Shepherd’s already turning to his men, dismissing everything but the mission ahead, when Liz pipes up.
“Any truth to the rumors of what we’ll find?”
The commander’s icy stare would shrivel anyone else. “We believe D2S is cultivating its marijuana trade here. It’s all in the fact sheet—”
“I’ve read it. It’s riveting. Is this where they’re growing Black Lung?”
A blink. “Growing what?”
“I’m sure you’re aware the recent overdoses are linked. And they’re not from intravenous drug use.”
“You don’t OD from hash.” Shepherd glances at the Deputy Commissioner over her shoulder. “Why the fuck you have to over sensationalize—” He dismisses her, finishes final checks with his team.
But his pause is all she needs. She’s just casting out a feeler; now knows she’s hooked something.
The rest of the emergency personnel mill uncertainly, having never heard the term. Liz’d only heard it herself whispered by a panicked girl in an ER waiting room — before she’d started convulsing and was whisked away by the triage nurses.
The detectives roll their eyes. “Sorry guys. But I have to know.”
“Then ask us.”
“I have been.” She smiles. “And you haven’t told me shit.”
Austin takes her aside. “Look, whatever you think you saw, I was there—”
“I know what I saw.”
The detective sighs, waves her away.
But did she know? The more she thinks about that night, the more she begins to question her sanity.
Black Lung. An unseen new strain of dope said to offer an almost otherworldly high, the potent hashish potentially linked to an outbreak of lung cancer and psychotic behavior, perhaps due to being contaminated with LSD and other chemicals in production, if the attending doctors she’d paid off were right in their speculation.
Or maybe this was the usual apocalyptic mythologizing that heralded every new drug. Crack was supposed to enslave everyone’s children. Speed create a nation of zombies. And yet… there’s something that sticks in her gut about this one. An unease she can’t shake. The raver vomiting and vomiting, more liters than the body can hold—
An unease she thinks she’d seen in the face of Shepherd for an instant, too. Maybe that’s the true reason for this whole risky operation. Not just a statement to the community after the explosion of violent crime the last few years — a puff piece on the nightly news about how our lawmakers are getting tough on criminals. But shutting down something that has real legs before it sweeps aside everything in its path. And who else would be distributing such a nihilistic substance but a group called D2S?
She was sure she’d seen the drug’s effect in person, even taken shaky footage on her phone. But before she could file her impossible story, she’d been hauled in before the Police Minister. Dalton had threatened her paper at first, even claimed they’d contrived the name, but she’d been doing this shit long enough to laugh at that. She’d take contempt before rolling over to outside influence. So he offered her an incentive: if she held off inciting fear in the community — they’d dismiss the footage as fabricated anyway — she’d be granted exclusive access to upcoming raids looking to break the back of drug manufacture in the state.
What she hadn’t known for sure was whether the raids were linked to Black Lung. Dalton obviously thought if he could keep her from publishing until afterwards, the scourge would already be nipped in the bud. And she’d be just one of many good little tools talking about an already contained problem.
But she’s no one’s puppet.
And this must be Ground Zero.
She feels Deputy Commissioner Daniel’s eyes boring into the back of her head and turns and smiles at him. Did he think she wouldn’t do her job? A leopard doesn’t change its spots.
The only person with the power to keep her here looks away.
“How to make friends and influence people,” Fozz whispers.
“Just fishing with hand grenades. Always good to see what rises to the surface.”
“It’ll be us if you keep pissing off the soggies.”
“As long as the good Shepherd tells me what I need to know.”
“We onto something?”
“We’re onto something.”
2 — MOVE-OFF POINT
THE OP GOES wrong almost from the first moment.
The two six-man SOG teams slink like black wraiths to the edge of the residential block nearest the tower, evidently the last possible place of cover before they hit the open and the gang’s spotters could see them.
“Once they get the go-ahead, there can be no turning back,” Collins, one of her detectives, leans in and explains. “All forward movement until the target is neutralized.”
Austin grins next to them. “Suck up all you want, Bill. She’s still profiling me for the story.”
“Why? You don’t know jack.”
“I’m prettier on camera. Ain’t that right, Fozzie?”
Fozz glances at the warts on Austin’s bald skull, not knowing what to say. Liz just smiles. Let them vie for attention.
The Team A stack, Shepherd at its head, bunches at the corner, weapons extensions of their bodies. Some of them had the non-lethal beanbag shooters, she knew, but the last resort shotguns at the rear were fully-loaded killers. She watches each man tap the shoulder of the one in front, signifying readiness. No one looks back. They can’t afford to take their eyes off the danger ahead.
Shepherd nods at his tap and there’s a crackle from the radio behind Liz as he breathes into his throat mic: “Team Alpha in position at Move-Off Point. Good to go.” Silence all around among the waiting troops.
“Ready Ready,” the Head of Operations, a big grizzled veteran the SOG naturally called God barks back. Hunched over the comms equipment, he pauses a moment, then: “Go Go Go!”
The black shapes disappear into the night. Liz has to crane to watch them on the helmet-mounted camera screens arrayed on one of the command desks. The angle’s not great and it’s dark, but the infra-red view on the closest screen is even worse: just fuzzy glares of yellow bouncing in grainy darkness.
“This is the most dangerous moment out in the open,” Austin explains softly. “But inside they’ll have the tactical advantage with their infra-scopes.”
Liz nods, watching the Shepherd shape run low and hard, sweeping ahead with his rifle across the small courtyard in front of the tower, the team hoping for little resistance until they hit the door and enter.
“Readying explosives for door—”
The observation post can hear the screams even at this distance. Banshee howls of rage coming from deep within the building.
“Fuck is that?” one of the uniformed guys waiting at the mouth of the parking lot says.
The advance unit hit their gun barrel-lights, training them on the front door in a tense converged pattern. They barely have time to slow before the doors bang open and half a dozen figures burst out.
Gasps around her and Liz nearly jumps back herself.
“Contact! Police! Put your—”
But the crazed gangbangers run headlong into the line of fire, faces wild and frenzied in the flitting lights, like something from nightmare.
It’s insane and Liz can only stare, trying to comprehend, mind racing: most gang members do all they can to save their own skin under threat of arrest, knowing how to play the system so they’ll be back on the street after a small stretch of incarceration.
They don’t run toward the guns.