by Sean Flynn
Fifteen seconds ticked by. Then Mike McNamee's voice. “Last message, can you repeat? Last message?”
Other voices clicked on immediately after Mike, jamming the airwaves. Robert A.: “Engine 1 to Command, get everybody out of the second floor, back them out.” Jack Fenton: “Command to Fire Alarm.” Fire Alarm answering. Twenty-two more seconds gone.
Paul pushed his talk button. “Fire Alarm, Fire Alarm. Emergency, emergency! Clear the air, clear the air! Emergency!”
On the floors below them, dozens of men felt a spasm of dread. What they heard, what they would later swear they heard, was, “Mayday, mayday.” Perhaps the syllables had been distorted by the background noise and the sketchy frequency. Or maybe it was Paul's tone, urgent and almost bewildered, and every other man's nerves that twisted one word into the other. Whatever the reason, they would remember it, be haunted by it, because they knew how frightened Paul must have been. Firemen were loath to speak that word, “mayday,” ashamed to call for help, to admit that the heat and the smoke and the flames might be tougher than they were. Men called mayday only before they died, or when they believed they would.
Two more broadcasts followed in quick succession. First Jerry. “I have an emergency.” Then Paul. “Command, we are two floors down from the roof,” he said. “This is the Rescue company. Come now, come now.”
The transmissions were breaking up, chopped by fragments of static and the background drone of the fire. “Okay,” Mike answered. “Where are you? Where are you?”
“Two floors down from the roof.”
He got on the radio. “All companies, we have an emergency. Somebody is two floors down from the roof.”
“Guys, we're …” A different voice. Jerry. “Not the top floor. One floor down.”
Mike broadcast again. “What is your emergency?”
Fire Alarm answered, clear and distinct, so every man could hear it. “Running out of air.”
“Command to Engine 3.”
Lt. John Sullivan heard Mike McNamee call his truck. He punched his radio. “Engine 3”
“Come up to the side of the building,” Mike told him. He kept the message short, clipped, not wasting time or breath. Mike had blocked out all emotion, distilled the operation to a tactical chore. He had two men—his men—lost in the black mist above, frightened and choking and probably dying. Mike couldn't afford to be afraid. No one below the fifth floor could.
Sully didn't bother answering, just started moving. Instinct took over. There wasn't much in the manuals about moments like this, two men missing. There didn't have to be: when one man is in trouble, every other man goes after him.
He called back over his shoulder, “Jay, shut it down. You're coming in. You take Joe. I'll take Mark and Doug.”
Jay Lyons nodded, jumped down from the cab. At most fires, the driver usually stayed with the truck, ran the pumps and fed the lines. He was also the only man not fully dressed for battle; a man couldn't drive a firetruck very well if he'd had a tank of air strapped to his back. Jay reached for a harness, slipped his shoulders through it, shrugged, rolled the air bottle into postion between his shoulder blades.
Joe McGuirk watched Sully and the others run toward the warehouse while Jay put on his gear. He was eager, excited, desperate to get inside. Joe had never been in a big one before, never seen enough fire for everyone. The worst danger Joe had faced on the job was a medical run when an overdosed junkie puked all over him, splashed vomit in his eyes. He had to worry for a couple weeks that he might have been infected with hepatitis. Nothing heroic about that. This is what he'd waited for, the mission that was born into him, the stuff of lore and legend. He was a real fireman going to save real lives, his brothers’ lives.
He was relieved Sully had left him with Jay. Of the two, Joe would probably see more action with Jay. He always wondered if Sully was too timid. Those times Sully had let slower trucks overtake Engine 3, let other men jump into the flames—sure, it was protocol, Engine 3 taking its assigned spot as second due. Joe understood that. But he still suspected that maybe Sully wasn't as eager to jump into the flames as some of the other guys. Guys like Jay. Jay was aggressive, a warrior. “Ballsy,” like Sully said. Joe wanted to be ballsy, too. Once Jay made lieutenant, maybe he'd get assigned to a ladder truck, and maybe he'd take Joe with him. Joe hoped he would.
