“Time to restore the peace and earn my pay,” he muttered under his breath. He pumped a round into the riot gun and trotted toward the appliance store. His heart started to pound.
A few people at the edges of the crowd saw him coming and faded away, some pulling friends with them, the others just hightailing it up the street. The rest were still trying to force their way inside. The looting must be just starting, Calvin concluded. Good. Now was the time to stop it.
He pulled the trigger on the shotgun, firing it into the air. The weapon bucked in his hands, and the roar easily drowned out the mob’s confused babble. “Everyone on the ground now!” he shouted.
More of the crowd, maybe half, broke and ran. The rest stood their ground, apparently trying to gauge their chances. After all, they were many, and he was only one.
Calvin sensed their mood and fired the shotgun again, closer this time but still over their heads. Most of the rest took flight. He pumped another round into the riot gun and levered it at the few who were left.
“Go on, get out of here!”
Needing no further instruction, they fled.
Even as they disappeared into alleys and doorways, Calvin suddenly realized he wasn’t breathing. Letting the air held in his lungs out with a whoosh, he took a breath and felt the tightness leave his body. He took off his cap and wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Shit, maybe that was stupid, but it worked.”
Trotting toward the shattered storefront, he sighed. With enough backup, he could have arrested them all, but the jails would already be full tonight. Anyway those weren’t the kind of people he wanted to lock up. He’d seen their worn out winter coats, and lean, careworn faces. They were just taking advantage of something started by someone else some thief or gangbanger who’d broken in the store’s windows.
Calvin reached the store and stepped inside, picking his way through the jumble of boxes and broken glass. Almost immediately, he spotted the bodies. One lay by the front door, while another sprawled behind the counter.
He knelt by the closest, a Korean man in his forties who had been shot at least twice. He checked the man’s pulse quickly, but it was obvious from the head wound that he was stone-dead. Damn it.
Calvin turned to the other victim. This one was a Korean woman probably the dead man’s wife since they were almost the same age. She lay on her back near the smashed open cash register, almost spread-eagle, and with a single wound in the chest. The bullet must have gone all the way through, he realized, looking at the pool of dark blood all around her.
She was still alive, but she wouldn’t be for much longer not in the cold and not after losing that much blood…
He sprinted back to his patrol car and pulled up next to the shop. As he drove the short distance, he reported to Dispatch, asked for an ambulance, and checked again on his backup.
“Backup is still five minutes out, FiveThree-Two. Ambulance delay is currently twenty minutes or more.”
Calvin swore. Without adequate communications, the city was losing its ability to deliver emergency care with the necessary speed. Another link to civilisation had broken.
After quickly applying field dressings from the first-aid kit in his car, he loaded the wounded woman into the backseat and sped off for Mercy Hospital, fifteen minutes away. He knew the looters would come back as soon as he left the scene, but there was nothing else he could do.
Mercy Hospital was a mess. The emergency room was crammed, of course, nothing new about that, but the injured were coming in so fast that a triage team had been set up in a nearby meeting room.
Detroit was falling apart. The drugged-out thugs and drunken punks who perpetrated Devil’s Night every Halloween were taking full advantage of the developing crisis. The fire department had been swamped by hundreds of small fires, any of which could flare out of control if not contained in time. Besides the fires, a wave of looting, robbery, and revenge killing was spreading through the city as police response times lagged further and further behind.
After leaving the wounded Korean woman in the hands of a haggard surgical team, Calvin reported in.
“Roger, FiveThree-Two,” the dispatcher acknowledged urgently. “Code Three to the commercial district. Report to the mobile CP at Michigan and Woodward.”
Calvin sprinted back to his car and tore out of the hospital driveway at high speed. Code Three meant move it, lights and siren. Something big and bad was going down.
Detroit’s biggest tourist attraction was the Renaissance Center, a glittering, high-rise collection of shops and offices right on the water. Part of an extensive redevelopment plan by the city, it had become a symbol of Detroit’s hope for better economic times.
Now the Renaissance Center was on fire, and Calvin could see the smoke billowing skyward as he raced up Michigan Avenue. He pulled up to the command post, a cluster of police cars, vans, and ambulances parked a few blocks from the complex. As he drove up, an ambulance pulled away, screaming back down the avenue.
The command post was close to the Center, but far enough to be out of immediate danger. Calvin could hear the dull roar of a crowd out of control just a few blocks away. He could also smell smoke and tear gas. The streets had been blocked off.
The commander-on-scene was a middle-aged, harriedlooking lieutenant hurriedly briefing and assigning policemen as fast as they reported in. His name tag read “Haskins.” He grabbed Calvin by the arm and pointed to a street map spread in front of him. “Set up a roadblock at this intersection. Nothing goes south toward the Renaissance Center. You’re part of a cordon around the area. Got it?”
Calvin nodded and drove off to take up his position.
Beneath an overcast sky, it was already twilight. Off to the east, the blazing towers of the Renaissance Center glowed orange against a black horizon.
Despite the cold, deepening as the sky darkened, Bob Calvin waited outside his police car. So far he hadn’t had much to do beyond waving off those few idiotic motorists who somehow hadn’t heard the news.
To Calvin that seemed almost impossible. He’d been listening to the radio transmissions describing the disaster overtaking Detroit’s city center for more than an hour.
Someone, nobody seemed exactly sure who, had firebombed two of the Center’s towers, trapping hundreds of workers inside. The arsonists hadn’t fled when the fire department arrived on scene. Instead, they’d begun sniping at the firemen and rescue workers, forcing them to fall back until a police SWAT team showed up.
But then, in turn, the SWAT team was driven back by a new wave of angry, young black men pouring out of the rundown row houses only a few blocks from the Renaissance Center. Word of the arson and looting attracted many who seemed determined to burn the soaring towers to the ground, along with anyone, black or white, still inside. More police units were fed in to regain control.
For the first few minutes, despite the increasing furor, Detroit’s law enforcement units had seemed to have the upper hand over the rioters. To Calvin’s trained ear, the reports of arrests, disturbances, and requests for ambulances had been rushed and excited but indicated that the officers were still in control.
Then, almost as soon as true darkness began falling, the radio transmissions changed. Now there was real trouble.
Calvin heard someone, a sergeant he knew only by voice, suddenly transmit, “Jesus, Tactical! We’ve got more bad guys swarming us! Too many! We need immediate assistance!”
There were sporadic gunshots audible over the radio now.
“Say again! Shit! Tactical, we’re getting fucking overrun ”
And that was it. Nothing more.
Calvin listened to the static hiss for a moment more before scrambling back inside his patrol cruiser. He reversed away from the barrier he’d been manning and headed east toward the Renaissance Center. He considered calling the CP to ask for permission-to leave his post and then scratched the idea. There wasn’t enough time. His buddies on the police line needed him now.
He skidded to a stop at a line of black and yellow traffic barriers blocking off the wide, divided boulevard that ran past the Renaissance Center.
The Center’s landscaped grounds were filled with a tangled mass of people, overturned cars, and burning emergency vehicles. Flickering light from the flames and from spotlights showed him a huge crowd, more than a thousand strong, on the rampage. Shots rang out from time to time, but it was impossible to tell who was firing at whom.
