The Storm nf-10 Page 16

  “Is there anywhere he could shelter?”

  “There’s a small office near the back of the engine room, a control room. If he was in there when it started, he might be alive.”

  Two lines were now laid out. The hose Paul and Marchetti held and a second one for Kostis and Cristatos.

  “Open the tap,” Marchetti shouted.

  One of the crewman turned the valve, and the hoses came to life as they swelled with water. Marchetti opened the nozzle, and the high-pressure stream burst forth like a jet. Even with Marchetti also holding tight, Paul felt himself fighting the recoil.

  He tightened his grip and flexed his knees, pushing forward as he and Marchetti forced their way into the engine room.

  Passing the bulkhead felt like crossing the threshold into hell. Black smoke swirled around him so dark and thick that at times all he could see of Marchetti was the beacon on his respirator. Waves of heat baked him through the Nomex suit, and his eyes stung from smoke seeping beneath the seal of the mask. Here and there orange flames cut through the dark. They raced up and down and around, occasionally shooting over the top of the men like demons dancing to perdition. A series of small explosions shook the room from its farthest recesses.

  Marchetti sprayed the water back and forth and adjusted the nozzle to widen the pattern. The second hose was brought in by Marchetti’s crewmen. Attacking with the two jets of water, they fanned the blaze, adding waves of superheated steam to the cauldron.

  “Can you see the source?” Marchetti asked.

  “No,” Paul said, trying to peer through the smoke.

  “In that case, we have to move forward.”

  Until now, Marchetti had seemed weak to Paul, sort of a bumbler, but he admired the man’s guts in defending his island and fighting for his crewman’s life.

  “Over here!” the lead man on the other hose shouted.

  Paul turned to see them laying down a wave of suppressing water, clearing a path for Marchetti and him to move through.

  Paul steeled himself and moved in unison with Marchetti as they pressed into the heart of the conflagration.

  By now Paul could feel the heat from the deck like he was standing on top of glowing lava rocks. A new wave of fire spewed to the left of them, and a blast knocked Marchetti to the ground.

  Paul pulled him back up. “This is no good!” Paul shouted. “We have to get back.”

  “I told you, one of my men is down here!”

  Another small explosion buffeted them, and a wall of flame rose up, only to be forced back by the water from the two hoses.

  The engine room was three stories tall, four times that in length and filled with equipment pipes, hoses and catwalks. The flames were reaching the roof in places, everything was obscured. If they weren’t losing the battle, it was at least a stalemate.

  “We have to flood the compartment,” Paul said. “It’s the only way.”

  “We tried,” Marchetti said. “The fire-suppression system is not responding. It should have kicked on at one hundred and seventy-five degrees but didn’t. We tried to trigger it from the bridge but nothing happened.”

  “There has to be an override,” Paul said, “a manual trigger down here somewhere.”

  Marchetti began looking around. “There are four,” he said. “The closest should be that way. By the generator stack.”

  “We need to activate it.”

  Marchetti hesitated. “The doors will auto-seal as soon as we trigger it,” he explained. “Whoever does it will be trapped inside.”

  “How long?”

  “Until the fire goes out and the temperature drops.”

  “Then let’s not waste any more time.”

  Marchetti looked back down the mangled path that led to the possible safe haven of the office. The walkway was twisted and bent as if an explosion had gone off halfway across. Flames and smoke and boiling water dropping from above made it obvious: there was no way they were going to fight through that.

  “Okay,” he shouted, turning toward the far wall. “This way.”

  CHAPTER 28

  GAMAY FOUND A STATE OF CHAOS IN THE CONTROL ROOM. Two of Marchetti’s men were working the computers with all due haste, trying to bring the robots or the firefighting system back online.

  The chief, a short but burly Greek man, was monitoring the fire. In the background Gamay could hear the radio conversations between the two firefighting teams. It didn’t sound like they were winning.

  “How bad is it?” she asked, thinking it hadn’t seemed quite as overwhelming down below.

