Jack Reacher 07: Persuader by Lee Child

Author:Lee Child
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781407070315
Publisher: Random House
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Dominique Kohl said no DICE to me the night we had our beer. Something unexpected had come up and I had to rain-check the first evening and then she rain-checked my makeup date, so it was about a week before we got together. Maybe eight days. Sergeants drinking with captains was difficult on-post back then because the clubs were rigorously separate, so we went out to a bar in town. It was the usual kind of place, long and low, eight pool tables, plenty of people, plenty of neon, plenty of jukebox noise, plenty of smoke. It was still very hot. The air conditioners were running flat out and getting nowhere. I was wearing fatigue pants and an old T-shirt, because I didn’t own any personal clothes. Kohl arrived wearing a dress. It was a simple A-line, no sleeves, knee-length, black, with little white dots on it. Very small dots. Not like big polka dots or anything. A very subtle pattern.

“How’s Frasconi working out?” I asked her.

“Tony?” she said. “He’s a nice guy.”

She didn’t say anything more about him. We ordered Rolling Rocks, which suited me because it was my favorite drink that summer. She had to lean very close to talk, because of the noise. I enjoyed the proximity. But I wasn’t fooling myself. It was the decibel level making her do it, nothing else. And I wasn’t going to try anything with her. No formal reason not to. There were rules back then, I guess, but there were no regulations yet. The notion of sexual harassment was slow coming to the army. But I was already aware of the potential unfairness. Not that there was any way I could help or hurt her career. Her jacket made it plain she was going to make master sergeant and then first sergeant like night follows day. It was only a matter of time. Then came the leap up to E-9 status, sergeant major. That was hers for the taking, too. After that, she would have a problem. After sergeant major came command sergeant major, and there’s only one of those in each regiment. After that came sergeant major of the army, and there’s only one of those, period. So she would rise and then stop, whatever I said about it.

“We have a tactical problem,” she said. “Or strategic, maybe.”

“Why?”

“The pointy-head, Gorowski? We don’t think it’s blackmail in the sense that he’s got some terrible secret or anything. Looks to us more like straightforward threats against his family. Coercion, rather than blackmail.”

“How can you tell?”

“His file is clean as a whistle. He’s been background-checked to hell and back. That’s why they do it. They’re trying to avoid the possibility of blackmail.”

“Was he a Red Sox fan?”

She shook her head. “Yankees. He’s from the Bronx. Went to the High School of Science there.”

“OK,” I said. “I like him already.”

“But the book says we should bust him right now.”

“What’s he doing?”

“We’ve seen him taking papers out of the lab.”

“Are they still doing the sabot?”

She nodded.

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