Vertical Burn (35 page)

75. STANDING IN THE BACK ROW AT YOUR OWN EXECUTION

2130 HOURS

Too late, Finney reached around and muffled the bell on his backpack with his gloved fist. If he’d had a gun, he would have shot through the lower quarter panel of the door, for surely they were crouching under the heat and flame just outside the door.

But he didn’t have a gun, and his only option was to run. Scuttling through the reception area and down a long corridor, he kicked in the last door on the right and crawled in. Too late, it occurred to him that by going right he’d taken just one more turn into a dead end. His only compensation was a paucity of smoke in this office, little enough so he could stand up and cross the room on his feet. When he swept the flashlight beam behind him, he noticed his boots had left black marks on the carpeting like a dance pattern on the floor of a school gym.

The smoke on the ceiling was three feet thick, curling in on itself, a collection of gases waiting for ignition. When these rooms took off, they would go in a burst. Even crouched low on the rug in his bunking clothes, the heat in such an enclosed space would broil him alive.

Then, unaccountably, the sounds in the outer office grew weaker. When he heard his pursuers moving to the far end of the corridor, it became clear that their job wasn’t to kill him.

Their job was to keep him pinned down. To make certain he didn’t leave.

In not too many minutes the fire would kill him, and his demise would look like that of any other luckless firefighter who’d become separated from his companions.

Knowing he had a few moments to think, Finney went around the desk and sat in a plush office swivel chair. It was awkward with the bottle still on his back. His flashlight played across a silver-framed photo on the desk, a man, a woman, and three little girls with ribbons in their hair. He tried to think the problem through, but for the first time tonight he found himself beginning to panic. He’d been moving quickly earlier, fighting for his life, but he hadn’t been panicked. Not till now.

He knew if he treated this as a logistical problem rather than the last five minutes of his life, he’d have a better chance, but how could he not think about these as the last minutes of his life when that’s exactly what they were? In minutes the fire would gallop through this dead end he’d fashioned for himself.

He did his best to slow his breathing. To conserve what little air remained in his bottle.

He tried to contact the dispatcher via radio. No answer. He attempted to raise Diana, but there was no reply on the tactical channel either. The telephone on the desk was dead.

At the same moment his air bottle gave out, a
whoosh
outside the office door signified flames had flared up in the corridor. Already, long fingers of orange crept over the top of the partition separating this room from the next. Lazily, flame crept across the ceiling toward him. He ripped off his facepiece so he could breathe. Surprisingly, the air wasn’t too bad in here.

Should he make a dash for the stairs, the inferno outside the door would eat him alive, and even if he made it, he’d be burned horribly when he faced down the three men with guns.

He couldn’t help reminiscing over all the stories he’d heard about firefighters who’d ended their lives trapped in small rooms such as this.

He was as good as dead. They knew it. He knew it.

There were two large windows in the room, several metal file cabinets against the far wall, and a coat tree. Finney ran his light over the windows. On the nearer of the two down in a corner he found the two-inch white dot signaling a breakout window. He could break it out and jump. Or . . .

There might be a chance.

Several years ago somebody’d thought to put a small bag on the side of truckmen’s masks, fifty feet of nylon climber’s webbing stuffed inside, ostensibly to be used as a lead-in line, but the line was strong enough to be used as a lifeline. Because he’d appropriated this mask from Ladder 9, he had the bag with the fifty feet of webbing.

Yarding out the material, he put a loop around his waist under the MSA backpack. He doubled-up the webbing and grasped it in front of himself. Then he looked around the room for an anchor point, something to tie the other end to. He overturned one of the heavy file cabinets and dragged it toward the windows, then opened a locked drawer with the axe. He hit the cabinet with the pick on the Halligan and made a hole in the side, then tied the webbing through the hole and out the drawer.

He shattered the window with the Halligan and hurriedly cleaned out the remaining shards of glass on the sill.

