by Tom Barber
As he felt unconsciousness looming, Lupinetti clawed behind him and with a wrenching twist pulled at the man’s balls like he was trying to rip them free. Latham screamed and the pillowcase slackened. Lupinetti ripped the material away with his other hand, sucking in air, and gave his cellmate a few hard kicks while he was bent double, following up with a few more as he fell to the floor.
The former NYPD lieutenant staggered slightly, light-headed from lack of oxygen, and gripped onto the bedframe as he sucked in much-needed air, but as soon as he could see straight again he stumbled out of the cell.
Downstairs on the west-side approach to C Block, the first members of the riot control team were appearing, helmets and body armor in place, tasers and pepper spray ready. ‘DROP THE WEAPONS!’ one of the officers shouted, all of them taking cover behind their shields as inmates hurled anything they could find, some of the prisoners rushing them, shouting abuse and taunts as they attacked.
Lupinetti went in the opposite direction and moved through the first door opened in the riot, past the pool of blood and the dead body of CO Pena lying on the floor.
Having followed the riot team through the main access door, Archer and Marquez were now inside the block and at the back of the group. The cell housing was to the right, but as the two NYPD cops made their way down the corridor, they saw just further ahead on the left was a room with a bank of screens inside, cameras providing full coverage of C Block.
‘Riot control are containing that area,’ the sergeant said over the radio. ‘I can see you. You’re good.’
As the riot team went to war with the inmates inside the housing, the two NYPD detectives entered the room with the screens. ‘Might be some prisoners disguised as COs or riot officers,’ Archer warned the sergeant, seeing open lockers which he guessed would normally have held uniforms, batons and perhaps riot gear. ‘The lockers in here have been stripped bare.’
Beside him, the monitors were good quality and Marquez searched them for Lupinetti, but it was almost impossible to pick him out in the melee with all the inmates wearing matching BOP-issue white t-shirts and orange jumpsuits. The former cop’s tattooed arms were what she was looking for as a distinguishing mark.
‘Can’t see hi-,’ she started to say.
‘I think I just got him,’ the sergeant’s voice said over the radio. ‘Check 14.’
The two NYPD detectives immediately looked at the relevant screen, its number underneath, in time to see a figure running through the shot. Archer and Marquez watched him reappear in the next and tracked him to 15.
It was Lupinetti, and he was on his own.
‘Where the hell’s he going?’ Archer asked the sergeant.
‘Towards the laundry, looks like. I can guide you there. It’s not far.’
Archer clipped the radio to his belt, lifted his shotgun’s stock back to his shoulder and the two cops peeled out of the room to follow the sergeant’s directions. As they turned onto the next corridor, the sergeant buzzed the door open for them. Marquez closed it again once they were through just as Archer saw a couple of officers coming towards them, wearing armor, helmets and carrying batons.
He took his finger off the trigger for the shotgun as he and Marquez continued towards the pair, but as they got closer, Archer noticed a splash of orange fabric visible where their uniform met their boots.
He’d just found who’d stripped the lockers bare.
Archer ducked as one of them suddenly swung his baton at his head, then threw himself back as the other did the same. Marquez, who’d been slightly behind her colleague, dropped her aim and blasted the first inmate in the stomach, sending the guy to the ground in a crumpled heap a second before Archer did the same to his friend.
The armor the pair were wearing took a lot of sting out of the non-lethal shells but the shots had still badly winded each prisoner and would leave one hell of a bruise. Before they could recover, Archer kicked their batons away, Marquez covering the hallway as Archer then dragged the two inmates one-by-one towards a pipe running along the wall. He locked a hand of each around it with his set of cuffs, then pulled off the men’s helmets to reveal their faces; both were white boys, one with badly-designed tattoos covering his face, each still grimacing in pain and gasping for air like landed fish.
‘I’ll send someone to collect them,’ the sergeant said over the radio. ‘Keep following my directions.’
