That would probably be one of the base’s senior officers, a captain or major somebody come to see what the hell was going on, Dodd thought. His personal project, his, had gotten Lieutenant Santiano and these enlisted men in serious trouble. He tried to think quickly of some explanation that might get them off the hook, but nothing came — and that seemed proof of how quixotic the whole thing was. As for himself, it was going to be embarrassing all the way up and down the line, especially up.
A figure appeared in the doorway. Wearing a beige trench coat with the right sleeve hanging empty.
Helen.
Why the hell was she here?
Dodd went to her, gave her a brief, public sort of hug that she coolly received, letting him know she was annoyed. He introduced her to Hackley, Poss and Ruzkowski. She was more pleasant to them. They continued their work, while Dodd and Helen went to a corner of the hangar, sat on a pair of high stools by a workbench. Facing one another.
After a long, steady look at him, she asked, “What is it you’re doing, Roy?”
It was too complicated to explain now. He promised to tell her about it, all of it, later.
That didn’t satisfy her. Usually she didn’t want to know what he was into because it would be too nerve-racking.
“It has something to do with that mud slide, doesn’t it?”
“Yes”
“Commander Everett called.”
“Called you?”
“He’s worried about you, about your … well, the way he put it was … your mental state.”
Dodd thought Everett probably knew every move he’d made up to now. But, if so, why hadn’t Everett intervened? Maybe Everett was letting him hang himself. Maybe he owed someone a push up to area captain. Soon as he thought it, Dodd knew it wasn’t true.
“What else did Bill have to say?”
“Just that it wasn’t like you to disobey orders.”
“I have before.”
“Maybe you’ve been lucky up to now.”
He grunted. “And maybe my luck won’t change.”
She tried being direct. “Come home with me.”
His eyes told her he wanted to. He said, “I can’t.”
“Why, for God’s sake?”
“Because unless I see this thing through, I’m going to be the damnedest loneliest man alive —”
“With me?”
“Even with you.”
Helen had intended to be firm with him. Through the night and on the way there she had worked herself up to the point of wanting literally, single-handedly, to throw him in the car and haul him back home. But now, looking at him, believing she understood what he felt, she had to soften.
“Well, I couldn’t sleep anyway,” she said.
They kissed and silently promised one another more loving than that when time got back to normal.
“By the way,” she told him, “your lemon tree fell over.”
“What do you mean, ‘fell over’?”
“Late this afternoon I noticed it lying on the ground. I guess it just gave up at the roots.”
It didn’t mean anything, Dodd told himself. “I’ll plant another,” he said, but he seemed worried.
Helen stood, smiled her best for him, took his hand. “Come on. Show me what you’re doing with that weird-looking plane. Maybe I can help.”
She already had.
26
The mud had still not risen more than a fraction of an inch in the past hour. The ceiling was still just out of reach.
Judging from his own condition, Brydon knew the others must be beyond their physical limit. It was incredible that they had endured this long. Over six hours of rigid, cataleptic exertion, riding the surface of the mud.
Now, the help of the amphetamine was beginning to wear off. Brydon could feel exhaustion starting to take over every muscle. A trembling sensation inside, increasing. He doubted he could hold up another half hour, definitely not an hour. Any minute he expected to hear Amy cry out as she gave up. Or any of the others.
If only he could reach the ceiling.
But, so what if he could?
They’d still be trapped. It still wouldn’t give them a way out. The mud that had lifted them there would follow them up, eventually fill the place, overwhelm them. Except for the difference of a little time, more frustration and anguish, they might as well have it happen now. Death.
God, how he hated this mud. More intensely than he’d ever hated anything. It was so goddamned relentless, evil, the way it ate up the time of their lives, devoured their future feelings, tastes, sights, touchings, every delicious moment, even the reassurance of pain.
The mud seemed to take exception to Brydon’s thoughts. As though deciding to prolong their agony, taking perverse delight in giving hope in order to take it away, the mud suddenly began to rise again. Several inches in just a few minutes, finally putting the ceiling within range. Easy range.
Brydon told the others not to reach for it, to not yet relinquish the stretches of the plastic from their arms to their sides that kept them afloat. Then, not heeding his own warning, in a single swift motion Brydon tore loose the plastic and punched upward, hard, with both hands. Knocking one of the three-by-five acoustical panels up and out of the way. Immediately, before he could sink, he tossed the flashlight and the gardening claw through the opening and made a grab at anything up there. He got hold of a cross beam and, as he pulled himself up, the plastic bag dropped from around his legs.
Up there was a clearance of about six feet. Brydon hurried, lifted away other panels, helped Gloria up, then Elliot and Marsha and soon they were all up there, all eight, naked, except for Spider.
Brydon retrieved the flashlight and the gardening claw.
That area between the ceiling and the roof. They had imagined it would somewhat resemble a regular attic, but the atmosphere was industrial and unfamiliar to them. Even Brydon with his architectural experience found it unusual, particularly the size of the steel beams, the bar joists that ran front to back across the top of the building. They were immense. One hundred twenty feet long, six feet high, three inches thick. Twenty-eight of them, parallel, spaced ten feet apart. The major bones of the skeleton, they were the structural factor that had allowed the supermarket’s uninterrupted spaciousness.
