by Suzi Weinert
He fought for composure. “I must speak now to your mother.”
They walked to the dining room and found Zayneb. “I leave your house now. Good-bye and thank you for your kind hospitality.” Their eyes locked in a shared secret of their own about something hidden outside beneath a raised garden. “I will go upstairs to make sure I left nothing in my room.”
When he drove away, determination alone prevented him from looking back.
Arriving at the motel, he thanked Abdul for the use of his car. Then, noticing Abdul’s visible relief at seeing his vehicle returned intact, Ahmed added, “However, my friend, you would make a very bad camel trader.”
97
Tuesday, 11:58 PM
Thunder rumbled in the distance as Adam crunched across the gravel parking area at the top of the driveway. Pushing open the barn door, he flipped on the light to locate a crowbar and ax. He tested the blade with his thumb. Not razor sharp but adequate for what he had in mind.
When he turned off the light, darkness closed in—almost as dark as last night when he and Hannah helped foil the kidnapping on the other side of their farm property. He glanced up at ominous clouds moving swiftly across the moon before blotting it from view. In the darkness, he felt the air freshen as the wind picked up. Branches in surrounding trees began to rustle and sway. Distant flickers of lightning accompanied a rising wind as the storm moved closer. The TV weatherman forecasted severe thunderstorms tonight. Good, the countryside needed rain.
He remembered Nathan’s warning: “Brush fires are a worry now in current drought conditions. Not only a problem for firefighters like me but for police like you who might need to evacuate residents from threatened homes.” Considering the woodsy profile of this part of Fairfax County, Adam hoped the lightning fizzled fast but the rain poured hard.
Inside the house, he gazed lovingly at his sleeping bride before quietly closing the bedroom door and crossing the hall. A bright burst of lightning flashed outside the window shades as he counted one-one-hundred, two-one-hundred and three-one-hundred before a huge thunderclap rattled the windows. A close strike, only three miles away if the old formula held true. Like most residences, theirs had no lightening rod, but knowing this wooden house had withstood over a hundred years of just such storms reassured him.
He moved quickly to the exercise-room closet, climbed the stepladder positioned there, wiggled through the ceiling trapdoor access and again surveyed his childhood attic Punishment Room. He turned on the flashlight he’d left there yesterday, illuminating the claustrophobic wallboard enclosure. He focused the beam on the bloody four-digit handprint he’d made as a child when his mother shoved him up here after cutting off his little finger to punish spelling mistakes.
Though he saw no lightning through the makeshift room’s four solid walls, the crashing rolls of thunder reverberated even louder in the attic as the storm stalled overhead. He’d felt pathetic gratitude at finding his mother’s letter, proving she’d adored him once. That loving letter helped balance her later cruelty to him after she was driven insane by the monster she married.
Still, the memory of those horrible hours—those terrible days unable to defend himself as an abused child—welled over him, fueling anger at the injustice that took place here. Now he could let that tormented little boy escape by destroying this hated room now in a way he couldn’t then. He lifted the ax and, using all his strength, hacked into one of the walls. The blade tore a long gash in the wallboard. A second blow widened the initial hole. After the third blow, he glimpsed some of the old attic on the other side. In a frenzy, he chopped and slashed at the wallboard until only the room’s vertical studs remained.
As the resulting debris lay on the floor around him, he saw that someone had amateurishly planked the floor in this small area and erected a closed room around it with the closet’s ceiling trapdoor the only access. His mother could not have built this. Maybe Tobias, or even his father? How many souls over how many generations had suffered punishment in this miserable hole? But he’d changed that. Nobody would ever suffer here again.
He had just squeezed through the destroyed room’s studs into the larger attic, when he cringed involuntarily at an ear-splitting crash of thunder, so powerful the house shook beneath his feet. He steadied himself, clinging to a joist. He recalled his police training taught that when lightning strikes wood, the flow of current through it can splinter or shatter with such force the heat generated often ignites. Had a bolt struck the house? No. What was the chance of that?
