Now inside the chopper, the man looked outside at the creek, the meadow, the blue sky. He was leaving it all.
“Let’s go,” the fisherman told them.
“Then you are Derrick Storm!” the younger man gushed. “You aren’t dead like everyone said.”
The older envoy gave the pilot a thumbs-up and the helicopter lifted from the ground.
“What’s it been, Storm?” the older man asked. “How many years have you been dead?”
It had been nearly four. Four years of solitude. Of peace. Of self-assessment. Of reevaluation and reflection. Jedidiah knew Storm better than any man alive. And he had known that he would come back if the trump card was played. Jedidiah had played it. Tangiers. Derrick Storm always paid his debts.
Even in death.
Chapter Two
A black stretch limousine was idling near the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland when the air force C-21A Learjet carrying Derrick Storm landed. Now clean-shaven, dressed in a tailored Caraceni suit and black Testoni shoes, Storm walked directly from the jet to the car’s rear passenger door. An officer from the Central Intelligence Agency’s internal police force, called the Security Protective Service (SPS), opened the door for him.
Sliding into the back leather seat, Storm found himself sitting across from Jedidiah Jones, the director of the agency’s National Clandestine Service-a fancy name for the CIA division that recruited spies and did the nation’s dirtiest jobs overseas.
Jones inspected Storm over half-glasses perched on a nose that had been broken so many times that it had been impossible for surgeons to fully repair. Although Jones was old enough to be Storm’s father, the NCS director was military-fit, built like a pit bull, with a shaved head and a raspy voice that sounded angry even when he was paying a compliment, which was rare.