As the fresh air from the window rushed into the room, the ceiling ignited with a soft, puffing sound like an old man sucking on a pipe. Flame began banking down the other side of the room, cloaking the door in a reddish-orange sheet. In another thirty seconds it would creep across the carpet and make a complete vertical sweep of the room.

Using half-hitches, Finney affixed both tools to the end of the nylon webbing and dropped them out the window. He tugged his thin, goat-skin climbing gloves on, then draped a leg over the sill.

He pulled tension on the line and worked his way over the sill, feeling the file cabinet begin sliding as his weight pulled the nylon webbing taut. His stomach started doing flip-flops. In the fog he could only see eight or ten stories, but he knew he was six hundred feet above the street.

At least it was cool out here.

Tools clanking against the building like a junkman’s chimes, he lowered himself so that only his head was above the sill, walking on his knees down the side of the building. Above, the room boiled with fire. One gloved hand kept the webbing together at his waist, the friction of the webbing wrapped around his butt slowing him down. He slowly let the webbing slide through his glove and began working himself down the face of the building. The file cabinet shifted again.

He lowered himself a few more feet. He was so dizzy he didn’t even know if he’d tied the webbing properly. Even if he had, it wouldn’t take much heat to melt nylon.

He dropped a few feet, a few more. All the white-dot windows in a high-rise would be in line above each other. He had to go down just far enough, because if he went too far he would not be able to climb back up on the half-inch nylon webbing.

When his rubber boots made contact with the next window, he saw through the glass that the room behind the window was fully involved.

He dropped down to the next floor and crab-walked to the center of the broken windowpane, held the webbing tight, and kicked at the remaining triangular-shaped plates of glass until they fell out. A hot stench exhaled into his face from inside the building. Below, swinging to and fro, his tools clanked against the building. Blades of flame shot out over his head into the grayness.

He kicked the remaining glass out of the sill, then found himself dangling, half-in and half-out. If he were to drop now, he’d slide down along the face of the building for hundreds of feet. Attempting to get some momentum, he pushed off the sill and swung out as far as he dared. Any second the webbing would melt through. He pushed out again, and on the second backswing, he managed to hook one leg inside the window, then pulled himself toward the building and slowly lowered himself.

As he settled his weight on the sill, a burning loop of nylon slapped his shoulder from above. He’d avoided a free fall into the fog by seconds.

He hauled his tools up, then rolled onto the blackened floor.

Near the window a current of foggy air allowed him to breathe almost as freely as if he were downstairs in the street. Wisps of dark smoke snaked up from various objects in the room. Even though he wanted to stay and revel in the fact that he hadn’t plummeted sixty stories or been burned to death, he knew if he loitered here for any length of time, he’d become too lethargic to do what he had to.

This was the floor where he’d last seen Diana.

Carrying the axe and Halligan over his shoulder, he made his way to the freight elevator and found it filled with bodies like junked manikins at a going-out-of-business sale. There were lighter spots on the blackened clothing of some of the victims that indicated they’d been moved after death. Diana had come and gone.

He walked toward Stairwell B on legs that felt wooden. In the stairwell, from above, he could hear the Darth Vader sounds of three masks as the men wearing them waited for him to burn to death. It was like standing in the back row at his own execution. In a moment, he’d be in the front row.

76. FREE FALL

2133 HOURS

Finney caught the first man completely off guard, grabbed the bottle on his back and jerked him down hard. The man flew past him in the smoke. There was a series of thuds and muffled yelps before he came to rest out of sight in the smoke on the next half-landing.

With barely a pause, Finney turned back and swung the flathead axe at ankle level, blade leading.

A man screamed into his facepiece and collapsed on top of Finney, who quickly lifted the heavy body off his shoulders, flipping it down the stairs to join the first man. He knew by their voices neither was his brother.

“What’s going on? Can’t you morons keep your balance in the smoke?” barked Lieutenant Balitnikoff.

Finney raised the axe over his head and swung downward. But the blade bounced off the concrete with a jolt that went through the axe handle and into his arms like an electric current. He must have misjudged the distance.

