*
They had thought the sickly sweet scents in the air were merely coming from the vast array of plants within the garden, but then they reached the wreckage of the helicopter and realised the charred bodies might have been contributing as well. The helicopter was bullet ridden and fire damaged and the two bodies protruding from the remnants of the doorway were being illuminated by moonlight, making them easier to identify as Furn poked with the toe of his boot.
‘I know them,’ he said. ‘They’re Skidmore’s men.’
‘How can you be sure?’ replied Breeze. ‘I mean, it’s pretty obvious they’ve seen better days.’
‘They were on the flight I took out here. It’s probably the same helicopter as well.’ He pointed into the doorway. ‘I was sitting there.’
‘Did they have anything to say for themselves during the flight?’
‘About as much as they do now.’
Riley emerged from a quick look inside the helicopter, keeping low and alert with his machine gun held at the ready.
‘No sign of a fight inside the chopper,’ he said. ‘No sign of Skidmore either.’ He knelt before the two bodies. ‘I’d say they were ambushed on the way out. Small arms and flame throwers.’
‘Do you think it’s Zulma Pei?’ murmured Furn.
‘I don’t know, but when I hear that name, I get the sudden urge to duck.’ He took out his flashlight. ‘You might want to duck too ‘cause I’m about to light up a crime scene.’
He shone the flashlight onto the ground and Furn and Breeze dived onto their stomachs, aiming their weapons towards the buildings of the Green Fields compound, the image of flame throwers roasting men alive as vivid in their minds as were the smells in their nostrils.
‘Are you going to whistle a nice, loud tune while you’re doing it as well?’ grumbled Breeze.
‘I have to do it,’ replied Riley. ‘The Red Line Files are still in the helicopter, which tells me Skidmore was here and left in a hurry.’
‘If he was in the ambush, he might be in the same shape as these two.’
‘Or he might not give a damn about your Red Line Files,’ Furn chipped in.
The flashlight was erratically combing the lush grass until locking onto a strip of fresh red that led away into the dense bushes to the side.
‘See that,’ said Riley excitedly and flicked off the light. ‘Fresh blood. And it doesn’t come from our two boys here. They’re cooked well done.’
‘Want us to take a look?’ said Breeze.
‘Furn and I will go. You stay with the helicopter. You’re the one who can fly these things and we may need to get away from here in a hurry.’
‘Fly this thing? Are you mad?’
Riley hurried off without reply and was promptly caught up to by Furn; they followed the trail of blood to the fringe of the bushes. They checked their speed there, aware that none of these plants was native or had a predisposition to live in such dry, harsh climate and could only assume that Skidmore’s purpose for growing them there was their toxicity - agents of death - quite possibly horrible deaths - and some came with fiendishly long thorns that could easily have ripped through their protective rubber suits.
There had been no barbed wire, no warning signs, no perimetre fences to mark the beginning of the Green Fields facility, nothing to explain this peculiar oasis of green lost amidst a vast, empty desert, just the cooked carcasses of the kangaroos and dingoes that had strayed upon it, littering the ground around it. A grotesque battlefield. A scene of violent death. It was here that the Rogue Intercept officers had first dismounted from the mountain bikes and put on their protective suits. No words were spoken and no words were needed - Riley, Furn and Breeze were in this job because they were comfortable in such situations: At the centre of all this death there was madness, there were people in positions of power who had gone rogue, there were things that needed to be done.
Colonel Skidmore had found those thorns, was slumped within them, unable to move. He was staring out with wide, glazed eyes. Thinned to a trickle, the blood stopped there.
Riley held a flashlight on the grisly scene, confident they were deep enough within the vegetation that the light would not be visible from the compound.
‘Colonel,’ he said, ‘you are under arrest.’
The voice jolted Skidmore out of his daze, his eyes flickering rapidly before finally managing to focus.
‘Under arrest? My friend, the trial has come and gone and the verdict is in. It is a death sentence.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘There was one plant that could stem the bleeding, is a natural coagulant, but to reach it I had to negotiate a path through plants dripping in lethal poisons.’ He lifted out his hands, and the branches, with its thorns gripping, went with him. ‘This is as far as I got.’
‘What poison is it? We have antidotes.’
‘It is you, Detective Riley, isn’t it? Riley of the Rogue Intercept Police. I do believe the poison is you.’
‘We will save you if we can. Who ambushed you? Are they still in this vicinity?’
Skidmore moved in the thorns as though attempting to raise a blanket. His voice returned in a whisper that was almost lost in the rustling of poison bushes in the breeze: ‘They were my men and I believe they have been helping themselves to my garden. If so, they might already be dead, or they may be in the grip of a murderous madness.’ He shook his head. ‘You can tell people not to eat the fruit, but they really need to find out why for themselves.’
Furn stepped forward, grabbing him by the shirt collar and pulling him from the tree, amidst screams of agony as the thorns ripped away flesh.
‘The fruit in your own garden of Eden?’ said Furn, dropping him to the ground.
