3000 Degrees (20 page)

Mike couldn't continue on the radio. There were too many other men for whom he was responsible, scattered throughout the building, some holding the fire at bay, others making last-ditch efforts to explore the upper floors. Randy Chavoor was on the third floor with two other men, wanting to know where the Millbury guys were with the thermal imager. A man on the second floor reported that the flames had broken through the fire wall, had clawed across the second floor toward the B stairs. A rescue team called in, told Mike the stairs were impenetrable past the fourth floor. “Okay,” Mike told them, “don't risk it. Back down.”

Mike realized the building was claiming territory and more men, taking them two by two. If the fifth floor was gone, Tom Spencer and Tim Jackson were likely dead. Brosnihan knew it as well. Mike heard him on the radio again, a shriek this time, a choking, sobbing scream. “Ladder 2 to Ladder 2! Lieutenant Spencer!”

Mike counted ten seconds. Silence. He pushed his own button. “Interior to Ladder 2,” he said. “Lieutenant Spencer, answer. Please.”

He waited eight seconds, then tried Jay Lyons. “Interior to Engine 300. Interior to Engine 300.”

The fire roared in his ears, the only sound he heard.

M
inutes contracted into seconds, Mike's sense of time blurred by the chaos around him and the adrenaline surging through his veins. He was struck by the fact that he wasn't afraid. He was controlled, determined, processing information like a machine. But he was in uncharted territory, trying to make decisions in a situation he'd never experienced, never expected to face. The warehouse was going to be destroyed, that much was certain. On any other night, he would have withdrawn an hour earlier, let the flames feast on rotting timbers and fetid rubbish, devour the whole thing. Yet on no other night, not once in his twenty-seven years as a Worcester fireman, had six men gone missing. And never had any man been abandoned.
We always win,
he told himself.
The building might burn to ash, but everyone goes home. We win.

There would be a point at which the danger of continuing the search would outweigh the promise of finding anyone, dead or alive. But when? Firemen had survived worse fires, dragged people out of more ferocious blazes, gone into infernos when the stakes weren't nearly as high. Paul Brotherton had once risked his life to save someone's pet parrot. A parrot! Mike knew none of his men would admit defeat, surrender and walk away. He couldn't, either, not if there was the faintest ray of hope.

Worcester Cold Storage was deteriorating more rapidly now. Engine 9 called in, announced the exterior walls appeared to be cracking, that the side closest to the highway looked like it might collapse. Mike absorbed all of the facts coming over the radio and from the men returning from above. But he had to see for himself, gauge with his own eyes and ears and skin how treacherous the situation had become. He bolted into the stairwell, felt for the railing, climbed the stairs. By the second floor, the heat was withering, wrapping around him, pressing on him like a vise. He kept moving. He cleared one riser to the third floor, turned, made it to the next step.

Then something blew up. He heard it first, felt it an instant later. The sound was the same as when a match touches the pilot light of a stove, only loud as thunder, a spasm of air expanding so fast and hard against the warehouse walls that the whole building shuddered. The railing vibrated beneath his gloved hand. He gripped it tighter, waiting for the explosion to subside.

Robert A.'s voice barked over his radio. “Can you confirm that someone just said part of this building collapsed?”

He was close, just above Mike in the stairwell. “Robert A.,” he yelled. “I don't think so. But I think a large area just lit off.” A flashover maybe, somewhere on the upper floors, all those molecules of melting petroleum finally reaching their ignition temperature, turning to fire.

Mike barreled down the stairs. None of the men at the bottom had balked, fled outside. They eyed him like expectant fathers, waiting to be given the order—the permission—to ascend again into the inferno. Mike paused, skimmed their faces. “Wait,” he said. “Nobody goes up.”

He ran across the floor again, toward the back door, out onto the loading dock. The night sky glowed above him, illuminated by flames shooting thirty feet into the air. He told men to start pulling hoses down the stairs, get them out of the building. In the background, he could hear Mike Coakley warning of another breach in the walls, a six-foot crack above Ladder 4. Chief Budd ordered the truck moved away. Randy Chavoor came on the radio. The men from Millbury had made it to the third floor, but the thermal imager malfunctioned, the extreme heat blanking out the screen, showing only a field of white-hot smoke.

“Command to Chief McNamee.” It was Dennis Budd. “Mike, how you doing in there?”

