3000 Degrees

by Sean Flynn

  He swept his hand forward along the wall. His fingers jabbed a hard ridge. He reached for it with both gloves, slid all ten fingers against it. He felt a thin lip of metal. The door. A draft, a gust of heat or a hard puff of smoke, must have nudged it, pushed it in just far enough to be felt by a blind man. His heart pounded harder, two beats, three beats, twelve. Coakley rose up on his knees and pulled open the door, felt to make sure Bert was still with him, then edged through it. He paused, listened. The sounds—clomping boots, whining saws, clanking tools—were louder to the left. He turned, scuttled as quickly as his knees would move, felt another door, then the steel treads of the stairs. With Bert still behind him, he bolted down the stairs, his mask buzzing against his face as he cleared the final steps.

  Bob Mansfield followed Robert A. up the stairs from the ground floor a minute after Paul's call for help. Both of them had a fresh bottle of air, but neither trusted the supply to hold out. They were breathing hard from hiking through black steam, kicking the risers of each step to find their way to the fourth floor.

  They dropped to their knees and began to crawl. They didn't know if they were on the right floor, if they were crawling toward Paul and Jerry or beneath them. But maybe Paul and Jerry didn't know precisely where they were, either. Other men were already searching the fifth floor. If there was a chance Paul and Jerry had made it down to the fourth, Robert A. and Bob weren't going to risk leaving them there.

  The heat was ferocious, roiling the smoke, making it seem like the atmosphere was alive, angry, a predator smothering its prey. It wrapped around their masks, obliterated their vision, took away shadow and light. But they could feel it, moving with an unnatural velocity, swirls and eddies twisting around their arms and legs and chests as they inched forward, a physical presence that pushed back, pressed on them. And they could feel each other, Bob on Robert A.'s right shoulder, maintaining contact with one hand, holding a Haligan in the other. Robert A. had the only radio between them, and the background noise overwhelmed their voices unless they yelled in each other's ears. If they lost touch for more than a moment, they would lose each other.

  It was difficult to know how far they'd gone, but Bob memorized the turns. He'd practiced how to maintain his bearings in utter darkness on the underwater rescue team. In a black-water dive, men floated blind, losing sensory perception in three dimensions, side to side and front to back and up and down. At least in a fire he didn't have to worry about up and down, only the level movements. So far, he and Robert A. had made three lefts, tracing a giant U-shaped path into the warehouse. That's what it seemed like, anyway. Were they in fifty feet? One hundred? And how much air did they have left? It was impossible to be certain.

  Robert A. wasn't taking chances. With two lives on the line, he wouldn't help anyone by getting himself lost. “We're far enough in,” he said after the third left. “Let's get out of here. Because if we don't get out now, we're not getting out.”

  “All right,” Bob said. He was relieved. The danger, the very real risk of dying, was outweighing the possiblity of finding Paul and Jerry on the fourth floor.

  He felt Robert A. scoot forward and to the right.

  “Hey, hey! Wrong way,” he screamed. “You're going the wrong way. It's this way.” He tugged Robert A.'s sleeve to the back and right, the reverse of the turns Bob remembered making.

  “No, it's not,” Robert A. shouted back. “It's this way.”

  He scooted forward again. Bob's hand slipped away. He reached for Robert A., felt nothing but smoke. Just a few feet away, Robert A. was groping for Bob. He turned for him, reached again. Nothing. They were both spinning, swinging their hands, desperate to reconnect. They called for each other, but the noise, the rush of hot air and the grumble of flames, washed away their voices, grabbed them in the short gap between the two men, carried them away.

  Bob froze. His mind raced, two instincts, survival and duty, colliding, spinning around each other. Firemen didn't leave anyone alone in an inferno. Men lived because other men never left them alone to die. He couldn't leave Robert A., but he couldn't find him, either. Maybe Robert A. had switched directions, moved back the way Bob told him to go. Or maybe he'd crawled farther into the warehouse, made another turn, snaked into a corner. Bob didn't know, couldn't know. If he went after him, he'd just be guessing. And it would probably kill him.