Skidmore chuckled through the pain. ‘Maybe the fruit or maybe the weeds. We have been experimenting with a new kind of marijuana. If they have been smoking that, the only high they are going to get is high into psychosis. I did not want to use that as a weapon. It was to be my gift to the world. Who would take party drugs when this is the fun they would be having?’ He coughed with blood soaked lungs and cringed with the pain of it. Finally he relaxed the deep creases out of his face and spoke again. ‘The particular marijuana strain we have developed is called the Rogue Leaf.’ He grimaced with a smile. ‘Named in your honour, perhaps.’
‘We don’t have time for this,’ snapped Riley impatiently. ‘You can bleed your heart out all you want back at base.’ He started moving forward but Skidmore pushed away angrily.
‘I cannot be saved and I will not let you waste my last few breaths in the attempt. I am not afraid to be the first victim of the Rogue Leaf and it may even be fitting, for I am its creator. I am not afraid to die, especially not now that I have achieved my own particular brand of immortality: to be feared after death, how many people can lay claim to that?’
Furn shone his torch onto him, confirming what he had thought he was seeing under moonlight: bleached white skin and bloody teeth bared in a mad grin. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Wars are only won by those willing to fight dirty and that is why the War on Drugs has been going nowhere for so long. But that is about to change. Operation Harvest is about to begin. It is beginning here and now and if you manage to make it out of here alive, you can tell the world how it all started. Not that you will.’ Skidmore grinned some more. ‘Those who inhale the Rogue Leaf tend to develop a serious case of the munchies. How else do you think our man lost his hands? He was just writing into his notebook when he was attacked. The man he was trying to observe had turned into a rabid dog, so demented he was able to bite off two hands. I was reluctant to shoot him, for I wanted to see what more he was capable of. But I needed my scientist.’
There was a burst of gunfire from the direction of the helicopter. Riley grabbed Furn by the arm. ‘Cuff him and follow me.’
Furn looked at Skidmore and shook his head. ‘I didn’t bring the cuffs. This will have to do.’ He picked him up
and flung him hard back into the thorn bush. He gazed at Skidmore a moment longer. ‘Was it you that stuffed that dead kangaroo in my car? And shot up the Hyun gang at the train tracks? Stalking me?’
‘Perhaps,’ muttered Skidmore. ‘Perhaps, I wanted to know what you were capable of, too. I have a healthy curiosity.’
‘Healthy?’
There was another burst of gunfire. It was further away, coming from somewhere amidst the complex of buildings and greenhouses. Furn jogged that way. He had lost sight of Riley but at the fringe of the clearing found him springing forward.
‘We need to take one alive,’ snapped Riley, urgently. ‘For research purposes. But keep your hands to yourself.’
‘You think Skidmore was serious about that?’ asked Furn. ‘You think we’re dealing with cannibals?’
From the bushes a dark shape leapt out at him; Furn reacted quickly, putting a burst of machine gunfire into the shape, eliciting a high pitched scream that was only barely recongisable as human.
‘Was that your idea of research?’ Riley hissed.
‘Sorry.’
Riley trod on the lifeless man’s arm and plucked a long bowie knife from his hand. He said into the headset mike, ‘Breeze, are you hot?’
‘Getting warm,’ came the reply into his earpiece.
‘Concentrate your fire on the buildings and we’ll work the flanks. The garden has got them crazy high, so this is no time to try brushing off your negotiating skills.’
‘Negotiating skills?’ Breeze, from his position at the helicopter, started spraying the nearest greenhouse with machine gunfire. He soon paused, however, and added, ‘It doesn’t feel right shooting at people in uniform - in our uniform, that is. Not that they seem to mind doing it themselves.’
Riley chucked aside the bowie knife, aware it was not the right weapon for this fight. ‘No, they don’t.’
‘And you’re saying they are high on some herbs from the garden?’
‘That’s right? We found Skidmore and he tells us they have been smoking marijuana containing a powerful psychotic agent.’
‘Well, if they’re tripping on something that’ll make them paranoid, some noise might push them over the edge. They can sleep it off in the desert. Once they’ve stopped running.’ Breeze went to the helicopter’s heavy machine guns and began to hammer the four main buildings relentlessly. Windows smashed and brick walls were pummeled. This was not enough for Breeze, however, and he took to discharging small arms fire as well. The destination of these bullets was less obvious and Riley pulled down on Furn, saying, ‘We could be scared to death ourselves by this.’
The machine gun fire finally paused, though only long enough for a Rocket Propelled Grenade to be unleashed on the centre building.
‘Jeez,’ said Riley. ‘If there’s an ordinance in that helicopter, he’s going to fire it.’
‘And you get the feeling that helicopter is an ammo-dump with rotor blades on top,’ added Furn.
Riley changed the frequency on his two-way radio and went back to his mike, yelling, ‘HQ, are you there?’
‘Yes, here,’ came the prompt reply. It was Azu Nashy.
‘Tell the generals they can now safely intervene. Green Fields is open. But let them know if they still want to keep Skidmore on the project, they’ll have to intervene in a hurry. Got that?’
‘Got it,’ said Nashy. ‘Did you extract Furn successfully?’
‘He’s fine. Is our transport organised?’
‘The generals have got a fast jet reserved for you. Now they have what they want, I’m sure they would suggest the faster the better.’
‘We’ll take that. Out.’
Breeze was back to the heavy machine gun.
Riley flicked a glance to Furn and nodded. ‘I think he needs this.’
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