  “It’s grown quickly,” the chief said. “The whole engine room is burning. Fuel leak of some kind. Has to be.”

  “Is it spreading?” Gamay asked, fearful that Paul would end up trapped.

  “Not yet,” the chief said.

  As Gamay tried not to focus on the words Not yet, Leilani came in looking scared and bewildered.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Engine room fire,” Gamay said. “One of the crew is trapped inside. And the automatic systems are down.”

  Leilani sat down and began to shake. It seemed like she might break down, but Gamay couldn’t worry about that right now.

  “What if it does spread?” Gamay asked. “My husband and Marchetti and your other men will be cut off.”

  “Not if they contain it first,” the chief said. “They have to beat it back.”

  “You need more men down there.” The words came from Leilani.

  Gamay and the chief looked over.

  “If the robots aren’t working, you need to send more men,” she repeated.

  “She’s right,” Gamay realized, surprised by her suddenly strong stand.

  “We’re trying to get the robots back online,” the chief insisted.

  “Forget the damn robots,” Gamay said. “Four men can’t fight this fire.”

  “We have only twenty crewmen on board,” the chief said.

  That had always seemed like a mistake to Gamay, suddenly she saw why. “Anyone trained to fight fires should be down there,” she urged, “or Paul and the others should pull back.”

  The chief looked over at the two men working on the computers. “Anything?”

  They shook their heads. “It’s a looped code. Every time we break through the outer layer, it resets and we have to start over.”

  Gamay didn’t know exactly what that meant, but it sounded like there wasn’t much point in continuing.

  The chief exhaled. “The robots are down for the count,” he said, admitting the obvious. “Go,” he said to the men at the computer terminals. “I’ll have the others meet you at the engine room.”

  The two men at the computer stations headed for the door.

  “Thank you,” Gamay said, glad to know backup was headed Paul’s way.

  Marchetti’s voice came over the radio: “Any luck, chief?”

  “Negative,” the chief said into a microphone. “We’re locked out, sending you help.”

  “Understood,” Marchetti said. “We’re going for the override.”

  “What does that mean?” Gamay asked.

  “They’re going to flood the compartment with Halon,” the chief said. “It’ll suppress the fire and put it out.”

  “What’s the drawback?”

  “Halon’s toxic. And it requires a closed room to be effective. Once they activate it, the doors will shut and lock automatically. They’ll be trapped in there until the sensors determine that the fire is out and the room temperature has dropped below the reignition point.”

  Gamay felt sick. She knew what that meant.

  “It shouldn’t be a big problem,” the chief said. “Once the compartment is flooded, the fire should burn out in thirty seconds. The temp in there is two hundred and fifty-five now. By my calculations the cooldown time should take about ten minutes if everything goes according to plan.”

  Ten minutes with Paul sitting behind a locked door in a cauldron of heat. She could barely stand the thought
. But another thought was worse.

  “If everything goes according to plan,” she repeated. “The way things are going, that’s an awfully big assumption. What if the doors don’t shut? Worse yet, what if they don’t open?”

  The chief said nothing, but she guessed from his body language that he had already thought of that.

  DOWN IN THE ENGINE ROOM, Paul and Marchetti had begun fighting toward the far wall. It seemed to take forever to cross the cavernous space. In one section debris and burning fuel blocked their path. In another, steam was blasting from a broken waterline.

  With Marchetti’s crewmen at their backs to keep them from getting cut off, they forged onward one yard at a time, beating the fire back as they went. Eventually they saw a path through.

  “Hold the line,” Marchetti said. “Keep the fire back while I run through. I’ll signal you when I get there.”

  Paul slid forward and grabbed the nozzle. “Okay, go!”

  Marchetti let go, and it took all of Paul’s strength to keep the hose on target. As Marchetti lumbered forward, Paul washed down the flames to the left and then back to the right on a wide-pattern setting, drenching Marchetti purposefully in the process.