An instant after the axe hit the concrete, something small and metallic clattered to the floor. It took Finney a second to realize he’d missed Balitnikoff but had nicked the gun out of his hand.

“Hey, who is that?”

“The ghost of Christmas past, big boy.”

“Who?”

“Next time you kill a man, do it face-to-face.” Finney’s voice was hoarse.

When Balitnikoff ran up the stairs, Finney tried to give chase, stumbling to his knees just as a gunshot rang out from below. A bullet ricocheted against the wall next to his face, and chips of concrete spattered his cheek. He groped around on the floor, picked up the Halligan, then raced up to sixty-four, where the door was just closing on its pneumatic closer. At least one of the men behind had a gun, and though he believed Balitnikoff had lost his, he couldn’t be certain.

When he stepped through the door onto sixty-four, he could see the rooms were absorbing heat and poisons from the fire below through the ductwork and pipe chases. This would be the next floor to explode into flame. Even so, he could see here more clearly than on the stairs.

Marion Balitnikoff stood facing him, an open Buck knife with a four-inch blade in his left hand. No gun in sight. He weighed in at two-fifty, was quicker than a cat in a dog fight, and had a keen little smile on his face that he reserved for situations such as this. It occurred to Finney that he’d never been in a fight as an adult. By all reports, including his own, Balitnikoff had been in dozens of brawls over the years.

Finney stepped forward with the Halligan bar raised over his head. Balitnikoff feinted, then forced Finney back, then feinted again. Even with all that equipment on, the knife blade moved with surprising swiftness.

Careful not to place himself in a position where Balitnikoff would step inside his swings and gut him, Finney swung the heavy bar. He missed. He swung and missed again, the bar whirring in the air. Balitnikoff flicked the blade at him and cut a banana-shaped wedge out of the Nomex shell on his shoulder.

As they fought, Finney began to think about all those sleepless nights he’d endured. He thought about Annie Sortland and her burns and rictus teeth, about Gary Sadler saving his life and then dying in the smoke. He thought about the dead waiters and waitresses in the freight elevator. He thought about Spritzer, the firefighter who’d fallen into the street outside, and the woman who’d fallen beside him. About the corpses they’d found in the stairwell. He thought about Bill Cordifis, and as he thought about these things a rage welled up in him.

Stepping forward, he swung right-to-left and then left-to-right, using his arms as if the heavy bar were a kayak paddle. He swung again and again.

Stunned by the rapidity of the assault and the fact that Finney was swinging from both directions, Balitnikoff began edging backward. In the middle of his assault, Finney recognized Balitnikoff’s strategy for what it was, an old Muhammad Ali ploy—the rope-a-dope: let the other guy punch himself out. It would work only as long as he could evade Finney’s blows or absorb the punishment, and only if Finney actually wore himself out.

Working like a farmer with a scythe, he forced Balitnikoff back a step at a time until the bottle on his back butted up against the wall with a melodic clank. Then, before he could get his bearings, Finney stepped in and hit him in the left shoulder, the right hip, left shoulder, right shoulder. Finney fought as if possessed. With all the equipment Balitnikoff was wearing, no single blow was going to bring him down.

He hit Balitnikoff across the side of the helmet, knocking it half-off and cracking the lens on the MSA facepiece. When he connected with Balitnikoff’s forearm, the knife flew off and skidded across the floor.

Weaponless, Balitnikoff bulled forward and grabbed Finney around the shoulders. Face-to-face now, they danced a cumbersome dance. Clean air blew out the sides of Balitnikoff’s dislodged facepiece. Arm-weary, Finney struggled in Balitnikoff’s powerful grasp, managing only to twist around so that they were facing the same direction, his back to Balitnikoff’s chest, the larger man’s arms encircling him from behind. It was a mistake, because in a matter of seconds Balitnikoff maneuvered the crook of one arm around Finney’s throat and began choking him.