  He decided not to die. If he got out, got more air, he could come back. He could tell other men where to look, get someone to raise Robert A. on his radio, talk him back to the door. Nausea churned in his stomach as he lurched back and to the right, the way he remembered.

  Bob crawled a few feet, then made the first right turn. He felt something hard and solid rise up in front of him. A wall. He spread out his hands, reached ahead. Another wall, coming into the first and forming a corner. “Shit,” he whispered. He didn't remember any corners. It must be a room, he thought. But he shouldn't be in it, didn't know how he'd gotten there. He realized he'd made a mistake, maybe a fatal one.

  Panic tickled his brain stem. He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, concentrated, forced his nerves to steady themselves. He'd been through this before, thinking he would die, trapped in a flaming cellar, three minutes of air in his tank, the hose that led out through a maze of boxes and shelves hidden under rubble and water. He'd panicked then, started to hyperventilate, convinced he didn't have enough oxygen to escape. “You dumb shit,” he'd muttered next. “You keep breathing like that and you're definitely not getting out.” Self-control had saved his life. This was the same thing, only worse.

  He stopped moving, stayed in one spot, listening, hoping to key in on a sound that would lead him out. For a long moment, there was only the snarl of the fire. But then a sputter, the rapid pop-pop-pop of an engine jerking to life. He recognized it as a K-12, a heavy-duty saw that can tear through most anything. There had to be a fireman holding it. That had to be the way out.

  Bob crawled toward the sound, feeling the wall as he went. Above him, he felt a small hole, just big enough to stick his head through. He stood up and peered into the black. The smoke seemed thinner, still black and oily but not quite as dense, breaking and fading in random places. A light shone through, disappeared behind another puff, reappeared. A searchlight, attached to one of the big aerial scopes. It had to be coming through one of the stairwell windows.

  Safety was only a dozen yards away. He scurried along the wall, felt another corner, turned right. His hand hit a short ledge. A step, the step to the landing. He lurched to his feet, swept his leg forward, his brain telling his body to run, sprint to the ground, to fresh air.

  He froze again. He couldn't leave. He'd been less wrong than Robert A., probably, anyway. If the captain was still inside, Bob had to get him out. He took a step back into the fourth floor, followed the wall until he came to a metal door. Then he swung at it with the Haligan, hit the steel as hard as he could. Once, twice, three times, big booms that rolled into the smoke. He stopped, listened.

  “Keep doing that!” It was Robert A.'s voice, faint and muffled, but not far. Then it came again, louder, as if the captain had pulled off his mask, removed one barrier between his mouth and Bob's ears. “Keep doing that!”

  Bob swung again, the Haligan light in his hands, adrenaline stoking his muscles and fear pumping out more adrenaline. He kept a steady beat, his pounding heart doubling for a metronome. The smoke rushed past him, a violent upward draft. He stood alone in the dark, banging and hoping for a minute or maybe three, each one dragging on for an hour. He felt something brush against his leg. Then Robert A. was on his feet, reaching for him, pushing at him, urging him down the stairs.

  Mike McNamee paced at the bottom of the stairwell. Two minutes had passed since Paul Brotherton's last transmission. He'd never heard a man sound so desperate, never expected that when he did it would be Paul. We have no air. Please.

  Mike keyed his radio. He had to raise Paul and Jerry, convince himself they were still alive, that they could still b
e found. He remembered their alarms, wondered if they'd sounded. Every fireman carried a small device attached to his coat called a PASS alarm, which stood for “Personal Alert Safety System.” If a man remained motionless for thirty seconds, either overcome by smoke or trapped by debris, the alarm automatically sounded a piercing tone. There was also a panic button that could be pushed at will, setting off an auditory beacon for rescuers to home in on.

  “Paul Brotherton, Rescue 1,” Mike barked into his radio. “Paul Brotherton, activate your PASS system, activate your PASS system so we can hear you, activate your emergency alarm.”

  No answer. Mike ran outside, scanned the building again, desperate for a hint, anything. A minute passed before he heard his call sign on the radio.

  “Command to Chief McNamee.” It was Jack Fenton, the deputy chief. “Have you got the location of the men?”

  “We have Ladder 1, Ladder 2, and Engine 3 looking,” Mike answered.

