Fire Born (Firehouse 343) (2 page)

Calvin grabbed the radio mike again. “Engine 14 to
Ladder 12 and Rescue 3:
Football
, Airborne
—looks like we got us a three-story apartment building. You boys are
gonna
earn your paychecks tonight.”

“
Rock on, Boss
,” Curtis Edmonds replied from the rescue unit, a sentiment echoed
moments later by Logan
Kilbride
. Their nicknames were references to their former careers—Curtis had played two seasons with the Washington Redskins before a knee injury had sidelined him permanently, and Logan was a former Army enlistee with the 101
st
Airborne Division.

“Alright, let’s rock and roll, boys,” Calvin said into the mike then as the
Breckon
Apartments building came into view down the street. The perimeter set up by the Gracechurch Police had pushed the
looky-loos
back a block, but Chris knew Calvin well enough that he’d reque
st they be moved back another. Logan pulled Ladder 12 ahead of Engine 14, and a
s they
were climbing out of the pumper
, the first thing Calvin did was ask who the first cop on-scene was. When the officer identified herself, the fire captain then directed her to do precisely that—
move
the perimeter back another block.
EMS units were arriving as well to see to the tenants who had evacuated.

Every man in the platoon
donned their SCBAs
, then Chris and
Rick—
the third man from the engine
—
hurried to set up hoses
as Terry, who’d ridden with Football in the rescue unit, was sent on a perimeter run around the building.
Rick would get started with the pumper’s onboard reserv
oir while he hooked another line
to an outside water source, which he
had
spied and gave thanks for seconds after his feet had hit the ground—there was a hydrant on the
corner across Main
S
treet. H
e ran over to it
now
followed by Logan, who helped him hook the hose and then open the hydrant. They were running back to the truck to switch on the CAFS
pump
,
listening to Calvin on the radio calling for assistance,
when a piercing scream rent the air and a woman came running toward them, barreling past the two cops manning the sawhorse barricades.

“
Jessica!
” she screamed again
, struggling madly
even after Chris had grabbed hold of her.

“Whoa, calm down,” he said, keeping a firm grip on her arms. “Who is Jessica?”

“My daughter—s
he’s in there! I s
wear I wasn’t gone more than ten
or
fif
t
e
en minutes—I just ran to Speedway for a couple cold sodas for us.
Jessica!
”

Chris glanced at the apartment building. It was three stories tall with nine units—three on each floor. “What floor is your apartment on?” he asked the woman.

“The third floor
—apartment 3C
,” she
said, tears pouring down her face. “She’
s ten.
I can leave her alone for short periods because I’ve taught her never to open the door for anyone, but
she’s
mildly
autistic and
when she gets scared she hides in her closet. She’ll die in there if we don’t get her!”

Chris looked at Logan, who nodded mutely
and ran to join the others
. He then turned and looked back at the cops at the barricade. He signaled to one, another female officer, and said a curt “Stay with her,” then released the frightened mother before running back over to join his team, passing Logan who was running
another lin
e to the hydrant with Rick; they were connecting the ladder truc
k to the water source as well. T
he ladder had a pump and hos
es to aid in fire suppression, though
not a compressed
air foam system like the engine
had.

Football
and
Terry
were
read
y
ing to enter the building, having pul
led up their
Nomex
hoods and closing the faceplates of
their
mask
s. Calvin had taken the hose from Rick but when Chris stepped up to him he told him, “Take this, I’m going in.”

“Cal, you can’t be serious,” Chris said incredulously. “I can feel the heat from
here—Football and Terry aren’t going to have much time as it is.”

“I put in a call to Alton and
Summerford
. They’re sending their pumpers and more men,
and some of the crew from A and C are coming in,
but right now we need as many
guys
to
search for
people trapped inside as we can
get
. L
ogan told me about the girl, and
according to
one of the
other tenants,
there’s
an elderly
couple
on two who
don’t move too well that aren’t
out here.
”

Chris took a
nother look at the
brick façade of the
building as he
reluctantly
accepted
the line
, keeping it pointed
u
pward. The fire
appeared to have
originated on the second floor
as most of the visible flames were on that level,
but whatever had started this bla
ze was strong—the
first and
third floor
s had
quickly
been
engulfed. It was a strong accelerant that c
ould spread fire this fast; the building had already reached
the NWS point before the fire department had even arrived.

“Be careful, old man. This
one’s
not worth saving—and Tonja will have my ass if you get hurt,” Chris said at last.
He knew that he should be the one going in, but Calvin was the man in charge and he’d already made up his mind.