  He watched as Marchetti made it through the first wave of flame and continued forward only to be suddenly obscured by a sideways blast of fire and smoke. Paul directed the hose into the blast and forced the flames back, but he still couldn’t see through.

  “Marchetti?”

  He heard nothing.

  “Marchetti?!”

  The smoke was so thick, Paul could barely see a thing. He was sweating inside the fire suit, and his eyes were stinging badly from the fumes and the salt of his own perspiration. He washed the walkway back and forth with the spray until he saw a dim light through the darkness. It was down low, close to the ground. Marchetti’s beacon.

  “Marchetti’s down!” Paul shouted. “I’m going to get him.”

  He shut off the nozzle, dropped the hose and ran forward. The crewmen swept in behind him, washing him down as he went.

  He made it past the blast furnace of the open flame and reached Marchetti. Marchetti’s hood was blackened, his mask half off. It looked like he’d run smack into a protruding beam. Paul pressed the mask back onto Marchetti’s face and Marchetti coughed and came around.

  “Help me up,” he said.

  An explosion shook the engine room, and debris rained down on them from above. Paul lifted Marchetti to his feet, but he immediately stumbled back down to his knees. He put a hand out.

  “No balance,” he said.

  Paul heaved him up and kept him vertical. They trudged forward like two men in a three-legged potato-sack race. They reached the wall. The manual override beckoned.

  “We’ve made it,” Paul shouted into the microphone. “Get out. We’re going to trigger the Halon.”

  Paul reached for the handle, flipped the safety aside and put his hand on the override. He waited what seemed like forever. Another explosion rocked the engine room.

  “We’re clear of the bulkhead,” one of the crewmen finally reported.

  “Now,” Marchetti said.

  Paul yanked the handle down hard.

  From eighty points around the room Halon 1301 blasted into the compartment at an incredible rate, hissing from the nozzles and flowing in from every direction. It quickly filled the room, smothering the fire. In places the flames jumped and flickered and seemed to cower in a desperate quest for survival. And then, as if by magic, they went out all at once.

  Stunning silence followed.

  It seemed unearthly to Paul. The raging flames, the explosions, the buffeting currents brought on as the fire sucked air in and expelled heat, all were gone. Only the thick smoke lingered, accompanied by the continued hissing from the Halon nozzles, the sound of dripping water and the creak and groan of superheated metal.

  The absence of flame seemed almost too good to be true, and neither Paul nor Marchetti moved a muscle as if doing so might break the spell. Finally Marchetti turned toward Paul. A smile crept over his face, though Paul could barely see it through the smudged, soot-covered face mask.

  “Well done, Mr. Trout. Well done.”

  Paul smiled too, proud and relieved at the same time.

  And then a shrill electronic beeping began, accompanied by the strobe light on the back of Marchetti’s SCBA. Seconds later Paul’s own strobe began flashing and chirping. The two alarms combined into an annoying cacophony.

  “What’s happening?” Paul asked.

  “Rescue beacons,” Marchetti said.

  “Why are they going off now?”

  Marchetti looked glum. “Because,” he said, “we’re running out of air.”

  CHAPTER 29

  KURT AUSTIN HELD THE AWKWARD POSITION HE’D LANDED in as long as he possibly could. Even after the vehicles drove off, even after the rumbling of their engines had faded and he was left with only the sound of flies buzzing in the dark, he remained still.

  They zipped here and there, settled for a moment and then buzzed around again. Even when they landed on him and crawled on his face, Kurt did all he could not to flinch in case someone was watching. But eventually he had to move.

  With a glance up to the circular opening high above, he slid one arm to the side, rolled over slowly and then propped himself up. From there he managed a sitting position and eased back until he was leaning against the wall. Every movement brought new levels of pain, and once he’d settled against the wall he decided to stay there for a minute or two.