  Another thirty seconds ticked by. Still no answer from Paul or Jerry. Mike punched his talk button again. “Command to Paul Brotherton. Command to Jerry Lucey. Activate your PASS emergency.”

  Jerry answered, “They are activated.”

  Thank God, Mike thought. He had Coakley and his men on the roof, and Tom Spencer, Sully, and their men working their way up the stairs. “Ladder 1, Ladder 2, Engine 3,” he said into his microphone. “They have activated their PASS alarms up there.”

  Maybe they'd caught a break. The sound of a PASS alarm could penetrate lead-dense smoke, cut through blackness that smothered the brightest lights, reflected all the photons back upon themselves. If his men could hear Paul and Jerry, Mike knew, they could crawl to them, get a fresh tank snapped onto their masks, bring them out alive.

  The actual fire, raging on the second floor, was still basically contained. It was worsening, growing more vicious with each passing minute, but it hadn't spread much beyond the old office area. And a fourth alarm had been struck three minutes earlier. Two more engines and a ladder were only blocks away. They were all undermanned, only three men on each truck, but any fresh set of legs and lungs would help.

  For the next two minutes, Mike counted heads, coordinated men with positions, made sure everyone was accounted for. Tom Spencer and Tim Jackson were on the fifth floor, Sully was working his way up to the fourth floor. He had four good pairs of ears listening for Paul and Jerry. There was still time, though precious little of it.

  At 6:57, he heard Sully's voice on the radio. Mike had sent him up to the third floor with Mark Fleming. From the doorway, down on his belly, Sully could see into the warehouse beneath a bank of smoke that hung a foot above the floor. He'd crept in, Mark trailing him, both of them lugging extra air tanks for Paul and Jerry. Conditions worsened by the minute, the smoke dropping, heat rising. They pressed into the miasma, inching all the way to the firewall on the far side. “They're not in here,” he told Mark. “We gotta go up.” They found their way back to the stairwell and started climbing, pausing on the landings of each floor to listen for the squeal of an alarm.

  “Engine 3 to Command,” Sully said.“Engine 3 to Command.”

  Jack Fenton answered. “Command.”

  “Chief, we made it all the way to the top, and we hear no alarms on this side of the building.”

  “Engine 3, if you can't reach them”—a burst of static—“get the hell out of there.”

  Mike's stomach turned to lead. Paul and Jerry must have been buried somewhere deep inside, behind the walls layered with cork and polystyrene, materials thick enough to mute the whine of their PASS alarms. He stopped tracking time—the heat of a firefight melts seconds into minutes and minutes into seconds, all of it lost in a blur—but he knew he was running out of it. He returned to the base of the stairs, watching his men, keeping track of them. A PASS alarm for Engine 6 sounded, but it was a malfunction; Capt. Arthur Shepard and his men were all present and accounted for. Mike called for more ambulances, made sure enough emergency medical technicians were standing by for men who'd surely be wracked by carbon monoxide. Fire Alarm told him six ambulances were waiting.

  George Zinkus, Mike's aide, was monitoring the battle against the fire, keeping Mike briefed on the battle fatigue. At 7:02, he told Mike they needed more men. “We could use a fresh crew over here,” he said from the C-side stairs. “Engine 7 just came down. We are at the other stairway.”

  “Okay,” Mike said. “We got 'em here.”

  “Have them follow that two-and-a-half on the first floor all the way around to us.”

  Then Fenton was calling him again. “Command to Interior, Chief McNamee.”

  “Go ahead, Command.”

  “Do you need any additional lines in there?”

  A brief pause. “Say that again?”

  “Do you need any additional lines in there?”

  “Negative. We have enough lines. The focus right now is on the search.”

  “Ten-four. I got men out here now. Do you want any additional help or need relief up—”

  Mike cut him off. “Fresh crews with masks. We're going to rotate people in.”

  “Repeat that message.”

  Too late. Tommy Spencer was calling Mike on the radio. “Stand by, Command,” Mike told Fenton. “Ladder 2, repeat your message.”

  “Chief,” Tom said, “are all the people accounted for, out of the building? Ladder 2 and Engine 3 are on the fifth floor, still searching.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are they accounted for?”