“Yours and mine both, kid,” Calvin
said terse
ly, though he smiled briefly
at the mention of his fiancée. He listened
with only half an ear as Cal then
bark
ed orders to Football and Terry
to get the elderly
couple on the second floor;
he would get to the little girl on the third. He
also heard Cal hollering at
Logan about getting the ladder ready to receive them
if it became necessary
.

A feeling of unease
settled in Chris’
s
stomach that he tried his damnedest to ignore. It wasn’
t like him to experience doubt.
To worry
or be afraid.
He’d been at this job too long to let those emotions get to him while he was on
the scene of a call
—there’d be time to decompress when it was over.

Nevertheless, even though he caught sight
of
Logan climbing the now-extended ladder—from which he knocked out a window and then turned on the nozzle to pour water on the fire from above—as Calvin, Football, and Terry entered the building, his stomach roiled. Something told him this was one of those calls that would not end well. And thou
gh in his youth on the Fort Peck R
eservation he had done his best to ignore the bel
iefs of his people, it was his g
randfather’s words of age-old wisdom that came to him now, the same ones that had finally beaten their way through his I-don’t-give-a-shit teenage hard
-
ass attitude:

“
It is wise to listen when the spirits speak to you
.
”

The windows
of one of
the second floor
apartments
had blown out from the heat, scattering glass all over the sidewalk. Smoke poured from the openings, thick and black, choking the immediate airspace around the building. To his right
,
Rick coughed hard
and slapped the
faceplate
of his
mask
shut to cut himself off
from the acrid, nearly
unbreathable
air
, but he held the water stream from the ladder truck’s hose steady next to his, both aimed at the second-story windows.

“
We’ve reached the second floor
,” Football’s voice came over the radio. “
Captain’s heading up to three
.”

“Roger that,” Chris replied terse
ly, thankful for the umpteenth time that
Gracechurch’s
Chief of Fire Operations had managed to get the department mask-mounted radios.
H
e needed hi
s hands free to control the line
as well as
the ability to
talk to his men to run ground-ops,
given that their unit
commander was inside the burning building. Each man had a two-way
analog radio as well, but the broadband transmitter/receivers fixed inside the frames of their masks were essential for
hands-free operation,
be
it manning a hose or rescuing victims.

“
On three—which is nearly as fucked up as two
,” Calvin said then. “
Get the
vics
and get out, boys
.”

“
Same to you, Boss
,” Terry replied.

Tense minutes passed. Football relayed that he and Terry had located the elderly man and his wife in their bathroom; though they were mostly unhurt, the man had a burn on his left forearm and the woman’s gown was
singed
. Chris figured the man had hurt himself putting out the fire that had caught his wife’s dress alight.

He was getting worried about Calvin. The last he’d heard from the captain was a grunt
and an announcement that he had
he kicked apartment 3C’s door in.
And then the sense of unease in his gut sent his stomach plummeting when
a piercing whine blasted over the speaker in his mask, one not even the screaming sirens of the arriving engines from Alton and
Summerford
Townships
could drown out—

—a PASS device sounding its alarm.

“Fuck!” he shouted. “Calvin, can you hear me?
Captain Maynard, respond
.”

A firefighter with Alton at the top of his helmet’s shield approached. “Where’s your ground commander?” the lieutenant asked.

“Inside—right now I’m in charge
until the Marshal gets here
,” he snapped as the lieutenant from
Summerford
came to stand next to the man from Alton. “Just get your hoses on those flames. We
gotta
keep this bitch from spreading to the neighboring buildings.”

The two men nodded and hurried to carry out the order.
There was a McDonald’s to the right of the
Breckon
building
separated from the apartments onl
y by the restaurant’s small parking lot
, and
the dentist’s office to the north
was separated by a wide
alley. From his vantage point directly in front of the apartment building’s door, he could see that the burger joint had escaped damage thus far
. The condition of the dentist’s office, from Terry’s earlier report, was the same, but Chris knew that could change in an instant
. The Alton engine pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot and the
Summerford
crew moved to attack the building from behind
.

More me
n from the city’s A and C
platoon
s arrived
then, one of the
m taking the ladder truck’s line
from Rick and another appr
oaching him for Engine 14’s
as Football and Terry were coming out the door. Their turnout coats were covered in soot and both men’s jackets bore scorch marks; Terry had the old man slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and Football had his wife cradled in his arms. The two were immediately passed off to EMTs, one of which, Chris noted with renewed dread, was Sam Temple, brother
to one of the guys in C-Platoon
. He cursed again
. If Sam was here then so was
Karalyn
, his partner
…