her voice was robotic.

  Alternating his glances between the road leading to Oxford and her face, Storm saw Showers chose her eyes and he knew that he was in danger of losing her. He reached over, put his hand on her leg, and squeezed it.

  Showers opened her eyes. “Hands off the merchandise,” she said.

  Good. She still had a sense of humor.

  “You wear a bullet well,” he replied.

  But the truth was that she looked wretched. Her white skin was ghostly and her blouse was stained red.

  Showers was in shock and that could kill her. He needed to make her stay focused, to keep her grounded in the moment.

  “What happened here?” he asked. “Who shot whom?”

  “Lebedev,” she said in a whisper, “shot Petrov. Something about gold.”

  Storm knew about the gold. Sixty billion dollars’ worth smuggled out of the Soviet Union before it collapsed. But he hadn’t told Showers. The CIA didn’t want the FBI to know about it.

  “April,” he said, “if Lebedev killed Petrov, who shot Lebedev? Who killed him?”

  “Too tired to talk now,” she moaned. “Later.”

  “No, now, April,” he said sternly. “Did you shoot Lebedev or did Petrov kill him?”

  “Me. He was going to kill me. Blame me for Petrov’s death.”

  The gunshot in her shoulder had crippled her right arm. How had she outmaneuvered Lebedev?

  “He took my Glock from me. Used it to shoot Petrov,” she said. He noticed that she was speaking in bursts, trying to concentrate and also save her breath. “He put my Glock on his lap. Got his own pistol. Was going to shoot me. Tell everyone I shot Petrov. There was an explosion. A noise.”

  “That was me crashing into the farmhouse,” Storm explained. But he wasn’t certain if she understood.

  “Loud noise. Lebedev looked away from me. Turned his head. I seized my Glock. Left hand,” she said, smiling. “Didn’t expect that. Shot up in his face.”

  Storm asked: “Why did you tell me to grab Lebedev’s phone?”

  “The gold. Longitude. Latitude. App. Memory card.”

  “You shot him left-handed after you discovered where the gold is hidden!” he exclaimed. “Outstanding! You’re really incredible.”

  Through half-closed eyes and with an unsteady head, she replied, “I have my moments.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Mercedes�
��s GPS directed him to the emergency room at the John Radcliffe Hospital on the east side of Oxford. Storm bolted inside.

  “I have a gunshot victim in the car!” he announced. “She’s bleeding. In shock. But conscious!”

  An intake clerk grabbed a phone, and within seconds an emergency assessment unit came rushing from behind double metal doors. An attendant pushing a “trolley bed” ran behind a triage trauma nurse and a physician’s assistant. The three of them followed Storm to the still-running Mercedes, where he helped the attendant lift Showers onto the cart while the nurse and the medic worked on her.

  “She allergic to any medicines?” the nurse asked.

  “Don’t know,” he replied.

  “How’d this happen?” she asked.

  “She was shot at a protest rally at Oxford this morning.”

  “We’ve already had three others come through here who were in the crowd. Why are you so late?”

  “Got lost.”

  The nurse noticed the blood on the interior of the car windows and also on him. “We’ll take it from here,” she said. “You need to sign in.”

  As they hurried by the intake desk, Storm overheard the nurse say, “Call Security.” Before the receptionist could lift her phone, Storm handed her Showers’s FBI business card.

  “Left my car running,” he said. “Be right back.”

  “Wait,” she called after him. “There are forms—”

  But he was already speeding away from the hospital.

  From behind the wheel, Storm called Jedidiah Jones, the director of the National Clandestine Service at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. “Showers has been shot,” he said. “Just dropped her at the John Radcliffe emergency room in Oxford, England. You need to call.”

  “I’ll put the FBI in touch with the hospital. They have her medical information from her personnel file,” Jones replied. “I’ll let our London embassy know. They’ll get people out there. What about you?”

  “Only bruises.”

  Storm recapped the morning’s events at the Oxford rally and later under the English oaks.

  Jones listened without interrupting and then said, “Obviously, Georgi Lebedev was a traitor in Petrov’s camp. He was keeping Russian President Oleg Barkovsky informed about what Petrov was doing.”

  Once former pals, Barkovsky and Petrov had turned against each other after the oligarch had criticized the Kremlin leader in public. A furious Barkovsky had forced Petrov to flee Russia and had later sent assassins to kill him in England.

  Jones said,” It all makes sense now. President Barkovsky must have bribed Lebedev. Because Petrov trusted Lebedev like a brother, he wouldn’t have suspected that he would turn on him.”

  Storm said, “There’s more. Showers found out where the gold is hidden.”

  “She did? Only Petrov knew its location, and he’d refused to tell anyone. How’d she pull that off?”

  “Judging from the bullet hole in Petrov’s foot, I’m guessing Lebedev forced the issue. Lebedev must have threatened him in the parked car. He probably said he wouldn’t drive him to a hospital for his chest wound unless he spilled his guts—pun intended—about the gold. When Petrov refused, Lebedev showed him how serious he was. Showers was in the front seat during all of this and overheard their entire exchange. I’ll send you the longitude and latitude coordinates for the gold from Lebedev’s cell phone after I ditch this car.”

  “Delete them after you send them to me,” Jones said, adding, “Do you need a cleaner?”

  “Too late,” Storm said. “I’m sure the car explosion has attracted a crowd by now.”

  “I’ll call MI-6 and have the FBI pull strings with Scotland Yard. Both owe us. But it would be best if you disappeared. Hold on for a moment.”

