Clan and Conviction (Clan Beginnings)

by Tracy St. John

  His expression set, the dealer asked, “I give you information, and you’ll get Eki and Byd to safety?”

  Gelan nodded. “You give me names of the gang leaders and the central location where your group operates from, and I promise your sister and nephew will get new identities. The department will set them up with whole new lives elsewhere. I think Eki would enjoy a fresh start, don’t you? A chance to do things over, maybe find a clan who will care for her and Byd?”

  Latwik drew a shuddering breath. It was obvious he was desperate to protect his family members. Dangling the promise of a better life for them only pushed him to cooperate even more.

  As a law enforcement officer, Gelan too often saw the worst of his people. But he had also come to realize that the worst often had a noble streak lurking somewhere inside. It might be as slender as a hair, but it was usually there.

  At last, Latwik spoke. “No names. And there’s not a central location where the gang does business.”

  Gelan leaned back against the table again and folded his arms over his chest. “No deal then.”

  Latwik clenched his teeth, his gaze hectic on Gelan’s face. “You don’t get it. If I give the names up, there will be those who will hunt down Eki and Byd no matter how well you hide them. Someone in the organization is a badass when it comes to getting through security and shit like that. I don’t know who he is. I’m just a dealer and gang enforcer, okay?”

  Gelan stared at him. Suddenly he wished he’d had Krijero observing this from the viewing room and giving comments via an earpiece. He thought Latwik was sincere about what he said, but it would have been nice to get the psych’s insight right now. Then again, he could always show Krijero the vid recording of this interview.

  Damn it, I want to know what I’ve got here and now. Next time, I’ll definitely have that Imdiko on hand.

  For now he’d have to trust his own instincts. Fortunately, his innate grasp of what was going on in a prisoner’s head had been pretty reliable in the past.

  Gelan cocked an eyebrow at Latwik. “What will you give me?”

  The Nobek drew a deep breath, obviously bolstering his courage before speaking. “I’ll tell you where the lab is. I know where the Delir is coming from.”

  Gelan’s pulse quickened, but he made himself look unimpressed. “All I’ll find there are soldiers marching to orders, the same as you. No one of any real importance.”

  Latwik scowled. “I’m not done. I’ll also give you the locations of some of the meeting places I know about, the places where we get our orders. There are computers there where whoever is in charge sends messages to. It could be you’ll find some sort of trail you can follow that will give you the names of the guys in charge. But you got to hit those places first before the lab.”

  “Why?”

  “The lab is big time, much bigger than the meeting places. If the guys behind Delir think you also got the lab’s location from any records you find, then they might leave Eki and Byd alone. There’s a chance they won’t try to track them down in revenge.” Latwik looked at Gelan with intensity. “I’m not going to fuck with these people, Investigator. If they think I gave them up, it doesn’t matter how safe you try to keep my family.”

  “We can alter their appearances, change their histories—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” His tone was low and insistent. “I’m telling you, you could make them look like Tragooms, hide them underground on the most remote moon a galaxy away, and those bastards will find them.”

  Gelan considered. It wasn’t nearly as much as he’d hoped to get. However, he didn’t need Krijero to tell him Latwik was genuinely terrified. The dealer had no doubt his gang would hunt down his nephew and sister and kill them in retribution.

  As little as Latwik offered, it was still the first glimmer of potential in breaking the Delir case. Gelan could have Nost set up surveillance on the supposed Delir lab and keep tabs on who came and went. Gelan could easily hold off on taking it down until after they hit the meeting places Latwik was willing to give him. Of course, if the gang might choose to dismantle and move their lab when the other locations were seized. In that case, he could have a group of enforcers ready to intervene if it became apparent evidence was being destroyed.

  It was worth a try. Gelan nodded. “Consider it done, Latwik. You give me those locations, and we’ll place your family in protective custody. Once we hit the meeting places and lab and confirm the information you’ve given is legit, Eki and Byd get their new start.”