Like a pair of mating monsters, they staggered backward out of the room and crashed through a hollow-core door into one of the tenant areas. Finney, seeing stars and streaks of light in front of his eyes, knew he was beginning to black out.

He pushed the larger man off balance, forcing him backward. When he heard Balitnikoff’s composite air tank clank against a window, the sound of the cylinder on the pane solid and heavy, for a split second he thought the glass would break and they would catapult into the street, but these windows didn’t break that easily. The ones without the white dots didn’t break at all.

Finney had only seconds. He pushed with every ounce of strength, but all he accomplished was to run Balitnikoff along the surface of the glass from one side to the other. He still had the Halligan in his hands. He swung hard between his own legs, thinking to hit a leg. Instead, the sound of shattering glass startled him, small plates falling onto the floor, others disappearing silently outside.

Balitnikoff whispered, “Oh, shit!” His grip loosened.

Their combined weight had been pushing hard against the glass when the Halligan cracked it. Balitnikoff had his heels firmly up against the window base and was now holding onto Finney in order to maintain his balance. He might have stepped forward, but the heels of Finney’s boots were against the toes of Balitnikoff’s, locking his feet in place.

Now Finney swung the Halligan hard over his head and down, digging the pick into the surface of a nearby desk as they teetered for a moment, and then Balitnikoff began sliding backward, his feet inside the broken window, his body and rump out. As much as he tried to right himself by pulling on Finney, he continued to drop. His grip had slipped, so that now he was grasping the tail of Finney’s coat and his backpack. Finney couldn’t tell if he was trying to climb back in or take Finney with him.

Finney held tightly onto the Halligan, which he’d buried in the desk.

Balitnikoff, Finney, and the desk all began to slide toward the open window. Only Balitnikoff’s ankles and wrists were inside now.

“Help me,” Balitnikoff said, his words brushed smooth by the hissing from his displaced facepiece. “Help!” There wasn’t anything Finney could do but hold onto the steel bar with all his might.

When the tugging stopped, he turned his head in time to glimpse the soles of Balitnikoff’s boots as they rolled backward out of the building, the only sound the whispering of his facepiece as his body merged with the mist.

Finney peered over the lip of the open window in time to hear the body land in the street below. The composite air cylinder exploded.

Diana’s MSA cylinder had only six hundred pounds of air left, barely enough to get her back to sixty. She was finding that the lower she went in the building, the longer it had been since the fire had touched a floor, the more tenable that floor was. Sixty was dicey. Fifty-nine iffy. But fifty-eight was definitely inhabitable despite sparking wires in the ceiling.

She’d failed to contact Finney by radio and believed he was probably with the rescue team and in the process of getting a full air bottle. She certainly couldn’t squander any more of her air waiting for him.

Fifty-seven had so many missing windows she was able to conserve air by turning off her waist regulator. Midway through her exploration of the floor, she spotted a man dragging a large canvas package out of one of the elevators.

He wore a bunking coat and helmet with civilian trousers, along with a mask in stand-by position. It was G. A. Montgomery. When he looked up, she saw nothing but his smile.

“The elevators are working?” she asked.

“Just this one. I have to get this out, though.”

Helping him slide the heavy canvas-clad lump out of the elevator, she said, “Looks like a department tarp.”

“Am I ever glad to see you. We’ve been looking all over for you guys. Have you seen what the fire’s done to these floors? This is incredible.”

“I didn’t think the elevators were working,” Diana said. “If they are, we have a lot of people upstairs who need help.”

“I don’t know how dependable it is. I only just found it.”

“And you came up without full bunkers? Bring anybody with you?”

G. A. looked around. “They were here a minute ago.”

Waving her flashlight along the burned carpets so they could both step safely through the debris, Diana surveyed the floor. She noticed the doors on a second elevator were propped open, a gaping black hole showing—the elevator car was not on this floor. Before she could turn around to address G. A., a loop, possibly a section of curtain cord, dropped around her neck from behind. “Hey,” she said, as the cord tightened. “Hey. Cut it out.” She grabbed the cord and managed to get a glove under it before it tightened fully.