  The words were lost in the cacophony of the fire, drowned out by flames and saws and hoses and static. And Mike was distracted by other tasks. The men fighting the fire needed to be relieved. He steered a team from Engine 8 through the first floor, toward the C stairs, radioed George that relief was on the way.

  Paul Brosnihan, on the other hand, was trying to locate his lieutenant. He'd been dispatched to rip the plywood out of the stairwell windows, open more holes so the smoke could cough out into the open air. Doug Armey, one of Sully's men, had peeled off to help. With that task done, he wanted to find Tom Spencer. He called him twice before he got an answer.

  “Ladder 2, go ahead.”

  “Tommy, did you come up the stairway, four flights?”

  “We came up the stairwell,” Tom said. “We're on the fifth floor.”

  “What is your location on the fifth floor?”

  “Good question.”

  “Repeat,” Brosnihan said.

  “We're doing a sweep.”

  “Are you near the front side of the building or the rear?”

  “I believe that we are in the front part of the building.”

  “Okay,” Brosnihan said. “I've got myself and Firefighter Armey.”

  It was 7:05. Paul Brotherton and Jerry Lucey had been lost for almost twenty minutes, buddy-breathing for fifteen. At the bottom of the stairs, Mike was entering a desperate phase. He was still calm, detached, his emotions stripped away from his technical duties. But he knew only a miracle—a fortuitous air pocket, an obscured window—would allow Paul and Jerry to still be breathing, still be alive. Yet it was difficult to monitor the search. The men who tromped down the stairs briefed him on the conditions above—bad and getting worse—but there were others, more than a dozen of them, scattered throughout the warehouse. The only way to keep track of all of them, to gather their field reports, was over the radio. And he couldn't hear the damned thing. Saws screeched through wood and metal, hoses gushed, fire hissed like a herd of dragons.

  “Stop with saw,” he snapped into the radio. “We can't hear the radio transmissions. Stop with that saw.”

  Sully was finally coming down the stairs, emerging from the fog like a dirty wraith. He told Mike how hot it was, how dark, how he couldn't hear any PASS alarms, couldn't stay any longer in the heat and the smoke. Then Fenton was back on the radio.

  “Go ahead,” Mike said.

  “Do you need relief for Engine 3 and Ladder 2?”

  “Engine 3 is alre
ady exiting.” He was looking at Sully, knew it was true.

  Tom Spencer and Tim Jackson were still five floors up. At eight minutes past seven, Spencer pressed his talk button. “Ladder 2 to Command.”

  Fenton answered, “Command. Go ahead, Ladder 2”

  “Chief, get a company up the stairwell to the fifth floor,” Tom said. “We can't locate the stairwell. Or give us some sign as to which way to go. We are running low on air and want to get out of—”

  The transmission was cut off. For three and a half minutes, an agonizingly long time in three-hundred-degree darkness with a preciously limited supply of oxygen, the airwaves were cluttered, either with open microphones—guys hitting their buttons by mistake or at the same time as someone else—or chatter about where to put another hose. Tom Spencer finally held his button, raised his voice, demanded attention. “Ladder 2 to Command!”

  “Command,” Fenton said. “Go ahead.”

  “Send somebody up the stairwell to the fifth floor. Stand in the doorway and start singing.”

  “Repeat that message.”

  Mike patched in. “Slow it down a little.”

  “Get somebody up in the stairwell to the fifth floor,” Tom said again. He was calm, almost serene, as if he knew fear was an extraneous emotion, something that could only distract him, blur his concentration, sap his strength. “Have them stand in the opening and yell. We can't find the door to the stairs.”

  Fenton still couldn't hear it. “Repeat the message,” he said. “We can't understand it. Repeat the message clearly.”

  Sully jumped in. Sully had good ears and a fresh bottle of air. “Engine 3 has the message, Chief. We're going to the fifth floor, to the stairway, to lead them.”

  It was 7:13. Sully stumbled up the stairs, feeling his way through the murk. When he'd counted five floors, he stopped, stood stone still, closed his eyes because he always listened better that way. He strained to catch the faintest sound, the shuffle of knees against concrete or the shriek of a PASS alarm or the static cackle of a radio.