Drought

by Graham Masterton

  ‘We’re not going to riot, Luis. Not here in Muscupiabe. When you riot, you only end up destroying your own neighborhood. But we’re not taking this lying down, neither. No, sir.’

  Marjorie appeared in the living room doorway with her hair in curlers. ‘Would you men care for some coffee?’ she asked.

  Bryan said, ‘Yes, I’d love some.’ But then, ‘No … On second thought, I think we need to conserve all of the water we can.’

  TWO

  As dawn began to lighten the streets downtown, Lieutenant Henry Brodie pushed open the door of police headquarters and came briskly down the steps on to North D Street, accompanied by Sergeant Hector Perez Gonzalez and closely followed by seven officers in full riot gear.

  The warm morning air still smelled acrid, although Lieutenant Brodie had been told that most of the serious fires had now been brought under control by the fire department or had simply burned themselves out.

  He could see that smoke was still drifting from City Hall, three blocks further south, and that even thicker smoke was rising from the Vanir Tower, over on G Street. The roadway was littered with broken glass and lumps of concrete and overturned trash cans, and every vehicle in the parking lot opposite police headquarters had been burned to a blackened shell. There were even two burned-out squad cars blocking the West Seventh Street intersection, and halfway down the next block, a police van was lying on its side, with all of its windows smashed.

  ‘We lost control of this, Sergeant,’ said Lieutenant Brodie. ‘That was inexcusable.’ He was a tall, clear-eyed, gray-haired man with a squarish, chiseled face, and rather large ears. If he hadn’t always looked so sour about the state of the world around him he might have been quite handsome. As it was, men found him intimidating and women thought that he was humorless and cold, even his wife Sylvia.

  ‘We just didn’t have the manpower, sir,’ said Sergeant Gonzalez. ‘Even with all of those security guards to back us up, there was no way that we could cope with so many protestors in so many different locations, not all at once.’

  ‘That’s because we got the psychology all wrong, right from the get-go.’

  ‘Sir – these people had no water. They still have no water.’

  ‘I know that, Sergeant. And I’m sure that this probably started off as a perfectly legitimate demonstration. Most of these civil disturbances do. But it never takes long before a criminal element joins in, and uses them as a cover for violence and looting and criminal damage. This has happened so many times before and we still haven’t learned the lesson, have we? It’s Watts, all over again. Monkeys in the zoo.’

  They heard sirens in the distance, and more crackling sounds that could have been automatic gunfire.

  ‘Do you know what our worst mistake was?’ said Lieutenant Brodie. ‘We felt sorry for them. Instead of allowing them to demonstrate, we should have dispersed them immediately, and collared anybody who wouldn’t go.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sergeant Gonzalez. ‘What do you want to do now, sir?’

  Lieutenant Brodie irritably checked his watch. ‘Are they bringing around those Humvees or not?’

  ‘Yes, sir. They should be here any second now.’

  ‘Good. Like I told you, I want us to undertake a slow and systematic tour of the whole division, street by street. Slow and systematic. I want people to see us. I want to show them that we’ve completely regained our control of the situation, and I also want to make it clear to them that if these riots kick off again we’re going to come down on them like a shitload of bricks.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sergeant Gonzalez. ‘But, you know, before we start off – maybe we could contact the water department and find out when they’re going to turn the water back on. If we could tell people that, it could calm them down some.’

  Lieutenant Brodie shook his head. ‘It’s too late for that. They tried calming people down in Watts and it didn’t work there, either. Once the looting’s started there’s nothing you can do. If people believe that they’re justified in running off with a flat screen TV just because they’re socially hard done by, you’ve lost the battle.’

  Two khaki Humvees appeared around the corner and parked in front of police headquarters. The SBPD had bought them at a military surplus sale in Barstow, three years ago, for use in emergencies, but so far they had been used only twice, both times in flash floods in the Riverside district, after tornadoes.

  Lieutenant Brodie climbed into the leading hummer, but before he could close the door Sergeant Gonzalez received a message on his radio. He held up his hand to indicate to Lieutenant Brodie that he should wait.