  The relief on Latwik’s face couldn’t be faked. His hard edge vanished with the strength of it. The scarred brute looked damned near civilized as he said, “Okay. Okay, it’s a deal.”

  * * * *

  The next two weeks were the longest in Gelan’s life. He’d never been one to sit back and watch events unfold. For the Delir case, he had no choice.

  He started the same day as Latwik’s interview by meeting with Krijero and going over the vid. He was amused to see the Imdiko moving as slowly and stiffly as Gelan had earlier in the morning. Apparently, Krijero’s foray into the pleasure club had been a profitable one. It was all the Dramok could do to maintain his professionalism and not offer the other man a hit of his pain inhibitor.

  Krijero confirmed that Gelan had gotten all he was going to out of Latwik, at least for now. “He’s going to expose his culpability as little as possible in the more threatening aspects of the case,” the psych said. “He’s determined to lessen the likelihood that his family will be targeted. In that sense, having his sister and nephew as a bargaining chip is as much a detriment as a boon to your case.”

  “He’ll give a little, but not so much that he feels the gang will go out of their way to find and kill them,” Gelan said.

  Krijero nodded. “What interests me the most is his certainty that they will discover where law enforcement puts them, no matter the secrecy involved. That’s an allegation of a serious security breach.” He paused and then added, “It sounds like he thinks someone within the law enforcement community is helping the gang.”

  Gelan frowned. “Maybe. More likely, he thinks one of us could be kidnapped and forced to give up Latwik’s family members.”

  Krijero only shrugged at that theory.

  Gelan’s next move spanned the next several days. He got with Nost to put together an undercover operation. His friend’s department immediately swung into action, spying on the locations Latwik gave them.

  The lab operation stunned everyone involved in the Delir case. It turned out to be hidden inside a legitimate company that manufactured body care products: shampoos, soaps, and the like. The business was housed in a warren of caves owned by an entity known simply as Advantage Industries. Most of the plant was automated, requiring only a skeleton crew to run it. Yet more people than the operation required reported to the complex each day, passing through state-of-the-art security scanners to access the plant.

  When Gelan questioned why no one had ever noted the number of people working at Advantage Industries and why a body care product manufacturer would require scanners that would pick up secret vid and com recording devices, Nost laughed.

  “How much thought do you give to who made your soap, Gelan? Have you ever wondered how many people are involved in washing your big ugly ass?”

  Gelan scowled. “Who the hell thinks about stuff like that?”

  “Exactly. So naturally, no one bothers to wonder at the number of people working in that building. As for the scanners, Advantage actually produces the work of four rival companies. They send in their lists of ingredients for each line, how it gets mixed in what ratios, how it should look, and Advantage does the rest for them with the guarantee the competition will not get any of that information. They have to watch out for corporate espionage and all that crap, so of course they have serious security measures.”

  Gelan gaped at him. “They’re that protective over soap? Soap?”

  Nost shook his head. “That’s the big world of business
and industry, my friend. A lot of industries have state-of-the-art security teams and protections.”

  That evening as Gelan scrubbed Wynhod’s back in the shower, he asked, “Guess how many people made this soap?”

  The Nobek’s answer came in a sigh as he enjoyed the cleansing rubdown. “A hell of a lot fewer people than work at Advantage Industries.”

  “What? Who told you that?”

  Wynhod looked over his shoulder and grinned at Gelan. “Nost told me you’d ask that question. ‘Such a simplistic-thinking guy like Gelan can’t resist’ were his exact words.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Oh, I completely agreed with him.”

  Wynhod ended up wearing a couple of Gelan’s handprints on his ass, which started that night’s festivities.

