Gamma Blade - Tim Stevens Page 0,19

before him. Hated him with a fury as incandescent as a phosphorus bomb.

And he had a hard-on.

It was the tightness in his pants more than anything else that stopped Brull’s finger from pulling the trigger back those last two millimeters.

His tumescence meant that his body, as opposed to his rational brain, was calling the shots.

And that, in business, was never a good idea.

The orgasmic thrill he’d get from blowing the New York cop’s brains across the floor of the alleyway would be intense. Ecstatic.

But it would be short-lived, like a drug high.

And the hangover would outweigh the trip.

The hangover would consist of the entire Miami PD up Brull’s ass, like a troop of weekend hunters from Hicksville hell-bent on bagging themselves the only bear in the woods. The cops wouldn’t stop. They’d bend, and break, the rules. They’d come down hard on every stool pigeon, every low-level contact that Brull had in Florida. And sooner or later, one of those deadbeats would crack. They’d give up a name, which would lead to another name, until Brull found himself cornered.

Brull didn’t like cops. He thought most of them were as dumb as a sack of mice, and he had no personal qualms about killing any of them. One night he’d had a dream that he’d weaponized a mutant strain of the Ebola virus, which targeted only law-enforcement officers. He walked the streets of Miami in his dream, watching uniformed cops dissolving into leaking bags of blood. He’d woken up laughing.

But there was one thing he respected about cops. One thing only.

They were loyal. They looked out for their own.

And an injury to one really was an injury to all. Even the laziest, most lard-assed of pigs would get up off his sweaty butt to join the hunt for a cop-killer.

So Brull’s finger had frozen on the Glock’s trigger, and slowly he’d let it slip back to its resting position.

He’d hit the New York cop hard, across the nape of the neck, making sure the sight of the gun gouged his shorn scalp. Brull was practiced at knocking men unconscious with a single blow, and this guy was a sitting duck. He’d watched the burly torso slump forward across the knees, and for good measure he’d kicked the guy square in the ass afterward, though he didn’t think the cop felt it because he was out cold already.

He hoped the son of a bitch woke up with the headache from hell. And with a sudden desire to terminate his weekend vacation down here in the south and board the next flight back to his candy-ass New York City, with its stupid accents and shitty winters.

But as Brull took the Dodge deeper into Miami, leaving the flashy waterfront high-rises behind for the darker, meaner streets, he understood that there was a downside to his decision to spare the cop’s life.

As he’d gazed down at Venn’s face, the closed eyes, he’d seen that this wasn’t just some pumped-up muscleman who was all image and no substance.

Even unconscious, the cop looked mean.

He was a detective lieutenant, not some asshole patrolman. He’d just been humiliated, and had his lights punched out.

He was probably a racist, too, and he would have detected from Brull’s voice that Brull was Cuban.

All of which added up to this: there was a hard-nosed bastard alive in Miami, who was a senior law enforcement officer and likely a bigot, and who’d heard Brull’s voice before Brull had knocked him senseless.

If Brull were in the cop’s position, he’d walk through hell itself to settle the score.

*

Brull pushed all thought of Joseph Venn from his mind and speed-dialed one of the first six numbers on his phone’s list.

Unlike Elon a few minutes earlier, Popok answered after a full five rings.

“Yes?”

The man drew the single syllable out so that it sounded like three. Brull had no idea where the guy had learned his English, but he spoke it like he was trying to sound like a British stage actor performing Shakespeare. Unfortunately his dense, guttural accent let him down, so he ended up sounding like he’d either had a stroke or was slightly retarded.

Brull had never met Abdu Popok. He’d spoken with him many times over the last year, via satellite- and encrypted cell-phone, but although he’d searched for the man online, he’d never found his picture. He had a fair idea, though, what the Turkmen looked like. Brull imagined a fleshy, jowly guy in a cheap suit, the armpits stained with sweat. Probably small