G. A. pulled the cord taut and then placed one of his feet between hers, jerking on her neck and tripping her like a cowboy roping a calf. Without realizing how it happened, she was on the floor on her hip. Oh, God, she thought. He’s one of them. He began dragging her across the floor by the cord. It took her a few moments to realize he was dragging her toward the elevator shaft.

“What the hell are you doing?” she gasped. “Are you crazy?”

Her free hand grasped frantically at the floor, but there were no handholds. She grabbed at the wall and caught a feeble purchase on the corner molding next to the elevator doors. They were at the shaft opening now, and she could hear the sounds of their movements echoing in the elevator well. She was on her back, digging in with her boots, anything to slow her momentum.

Pinpricks of white light had been rotating behind her eyes, but now they began to turn to large black circles. She could feel the deep, open space under her head and neck. Of necessity, he had loosened the cord and was pushing instead of pulling. One of her shoulders was now beyond the lip of the opening. Another few seconds and she would be falling.

Finney walked down to the next landing and felt around on the floor for the pistol Balitnikoff had dropped. He hadn’t encountered either of the Lazenbys since he threw them down the stairs and had no idea where they were now. As he swept his gloved hands around on the floor for the gun, he touched a pair of boots and realized there was a man standing in front of him. He rose to find the dim outline of his brother, Tony, a battle lantern in one hand, the missing pistol in the other. He was still wearing a facepiece and breathing bottled air. “What are you doing with these guys, Tony?”

“Get out of here, John. Leave the building. Go away and don’t come back.”

“I can’t leave. There are people in trouble.”

“Get out or—”

“Or what? You going to shoot your own brother?”

“John . . .”

“Give me the gun, Tony.”

“I can’t.”

“Shoot me or give me the gun. I’m not giving you any other choices.”

“Damn you, John.”

“I’ve been damned for a while. You want to see what it’s like, pull that trigger.”

Tony raised the pistol to his brother’s face and held it. After a moment, his arm began shaking. Then his shoulders slumped and the gun skittered down the stairs. “Ah, shit! The whole thing just ran away with us.”

“Where are the others?”

“Mike has a dislocated shoulder. You broke Paul’s leg. I don’t know where Marion went. There’s no one else up here.”

Diana was almost to the juncture where her own body weight would carry her into the shaft. She’d kicked him two times in the face and blood was gushing out his nose, but it didn’t seem to faze him. He continued to push and shove like a man putting garbage down a chute.

Then she heard a familiar voice say, “You sonofabitch!” Immediately the pressure against her hips ceased. She heard scuffling as she balanced on the brink of the shaft, uncertain whether she was going in or not. After some moments of flailing, she managed to touch the wall inside the shaft where she found a metal flange that gave her enough purchase to slowly stop her teetering and lever herself out. She propped her back against the wall, stripped the cord off her neck, and tried to move air into her lungs. Her throat was swollen, her face itchy with what felt like needle pricks.

G. A. was making almost no headway against the intruder, even though, legs pumping, he was shoving with all his strength and weight.

Finney wasn’t wearing a bottle, his sooty face and shoulder dappled with blood from G. A.’s nose.

Finney walked G. A. backward, the two performing a strange, lethal dance, until they were standing next to the exposed elevator shaft. As Diana watched, G. A. pulled a small automatic pistol out of his pocket. She tried to shout a warning, but couldn’t get any sound out of her swollen throat before G. A. fired a single round into the center of Finney’s coat.

It didn’t seem to affect him. At the sound of the shot, Finney gripped G. A. by the lapels and whirled him out from the wall, spinning him around the room in a circle, like a man playing with a child, until the centrifugal force brought G. A. back around and slammed him into the raised edge of the floor of the elevator. Striking his rib cage and arm with a dull cracking sound, G. A.’s legs collapsed and he slipped, his legs disappearing into the shaft.