  Jones was off-line for less than a minute. When he returned, he said, “About forty miles south of Oxford is a town called Newbury. There’s a U.S. Air Force operation there under the command of the 420 Munitions Squadron. I’m arranging a military flight to get you out of England into Germany and then home. Best to avoid commercial flights and passport controls. How soon can you get to Newbury?”

  “An hour or less unless I get stopped.”

  “Don’t. At least not before you send me those coordinates.”

  Jones had his priorities. Gold. Then Storm.

  “Call me later,” Storm said, “about April.”

  “April? She your girlfriend now?”

  “Agent Showers,” he said, correcting himself. “And she’s not my girlfriend. She’s my partner.”

  “Right,” Jones said skeptically.

  “Just make sure someone gets to that hospital.”

  Hanging up, Storm used the Mercedes’s GPS to direct him to the closest shopping mall: Templars Square, less than four miles away. He parked in the garage across the street, leaving his blood-covered jacket in the car. Storm wasn’t worried about trace evidence. He’d been dead, at least officially, for four years. The CIA had helped him “die” and vanish from the grid. He’d been happily living in Montana when Jones summoned him back for what was supposed to be a simple kidnapping investigation. If Scotland Yard or Interpol found traceable evidence in the bloody Mercedes, their investigators would compare the findings to records of living suspects. No one searched a cemetery for a killer.

  In the parking garage’s second-floor stairwell, Storm paused to examine Lebedev’s cell phone. He found the directional app and forwarded the coordinates on it to Jones. As a backup, Storm also sent them to his own private cell phone. Satisfied, he deleted the app but kept Lebedev’s phone for delivery to the tech experts at Langley. Who could tell what else it might contain?

  Exiting the garage, Storm entered the shopping mall and went immediately into a public toilet to wash blood from his hands. He had it on his slacks, too, but they were black, so the stains were not so noticeable. He left the toilet and bought a pair of slacks and a shirt in a nearby clothing shop, then returned to the men’s room to change.

  Outside the mall, he flagged a taxi at the corner of Crowell and Hackmore Streets.

  “Where to?” the hack driver asked.

  “Air base at Newbury.”

  “That’s a long ride, mate,” he said, giving Storm a curious look.

  “Got into a fight with my girl inside the mall,” Storm improvised. “She won’t drive me back to the base. She’s Irish, and if I’m late, it’ll be my head.”

  “Birds—or in the States I guess you call ’em broads,” the driver said. “The nationality don’t matter. They’re all a bit loony. We’re off to Newbury.”

  They’d gone about a mile when the cabbie started talking.

  Storm leaned back his head and closed his eyes. He didn’t want conversation.

  “You heard about the shootings at Oxford this morning, didn’t you?” the driver asked. “All over the radio. Three men started shooting at some Russian speaking at a rally. People got hurt.”

  “I’ve got a twelve-hour shift waiting for me and a girl kicking my balls,” Storm replied. “I don’t need to hear about someone else’s problems.”

  The cabbie chuckled. “Then you take a little nap and leave the driving to me.”

  About forty minutes later, the cab arrived at the air base gate. Storm paid the sixty-dollar fare and then handed the driver another twenty. “My Irish girlfriend happens to be married,” he explained. “I’d like to have a face that is easy to forget.”

  The driver pocketed the bills. “You Yanks all look alike to me, mate.”

  Storm was about to board a flight an hour later when his cell phone rang.

  “She’s out of surgery,” Jones said. “The prognosis is good. A car will be waiting when you land.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “What’s today?”

  Those were the first words coming from Agent Showers’s mouth when she awoke from the anesthetic.

  “You was brought in yesterday morning, miss,” a nurse sitting next to her bedside answered. “I’m supp
osed to fetch our matron now. You’re quite the celebrity. You should see all the reporters hovering around, trying to get a story. They got cops at your door to keep them away. They told me not to talk to you, but I want you to know that I’m happy you’re okay, and I don’t want you to worry a bit, because I won’t tell anyone about your bloke.”

  “My bloke?”

  “Sure, your Steve,” she replied. “Isn’t he your bloke? I mean, I just assumed the way you was going on and on about him and mentioning his name. But don’t you worry, ma’am. Lots of people are as mad as a box of frogs when they’re gassed.”

  “What did I say?” Showers asked.

  “The truth is that it sounded a bit randy to me, you know. That’s why I’ll not be repeating it.”

  “And you’re sure that I mentioned the name: Steve?”

  “Oh, you did more than mention him. You had me blushing, but I’m really not one to gab.”

  The nurse hurried from the room, leaving Showers to clear the cobwebs from her head. Obviously, she was in a hospital, which she presumed was in Oxford. Bandages covered her right shoulder, there was an IV in her left arm, and she was attached to a monitor that was tracking her heartbeat, temperature, and blood pressure. She felt a remote device at her side and pushed a button that raised the back of the bed with a loud mechanical whine. A pain immediately shot through her shoulder. Her head was throbbing and she needed to use the toilet.

  The nurse returned with an older, gray-haired woman who was being followed by two men in business suits. One had an American flag in his lapel.

  “I’m Rachel Smythe, head matron at the hospital, and these men are from the American embassy,” the matron said. “They insist on speaking to you. Do you feel up to it?”

  “Who are you?” Showers asked the man with the flag lapel.

  “FBI Special Agent Douglas Cumerford,” he replied, while reaching into his jacket to produce his credentials. “This is Thomas Goodman. He’s with the State Department.”

  Goodman didn’t offer credentials, and Showers immediately suspected he worked for the CIA.