Hellhole

by Jonathan Maberry

  If only their goal was the roof. At least that’d be visible to the police snipers’ cover fire.

  The drug raid’s target is instead somewhere within the barricaded nightmare building, close-quartered and claustrophobic. As with the other towers in the almost-lawless western suburbs, Force Command knew the building was controlled by the Death To Society (D2S) gang, an anarchic virus of criminals that’d managed to rise above most of the other gangs in the suburbs—mainly because they’d taken over much of the drug trade with such insane violence it’d scared those they didn’t kill into early retirement. Liz had written a story during their early days, so she knew how heinous their methods were: Australia had never seen necklacing before their arrival. The images of rivals burning to death with tires around their necks on the shopping strips of Dandenong and Thomastown still haunted many. The thought of entering the building, even if only after the police tactical teams had cleared the way, sent prickles of sweat across her brow. She hoped the drug squad detectives she’d been embedded with over the past month didn’t notice. They gave her some concessions as an outsider, but like all cops they lapped up weakness.

  Police Intelligence knew that walls inside had been torn down at will, escape holes hidden behind plaster everywhere throughout. But further intel on the internals was sketchy. The hydroponics labs might be scattered throughout the labyrinth of apartments, having shunted the remaining families into the few empty rooms left, or the gangs could have taken over whole floors to network the banks of plants. Then again, the labs might be so well-hidden the search comes up empty-handed. Command just didn’t know. And there’s only so long the police head honchos could keep covering up the true impact of whatever it was D2S were now peddling.

  The raver glimpses through the tangle of bodies, back hunched and convulsing, dreadlocks snapping like snakes, and he turns with eyes black from embolism, and the bile he’s spewing in a great torrent doesn’t stop, it doesn’t fucking stop, it’s impossible for that much to be inside a—

  She tears herself from the ominous view, glances over the forces assembled in the hotel rear parking lot with its shielded line of sight to the tower across the block. All with their jobs to do. The chosen protectors of society. The black-clad Special Operations Group members with their muzzled mouths and steel eyes, checking each other’s kits: “You good Jacko?” “You good Mad Dog?” The uniformed officers waiting to clean up and secure in their wake like puppies eager to prove themselves. The forensics team in their plastic ponchos and booties, scoffing down a last biscuit or two at the coffee trolley. Detective Austin and the other drug squad members, who she and her usual Herald photographer lapdog Fozz—shifting from foot to foot now beside her—had sat alongside the last weeks. Or the Deputy Police Commissioner and the other faceless suits lined against the back of the co-opted parking lot, all stabbing away on their smartphones or quietly reviewing political strategy with a shrewd eye over the whole congregation.

  She wishes she has their righteous self-belief, their unshaking confidence in their place in the world. She’d lost hope long ago, before all this. The only thing that keeps her going anymore is the puzzle, the story. She has nothing else in her life.

  “Who’re the work experience kids, Austin?”

  The detective beside Liz jumps as the hardass SOG commander, a lethal bullet of a man Liz had heard tagged Shepherd, passes with a snarled grin. “Press tagalongs,” Austin says. “PR for the Minister.”

  “Think he’d learn. Like letting the wolves in the door.” He keeps walking. Liz can’t help herself.

  “Can’t criticize the Brotherhood, hey?”

  Shepherd turns back, smile turning hard. “That didn’t take much. Dalton know this is going to be a hatchet job?”

  “Not this piece. But someone has to watch the watchmen.”

  Shepherd’s pale eyes look through her. She can almost feel the impact out the back of her skull.

  “Just stay the fuck where you’re told. Media blood’ll take us years to live down.” Shepherd points a finger at Fozz. “And any footage of our faces, I’ll disappear that camera up your arsehole.”

  The Victoria Police Special Operations Group were perhaps the most well-trained, well-skilled tactical response team in the country. They attended hundreds of incidents a year, everything from terrorism threats, to sieges, to mass shootings. Within the group they called themselves the Sons of God, a backronym referencing Matthew 5:9: “Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called the Sons of God.” Hell, they’d flown down to Port Arthur to stop the killing spree of Martin Bryant because Tasmania didn’t have a force capable of dealing with such an event.

  They’d also been involved in a number of well-publicized shootings during the Gangland Wars that brought into question whether they’d become a trigger-happy death squad. Liz had thought most of the shootings were justified, considering the heavily-armed opposition they’d been up against. But they’d nearly been disbanded and it necessitated a full cultural review and more emphasis on non-lethal means of apprehending suspects.

  She knows she’s being harsh, but if you didn’t put a rocket up the narky ones early, they’d find a way to get rid of you.

  Detective Austin stands a moment, embarrassed. “Jeez, Hendo. Go easy.” He subtly turns his back, so they’re no longer part of their unit.