  He checked his leg. Something hit it during the shooting, but he found no bullet hole and figured it was a piece of the wall blasted off when a shell ricocheted. His shoulder hurt like crazy, but it seemed to move okay.

  He reached over and checked Joe, shaking him gently.

  Joe opened his eyes halfway like a man coming out of a deep sleep. He moved a few inches, grunted and generally appeared confused. Looking around at their surroundings didn’t seem to bring any clarity.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Last I remember, we were being dragged by a truck,” he said.

  “That was the high point of our journey,” Kurt said, looking up. “Literally.”

  Joe forced himself to sit up, an act that seemed to cause as much pain for him as it had for Kurt.

  “Are we dead?” Joe asked. “’Cause if not, this is the worst I’ve ever felt while still alive.”

  Kurt shook his head. “We’re alive all right, at least for now. We’re just stuck at the bottom of a well without a rope or a ladder or any other way out.”

  “That’s good,” Joe said. “For a second I thought we were in trouble.”

  Kurt looked around, taking note of the other bodies in the sand. Two of them seemed to have been there for a while. The stench emanating from them was horrendous, almost enough to make him gag. The third was the guy he’d shoved over the edge just prior to being tossed in himself. A large gash split the man’s forehead. His neck was bent at a grotesque angle. He wasn’t moving.

  Kurt was surprised to be alive. “I guess the sloping pile of sand and dropping feet first helped. It looks like this guy hit his head.”

  “Plus we dropped from a little lower,” Joe said. “Or, at least, I did. What about those other two?”

  “No idea,” Kurt said, looking at the bodies half covered with flies. “Must have made the boss angry.”

  “If we ever leave NUMA,” Joe said, “remind me not to work for an egomaniacal dictator, madman or other type of thug. They don’t seem to have adequate channels for working out grievances.”

  Kurt laughed, and it felt like he was being stabbed. “Oh, that hurts,” he said, trying to stop. “No more jokes.”

  He looked up at the narrow opening above. A small circle of blazing orange sky lay beyond.

  “We’ve got to figure a way out of here or we’ll be next on the flies’ menu. Think you can stand?”

&nbs
p; Joe stretched his legs. “My ankle is pretty stiff,” he said. “But I think I’ll be all right.”

  Using the wall for balance, Kurt got to his feet. He felt light-headed for a second, but it cleared quickly. He offered a hand and helped Joe up. In the five-foot-wide circle of the well they stretched and flexed their legs.

  It seemed like the well had been dug in sections. The top part was lined with adobe bricks to a depth of about twenty feet. Below that it was raw dirt all the way down.

  “Think we can climb out?” Joe asked.

  Kurt put his hand on a protruding stone and put some weight on it to test its strength. It crumbled in a disappointing shower of dust and rubble.

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe we can wedge ourselves up?” Joe said. “Use our hands and feet and sort of force ourselves upward.”

  Kurt stretched his arms out. He could just barely touch both walls. “We’ll never generate enough force to go up like that.”

  He looked around. In addition to the three bodies, the well seemed to be a repository of junk and trash. Tin cans, plastic bottles, even a thin bald tire sat piled and strewn about. Small bones were everywhere. Kurt guessed they were from animals that had fallen in or someone’s dinner tossed down here when they were finished with the edible parts.

  Kurt looked at the tire, then at the walls, then at the dead men.

  “I have an idea,” he said.

  He searched the thug he’d shoved over the edge, pulling a knife, a Luger-style pistol and a set of compact binoculars from the man’s kit.

  He found a canteen on his belt. It was three-quarters empty. He took a swig, no more than a mouthful really, and handed it to Joe.

  “To your health.”

  Joe drank the other mouthful as Kurt pushed the junk aside and dug the old tire out of the sand.

  “Tidying up?” Joe asked.

  “Very funny.”

  He dropped down beside the other dead men, holding his breath and sending the flies swarming. He untied the rope that bound them together. “We’re gonna need this.”

  “Don’t suppose they have a grappling hook on them?”