Snow Storm Read Online Free PDF Page A

machete design but this one in
particular, the panga machete or cutlass has a pretty serious curve
to it.”
    “ Right.”
    “ I know,
you’re thinking what the hell, Pirates of the Caribbean, that kind
of thing but you’re actually not far not far wrong. These things
are most popular in the Caribbean and parts of Africa.”
    Burke nodded as he
surveyed the blade. The swept up curve thickened towards the end
before coming to a sharp point.
    Campbell smirked exposing
a row of crooked teeth. “Kind of backs up my theory no?”
    Burke decided
to put in a call to the Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency on a
hunch and after two hours got call back from a DI Mike Edwards at
the Drug Strategy Unit in Paisley.
    He explained the
situation and Edwards listened with interest.
    “ So what I
wondered,” Burke concluded, “is if anyone might missing any ex
Eastern Bloc players.”
    “ Well seeing
as you ask,” Edwards replied, “we have lost Vlad the
Inhaler.”
     
    ********************
     
     
    They had no respect,
these kids; no idea of the trials they had sidestepped, the brutal
apprenticeship they had bypassed by virtue of being born to a
particular generation.
    Victor had to
walk away from his luggage before the tall one; the one that looked
like Lurch from The Adams Family on Prozac took the hint and picked
it up. The short one seemed to be more interested in talking than
anything else. They both knew he was just making noise in the hope
something sensible would come out, trying to distract himself from
jangling nerves. No strength of character.
    He’d grown used to having
this effect on people. It hadn’t always been this way. He’d earned
it, paid for it in pounds of flesh, albeit other people’s flesh,
those who’d met their demise at his behest.
    What was this place? What
kind of excuse was this for an international airport? He’d left
home after noon, passing through a plush new terminal and arrived
on the other side at this, a glorified goat shed. The west was on
its knees, dying a slow lingering death.
    The small one
asked him a question about something; some kind of mindless small
talk. He chose to dismiss it with a look and the man averted his
gaze to the floor like a scolded dog, doubtless inwardly
cursing.
    They had brought a
Mercedes four by four. Of course, why wouldn’t they? City cowboys;
while they were swanning around the smooth city roads in something
designed to tackle the Serengeti back home they were
circumnavigating potholes the size of hot-tubs in battered
saloons.
    He missed his Maybach and
he wanted some drugs. The pain behind his eyes had started to
intensify. Maybe it was the small talk but he had a feeling they
didn’t need to say very much to communicate their uselessness. From
an evolutionary point of view they were surplus to the requirements
of the species.
    He checked his
Blackberry. Nothing.
    There had been a time
when it all meant something, before the money and the gadgets, the
cars, the villas and the women who stayed the same age as he greyed
and sagged.
    He’d been sent to the
camp at fifteen. His excuse of a father had disowned him ten years
before; some five years after his mother had died bringing him into
the world. He’d been allowed to go feral, fallen in with the wrong
crowd they said but the wrong crowd were at least something
resembling family.
    He started from the
bottom, took the beatings when required and grew into dishing them
out when need be. He’d become numb to it at home. He managed to
find his way to the fringes of various rackets and found himself a
niche “acquiring” things to order; what little there was to acquire
back then.
    They caught up with him
eventually. He was no one and didn’t have the means to pay them
off.
    But there it
all began. Sent away for 7 years, he was baptised in fire and
Siberian ice, and reborn.
     
    ********************
     
     
    The press conference was
a hastily cobbled together affair. Gray described it as an
outreach, a