Racking their shotguns which spat out the empty shells, the two NYPD detectives reached another door and after it buzzed, slipped through just as more inmates appeared in the corridor behind them, missing seeing the pair of detectives by a matter of seconds as the door closed.
Not far away, Lupinetti had almost made it to the laundry when he heard footsteps behind him. Swinging round, he saw it was the two guys who’d come at him with a blade the previous week and had turned his prospective transfer to another facility into a certainty. They were a pair from South Carolina each doing nine years for assaulting a police officer and stealing his squad car when smoked up on ‘swamp glass’ meth. Ever since they’d found out Lupinetti had been a cop, they’d been looking for a shot to get their hands on him.
‘You ain’t gettin’ outta here, boy,’ one of them hissed as they wrestled Lupinetti to the ground, before pulling the same shiv from his sock he’d cut him with eight days ago. He went to bury the weapon into Lupinetti’s eye but the ex-cop brought his unbandaged arm up and the razorblade stabbed into the meat there instead, making him shout in pain. As the other inmate tightened his grip to help his friend pin Frank down and keep him still, he was suddenly clocked from behind with the stock of a shotgun which sent him sprawling. The other inmate leapt up and spun round, but before he could move further a non-lethal shell to the sternum put him down too.
Lupinetti stared up in disbelief at the pair who’d just rescued him, the shiv still buried in his arm.
‘You two?’ he said. ‘The hell are you doin’ here?’
‘Hi Frank,’ Marquez said, grabbing him by his other arm as she and Archer yanked him to his feet. Lupinetti suddenly twisted and tried to headbutt her, but Archer had been ready for him to try something and snatched hold before hip-tossing him to the floor.
Despite his arms being hauled behind him and cuffed with Marquez’s set of bracelets, Lupinetti continued to resist and in the struggle to contain him, the radio Archer had clipped to his belt was dislodged. The fall cracked the outer shell, but it was finished off when Lupinetti stamped on it accidentally as he kept fighting.
‘Riot team is regaining control, sir,’ a corrections officer informed the Gatlin warden who’d joined members of his staff in the prison’s camera room/control center. The CO was right; the squad was making good progress into the riot, using seize-and-hold tactics, but they were employing non-lethal force while many of the inmates were looking to do just the opposite, meaning every inch of the block they won was hard-gained.
‘I’m hearing two New York cops went in to find Frank Lupinetti?’
‘I think they just reached him,’ the sergeant who’d been guiding Archer and Marquez said. ‘Got him somewhere near the laundry.’
‘Can we see?’
‘Someone’s busted up the cameras in there so we lost them. I was leading the NYPD pair on radio, but communication just dropped too.’
‘That ain’t good,’ one of the other COs said, as they saw two of their most violent inmates with makeshift weapons were one corridor away from where they thought the two visiting cops had just located Lupinetti.
‘The hell are you two doing here?’ Lupinetti asked again as he finally gave up struggling, his face pushed against the wall.
‘You’ve got a cell date in Pennsylvania tonight,’ Archer said. ‘We’re making sure you get there.’
‘Take that thing out,’ Lupinetti said, looking at the shiv buried in his arm, his hands cuffed behind him.
‘No,’ Marquez said.
‘I know you hate me, bitch, but I’-’
‘Think clearly, dumba
ss. We pull it clear, you’ll start losing blood.’
‘You’re really gonna keep me shackled? Right now?’
‘We’ll watch your back,’ Archer said, grabbing him by the collar and pushing him forward. ‘Let’s go.’ But as they took him back towards the door in the corridor, Archer looked up at the camera.
The door didn’t open.
‘He on a smoke break or something?’ Marquez asked, as Archer kept a tight grip on Lupinetti.
Two corridors away in another direction, Nicky Reyes’ cellmate, the bearded, large motorcycle club president who Lupinetti had been housed opposite in C Block, was just moving past the chow hall with another inmate when he heard screaming from inside. It was a woman’s voice.
‘Keep going,’ he told the prisoner with him, who was holding a rolled-up orange prison jump suit. ‘You gotta get to the cell right now.’
