Bleak History Read Online Free PDF Page A

HIM,” SAID Drake Zweig, coming back to the car in the alley. “Dammit.” Zweig was a short, middle-aged man in a gray suit tight over his barrel chest. He wore his gray hair in a kind of oily pompadour, to give him height; wide face, eyes set slightly too far apart, his mouth almost lipless. He had large hands—there was a story he'd used those big thumbs on the eyes of detainees, back in Iraq, years ago, when he'd worked for the CIA at Abu Ghraib.
    “What about the detector?” Arnie asked, ruefully rubbing his bruised wrist.
    “Out of range—he must've slipped off to a subway. Caught a lucky train.”
    Loraine Sarikosca was standing by the car, spraying her burn with analgesic, then winding a bandage around her hand. She wanted to tell Zweig he should have taken her advice, brought in four more cars for this guy. She just wondered why it'd taken so long for her backup to show, in the bar. Had General Forsythe told them to hold off—see how she handled it alone? It was quite possible. “I can confirm the ID, all right,” Zweig went on. “Gabriel Bleak.”
    Arnie tilted his dark glasses back on the top of his blond head, revealing pale blue eyes. “Hot as hell out here. So, Drake—how you know this Bleak?”
    “Let's take it to the car,” Loraine said. She knew Zweig didn't like her talking as if she had rank on him—only, she did have rank on him, so he could stuff it. She didn't want them airing this on thestreet.
    They all got in, Loraine in the back behind Zweig, Arnie beside her. Zweig's partner, riding shotgun, was Dorrick Johnson, an African-American agent who rarely contributed more than a cynical shake of his head to any conversation. But Dorrick had good judgment. Such as the good judgment to put on the air-conditioning as soon as Zweig got the car fired up.
    “How's your hand, Loraine?” Arnie asked.
    “It's okay, just a little red.” It hurt like a bastard but she didn't want to be taken off the job. “Your wrist?”
    “Throbs. Doesn't seem broken. If I run into that guy again...”
    “Keep a professional attitude, Arnie, okay? Forsythe wants them intact.”
    Zweig just then got around to answering Arnie's question, so it sounded like a non sequitur. “Bleak fucked with me on intel, of course, in Afghanistan.” Zweig snorted. “He was Army Rangers. Supposed to be a tough bunch. But he was such an old lady about the civilians.”
    “Some 'old lady.'“ Arnie said ruefully. “Almost blew off Loraine's hand. And he made us look like dicks.”
    “Used magic,” Zweig snorted. “Didn't have the stones to use a gun. I don't really see the advantage of this weird-ass trick of his. Making a gun blow up.”
    “Think about it,” Loraine said, gingerly touching the bandaged hand. She winced. “He shoots me, that's a real clear crime. He makes the gun explode with a power the court doesn't recognize as even existing, he just says, “What, so your gun went blooey, why is that my fault?” No weapon, nothing the police can hold him on, really. No forensic evidence. He doesn't have to reload the thing—seems to pull it right out of the air. It's always there, even when he seems disarmed. And then there's the psychological effect—I was pretty startled, I got to admit.”
    “We're feds. New rules, we can take him in, don't need 'evidence,'“ Dorrick pointed out. Dorrick was new to CCA—which was itself fairly new. Dorrick was a transfer from FBI. Not his choice.
    Loraine nodded abstractedly. “We don't need evidence if we can get him without the police being involved—not always possible, from what I hear.” Her mind mostly on wondering if the agency had brought the other detectors into the area, as she'd requested. They were testers—only a few prototypes existed. Bleak might still be close by.
    She'd been standing so close to him—why didn't she just tackle him? Would he really have used that energy bullet on her, directly? She wasn't sure. She suspected he probably wouldn't have. But