“Ray, we’re going in,” Brooks said into his mic.
“Hold until I give the word!” Ray shouted. “There are only five of you. I don’t want you going in there on your own.”
Brooks cursed. His gut was telling him to kick in the damn door, regardless of what Ray said, but he forced himself to obey the order, knowing he’d give the same command in the other cop’s shoes. That didn’t keep him from growling in frustration as the shooting continued. People were dying in there.
In his ear, Ray shouted orders on the radio, moving his people up to the front door. José Rodriguez from narcotics yelled back, saying they were in position.
“Okay, Brooks,” Ray said. “Go!”
About damn time.
“SWAT going in,” Brooks announced.
Lifting his leg, he kicked in the back door, slamming it against the wall. Down near the loading dock, Trey did the same.
Dozens of scents hit Brooks as he and Connor worked their way down the hallway that led to the main part of the warehouse. Blood and sweat mixed with the acrid stench of gunpowder amid the maze of pallets and boxes, but none of it masked the pervasive smell of an opioid drug. Fentanyl probably.
Brooks was wondering why the scent of drugs was so strong, since the stuff was usually sealed in plastic bags, when a dark-haired guy in a T-shirt and jeans darted out in front of them. The gangbanger immediately lifted the submachine gun he held and pointed it in their direction.
“Drop the weapon!” Brooks ordered, aiming his M4 at the guy even as Connor did the same.
For a moment, Brooks thought the gangbanger might comply, but a split second later, bullets sprayed around them. Brooks dropped to the floor and rolled right while Connor rolled left. They came up on their knees together, both of them returning fire.
A part of Brooks winced as the gangbanger—who was barely out of his teens—dropped to the floor, his weapon spinning across the concrete. But Brooks quickly forced the thought aside as he and Connor moved quickly toward the front of the building where the other members of the task force were. Brooks sensed Trey and the other two members of his pack off to the left, heading in the same direction.
Gunshots and automatic weapons fire continued to echo in the building, but it had slowed drastically. In its place, he heard cops shouting at people to drop their weapons and get on the floor. It sounded like some of the gangbangers complied, both most didn’t. He and Connor crossed paths with three more bad guys on the way. Two put their guns down and their hands up, but the third guy refused, instead putting three rounds from his submachine gun into the wall inches from Connor’s head while he was cuffing the others.
A bullet to the head would kill a werewolf just as dead as a normal person, and Brooks quickly took the guy out before he could get another shot off.
As they got closer to the middle of the warehouse, the scent of drugs got so strong, it made Brooks’s nose sting. That was when it hit him.
“Ray, call back the K9 teams!” he shouted into his mic. “This whole place is filled with loose fentanyl.”
But even as he said the words, Brooks heard the sound of dogs running and out of control barking.Shit.If the K9s stepped in any of those drugs, they were going to be in trouble. Fentanyl—synthetic heroin—could soak through skin on contact. That included the pads on a dog’s feet…or nose.
Brooks and Connor sprinted toward the source of the odor. They got there just as Ray, several cops from the gang unit, and a K9 team ran up.
Brooks skidded to a stop. While he was still concerned about the drugs and where the hell they were, he couldn’t ignore the five dead men slumped in their seats along one side of a rectangular table. From the empty chairs on the other side and bullet casings littering the table, it seemed like the gangbangers had been ambushed by whoever had been sitting across from them.
He cursed as Ray moved over to take a closer look at the men. He recognized every one of them from the photos Ray had pinned to the briefing board back at headquarters. Two of them were Ray’s confidential informants. The other three were leaders in the east side gangs who’d been invited to the warehouse to discuss working together with the new boss to distribute drugs. Instead, it looked like he’d wiped out the competition.
Ray dropped to his knee beside his dead CIs, tears in his eyes. The two kids looked like they were eighteen or nineteen, twenty tops. It didn’t take a genius to know where Ray’s mind was headed. Brooks moved closer to the table, opening his mouth to tell his friend that what happened to those kids wasn’t his fault, but Trey’s voice cut him off.
“Brooks,” his packmate whispered from halfway across the room, his voice so low, only another werewolf could hear it. “You and everyone else need to back out of that area. Carefully.”
Brooks glanced at his teammate. Trey was standing with the rest of the guys, their faces intent and filled with concern. Brooks wasn’t sure what Trey was trying to tell him until his packmate looked pointedly down at the floor in front of Brooks, then back at him.
Brooks looked down, cursing silently when he realized he was standing in the middle of a pile of white powder that was scattered all over the floor near the table. He’d been so intent on the dead bodies that he hadn’t even seen the damn stuff. Werewolves could handle getting a few grams of the junk in their bloodstreams without going down, but for a human, a trace amount of powder on their skin could put them into immediate overdose—or worse.
“Ray, there’s loose fentanyl all over the place, including the floor where we’re standing,” Brooks said. “We need to get a hazmat team in here to clean up before we do anything else.”
The older man looked at him in shock, then cursed. “Okay, everybody. Walk out of here the same way we came in. Nobody touches anything.”
Nervous looks on their faces, they all did as Ray instructed, moving slowly and cautiously. Brooks thought they might get out of there unscathed, but then Kyber, the Belgian Malinois K9 who’d come in with Ray, stumbled and fell. A moment later, his handler, Officer MacIlwaine, collapsed too.
“Connor, grab Kyber,” Brooks ordered. “Trey, we need all the Narcan you have out front. Now!”
Tossing his M4 over his shoulder by the strap, Brooks scooped up an unconscious MacIlwaine and sprinted for the front of the warehouse. Connor was right beside him, Kyber in his arms. Fentanyl could kill a dog even faster than a human. Behind him, Ray was calling for EMS, telling them to get ready for two overdose patients on the way out.