In the larger attic, he swept his flashlight beam from one end of the old house to the other and across the floor. He stood a third of the distance from one end of the attic. He breathed in the ancient odor of long-abandoned space, as if he’d stepped backward through a timewarp.
Attic insulation, once filling the spaces between the cross beams, spilled unevenly now across the floor, below beams in some places and over them in others. Walking across would be dicey. Adam stopped to sniff the air again. Something new, something beyond the stale attic odor he first noted. Maybe smoke? But the sight of an old trunk pushed against the rafters about twenty feet away caught his eye. He moved toward the eaves, hanging onto rafters for support as he moved clumsily across the trusses toward the trunk. But as he neared it, he sniffed again.
Yes, definitely smoke. He turned the flashlight beam toward the trapdoor. Although chunks of wallboard from his demolition efforts covered most of it, a wisp of smoke wafted through. He stared, immobile. Smoke meant fire.
Hannah.
Galvanized into action, he held onto rafter supports to retrace his steps across the beams. Pressing his way through the old room’s skeletal studs, he kicked away the wreckage accumulated over the trapdoor. More smoke rose as he uncovered the opening. He cleared the hole and looked down, saw a smoke-filled room below, crouched on his hands and knees and dropped a leg through the ceiling opening to feel for the ladder.
Smoke choked him. By the time both feet settled on the top rung, the intense heat in the room forced him to scramble back into the attic. He slammed the trapdoor shut behind him.
Clearly he couldn’t rescue Hannah from here, but if he got outside he could run around the house, break her bedroom window and pull her to safety.
He must make the right choices.
Thin smoke hung in the attic now, increasing by the minute. If he could get to one end of the attic, maybe he could punch a hole in the gable vent, push it out and crawl through. He’d still have to drop fifteen feet to the ground but he would gladly venture that to save Hannah. He looked toward the vent at the end of the short distance but saw a tiny speck of flame licking at the attic insulation. He must go the long way instead.
Feeling for the rafters in the thickening brown-black smoke and coughing as its acrid chemicals stung his nose and lungs, he pulled off his shirt to tie around his lower face. He’d have a better chance if he could wet it but had no water. Remembering a wet-nap in his pocket, he tore its envelope open and pressed the damp paper over his nose and mouth inside the shirt-mask. The smoke stung his eyes. He could barely see. He groped his way in blackness along the rafters, measuring the truss distances in his mind and directing his unseen feet as best he could.
Then he slipped. His foot drove through the insulation and sank through the ceiling of a room below. Searing heat caused him to jerk the foot out fast. He teetered on the cross beams, struggling to regain his balance and stumble onward.
Moving blindly in the smoke-filled attic, he forced himself mechanically from rafter to rafter, truss to truss, with no idea how far he had yet to go. His hands touched a solid wall. He’d reached the end of the attic. Now, to find the gable vent. He felt along the wall for the octagonal shape. Touching it, he pushed hard but it wouldn’t budge. He’d need brute force to punch it out. He’d have to draw lungfuls of super-heated air to fuel that effort, a luxury he didn’t have. This way out would become oxygen’s way in, oxygen that would fuel the fire. The scorching smoke burne
d his lungs when he breathed. His mind knew what he needed to do, but his body wouldn’t respond.
He kicked at the vent with his last shred of strength and lucidity. To his amazement, the rotted wood around it gave way as a chunk the size of a door fell outward toward the ground. Air rushed in through this opening, sucked by the ravenous fire. He felt energy radiation rocket across the ceiling above him as the instant rush of heat and flame blended into a super-heated force igniting the space. In a horrific flashover explosion, the entire attic burst afire in a split-second conflagration.
The blast’s powerful concussion hurled Adam’s body out into the black night.
DAY SIX
Wednesday
98
Wednesday, 12:32 AM
As Adam lay unconscious on the ground beside the burning house, sirens filled the air. Pieces of the burning structure fluttered down around him, one chunk landing on his arm.