  ‘OK, sure,’ he said. ‘We can get down there in ten.’

  ‘What is it?’ snapped Lieutenant Brodie, impatiently.

  ‘Rioters have broken into the Inland Center mall, even though it was closed. Maybe as many as two hundred of them. They’ve broken almost every store window in the place and now they’re looting Macy’s.’

  ‘Right, then. What are we waiting for? What’s the situation in East Valley? The latest report they gave me, it was pretty quiet there now. See how many men they can spare us at the Inland Center as backup. And ask ESS if they have any personnel who can help us out.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  They drove down toward South E Street, to the Inland Center. Even from nearly a mile away, it looked like a war zone already. Two of the large anchor stores, Sears and Forever 21, were already on fire, and at least twenty automobiles in the huge parking lot were burning. As they approached, a Jeep Cherokee blew up only twenty yards from them, and was thrown up into the air before landing on its side with a deafening crash, blazing fiercely.

  Young people with their faces hidden by hoods or bandannas were running in all directions. Some of them were carrying 3D televisions in cardboard boxes and laptops and Xboxes and clothes which they had looted, designer jeans and leather jackets. Others were throwing bricks and lumps of concrete and metal fence-posts at a small group of police officers in riot gear who were huddled in the corner between Forever 21 and the eastern wing of the shopping mall. The police had parked five squad cars at different angles to give themselves some protection from the hail of missiles, but the cars’ windshields had already been smashed and their roofs and hoods badly dented.

  When the two Humvees were still a hundred yards away from the Center, Lieutenant Brodie ordered them to stop. There was very little that he could do to control a rampaging mob of rioters with only seven officers, but at least he could assess the situation before backup arrived, and plan how he was going to deal with it.

  He climbed out of the Humvee and the first thing that struck him was the noise. The barrage of missiles that were being thrown at the riot police were clattering and banging against their squad cars like a West Indian steel band. There was shouting and screaming and whooping, but most of all there was an ugly endless roar, which was the sound of human voices, some elated, some angry, some just carried away with the thrill of wanton destruction.

  The air reeked of wood smoke and the fumes from burning plastic, which made Lieutenant Brodie’s eyes water and seared his nostrils. He had dealt with public disorder situations before, several times. Mostly, they had been short-lived disturbances sparked off by somebody from an ethnic minority being arrested for some petty infringement of the law: like some kid pulled over for driving with a faulty brake light and then found to have marijuana in his glovebox, or two jealous women fighting in the street over the same feckless man.

  He had usually found that a rapid zero-tolerance response was the best way to deal with them – snatch arrests, baton charges, and tear gas if necessary to disperse the crowds. But this riot was on a far greater scale than anything that he had faced before, and it had already become much more violent. What with the fires and the smoke and the screaming and the roaring, he felt that he had arrived in the parking lots for hell.

  ‘Sergeant – tell them we need that backup five minutes ago. All the backup that they can spare. Urg
ent.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  At that moment, with their sirens wailing and their horns blaring, two bright red fire engines and a heavy rescue truck turned into the parking lot. Sergeant Gonzalez hurried out to flag them down, so that they wouldn’t go too close to the rioting crowds before they could give them police protection. The sound of their sirens, however, had attracted the attention of twenty or thirty of the rioters, and some of them picked up pieces of broken concrete and brick and started to run toward them.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Lieutenant Brodie, turning to the officers in riot gear. ‘Spread out, and don’t hesitate to use your batons if you have to. Tasers, too, if it’s necessary.’

  He could see the alarm on the officers’ faces, so he barked at them, ‘Now! Spread out! If any single one of these firefighters gets hurt, then I’m holding you responsible!’

  He turned to face the rioters as they came running through the parking lot, dodging their way between the parked cars. At the same time, with a loud ripping sound, a Ford Explorer exploded on the far side of parking lot D, which set fire to two other cars parked next to it.