  Nost’s department somehow managed to get spy vid- and com-recording devices into the plant, even with the scanning and security measures Advantage employed. Looking at the footage that they collected right in the Delir lab had even the most cynical of law enforcement open-mouthed. The lab was in an immense converted cavern. It was beyond the scope of what anyone had seen in drug manufacturing before. Cargo shuttles moved the deadly product every day to other manufacturing and warehouse shippers, where the containers of Delir were mixed in with shipments of perfectly legal goods. Most frightening of all was how much was being sent into other territories.

  Head Investigator Utta stared at recordings, showing how the well-hidden Delir made its way from his precinct into the rest of Southwest Mountain and beyond. He alternated between horror and fury.

  “No wonder we could never lock down the manufacturing and trafficking. The bastards thought of everything. Right in my own fucking backyard,” he was heard to mutter.

  The precinct’s research department kept busy trying to track down the men behind Advantage Industries. They also had their hands full attempting to trace ownerships for all the businesses where Latwik had made payments, deliveries, and gathered stock. What they found was only frustration as they navigated a byzantine network of shadow companies, businesses that existed in name only, and dummy corporations. Every path they traced in the effort to discover who was behind these facades wound up in exactly the same place: a dead end. Whoever made up the Delir gang’s leadership remained absolutely faceless.

  Wynhod consulted with the enforcement and sniper departments as those entities prepared to take down the gang meeting places. Squads were cycled in and out around the Delir lab, posted against the eventuality that it would have to be secured in a moment’s notice. Nothing was left to chance.

  Two days after Latwik’s arrest, the home the dealer had shared with his sister and nephew at the bottom of the Sko Mountain Complex was gutted by a mysterious fire. At his own request he was kept in solitary confinement. He seemed convinced that the gang would find some way to get to him if he was in the general population. In exchange, he gave up names, readily identifying some of the people Undercover Ops had gotten footage of coming and going from the lab and meeting places.

  “These are mostly dealers and gang enforcers like me,” he told Gelan. “I doubt they know anymore about the leadership than I do. You’ve got the couple of go-tos that I pointed out, men that report to a higher authority in the ranks. If you get them alive, don’t expect them to know any more than one or two names of the next level.”

  After the trouble Research had encountered in trying to find out who owned the targeted operations, Gelan was inclined to agree with Latwik. The gang leadership was a careful bunch of bastards, to the point of seeming paranoid.

  The day finally came for the raids on the half dozen meeting places. Since gang members never went to those locations in groups larger than three, Gelan knew they wouldn’t net many. Other investigator-enforcer teams headed out to grab the rest in their homes or on their Delir-dealing routes. Undercover Ops had been tested to chart every person they’d identified during their surveillance, but they’d done a great job nonetheless. The hope was that forty gang members would be captured in the simultaneous operations.

  As much as Gelan and Wynhod wanted to be in the thick of things, Utta insisted they man a command post at headquarters with him and Nost. “You know this case better than anyone. You know what we’re up against, and I want you two ready to advise our men out in the field if they need you,” Utta said.

  The plan was simple: go in fast and strong and take as many gang members alive and confiscate as many intact computers as possible. Four of the six meeting places were ripe areas for triggering shockwave devices, which knocked out those within its range. The other two would be brought down by sheer force.

  It was midmorning when Gelan gave the signal and the teams went into action. He and Wynhod listened avidly as the enforcement teams, supported by snipers, went into the meeting places. In three of the targets, the armed shockwave devices were tossed in and triggered, immediately taking down the men within. The fourth place one of the weapons was used, two of the three targeted men got out and ran, firing at the officers as they went. The snipers took them down without trouble, killing one and wounding another.

  The other two locations ended up being mostly one-sided shooting battles, due to the number of officers versus gang members. At those places, all the suspects were killed. Two enforcers were injured.

  Meanwhile, investigator-enforcer teams assigned to pick up individual gang members that had been identified frequenting the meeting locations had similar results. Caught by surprise, many chose to fight or run. A few committed suicide on the spot, shoving blades into their own hearts or turning percussion blasters on themselves. No one went quietly.

