Gamma Blade - Tim Stevens Page 0,13

he might be in private security.

A bodyguard, maybe. Or a bouncer.

Either way, he wasn’t immediately recognizable as a cop. He’d identified himself as such to the man he’d been chasing, but he didn’t know if the guy pointing the gun at his back had heard him.

So he didn’t necessarily need to say he was a police officer.

The guy behind him might hate cops. Might jump at the chance to waste one of them. In which case, to show the man his ID would be to sign his own death warrant.

On the other hand... often, when you told an attacker you were a cop, he backed off. The repercussions of killing a cop were enormous. You only did so if you were a desperado, strung out on adrenaline and drugs. Or if you considered yourself untouchable.

The man standing behind Venn was a professional, as Venn had already established. That didn’t say anything about whether or not he’d be willing to take on the risks of a cop-killer label. To take on the target that would tattoo on his forehead, for ever more.

Venn made his decision.

He called out, his head facing forward.

“I’m a cop.”

There was the briefest pause. It probably lasted no more than two seconds, but to Venn it felt like the eons steadily eroding the wall of a cliff.

The man said: “Show me some ID.”

Venn kept his arms spread out on either side.

“I’ll need to reach into my jacket.”

“So do it.” The guy’s voice had taken on an edge.

Venn slipped his right hand - his empty right hand - into his pocket. He took out his wallet, extended his arm once more, flipped it open in reverse so that the shield was showing over his shoulder. He tilted the wallet this way and that, to allow the sparse incoming light from the street at the end of the alley behind him to show the tin.

The man said: “Toss it toward me.”

His gun, and now his shield. Venn felt like a stereotyped TV cop from the 1970s, handing in his resignation.

Except maybe he was doing just that. Resigning, permanently, and not just from the force, but from the human race itself.

He lobbed the wallet back over his shoulder.

There was the faintest scamper of noise at his back.

“NYPD.” The man pronounced each letter with a slight pause between them. He sounded about the same distance behind Venn as before. “Kind of out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you, Lieutenant Venn?”

Venn said nothing.

This time, he counted a full six seconds of silence. It was a relative silence. The sounds of the city were up ahead, and behind. Venn thought he could hear a siren, somewhere, most likely many blocks away, but drawing nearer.

The man’s voice was closer when he spoke again.

He said: “Get down on your knees.”

And Venn knew, with a sickening punch to his gut, that he’d made the wrong call.

Chapter 7

You made a man get down on his knees, with your gun aimed at the back of his head, under two circumstances, and two alone.

You were taking him prisoner, if you were a soldier or a law-enforcement officer.

Or you were preparing him for execution.

Something told Venn the man behind him wasn’t about to cuff him, that he wasn’t a cop or a soldier of any kind.

Which left one likely outcome.

The voice came again, paradoxically more softly: “Down on your knees. Now.”

For dramatic effect, the gun at Venn’s back was uncocked. Then cocked again. Venn was acutely aware of every minute component of the ratcheting, rasping click.

He considered his options once more. If the man was going to shoot him, then Venn would rather take it standing up. On the other hand, complying with the guy’s instructions might buy Venn a few, precious seconds.

What he’d do with those seconds, he didn’t know. The guy was smart. He was hanging back, so that even Venn, with his long arms and legs, wouldn’t be able to reach him with a backward kick or a sudden, spinning sweep of his fist.

But when you were facing death - or, in this case, facing away from death - you conserved every last moment of time granted to you.

The man said, his voice low and neutral: “If you don’t do as I say, my first shot will be through your kneecap. From behind.”

Venn believed him.

And that meant he had to obey. Because he knew a bullet through the kneecap came close to the ultimate in agony. He’d seen men in the battlefield, shot in just that way. That kind