As the other man nodded and carried on, the biker moved into the chow hall to see six prisoners holding onto a blonde female guard called Andrea, two of them in the process of tearing her uniform off. A fellow CO of hers was lying on the floor bleeding from a wound to the stomach and he wasn’t moving.
The biker watched for a moment, then threw some keys in his hand aside and moved forward to grab two of the inmates, pulling them away.
‘Wait your turn, Prez!’ one of them snapped, fighting free from his grip. The other, however, made the mistake of swinging a punch at the big man, connecting with his jaw; a second later, Prez’s own fist crashed into the smaller inmate’s face and sent him spinning to the floor.
The biker saw a shank coming at the last second, and bent his elbow in across his torso like a boxer defending a body shot, but the hot pain that came from the weapon set him on fire and he started to lay into the group, three of whom turned on him as the others kept on tearing at the female CO’s uniform.
Archer and Marquez had decided to find another way out, sensing there must have been a good reason the sergeant hadn’t opened the door, and were just approaching the chow hall when they heard a woman screaming and the sound of a violent fight.
At the same time, at the end of the corridor ahead they saw the Gatlin sergeant who’d given them his radio appear at a locked exit, urgently waving them forward. ‘C’MON!’ he shouted.
Archer looked into the chow hall, then at Lupinetti with the shiv buried in his arm.
Next door, the scene resembled a lion being attacked by a pack of hyenas as the large biker fought a losing battle against three smaller inmates, the prisoner he’d hit still laid out on the floor, the female CO kicking and shrieking as she was held down by one guy, a second undoing her pants belt as fast as he could.
Suddenly the loud boom of a shotgun being fired echoed around the hall and the man restraining her was punched off his feet by a beanbag. The other one was hit a second later, another blast echoing, and the biker took the opportunity to put down two of his attackers when they turned to see what the noise was.
He looked over to see a blond man and black-haired Latina woman, both in bulletproof vests with NYPD printed in white on them, each holding a pump-action twelve gauge with yellow coloring on the stock and barrel. As the biker’s last attacker thought better of it and decided to run off, the blond man moved forward and helped the shaken female CO to her feet, her shirt torn, blood leaking from a split lip and a cut on her head. The biker had already made eye contact with the Latina holding the shotgun, and kept his hands up as she racked the pump.
‘Six o’clock!’ he warned, and she swung round before firing, dropping another inmate who’d just run in. However, the prisoner had been holding a canister of pepper spray stolen from one of the COs, and the shotgun beanbag was enough to break the metal, the can erupting. Marquez took a nice dose of it to the face and she recoiled, coughing and stumbling as she followed Archer with the female CO back to the corridor outside.
Two riot control officers appeared and took the CO from Archer, hurrying her away down the corridor. ‘GET ME OUTTA HERE!’ Lupinetti begged; Archer undid his spare set of cuffs from a bar door handle they’d secured him to before entering the chow hall, then pushed him forward towards the exit gate. Archer grasped hold of Marquez’s arm as Lupinetti hurried ahead of them and guided her until they exited the block, the pepper spray now taking full effect.
Turning, Archer heard the door lock again behind them and took some deep breaths while beside him Marquez coughed, cursed and wiped her eyes. He looked at Lupinetti, who was being held by the sergeant and another CO, the shank still buried in his arm.
They’d gotten their man out; not unscathed.
But still in one piece, more or less.
FIVE
Some prison riots across the United States in recent times had been known to stretch into several days, weeks or even months of standoffs between inmates and the authorities, but USP Gatlin’s fast response and the decisive actions of their riot squad meant the officers had regained control of the notoriously rough penitentiary within the hour. Yelling and shouting was coming from other cell blocks, their inmates desperate to get involved, but they’d all been locked down as soon as the trouble started so the only thing those prisoners had been able to contribute was noise. Now even that was starting to die down too.