“We're backing out the back,” Mike said. “We got a report that the walls were weakening in the front. We are trying to back the lines out so we can use them. It's through the roof in the back, and it's going like hell right up the side. I think we're almost ready to go to an exterior attack.”

Then he ran back to the B stairs, into the doorway, onto the first step, then back down to the pavement. The lieutenant from Engine 2, Jimmy Pijus, emerged at the bottom of the stairs, exhausted. “We couldn't make the third, Chief,” he told Mike. “It's just too hot. We can't get past it.”

Mike nodded. He trusted Jimmy, knew he'd push through any fire that didn't physically hold him back. He looked at the men arrayed in front of him. The faces were all familiar. The beads of sweat cutting streaks through the soot, the eyes stung red from the smoke, the jaws firmly clenched—he'd seen them all before. They'd been at 728 Main Street, when Walter Rydzewski snapped at him, ordered him to leave that mangled woman on the pavement, save the people who could still be saved. They'd been in that warehouse on Jacques Street, sitting in the hallway, gasping, amazed their lieutenant had gotten out alive. They'd been inside flaming triple-deckers and outside crumpled Buicks and next to wheezing old men clutching their ailing hearts. They'd sat with him in the mornings, cleanshaven and showered, drinking coffee, and in the evenings, carving roast beef and wiping gravy from their mustaches. They had wives and girlfriends and children and parents. They were his men, and he was responsible for all of them.

“No more,” he said.

For one stunned moment, no one said a word. The white noise of the fire droned above, punctuated by snaps and pops and hisses. Then, as if a trigger had been pulled, the men surged forward in unison, stormed the stairwell. “They're still in there,” someone yelled. “Goddamnit, they're still fucking in there!” The other men joined in, all of them yelling, pressing forward.

Mike spread his arms and legs, pressed his palms and his boots against the jambs of the door, used his body as an X to block the path. “Listen to me!” he bellowed. “You listen to me!”

A break in the shouting, the men easing back, startled by Mike's tone. He swept their faces again. He saw hurt in their eyes, betrayal.

“You listen to me,” he said again, more softly this time. “We've already lost six. We're not going to lose any more.”

It was as if he'd thrown a great, crushing weight upon them. The men slumped before him, physically sagged, the same reflex of defeat he'd watched Randy go through thirty minutes earlier. But it was worse this time. Mike had said it out loud, made it true:
We lost six.
In his time, Worcester had never lost one.

“I want everybody out,” he said. He got on the radio. “Command to all companies,” he said. “Evacuate the building. Sound the evacuation signal. Evacuate the building.”

A
tremendous racket rose up from the streets, three blasts sounding from the horns on each of the trucks, the signal to abandon the building. Men filed out, walking slowly, hobbled by despair. It was over. The battle would continue for hours, but there wasn't anything left to fight for. Paul, Jerry, Tom, Tim, Jay, and Joe weren't coming out. All that was left to do was reposition the engines, circle the warehouse, pour water into the flames, wait for the fire to finally exhaust itself.

Dennis Budd found Mike on the street, standing with Randy Chavoor and a few other men. “Mike, get four guys together,” he said. “I want to make one last push.”

Mike started to answer. Randy cut him off. “You've been in there long enough,” he told Mike. “I'll go.”

Randy and three other men marched toward the loading dock, through the doors, up the stairs. They were going to the third floor, as high as they could hope to get. Maybe Tom and Tim had been wrong. Maybe they'd been on three. Maybe they found their way down there.

They found the rope tied off on the landing. Four men dropped to their knees, began to crawl. They inched in, the heat slowing them down. Randy could hear the fire, hissing and snarling and spitting, the sound seeming to come from all around him, but he couldn't see anything except black, couldn't feel anything except a sheet of steam wrapped around his face, swirling around him like a heavy cloth. He shivered despite the temperature, a premonition washing over him. Thirty feet from the door, he called off the mission. “Let's go!” he yelled. “We don't belong in here.”

No one argued. Each man pivoted, began scuttling toward the door. It was longer on the way out. Randy felt another shiver.
It's not done,
he thought.
The building's not done with us.
The smoke closed in on him, formed itself into a massive black paw, swept over his shoulders, grabbed him by the neck. He could feel it pulling, dragging him into its misty gullet, strangling him.
That's it. You're gonna die.
He struggled against it, crawled what felt like thirty feet. No door. Another twenty feet. Nothing. He wondered if the warehouse had chewed off the lifeline, tossed it into a corner, lured him into a trap.

