does that mean?’ Zara asked.
Chloe raised her palm to silence her boss and leaned in close to Gabrielle. ‘Are you completely sure?’
‘Sure,’ Gabrielle said, rocking her head on the pillow to nod.
‘What about the man who stabbed you?’ Chloe asked. ‘The police have a description from the lady who had her car stolen and a CCTV image from a car park where he abandoned it, but did you recognise him?’
‘Not seen before … Just one of the Runts.’
As Gabrielle said this, an alarm sounded from the monitoring unit beside her bed. By the time Michael had turned around to look at the display, Dr Shah was coming through the door.
‘Low oxygen,’ Shah explained. ‘Her lungs are fine, but she gets pain when she inhales and as a result she’s not breathing deeply enough. We’re going to have to increase her pain medication, but that will knock her out for another few hours.’
‘We’d better go,’ Chloe said, as she stepped away from the bed.
‘I love you Gabrielle,’ Michael said. ‘Everyone’s praying for you.’
As they backed out of the room, Dr Shah stripped the cellophane away from a needle pack and prepared to give Gabrielle her shot.
‘Love you,’ Gabrielle said, her voice weaker than before.
Zara put her arm around Michael’s back once they’d returned to the changing area and stripped off their masks.
‘You did great,’ Zara said. ‘But I didn’t understand what was so significant about what she said. Who’s Sasha?’
Chloe explained as she dropped her latex gloves into a medical waste unit. ‘It never made sense that a teenage gang like the Runts would take on a hardcore crew like the Slasher Boys. But the Slasher Boys’ biggest rival is a group known as the Mad Dogs. Sasha Thompson is their main man.
‘The Mad Dogs are led by old-timers; people who worked for or had close ties to KMG. Armed robbers and big-time dealers. Rather than smuggling drugs themselves, they let other gangs take the risks, and then they steal their money, drugs or ideally both.’
Zara nodded. ‘So Sasha’s boy said there’d be a lot more than four kilos indicates that the Runts were tipped off by the Mad Dogs about Major Dee keeping his cocaine stashed above the roof tiles?’
‘Seems that way,’ Chloe said.
‘Why wouldn’t Sasha take the cocaine himself?’ Zara asked.
‘The Slasher Boys and Mad Dogs have been squaring up for the best part of a year. But it looks like Sasha’s worked out that it’s easier to have the Runts do his dirty work for him.’
Michael nodded. ‘And once the Runts and Slashers have spent six months stabbing and shooting one another, the Mad Dogs can move in and clean up.’
‘Our biggest problem with this mission has always been that we don’t have enough manpower,’ Chloe explained. ‘There are several large gangs and the balance of power shifts regularly. The only way we can really get a full picture of what’s happening is by putting agents into another major gang.’
Zara smiled uneasily. ‘That’s a tough ask, Chloe. I’m facing a grilling about whether the mission was too dangerous in the first place and you’re talking about expanding it.’
Michael liked Chloe’s suggestion and nodded enthusiastically. ‘Which gang would you target? The Runts accept anyone who can throw a punch. They’d be dead easy to infiltrate.’
‘It would be easy,’ Chloe said, ‘but the Runts aren’t much more than random teenage thugs. We really need to get someone inside the Mad Dogs. They’re the ones pulling all the strings.’
‘I take your point,’ Zara said. ‘But didn’t you consider infiltrating the Mad Dogs before and decide that they were too tight-knit?’
‘We did,’ Chloe nodded. ‘But we’ve learned a lot over the past couple of months. Maureen and I talked it over and we think there might be a way.’
Zara couldn’t help laughing. ‘You’re not joking, are you? You really want me to go to the ethics committee and suggest that we put another agent on to the mission where Gabrielle almost died!’
‘Two agents, actually,’ Chloe said sheepishly, wondering if her boss was about to bite her head off. ‘This mission has progressed slowly from the start and now that Michael is working alone it’s not going to get any faster. It’s pointless going on with one agent. We’ve either got to expand and go after the Mad Dogs, or pull the plug and head back to campus.’
Michael hated the idea of pulling the plug, but kept his trap shut because he could see that Chloe was fighting to save the mission.
‘OK,’ Zara