In the nearest parking lot to the front gate, there was a gathering of COs, riot officers and medical staff from the local hospital treating the wounded. Among the crowd, Archer was helping Marquez clear the effects of the pepper spray, tipping a bottle of water slowly into her eyes. ‘Any better?’ he asked.
‘Not yet.’ He continued to help her rinse her eyes, then waited as she blinked repeatedly trying to flush the chemical out, using tissues to blow her nose and wipe her face. The sergeant who’d assisted them walked over, passing Archer their three sets of handcuffs which had been retrieved. ‘She doing OK?’
‘Getting there. It’s helping clear her sinuses,’ Archer said, seeing the worst of the effects were beginning to ease off.
‘Who said they needed clearing,’ she retorted, looking at C Block through watery red eyes as they heard the sound of more shouting coming from inside. ‘They still going at it?’
‘Nah, just locked in their cells and pissed about it. They better get comfortable. They’re going into 48 hour lockdown. Mandatory after any riot.’
‘What were the casualties?’ Archer asked.
‘Two guards killed, three others stabbed. Six dead inmates found so far, fourteen more injured.’ He nodded towards an ambulance where they could see the female CO they’d rescued being treated for some cuts to her face. ‘And they were gonna rape and probably murder Andrea too. She’s saying she wouldn’t have gotten out without you two helping her. Thank you.’
Archer was about to reply, but then realized the significance of being given his cuffs back and looked around quickly. ‘Where’s Lupinetti?’
‘On his way to the local hospital in Jonesville. Two of the Marshals went as an escort and they had him cuffed to the gurney. Don’t worry. He’s not going anywhere.’
‘When we first arrived, you said collecting him set this whole thing off?’
‘Pena and Hannity went to get him. Then it erupted.’
‘Cells were open?’
‘It’s not supermax or twenty three hour lockdown. Inmates get free time in the morning to walk around. Things have been on the level in C Block lately, so we assumed they wouldn’t be stupid enough to try anything. Things blow up here occasionally but it’s normally inmates going at each other. Not at us.’
‘Any way to tell when something bad is brewing?’ Marquez asked.
‘You start to sense when shit might be about to go down. Little clues. Older inmates’ll start staying on the edges of the field during yard time, or in their cells even when the doors are open. Things go too quiet. That’s when you need to start putting on body armor and calling the hospital. Someone’s gonna get hurt.’
‘But today?’ Archer asked.
‘No change in the static
. C Block’s had no trouble for a while apart from Lupinetti getting cut last week and we still don’t know who was responsible. This blew up outta nowhere.’
‘We’re gonna get out of here and keep extra eyes on our boy at the hospital,’ Archer said. ‘He pulls a magic trick out of the Marshals’ handcuffs, today’s just getting started.’
‘You go; I need more time to clear this, and wanna stay behind for a bit,’ Marquez told him. ‘I’ll try and find out why collecting Frank looked to set this off. Seems like there might be more to it than just him being transferred out.’
‘OK.’ Archer returned to their Ford and moments later was driving towards the gate, as Marquez tipped her head back and had another go at rinsing out her eyes.
Inside C Block, roof lights were periodically flashing, breaking up shadows before casting everything into darkness again. All the suppressed anger, aggression and testosterone that had exploded into the riot had left a grim aftermath. Small fires that had been set with toilet paper, books and clothing had been put out and were now smoldering, scuff marks and bloodstains evident on the floor and walls. Riot officers still performing sweeps had just found two more inmates near the exit to the main rec yard, one of them with a broken arm, the other badly beaten and barely conscious. They were just being taken out to the front by officers to where the EMTs were set up when two COs reached the laundry and discovered the pair of prisoners who’d started the riot in the first place.
‘God damn,’ one of the COs said quietly, looking at the scene in front of him. There was no need to rush these guys out for treatment; they were dead, both with their throats slashed open and lying in a large, merged pool of blood. Whoever was responsible had also left a shiv buried in the second man’s right eye. ‘Gonna need a couple more body-bags for the laundry, Sarge,’ he said into his radio. ‘Looks like a snuff movie down here.’
‘Who died?’