He felt the ledge, the step up to the doorway. His mind had gotten to him, a trick, an illusion that made ten yards feel like one hundred. Drenched with sweat, shaking with relief, he barreled down the stairs with the other men. He saw Brosnihan at the bottom, tears streaking the big man's face, dripping around his mustache. He rushed toward Randy, toward the stairs, toward his lost lieutenant. Randy caught him, held him in a bear hug, felt him heaving with sobs.

“We gotta go,” he said. “C'mon, we gotta get out of here.”

Randy kept his arm around Bros, steered him out to the street. They were the last men to leave Worcester Cold Storage. No one would be saved tonight.

R
obin Huard felt a squeeze on his arm, turned, saw Mike Mc-Namee.

“Robin, will you go in with me?”

Robin was exhausted, felt he'd cheated death once tonight, knew Worcester Cold Storage was too far gone. But he liked Mike, respected him, believed he was the best incident commander in the city. He wouldn't let him go alone.

“Mike, if you're going, I'll go with you,” he said. “But …” He paused, gathered the words. “But you know they're all dead.”

“I know,” Mike said slowly. “But we've got to try something. I've got to try one more time.”

Robin understood. An officer never leaves his men. Not a marine on Hamburger Hill, not a fireman on the edge of hell. He would follow Mike in if he had to.

Dennis Budd intercepted them. “No more, Mike,” he said. “No one else goes in.”

Robin was relieved.

16

E
ARLIER THAT EVENING, JUST AFTER SHE'D EATEN HER DINNER
, Joanne McNamee remembered she'd left a package in the back of the aging Volvo station wagon parked in front of the house. She went out the door off the dining room, through the garage, and out onto the driveway. The night seemed peculiar, a month out of season. The air was chilly but not uncomfortably cold, and the breeze that blew up from the south was mild, nothing like the biting winds that typically rustled the bare branches in early December.

She had noticed a familiar sound, a faint and plaintive wail, as she turned to go back into the house. She stopped to listen. Twenty-five years had passed since she sat in an apartment at the top of a hill, hearing the sirens from the streets below, whispering to her absent husband that he'd better not die, not now, not yet. They'd moved miles away, to a leafy neighborhood west of downtown, but the wind could still sometimes catch the echo, carry the howl into her living room or at least to her driveway. She didn't whisper to Mike anymore. She'd long ago accepted that her husband had chosen a dangerous trade, and with that knowledge came a certain anxiety, low-grade but constant. Eventually, she'd become immune to it.

The noise grew louder, the volume seeming to double. She couldn't tell how many trucks were involved, but by the chorus, the overlapping yowls and whoops, she guessed a second alarm had already been struck. A dozen trucks, all rolling at once. They could be headed for Main South, but they sounded closer. Northern district, she suspected. “Must be a big one,” she thought.

She had listened only for a moment or two before going back into the house, where she picked up the phone in the kitchen and dialed the number for Central Station. She didn't bother calling Mike's private line in his cinder-block office because she assumed he'd be out. She called the watch room instead.

The fireman who answered confirmed that Mike was working a fire.

“What's burning?” she asked.

“Worcester Cold Storage.”

She'd gripped the receiver more tightly, whitening her knuckles. She remembered driving past the warehouse only two weeks before, when Mike had pointed at it and told her how badly it scared him. She could hear him saying it again:
God, I hope we never catch anything in there.

“Shit,” she said into the phone. “All right. Well, tell him to call me when he gets in.”

She hung up, leaned against the cream-colored tiles Mike had cemented to the countertop, let out a heavy sigh. Mike had been through worse nights. She remembered when he came home that morning in 1973, black, wet, and exhausted, stinking of ash and fire and haunted by ten dead civilians. She'd wanted to stay with him, hold him, tell him how she was frightened and relieved and grateful all at once, give in to all the emotions that could torture a fireman's wife. Mike had fallen asleep and she'd gone to work and she'd put it out of her mind. He came home, and that's all that mattered. Her mother's advice came back to her:
You don't borrow worry.
Tonight was no time to start.