Jay fastened the clasps on his coat, double-checked his harness, made sure his mask was clipped to his shoulder. He felt for his medallion, St. Florian on a silver chain around his neck, similar to Tom Spencer's. Around the saint's image were four words stamped in relief: SAINT FLORIAN. PROTECT US.
Jay looked at Joe. He saw Joe's jaw set firm, his teeth clenched. But there was a shine to his eyes. “You ready?” he asked Joe.
Joe nodded. He realized he wasn't afraid. “Let's do it.”
The two of them broke into a light jog, the warehouse looming above them, rising with perspective until it overtook everything, filled their entire vision, a smoking hulk splashed with the red and white of the firetrucks’ lights.
Mike shook off the fear that stirred in his belly. Paul had called mayday. He was sure of it, and he was terrified by it, or would have been if he dwelled on it. He couldn't afford that. Paul and Jerry couldn't afford that.
Finding them would be impossible if Mike couldn't figure out where they were, at least which floor. Paul had said two down from the roof, but that wouldn't do the men starting to search from the bottom much good if they didn't know how many levels the warehouse had. Mike sprinted outside, faced the building, craned his neck toward the sky. He studied the facade, pored over it for a clue—a break in the pattern of bricks, the weathered arch of an old window, anything that might tell him where Paul and Jerry were lost. He checked one wall, darted around the back, then back to the front. Nothing. Worcester Cold Storage wasn't giving up any of its secrets.
Mike hurried back to the stairs at the same time the third-alarm companies were storming the building. He decided to post himself in the stairwell so he could keep track of everyone, who went up and who came safely down. He saw John Sullivan coming with two of his men. “Sully, we need more bottles,” he said. “Can you get us more air?”
Sully and his men went back outside, onto Arctic Street, to find a truck with a spare stash of air tanks. As they left, Tom Spencer and two of his men, Tim Jackson and Paul Brosnihan, clambered over the loading dock and into the foyer. Mike noticed the look at Tim's face, which was unusual because it betrayed nothing. No fear, no anxiety. Just a quiet determination, the countenance of a man who accepted that he signed on for a job that might actually require him to get hurt. Mike thought Tim must have been a hell of a soldier.
He turned to Lieutenant Spencer. “All right, Tommy, I need you to go to the fifth floor,” he said. “Stay on the ropes, stay together, and leave before your low-air alarm goes off.”
Tom nodded as he tightened his mask around his face. Mike caught his eyes, looked hard into them for a moment. Three curious facts flashed through his mind. Patrick, Casey, Daniel. Tom's kids. He knew all their names, how old they were. He was sending their father into a poisoned void.
Tom held the gaze, but only for an instant. His mask secure, he brushed by Mike and disappeared into the cloud, Brosnihan and Tim following hard behind him.
He heard Dave Halvorsen, Rescue 1's lieutenant, on the radio. “Rescue to Paul Brotherton.” A pause. “Rescue 1 to Rescue 600.”
“Yeah, go ahead,” Paul said. “Go ahead.”
“Six hundred, what's your location?” Dave was cool, almost formal, using Paul's call sign.
“Two floors down from the roof. Two floors down from the roof. Please hurry.”
Paul was pleading. Time was burning away.
“Rescue to Rescue 600”.
“Go, yeah.” It was Jerry again. They were taking turns on the radio. Dave didn't recognize the voice, couldn't tell it was a different man.
“You all right, Paul? You all set?”
�
�We need air, we need air. We're sharing a tank right now, off of me.”
“Paul, if you need air, come on down. Come down.”
Paul answered next, gave the mask to Jerry. “We're lost, Dave,” he said. “You gotta send a rescue team up here for us.” He sounded perplexed. Not desperate yet, but confused, baffled.
“What floor?” Dave asked. “What floor?”
“Second floor down from the roof. Two floors down, I think.”
Jerry gave the tank to Paul, barked into his own radio. “We were on the roof, and then we checked the next floor down,” he said. “Now we are on the next one. Hurry.” Forty seconds later, he pushed the talk button again. “Get up here. Please.”