The faces of the beams were diagonally latticed, to accommodate air-conditioning ducts, electrical conduits and various pipe lines. Openings large enough for even a large man to climb through. So, although the beams divided the area into separate, long straight sections, all of it was accessible. There were extending angles on the upper and lower edges of each beam, like the serifs on a tall, extremely condensed capital letter I. The upper for the laying on of the roof. The lower allowed wooden stringers to be run from one beam to the next, and also offered a four-inch ledge that could, with caution, be walked along.
Brydon advised they stay where they were for the time being, not to go wandering off. He estimated their present position was near mid-point at the front of the building. Spider had brought along the stubs of two candles, which he lighted and stuck upright in their own melt.
Those tiny tongues of flame drew the survivors and helped hold them together.
Peter and Brydon, with flashlights, went to search for any place where the roof might have been torn open. They hurried separate ways, down the length of one section, up the next. There wouldn’t be time to investigate the entire area.
Meanwhile, waiting, the other survivors felt more hopeful now. At least they weren’t surrounded by mud as before. Because it wasn’t in sight it seemed as though they were beyond its reach. Freedom was surely just above, and the only remaining obstacle was the roof. Not so much, they thought, compared to what they’d already been through.
“I think we’re going to make it,” Amy said.
“I’m going to make it,” Elliot Janick realized aloud. He looked over to Marsha, who was standing on top of an air-conditioning duct. He made his way along the ledge of a beam.
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When she saw him coming, her first thought was to retreat, but something she sensed kept her in place, and when he was close, confronting her, she knew he had reestablished himself. At once her body began to respond, a surge of wanting.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“What?”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, just above a whisper.
“What?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, normal level.
“What?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry,” she cried out.
He slapped her, so sharply her head spun. She immediately brought her head back around to face him, chin up. He took a step back to improve his range, a more solid stance for a backhand blow. She was ready for it, as though waiting for a kiss. His hand was up, his arm diagonally across his face, but only the top of his toes found the edge of the metal duct.
He toppled backward.
He was much too heavy for the ceiling panels. He crashed through them, into the mud just below.
Screams.
Elliot grabbed out, hit only upon another panel that also gave way. He was sinking fast. Spider tried to reach for him. Perhaps if he’d not been so frantic he could have found Spider’s outstretched hand and been hauled to safety. Instead, he flailed wildly. Those last moments were longer, more terrifying for Elliot than for any of the others who had been lost. Because the flat of the panels momentarily buoyed him.
He was screaming, struggling furiously, looking up to Marsha as he went under.
When Brydon and Peter heard the screams they cut short their search, returned quickly to the others.
Marsha was doubled up, cringing, hugging herself as though in terrible pain.
Gloria tried to console her, although to her way of thinking it seemed strange, a waste, that a victim should feel such remorse.
Again, the survivors, only seven now, had been frightened back to reality. Brydon and Peter underlined that by reporting they had not found a way out. Not a sign of hope. To the contrary. Both had noticed a heavy flow of mud down through the roof along part of the rear wall. Brydon believed it best they remove themselves as far from that as possible.
They climbed through the openings in the beams, traversed section after section, bruising their knees, scraping their shins on the steel. Wood and metal hurt their bare feet. Finally they reached the second section from the end. If Brydon was correct there was their best bet. The front left corner of the building. It fitted Brydon’s theory about the position of the market. Also — a more practical reason — it was from here, Brydon believed, those sounds had originated — those signal-like rappings they’d heard yesterday.
At once Brydon went to work on the sheetrock surface above, using the gardening claw. His first efforts hardly made a scratch, but he kept digging at it and it began to give, crumble. He made a hole large enough to get two fingers into. The sheetrock was five-eighths thickness. He tore at it, and, when he’d adequately increased the size of the hole, Peter and Spider helped break away the plasterlike substance until the hole was about eighteen inches in diameter.
Above that, insulation. A six-inch layer of Fiberglas. Not really an obstacle. Like dull yellow cotton candy. Spider and Peter quickly ripped it down.
They were making good progress.
The mud seemed to resent it.
Tilt.
It caught them unaware. Not a mere quaver or shift but a sudden convulsive heave. No time for them to brace or balance. It jolted them and threw them upward, sent them slamming against the beams, colliding with one another, clutching at anything they got their hands on.
Amy Javakian was thrown down on the ceiling panels, the same sort that had collapsed under Elliot Janick. She was foundering, about to sink. Brydon was nearest. With one arm wrapped around the lattice opening of a beam he reached for Amy, had to grip whatever he could of her, was lucky to even get her by the hair. He held on until Peter could take her wrist. They pulled her to safety.
When the heaving subsided the building was left at a steeper pitch. About thirty degrees. Half of that ceiling-to-roof area was under mud. Theirs was the high side. If they had chosen the rear they would have been dead.
