Haskin’s voice bellowed, “Guard!”
He brought his baton up, ready to take the shock and defend himself. The mob seemed as big as the ocean, and the tide was coming in.
“Advance!”
Calvin blinked. The tactical manuals said the best defense was a good offence, but who ever heard of a shoreline advancing to meet the waves? Nevertheless, he took one step in unison with the officers on either side, paused a moment, and then went forward again, falling into the well-drilled rhythm designed to cow an unruly crowd.
More tear-gas canisters landed right in front of them. The yelling people nearest to the grey haze recoiled for a second and then were pushed forward by the vast throng behind them. Some fell, retching, and were swallowed up.
With a heart-stopping, guttural roar, the mob slammed into the advancing police line.
A short, skinny teenager rushed Calvin first, trying to grab his baton. The policeman easily dodged his outstretched hands and brought the baton around in a slashing blow. The boy screamed and ducked back, clutching a broken wrist.
Another man, older and much larger, tried to tear the shield out of Calvin’s grip. Pain shot up his forearm as he slammed the baton down across the attacker’s arm and then again across the man’s head. The rioter went down in a boneless heap.
After that, the struggle disintegrated into a flurry of halfseen, half-felt, and half-remembered blows and counterblows, strike and counter strike. His earlier fears submerged by the primal urge to survive, Calvin fought calmly and effectively. But no matter how many rioters he knocked down or drove off, there was a seemingly endless supply of others still surging forward in an effort to tear him apart.
Twice he heard Haskins pulling the police line back to tighten its sagging formation. He saw another policeman dragged down and grimaced. They were running out of men and maneuvering room.
And still the mob came on.
Calvin felt a bullet whiz past his head and heard the deafening sound of a shot close by in the same moment. His eyes focused on a man in his twenties, heavyset and bald, coldly aiming a pistol at him at point-blank range.
Oh, hell.
The man fired again and Calvin felt his shield take the bullet this time, deflecting it, but the shock of its impact ran up his arm. It felt like his elbow had been hit by a ball peen hammer. He staggered backward.
The gunman fired a third time. This time the round tore through the Plexiglas shield and slammed into his bulletproof vest. At such short range, the 9mm slug had enough velocity to shock and bruise him, but the shield and vest stopped it from doing more damage.
His assailant snarled in frustration, acting as though the policeman had broken the rules by not falling down dead. The man raised his aim, pointing the pistol straight at Calvin’s unprotected face.
No! He didn’t have time to draw his own weapon.
Calvin lunged forward and slammed the point of his baton into the gunman’s sternum. As the man doubled over in agony, he slashed downward, striking him across the back of the neck, just below the skull. That was potentially a killing blow, but the policeman didn’t give a damn. There was only one law operating right now the law of survival.
He looked up, gasping for breath, and realized that he was surrounded by screaming, shouting rioters. His lunge had carried him well out into the midst of the mob.
People swarmed past him, pouring through the sudden gap in the police line. Others dove on top of him, knocking him over as they tried to pull off his helmet or grab his weapons. His shield protected him from many of their blows, but it also trapped one of his arms. Punches and kicks rained down in an unrelenting hail. Something sharp stabbed into his leg. He felt himself being driven down into unconsciousness.
Calvin struggled desperately to get up off the ground. Staying down meant dying.
A baseball bat swung overhand caught his shield and knocked him back down. Someone else stomped on his wrist and grabbed his baton away. The world blurred in a red fog.
Shots rang out suddenly. Calvin felt the pressure on him slacken as his attackers turned away in surprise. Seconds later, another ragged volley cut across the crowd noise. Somebody was firing tear-gas guns a lot of them. A dozen brilliant beams of white light lanced into the plaza, blinding rioters caught staring at them and turning night into artificial day.
Clouds of grey mist billowed up from each gas canister. The mob began coughing, gagging as the tear gas rolled over them. Their shouts changed swiftly in tone from anger and hate to fear.
Calvin heard the growing roar of diesel engines moving closer.
The crowd began backing away, slowly at first, and then faster. More and more of them turned to flee.
Still barely clinging to consciousness, Calvin lifted his head just high enough to see what was going on. Hundreds of soldiers in full battle gear and gas masks were advancing across the wreckage-strewn Renaissance Center Plaza. Armored personnel carriers mounting searchlights trundled behind the troops.
Suddenly, Bob Calvin lay alone. He tried to get up, but his right leg crumpled under him and he landed heavily on the pavement. The ground seemed very cold. He heard someone calling for a stretcher as he surrendered at last to the pain filling every corner of his being.
The ABC News Special Report showed signs of being hurriedly assembled. Half the video aired was live or only minutes old. And none of the news was good.
The Midwest’s phone system was still down, and it would remain down for the foreseeable future. Caught without the ability to communicate, tens of thousands of businesses had been forced to close, idling millions of workers. So far the only beneficiaries of the disaster had been messenger services. Most normal commerce had ground to a halt. The economic losses alone were already estimated in the tens of billions of dollars.
But there were other, far more serious losses. Detroit was not alone. With police and emergency services degraded, every major city in the region had experienced a vicious crime wave. The governors of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa had all mobilised their National Guard units by midafternoon and instituted an immediate nighttime curfew. Hundreds were already dead, and hundreds more were seriously injured in the continuing civil disorder.
Pressed hard for an explanation, company representatives now blamed “an external cause, most likely the deliberate sabotage of the switching network by a highly sophisticated computer virus.”
This claim was immediately backed up by several electronics and computer experts. In the blink of an eye, the phone company went from villain to victim. The news also transformed the ongoing catastrophe from an unavoidable act of God to an act of deliberate, calculated terror.
The final piece of the ABC News Special was an interview with Senator George Roland, one of the few survivors of the National Press Club bombing. Since the attack, Roland had acquired immense standing, and he used every ounce of it in making his points.
“There is no doubt that these terrorists are bent on destroying American society. The government can no longer deny that these attacks are part of a larger plan. Unless the administration acts swiftly, strongly, and positively, our nation may not survive.”
No one disagreed.
With Jim Johnston standing next to her, Maggie Kosinski dialed the boss’s number. Light-headed, almost shaking with fatigue and excitement, she hit the last digit and then looked again at the diskette on her desk. The label read simply
“Alpha Virus.”
An urgent, pleading voice answered on the first ring. “Yes?”