It was 6:52. Paul and Jerry had been lost for at least six minutes—longer, probably, considering Jerry broadcast their initial call for help at 6:46. One air tank was already drained, and the second couldn't have more than another handful of breaths left in it. After that, they would be forced to pull the mask away or die gasping. Once it was off, though, the only thing left to breathe would be smoke, a venomous mix of carbon monoxide and, depending on what was burning, several hundred or several thousand toxic chemicals. Hydrogen cyanide and hydrochloric acid were probably in the vapor. And the asphalt and polystyrene on the walls were the industrial equivalent of napalm, petroleum byproducts superheated into a poison mist.
They were already woozy from the carbon monoxide, maybe already crippled, their muscles paralyzed. A heavy concentration reduced a man to a paralytic stupor in five breaths, the CO bonding to the red blood cells, starving the body of oxygen. The brain, trying to save itself, would shut down the least important tissues, everything except itself, the heart, and the lungs. That's why firemen were always finding civilians unconscious next to doors and windows, overwhelmed by carbon monoxide one desperate lunge from safety.
While the CO was shutting down their bodies, the other toxins were destroying their airways. The smoke particles would have irritated their bronchial tubes and lung tissues at room temperature. Superheated, they scorched the deepest parts of Paul's and Jerry's chests, burning all the way into the tiniest air sacs. Their throats were closing, swelling shut from the trauma, the same way a finger swelled if it was slammed in a door. But there wouldn't be much pain. The CO would knock them out before it hurt too badly.
Jack Fenton struck a fourth alarm immediately after Jerry's transmission. Two more engines, one more ladder, nine more men. Mike had three teams working up the stairs, three at the bottom waiting to take their place. Then another message from Paul, frantic now.
“Fire Alarm, we have a second emergency here,” he said. “Get people up on this floor now or we are going to die. We have no air, and we cannot breathe.”
“What floor are you on?” Fire Alarm radioed back. “What floor are you on?”
“We don't know,” Paul said, his voice weaker now. “We don't know. We were on a wall. We have no air. Please.”
13
WHEN THE SECOND FLOOR WENT BAD, THE FLAMES NEARLY exploding and the smoke instantly shrouding everything in oily vapor, Capt. Mike Coakley headed for the roof. It was a calculated risk. He knew going up meant fighting his way through the worst of the cloud, all that gas and dirty molecules rising on their own heat. But he also knew Worcester Cold Storage better than most men on the job. He'd been in it a number of times for routine inspections, always in the light, never under pressure. And he'd gotten lost. Like every other Worcester fireman, Coakley used to tell himself, God, if that goes up, I hope I'm off duty. So much for hoping. He remembered the door from the stairs to the ground floor was tucked behind a short wall, that he could stumble past it, find himself at a dead end in the basement, maybe get lost in a maze down there. Moving the other way was a straight run to the open night sky and relatively fresh air. There was an escape route waiting, too, Ladder 1's big aluminum stick rising up from the back of the truck. All things considered, up was a safer bet than down.
Bert Davis, one of his men from Ladder 1, followed him, the two of them humping double-time through the darkness. Immediately before the bulkhead at the roof, Bert felt a sharp whack against the top of his forehead: a metal pipe, hung low across the stairwell. He blinked the stars out of his eyes, ducked, bounded up into clear air.
Neither man liked the view from the top. The vent just beyond the fire wall, the skylight Paul and Jerry had smashed out, was a volcano, orange flames shooting up through it, blowing thirty feet into the air, embers spinning away like bottle rockets, smoke braided through the strands of fire. Closer to them, the roof was bubbling, the tar starting to melt, to boil. There was too much heat below, so much that it couldn't all escape through the huge hole Paul and Jerry had bashed out above the elevator shaft, 15 feet to a side, 225 feet square. The warehouse had become an enormous blast furnace: the flames on the second floor were drawing great drafts of oxygen through the loading dock doors, gorging on air, then exhaling through the elevator shaft, which was functioning as a massive chimney. Attacking the fire—by the numbers, a textbook operation—appeared to have only antagonized it. It was as if the building had set a booby-trap, lured the men in, then erupted.
