by Larry Bond
She shrugged. It was necessary. Then she brightened. If she was the one who brought the phone system back into operation, she would get the glory. Of course, she was also the one who would take the fall if the system stayed down.
Kosinski got to work.
2:00 P.M., EST
CNN Headline News
“Our top story this hour is the continuing phone outage in the Midwest.
“Phone service in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana remains at a complete standstill. While some attempts to place calls have been successful, Midwest Telephone spokesmen estimate that only one in a thousand or even one in ten thousand calls are being connected.
“The outage remains confined to the six-state region, but the rest of the nation’s telecommunications companies are reported to be closely monitoring the situation.
“In an exclusive radio interview with CNN, an assistant to John F. Taylor, Midwest Telephone’s CEO, hinted that the company suspects outside interference with its operations. Apparently, Midwest Telephone has requested emergency assistance from both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission …”
2:15 P.M., EST
Detroit
Randy Newcomb stood with the rest of the crowd watching the fire gutting old Mr. Romano’s house. The fire department was nowhere in sight.
He felt strangely detached. Neither the sight of the fire nor the old geezer’s loss meant anything to him.
Randy lived on the corner with an older brother and an alcoholic mother. Just eighteen, he’d been drifting in and out of high school for more than a year. He was a bright kid, and his brains had earned him leadership of the F Street posse. But they hadn’t been enough to keep him off crack.
The fire was just one more unimportant event in his drab existence. The only color was provided by small vials of crack. Getting the money for the next vial and the one after that occupied his entire being. Nothing else was worth much thought or worry.
Newcomb heard the neighbors talking about the phones being out, and complaining about not being able to call a fire truck or an ambulance. That struck a sudden spark in his brain. If people couldn’t reach the fire or emergency services, they also couldn’t alert the police to any trouble, he slowly realized, smiling.
Drifting away from the crowd, he trotted back to his own house and grabbed the car keys. He had to collect a few of his friends. If they moved fast before the phones came back on, they could really score.
He turned the key, and the old Ford turned over. Reaching under the seat, he pulled out a 9mm automatic. He checked the magazine and patted the weapon affectionately. This was going to be fun. After all, the police couldn’t possibly be everywhere at once.
2:30 P.M., EST
Detroit
Newcomb wasn’t alone.
Ninety minutes after the phones went dead, Officer Bob Calvin had the frustrating feeling of knowing there might be crimes going on all around him, but of being unable to do more than sweep up. He’d found out about the Napoli restaurant robbery only when someone flagged down his car and told him about the shooting.
By then, it was far too late for Joe Millunzi. All Calvin had been able to do was summon the detectives and the coroner. Even that took extra time, because the coroner’s office was not normally on the radio circuit. Someone had finally passed them a walkie-talkie, but until then Dispatch had to send a runner over to their office. Calvin had the sinking feeling that Detroit’s medical examiners would be busy today.
He scrambled back into his patrol car still trying to think of a way to increase his chances of stopping the bad guys before they struck again. It was the old story. Walking a beat instead of driving would make him more accessible to the community but it would also cut the ground he could cover by a factor of ten. Using a motorcycle or bicycle instead of an enclosed car would have been a compromise, but just looking at the freezing weather outside made him shiver at the thought. Bike patrols were practical in the Sun Belt—not here.
Detroit’s police force had operated with radio dispatch for years, and before that they’d used a call box system for the beat cops. But both those communications systems depended on people phoning the police when they spotted trouble. You just couldn’t protect a large city any other way.
Now the city’s officials were scrambling to patch together a makeshift replacement for the telephone system. Neighborhood watch patrols and citizens with CB radios were already taking to the streets, but they were sometimes more of a hindrance than a help. He’d already heard of an incident where one officious idiot thought a radio in his car gave him arrest powers and tried to stop a liquor store holdup on his own. The man had paid for his overzealousness with his life.