  Lieutenant Brodie unholstered his nickel-plated SIG-Sauer pistol and pointed it unflinchingly at the three leading rioters, his arm rigid. As soon as he did that, they slowed down, although they didn’t stop. They kept on coming, but much more cautiously, weaving from side to side like hyenas as if they were stalking him.

  When they were less than thirty feet away, he shouted, ‘Hold it! Hold it right there! Drop all those rocks! Do it now!’

  As if to punctuate his order, the seven officers behind him cocked their carbines. Three or four of the rioters dropped their half-bricks and pieces of curbstone on to the ground, but the leading rioter held on to his, a large pyramid-shaped lump of concrete, which he kept jiggling up and down in his hand as if he were weighing it. He was short and skinny, wearing a blue hoodie and baggy black sweatpants with a crotch that came almost down to his knees, and what looked like brand new Nike sneakers, so new that he hadn’t even had time to put laces in them yet.

  ‘We need water, man,’ he said, in a hoarse Hispanic accent. ‘You turn the water back on and we’ll go home.’

  ‘Taking all of your ill-gotten goods with you, I suppose?’ Lieutenant Brodie retorted.

  ‘Resti-too-shun, man, that’s all we was lookin’ for.’

  ‘Put down the rock, kid.’

  ‘You turn the water back on, man. We’re dyin’.’

  ‘Dying to watch your new plasma TVs, you mean. Now put down the rock.’

  The young man lifted the lump of concrete even higher, and arched his back as if he intended to throw it. Lieutenant Brodie fired a shot into the air, only just above his head. The young man immediately dropped the concrete pyramid and started to back away, his hands held up in the air. His friends all backed away, too.

  Whether they heard the shot or not, only a few of the rioters who were still pelting the riot police next to the mall appeared to take any notice. They carried on shouting and whooping and running in and out of the mall’s main entrance like swarms of termites running in and out of a termite mound, carrying away their loot. Even from so far away, Lieutenant Brodie could see that they were stealing anything they could, even ironing boards and deckchairs and children’s paddling pools. He guessed that an estimate of two hundred rioters had probably been on the low side: as far as he could count, there must be three or four hundred or more.

  A dark blue ESS helicopter arrived overhead and started to circle the mall at a height of less than two hundred feet, the roar of its rotors drowning out the roar of the crowd below it. Its downdraft twisted the smoke from the three burning stores into three dancing tornadoes, and sent empty cardboard boxes and sheets of newspaper tumbling across the parking lots.

  Lieutenant Brodie heard more sirens, but these didn’t sound like police or fire department vehicles. Three dark blue Crown Victorias with red flashing emergency lights on their rooftops came speeding in from South E Street, followed by four dark blue SUVs. All of them carried the distinctive ESS logo on their doors.

  The leading car stopped beside Lieutenant Brodie with a slither of tires. The other vehicles skidded to a halt, too, and all of their doors were immediately flung open. ESS security agents in helmets and dark blue uniforms and Kevlar vests came piling out of them, more than forty of them, and all of them carrying semi-automatic carbines with their buttstocks retracted. They assembled next to Lieutenant Brodie’s officers and stood stiffly to attention.

  Out of the passenger seat of the first car Joseph Wrack unfolded himself like a long-legged black spider. He was wearing a black shirt and black pants, and a black combat jacket with the collar turned up. Lieutenant Brodie had met him only a few times before, mostly at seminars when the police and the security agency got together to compare notes on tactics and crime figures, but he had taken an instant dislike to him, for both his arrogance and his skull-like face.

  ‘See you got yourself a little trouble here!’ Joseph Wrack shouted, trying to make himself heard over the grinding of the helicopter and the cacophony of glass breaking and bricks bouncing off squad cars and all of the cat-calling and whistling and chanting of the rioters. Three more explosions echoed from the far side of parking lot C, and three balls of orange flame rolled into the air.

  ‘Glad to have some backup!’ Lieutenant Brodie shouted back, even though the words tasted even more bitter in his mouth than the taste of smoke. He paused for breath, and then he shouted, ‘What I’ve been thinking is, we should form a V-shaped echelon.’