McLean Volunteer Fire Department’s ladder truck and ambulance appeared first on the scene. Aware of this fire’s remote location, they called the Great Falls tanker for needed water. The firefighters arrived prepared, unloaded quickly, readied their equipment and got to work.
The lead medic jumped out of his vehicle to find Hannah sobbing hysterically in the driveway.
“Anyone inside the house?”
“My husband!” she wailed. “I don’t know where he is. What if he’s burning up in there?” Sobs shook her.
The medic grabbed her shoulders. “Ma’am, you need to calm down. We need your information right now to find your husband. Tell me exactly what happened.”
“We were asleep in the bedroom. The lightning strike sounded like an explosion. The whole house shook. I woke up terrified. He wasn’t in bed beside me or in the bedroom or the bathroom. I screamed for him down the hall but he didn’t answer. The fire spread so fast I couldn’t go after him. I climbed out a window and came straight to the driveway because we said we’d meet here in case of fire and…” she wept again, “and he isn’t here.”
“Could he have left in the car?” They hurried to the barn and found both vehicles there.
“Okay, then. We’ll try to get people inside and send someone to look around outside. What’s your water source here? Do you have a pond?”
“Just a well, but that’s not enough water for what you need.”
“A tanker’s already here and we’ve called other stations for more. Meantime, you stay put here in the ambulance. Don’t leave. We have no time to look for you, too. Hear me?”
“Yes.” She fought tears. “Oh, find my husband, please find Adam.”
They all knew what to do and hurried to their tasks.
“A tree caught fire right next to the house,” reported one fireman. “If it spreads to the woods we have a major problem. Do we need Brush Trucks?” He referred to large pickup trucks loaded with hand tools and small water pumps to deal with fire that spread to trees and ground cover.
”Not yet,” came the answer. “It’s just the one tree closest to the house right now. But we could use another tanker. They can refill at fireplugs along the main road. The storm brought plenty of lightning but no rain here. The adjacent woods are bone dry. We need to contain this blaze. At least the wind died. That helps.”
Another firefighter hustled over. “This old place is a tinderbox, a hundred percent on fire. We got our men out, but nobody else could survive inside. Hope the husband got out.”
“The overgrown bushes make it tougher to get near the house, never mind that radiant heat. We got guys looking for him in both directions.”
Despite protective clothing, one fireman dodged fiery “floaters” as he trudged outside as close as heat and shrubbery allowed. Experience told him the missing man’s chance for survival was poor from a fast-moving, roaring fire like this one. Didn’t the wife call him Adam?
When the first smoke entered the air, the firefighter thought, the room where Adam stood would have contained twenty-one percent oxygen, allowing him to think clearly. But as thickening smoke displaced oxygen and that level dropped, Adam would become disoriented, as if drunk. Worse, when smoke increased and oxygen diminished, heat soared, often to several hundred degrees. Besides a fire’s damage to a human body’s exterior, breathing heated air singed the respiratory system inside. The aged, dry wood in this house burned so hard from every angle that unless Adam had found a way out, he was cooked.
Glancing toward the roof, the fireman noticed a chunk missing from the triangular wall at the end of the attic. His eye followed its trajectory to the ground below.
“I think I found him,” he said into the microphone clipped on his gear. The radio pack in his chest pocket beamed the message to the rest. Forcing his way through thorny bushes, he pushed aside smoldering debris and knelt beside Adam. Seeing the hypoxic blue lips and comatose state, the medic feared he was dead. But when he checked, the man showed very weak vital signs. Smoke inhalation or fire-seared lungs made it hard to guess if recovery was even possible. Some fire casualties appeared undamaged on the outside but smoke inhalation killed them. His job: try to keep him alive until they reached the hospital.
Hannah waited at the ambulance. When two firefighters hurried a yellow-and-black stretcher around one end of the house, she jumped to her feet. Would Adam’s charred body come next?
She steeled herself for the worst.