  “I think we officially have cooties,” Fozz says low and she hides a laugh. He steals a photo of Shepherd’s back.

  She glances up to see the Deputy Commissioner staring at her across the gap. He nods and Liz feels the fingernail up the spine of being someone’s puppet. Her smile sours.

  “Quiet.” Shepherd’s voice slaps the assembled horde into silence. “This is an SOG op. You’re all tourists for now. Even the Dicks.”

  The surrounding officers grin at the stony-faced drug squad detectives. Austin’s mouth puckers like a cat’s bum.

  “Our targets are smart. They’ve barricaded the other entrances. That way they control in and out. Team A will hit the door, Team B in reserve as cover. Once in and we signal clear—we signal clear, none of you—uniforms will move in to hold the stairwells, in case any of the fine residents decide they want to join in.”

  A chuckle among the group eases some tension. Liz listens with half an ear as she takes notes, but she’s more concerned with watching the various teams. Imagining their motivations, which of them would make a good character sketch—maybe the young female forensics officer fiddling with the escaping hair beneath her hood, probably on one of her first jobs; one of the older uniformed guys, a Sergeant by his wings, who stares balefully out at the target building, like this is personal. Fozz takes her lead, snapping the tense resolve on the man’s face, backlit against the tower in the distance. It’s a good shot, as usual. She also thinks of how to describe the scene: the chill in the air, the sound of dishes from the hotel kitchen, impatient feet softly stamping, the sour ulcer-breath of one of the detectives behind her. The devil is in the details, her first editor said with every story, and Jim back at the desk still expects nothing less. She appreciates the mantra now. Anything to calm her nerves.

  “...sometimes wired with IEDs, so we spot anything, we’ll send in the robots before Forensics enters and starts bagging and tagging. Wouldn’t want to get in the way of your afternoon tea.” Another chuckle. The ponchoed-ones grin around biscuit crumbs.

  Shepherd turns his attention to Liz and the administrators along the back wall. “And then the rest of you can swan in and take the credit.”

  A thin smile from Daniel, the Deputy Commissioner. As long as the pawns do their job.

  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 t
hey’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.

  The screams still sound and there’s a snapped transmission—“Engaging”—then the distant sound of beanbag pellets. Dull thuds carry on the air. Liz tries to get a better angle on the screens and sees the figures jump and jerk with each painful hit then keep staggering forward. More thuds and finally all bar one drop.

  The last attacker, a huge bloated form that fills the doorway, keeps coming on despite the non-lethal rounds, his arm seeming too long, unnaturally elongated—

  “Weapon!”

  The SOG split to one side and the rear-guard officer steps forward.

  “Drop it!”

  A dark barrel raises on one of the screens, but the man doesn’t stop and there’s a flash then a concussive BOOM through the mic as the officer fires the lethal Bennelli shotgun, and the crazed man’s arm blows off—literally blasts o
ff still holding the machete; Liz can make out its spiral through the cordite smoke like a tossed snake.

  The man doesn’t slow.

  “Jesus.” Liz doesn’t know who says that one. Maybe it’s her. She notices Fozz zooming in to catch the encounter and Collins covering the lens.

  “Stay back!” The barrel centers on the man’s head and there’s a collective silence around her as everyone watches held-breath. One of the SOG tazers the guy from the side, but the wired barbs don’t even register on his huge expanse and he keeps coming, he fills the screen—

  A second BOOM. The man’s head disappears in a cloud of red and he pitches forward, spasms then stills.

  “Shots fired. Suspect down.”

  “Damn it,” someone at the table says softly.

  “Roger that Alpha. EMT on standby.”

  The screen holds on the dead man a second. Bit late for that. “Suggest the body snatchers.” Then the unit pushes up the stairs.

  “Acknowledged.”

  Liz can feel Austin and Collins watching her like she’s a live grenade. “You know they didn’t have a choice—” Collins starts to say.

  “I know. I’m not a turncoat.” She curses herself. It’d taken her weeks to win the squad over. Shepherd had planted doubt there now.

  “I don’t even know why I’m here,” Fozz grumbles.

  The team moves in and down the hallway beneath sporadic fluorescent lights, kicking in doors and clearing room after room, then continuing on. The apartments are all empty, most trashed and filled with detritus. None contain hydroponics banks.

  “Where are all the families?” Liz asks. Most new refugees were funneled into the government-owned towers upon entering the country. There should be hundreds of people within.

  Austin glances at her. A moment of hesitation. Then he must take pity. “Ground floor’s buffer space. Leave it empty, they don’t lose anything if they’re breached. Everything must be on the upper floors, so the guys’ll have to clear each one—” He breaks off, stares at the screen.