  In the end, the results were phenomenal from a law enforcement standpoint. They’d taken nineteen Delir gang members alive and confiscated every computer from each location they’d hit. The potential for further discovery had those manning the command post howling and screaming like a pack of bloodthirsty Nobek adolescents. Gelan’s only regret was that he hadn’t been in the thick of the action.

  Most amazing of all, only five officers had been injured. The worst hurt of the bunch would spend only a couple of nights in the hospital.

  The research and undercover ops departments, with their advanced knowledge of programming, went to work together on the seized computers. Meanwhile, Gelan and several investigators interrogated the men they’d caught. Like Latwik had warned, no one knew the identities of those on top. However, Gelan reasoned that if they continued to catch men higher and higher in the gang’s ranks, they’d eventually get the names of those in charge.

  In that vein, they struck gold. Both sides came up with a few identities of the next tier of the gang structure after a week’s work. More raids were planned to capture those men, along with finalizing the coming takedown of the Delir manufacturing operation itself.

  Then things began to go sour. Some of the gang members who had been caught alive found ways to commit suicide. Then when enforcers went out to round up those who had been identified by the captured, they came up either empty or with corpses. Some of the dead looked as if they’d committed suicide, but the majority had been killed execution-style.

  One of the more grisly discoveries was of eight men in a valley, staked to the ground. They had apparently been flayed alive, their bellies sliced open to expose internal organs. When the police got there, scavengers were feeding eagerly on the gruesome remains. Two of the men were ones Gelan’s team had been seeking. Latwik and his fellow dealers identified three others from vid pics. The gang was taking out everyone who might lead Gelan to whoever was in charge, leaving him no closer to ending the Delir nightmare.

  “Look at it this way,” Wynhod soothed the agitated Dramok as he stared at the growing list of dead suspects on his vid. “You’ve put a major kink in their operations. Sales of Delir in our precinct have dropped to nearly nothing. They haven’t shut the lab down yet, the only one in operation according to our sources. We still get to hit that with the opportunity for more evide
nce. Once that’s out of commission, Delir is done. Plus there are still four missing gang members we know of who may be out there alive. We might yet catch them and bring the whole damned thing to its knees.”

  “But there’s no guarantee they won’t set it up again!” Gelan raged. “And the ones who are most guilty could still get away.”

  Wynhod was patient with him. It was almost as if he was the calm, controlling Dramok and Gelan the warpath-storming Nobek. “It would take an insane amount of capital to make Delir happen again at the level it was. That manufacturing plant is ridiculously expensive. They did it once, but can they do it again? Even if they can, it won’t be for any time soon. Meanwhile, hundreds – probably thousands of lives are saved because Delir is off the market. Isn’t that the most important thing?”

  Gelan clicked his computer to bring up the images of the missing four gang members. He stared morosely at the feral faces glaring back at him from the vids. If he could catch just one of those men, one in the next tier of the gang’s operation, he might be able to take the whole thing down. How many levels could it possibly be to the leaders themselves? Surely no more than two. At the most, three. No gang he’d ever heard of had more than four levels: aspiring gang members, the main group of grunts, a few officers, and the leader or leaders.

  Nobeks Anam, Huk, and Wason. Dramok Behor. The names of the four third-tier gang members who had gone missing were burned in Gelan’s brain. Their vicious, snarling faces etched on his memory. If he could find just one of them, it could finish this once and for all.

  “My fathers want to know when we’re going to have the clanning ceremony. They need to put in for leave from work to attend.”

  Wynhod’s statement jerked Gelan out of his reverie. He blinked.

  “By the ancestors, Wynhod, we haven’t announced our clanship yet. You haven’t even moved your stuff in.”

  With the Delir case moving so fast, Gelan and Wynhod had delayed telling everyone but their parents that they were officially a couple now. They had agreed to hold off filing their status until things at work had settled down.