  ‘A V-shaped echelon?’

  ‘That’s right, like a pair of pincers,’ said Lieutenant Brodie, holding both arms out wide to indicate what he meant. ‘We advance toward the mall’s main entrance from two sides which will force the rioters to retreat inside the building. Once we have them corralled in the central vault inside, we can divide them up into arrestable groups of ten or so.’

  ‘And then what do we do with them, exactly?’

  Lieutenant Brodie checked his watch again. ‘I’m expecting more police backup any minute now. I’ve asked for six buses, too, so once we’ve hooked them up we should be able to transport them away from here with reasonable dispatch.’

  ‘And where do we take them?’

  ‘Where we always take our offenders, West Valley Detention Center.’

  ‘Which at this particular moment is overcrowded to the point of bursting and incidentally has no water supply, so all of its inmates are wading around knee-deep in their own excrement. Not that they don’t deserve to.’

  Joseph Wrack reached into the inside pocket of his combat jacket and took out a black-and-yellow pack of Cohiba Lanceros panatelas. He slid one out and took his time lighting it, narrowing his dark brown eyes against the smoke.

  After a while he leaned close to Lieutenant Brodie so that he could make himself heard, because he spoke very hoarsely and softly. Lieutenant Brodie ostentatiously waved his cigar smoke aside with his hand, but Joseph Wrack took no notice.

  ‘The thing of it is, Lieutenant,’ he said, and it was clear that he was choosing his words very carefully, ‘we have specific orders from Governor Smiley to stop this rioting dead in its tracks. I have to tell you, sir, that those orders apply to you, too, because we now have an official state of emergency.’

  ‘I’m aware of that,’ said Lieutenant Brodie, but let him continue.

  ‘Governor Smiley is doing everything he can to save as many lives as possible in this drought situation, and in his view, these rioters are a direct threat to the survival of those who are doing their best to comply with his water-rationing plan.’

  Lieutenant Brodie frowned at him. ‘So? We’re going to go in and arrest them. What more does he want?’

  Joseph Wrack said, ‘If you saw a young hoodlum about to take the lives of an innocent young mother and her children, what would you do?’

  ‘I still don’t get it.’

  ‘These young p
eople are sabotaging any chance we have of sharing out water fairly. Apart from the damage they’re doing right here, they’ve been vandalizing water department pumping stations, trying to turn the water supply back on, and they’ve been threatening the lives of water department maintenance personnel. By doing that, they’re endangering every man, woman and child in San Bernardino, and way beyond. Not to put too fine a point on it, sir, they’re potential killers.’

  Lieutenant Brodie was still bemused, but before he could say anything else, Joseph Wrack turned around to his security agents and waved them forward. All forty of them advanced, stamping their boots on the ground and cocking their carbines with a syncopated rattle.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ demanded Lieutenant Brodie.

  ‘We’re calling this party to an immediate halt,’ said Joseph Wrack, turning back to him, and approaching so close that Lieutenant Brodie could smell his breath. ‘It would be very helpful if you could deploy your officers, too. Maybe on the left there, so they can work their way toward their fellow officers pinned down behind their squad cars over there.’

  ‘You don’t have the authority to do this, Mr Wrack. Your men had better stay right where they are.’

  ‘I do have the authority, sir. And how do you think it’s going to look, at a future inquiry, if you have to admit that you let a riot continue unchecked because you were concerned about protocol?’

  ‘Mr Wrack!’ There was a sudden surge of noise from the helicopter, and Lieutenant Brodie almost had to scream.

  But Joseph Wrack had turned away from him again, as if he hadn’t heard him. He lifted his arm like a starter at an athletics meeting, paused for a second, and then brought it sharply down, pointing toward the rioters. The security guards immediately started jogging toward the shopping mall, their ammunition belts jingling, crossing the parking lot in a ragged line.

  ‘Mr Wrack! You order those men to come back! Mr Wrack! I’m warning you! You’re under arrest!’