Then Coakley felt a chill, despite the sizzling atmosphere. Paul on the radio. We're lost, Dave. You gotta send a rescue team up here for us. Coakley shuddered, felt his sweat go clammy. He knew Paul and Jerry were in peril, could hear it in their voices. He also knew where they were, give or take a couple dozen yards. Fifteen minutes earlier, after the roof had been vented and the hoses were positioned around the flames, Coakley had stood with Paul and Jerry on the fifth-floor landing. Coakley and Bert were going to help man the hoses. “You want to come down?” he'd asked the rescue guys. “Nah,” Paul told him. “We'll finish this floor. Then we'll be down.”
He heard Paul again. Second floor down from the roof. Two floors down, I think.
That meant they'd never finished the fifth floor. Coakley considered how much time had passed, mapped the building in his head from memory. Best guess, they'd crossed through the fire wall, had found the single opening between the two halves of the warehouse, then gotten turned around in the labyrinth on the far side. In clear light, it might take a man two minutes to cover that same ground, find them, get them a fresh bottle of air. Groping through a coal-black cloud on all fours would take five minutes, and then only if a man was guided by blind luck. Realistically, it was far longer, if it was even possible.
Coakley did more math. Paul and Jerry had one tank between them, buddy-breathing their last precious wisps of air. Their lives were being measured in minutes. How many? Two? Four? The exact number didn't matter; Paul and Jerry would be dead before anyone got to them. Coakley was sure of that. They could be recovered, but not rescued.
He leveled his stare at Bert, locked eyes with him. A Bible verse crept into his thoughts, something from Matthew. It was hard to remember. No, John. Definitely John, chapter 15. “A greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his brothers.” Something like that. It had been a noble abstract in Sunday school. On the roof, in the steam and the soot and the ferocious crackling, it was an obligation. Paul had been in the first drill class Coakley had taught, and one of the things he was supposed to have learned, that Paul did learn, was to never leave a man stranded.
“We gotta go get 'em,” he told Bert. “Let's go.”
It was an order. Bert didn't hear it as one, because Bert didn't need to be told to go save his friends. But Coakley meant it as one, an officer telling a subordinate what to do, relieving Bert of accountability. It was easier that way. In his mind, Coakley assumed responsibility for Bert's life.
Bert nodded, the quick, firm tilt of the chin that men do when they are very serious. They went back to the bulkhead, snapped their masks into place, and stepped into the darkness. They felt their way down one set of stairs, then a second flight. Coakley felt for the door into the fifth floor, pushed it open, then dropped to his knees. Bert was immediately behind him, one gloved hand
holding tight to Coakley's coat.
They crawled inside the fifth floor, trying to move in a straight line, aiming for the fire wall on the far side. Coakley felt for a wall, something to keep his bearings. His air tank had already been tapped, part of it already inhaled. They'd have only about ten minutes inside, and only if they controlled their breathing, kept it steady.
Coakley felt something solid to his right. He swept his hand up, then down, moved it in a wide circle. A wall. He scooted forward, keeping in contact with the flat surface on his right. After a minute or so, he came to an inside corner. He shuffled left, keeping the wall to his right. More crawling. Another corner. Then a third and a fourth. Coakley's throat tightened. I'm in a fucking room. But he hadn't felt a door. A four-sided room had to have a door. They'd gotten in. There had to be a way out.
He kept moving, his knees scraping faster over the same stretch of warehouse floor he'd been around once. Four more corners. Coakley shifted his arm higher, up where the door handles should be. He remembered the iron rings lay flush, nestled in pockets, but maybe he could feel one in the dark.
Four more corners. Still no door. His heart raced. “Bert,” he yelled over his shoulder, “we're going to die in here.” He crawled forward, quelled the panic rising inside. He said the same words to himself, believed them. I'm going to fucking die. I'm going to die for a piece of shit building, trying to save a guy who's already dead. I'm going to fucking die in here. Logic took him the next step. I've killed Bert. I've fucking killed Bert.
His low-air alarm hadn't gone off yet. There was still time. He'd given Bert an order. Forget laying down his own life. His duty, his immediate and only obligation, was to get his man out alive. Behind him, Bert was thinking the same thing: he had to save his captain. They had to save each other.
They kept moving, knowing that to stop was to concede defeat, surrender to the building. Coakley focused on the time. How long had they been in there? He wasn't sure. His air had to be running low.