The CB nets were confused too. Most of the people using them lacked the discipline and training needed to manage a communications net efficiently. Multiple callers on a limited number of channels often turned the airwaves into a staticladen Towel of Babel. There were even some jokers actually putting out false alarms—sending an already strained police force off on wild-goose chases across the city.
But then again, maybe they weren’t just pranksters, Calvin suddenly thought. The street gangs and other criminals infesting Detroit’s poorer neighborhoods knew what was happening around them. Maybe some of the smarter bastards just wanted to make sure they were left to run wild unmolested.
He slowed as a knot of people on the sidewalk ahead drew his attention and his concern. What he saw was unusual, and today anything unusual was bad.
Storefront shops and run-down apartments lined both sides of this two-way street. As he drove closer, he saw that the crowd he’d spotted was clustered around an appliance store. People were moving quickly in and out of the store, and even from this distance he could see a shattered window.
Wonderful.
He picked up the microphone. “Dispatch, this is Unit Five-Three-Two. I’ve got looting at Concord and St. Paul. I need some backup.”
The dispatcher’s voice came back through the radio speaker, relaying his request to the closest patrol cars. “Any units to assist Five-Three-Two at Concord and St. Paul?”
The responses were not reassuring.
“Unit Five-Two-One, I’m stuck here for at least fifteen more minutes.”
“Dispatch, this is Two-Four-Four. Negative on that. I’m tied up with two in custody.”
“Unit Two-Three-Two, I can clear and go. But I’m ten out.”
Shit. Ten minutes was way too long. Calvin thumbed his mike again. “Roger, Dispatch. I’ll do it myself. Out.”
He shook his head. Trying to break up a crowd alone violated not only standing department policy but common sense. Handling a mob this size ordinarily required half a dozen men. But the times were not ordinary and he’d studied the crowd’s behavior while the dispatcher made her futile calls. He had a glimmering of an approach that might pay off.
He was facing about twenty or thirty people, most of them adults. They seemed more intent on getting into the store and getting out with boxes or items in their arms than in physical violence. He didn’t see any gang members nearby with bloodier ideas on their tiny minds.
Calvin parked the car half a block up from the store and hopped out, taking the riot gun with him. He stood behind the driver’s side door for half a moment, surveying the situation one last time. No one in the crowd paid much attention to the lone cop car and the lone cop.
“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 drown
ed 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 leveled 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, Five-Three-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 civilization 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, Five-Three-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, harried-looking 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.
4:30 P.M., EST
Riot control cordon, near the Renaissance Center, Detroit
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.
The mob had a small group of police and f
iremen at bay more than a block away from the Center itself. Officers were loading and firing tear-gas canisters into the crowds, most of whom now seemed intent on rolling and torching a couple of fire trucks.
There were bodies littering the ground behind the police line, some motionless, others writhing in pain. They were being rushed into ambulances as the riot police fell back, giving ground slowly to win time for the medics to load up and escape. It was clear that the police had not only lost control of the Renaissance Center Plaza, they were actually fighting for bare survival.
Calvin abandoned his vehicle and sprinted toward the retreating police line. He was careful to hug the sides of buildings and duck behind cars or any other available cover whenever possible. Right now the mob was an aimless, angry animal, searching for prey. He did not want to draw its attention.
He spotted a figure behind the line issuing orders and hurried over. There was enough light to see that it was Lieutenant Haskins. Blood ran down the lieutenant’s face from a cut on his forehead, and he had one arm hanging limply at his side—splinted with a riot baton.
Haskins didn’t bother asking why he’d abandoned his position. Instead, he yelled, “Get on the radio and pull in the rest of the cordon! They’re about all the help we’re going to get!”
That would only give them about ten more officers to reinforce the line. Stunned, Calvin exclaimed, “Isn’t the department going to send anyone else?”
Haskins shook his head, then winced at the motion. “The department’s got other problems besides us. The whole goddamned city’s going up tonight!”
Still shocked, Calvin found the nearest intact police car and relayed the lieutenant’s orders. As he headed back, another shot cracked out from the mob. He saw a cop fall, clutching his leg. Another officer fired back.