Now they had to hang on, resist the tilt to keep in place. All the more difficult to work on making the hole in the roof. Brydon went back at it. With the Fiberglas insulation eliminated, a single layer of woven wire, light gauge, the kind commonly called chicken wire, was revealed. In view above that was a thickness of poured gypsum impregnated with white gravel. That would be the last, the top layer of the roof.
But what would be beyond that?
It depended on whether or not the entire supermarket was buried. It depended on whether or not Brydon was right about this spot.
If wrong there wouldn’t be any second chance.
The mud was now coming up fast, rapidly filling the place. They had another fifteen to twenty minutes. Perhaps not even that, because the air was getting poor. All at once their breathing was shallower, their hearts were beating faster, they had less strength.
Brydon hurried.
He inserted the prongs of the gardening claw through the wire mesh, gave it a yank. The wire merely stretched. He pulled harder but the wire refused to break. He swore at it and tried a different approach. This time only one prong of the gardening claw through a single loop of the wire, which he twisted. The wire tightened. More twist. The wire snapped. He repeated that process at various places and, when next he pulled down hard, a patch of the wire came free, and he was then able to undo more of the wire and bend it aside.
Brydon’s arm ached, burned from so much reaching up. Peter and Spider offered to take over.
Brydon glanced down. The mud was up to their feet. At the rate it was rising he’d never get through the roof in time. He clawed at it. The gypsum was solid. He kept trying.
Meanwhile Spider and Peter tore free several rafters, three-by-sixes, which they shoved through the openings in the huge steel beams. They laid the rafters across from beam to beam about three feet up, creating a platform. Everyone climbed up onto it. Now, only three feet of clearance to the roof. They had to crouch.
Which made it harder for Brydon. He couldn’t get as much force into his digging. He slashed at the gypsum time and time again. Mere scratches were all that showed for his effort. It was impossible; it was their only chance. He kept at it. A small chunk came loose. A start. He slashed and clawed. Several more chunks fell and, finally, a large one.
He had broken through. About a six-inch hole.
Mud poured down, streamed down through the hole.
No doubt now.
There was mud above them. They were buried.
The buzzard named RAQUEL BABY lifted off at El Toro.
Within five minutes it was over the San Joaquin Hills, then the ocean, where it made a banking turn so sharp its frame strained and creaked.
On the starboard side of its fuselage was a special rig, a davitlike arrangement with loops of nylon line serving as a sling to carry the ten-foot section of thirty-six-inch polyethylene pipe.
Hackley brought the buzzard in close to the slide area.
Dodd searched for that ledgelike spot he’d fallen from the day before, but the face of the slide had changed. The mud had slipped, run down, covered over the letter E that would have been a sure marker.
“Were we this high up yesterday?” Dodd asked.
“Just about,” Hackley told him.
“I think we were a little lower.”
Hackley backed the buzzard off and came in twenty feet down the slope. Still there was no visible hint of where the supermarket lay.
They made three passes back and forth across the face of the slide. It all appeared the same, except at one spot where there was a slight hump around a sort of bubble.
Could be, Dodd thought. Or it could be just a random air pocket. Taking a calculated chance was better than doing nothing, he decided.
Hackley maneuvered the buzzard closer, hove
red it over that spot.
The way the rig was built, the forward lines could be released first and the pipe lowered into a vertical position. Dodd’s plan was to jam the pipe down through the roof of the supermarket — if he could locate it. If necessary he’d use the downward force of the helicopter to drive the pipe through the roof. Then he’d climb down through the pipe and in. Hackley had insisted he tie a safety line around his waist like a mountain climber.
Dodd released the pipe.
It swung into a vertical position and was lowered to that bubbling hump in the mud. The pipe penetrated quickly under its own weight, nearly eight hundred pounds. Dodd watched it disappearing. Half of it, six feet, seven feet of it. Before he could react the entire pipe had sunk from sight.
“Pull up!” Dodd shouted.
Hackley throttled the buzzard. The nylon lines connected to the pipe snapped straight with strain.
It seemed the pipe should slip out easily, but it was as though something beneath the mud had a powerful locking hold on it, refused to let go.
Hackley gave the buzzard more throttle.
Surely the lines would break or the rigging would tear loose from the fuselage. How good a welding job had Poss and Ruzkowski done?
More throttle, more strain.
If they lost the pipe they were through.
Dodd saw the blue circumference of it emerge. First just the mouth of it. He held his breath while the pipe was extracted slowly, foot by foot. Then, when most of it was out, the rest came all at once, like a plug pulled, and the buzzard recoiled suddenly from its own power, whipped upward.
Hackley fought to compensate for that and finally got the buzzard under control. He banked it wide out over the ocean. The pipe was dangling from it.
“Same altitude?”
“Yes,” Dodd told him.
Hackley brought the buzzard in for another attempt.
Dodd again studied the slide. He saw a jutting, like a corner, almost the same as the one yesterday. It seemed right. He pointed it out to Hackley, who proceeded to put the buzzard directly above it.
Slide Page 21