Moments later, the two firemen rushed the stretcher to the place Adam lay, heaved his dead weight onto it and carried him to the ambulance. They worked in synch, wasting not a second in strapping on an oxygen mask, attaching a BP cuff on his arm and pulse-oximeter on his finger, starting IVs and treating his burns.
“Oh my God,” Hannah cried in anguish, staring at her deathly still husband and his raw burns. “Is he dead? Can you save him?”
“We’ll do all we can. Then Fairfax Hospital ER takes over.” He turned to the next firefighter. “Do we take him to Medstar for the burns or Fairfax ER? They’re about equidistant.”
“Most of his burns don’t look third degree. I say Fairfax.”
“Okay.”
“Could I ride with him?” Hannah pleaded.
The medic considered the hour, the rural location and the seriousness of the victim’s condition. Poor kids, he thought. “We’re driving the bigger unit tonight so I think there’s room, but only if you promise to stay out of our way while we work on him.”
“”I promise,” she pledged.
“Then let’s go.”
The door slammed shut and sirens filled the air as the vehicle whisked down the long driveway and, once at the road, rocketed toward their destination.
99
Wednesday, 3:34 AM
Wakened from a sound sleep by the chirping phone, Jennifer fumbled for the receiver.
“Mom, I’m sorry to bother you in the middle of the night but…but I had to. Are you awake?”
“Hannah, what is it?”
“It’s so awful, Mom, I can hardly say it.”
Jennifer sat up, wide awake. “Honey, take a deep breath and tell me.”
“Lightning struck our house in the big thunderstorm and it…it burned to the ground.”
“Oh, Hannah. Are…are you both okay?”
“I am, but Adam fell out of the attic and while unconscious he couldn’t push away some burning stuff that fell on his arm. We’re at Fairfax Hospital now. The firemen saved him, but he broke his right leg and three ribs in the fall and has lots of small burns plus the big one on his arm. And his throat and lungs may be burned inside. They say it’s a miracle he survived. Mom…oh, Mom…he’s going to be okay.”
“Precious Hannah, you must be in shock. But you’re alive. Did you lose everything in the fire?”
”We hadn’t moved in much furniture, just one bedroom and some kitchen stuff, but it’s all gone plus our clothes. They saved the barn so we still have our cars.”
“Have you had time to think what you’ll do next?”
“Adam’s sleeping s
o we haven’t talked it over yet, but I guess we’ll move back into his bachelor apartment in McLean. I’ll have to scramble together some bedroom furniture and linens to replace what we lost. Otherwise, the rest of his apartment is still furnished.”
“Have you told Adam’s mother yet?”
“No, it’s the middle of the night and he’s going to be all right so no point in waking her up. But I had to call you.”
“You did exactly the right thing, Honey. Do you want me to come be with you?”
“No, you’ve had enough trauma lately. There’s a reclining chair in Adam’s hospital room. I’ll sleep there tonight. They gave me a pillow and blanket. I want to be near if he needs me.”
“I understand. Is your car there?”
“No, that’s another thing. I’ll need a ride home but I don’t know when he’ll get out.”
“Well, that’s easy. I get Dad tomorrow so you can ride back with us.”
“Oh, this is so embarrassing. With all that’s happened I forgot Dad’s even here in another ward.”
“Dad was very lucky, Hannah, because Mr. D didn’t make it.”
“He’s dead?”
“I’m afraid so. His children lost both parents in less than a week.”
“Oh no. How awful.” Silence. “But Mom, I just realized…we almost did too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Dad in the car wreck and you…shot by a sniper.”
“Gee, you’re right. I hadn’t put it together that way.”
“Sorry to wake you up, Mom, but hearing your voice helped me a lot tonight. It always does.”
“I’m always here for you, Sweetie. Now try to get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a busy day.”
“And a happy day, too, since we’re all alive.”
“Amen! Night, Honey.”
“Night, Mom. I love you.”
“Love you, too, Hannah.”
100
Wednesday, 8:03 AM
“You’re back, I see,” Veronika said to her younger half-sister. “To what do I owe this honor?”