One room at a time. Stay under the smoke.
All around, the fire bellowed. It burned orange and hot, slithering along the baseboards and blackening the walls.
The heat was unbelievable, even here at ground level. Caleb felt as though he'd been plunged into the belly of hell, with the demons all around, mocking him. Somewhere, a little girl was in danger, held hostage by these cackling fiends, and their intent was no different than their fallen lord's.
“. . . to steal and kill and destroy.”
Hadn't Caleb read those words in his father's notebook? Or maybe John had quoted the Scripture to him during their long talk in the clearing.
“Jesus, help me,” he mumbled into his mask. Again, he shouted: “Lacey?”
Rolls of smoke writhed along the hall between the rooms. He edged through the first door to his right, but saw nothing through the blackness.
“Lacey?”
No response.
He hung a door tag to mark that the room had been checked, then crawled toward the next doorway. “Lacey! Where are you?”
Still nothing. Only flame-licked chairs and a sofa.
“Lacey.
Lacey!
”
He pushed through the next burning door with his thick Shelby gloves, ran his gaze beneath the coiling smoke, and spotted the girl. She was curled on the floor, on her side. He yelled out her name again, but she didn't move, didn't say a word.
LIEUTENANT SIMMONS TOOK charge now that their captain had gone inside. He'd convinced the frantic father to stand back, to trust Albany's trained firefighters. He barked instructions to Terrell and Eric, and they dragged the hose up the steps through the entryway. If they fanned out a blanket of water, they might give Caleb a chance to rescue the girl. They could also clear his return escape route. He would be toting anywhere from sixty to a hundred pounds through the blaze, and that was no easy task in full gear.
“Wayne.”
“Lieutenant?”
“Talk to the owner there. Find out if there's a breaker box we can access from outside. Shut everything down.”
“Yes, sir.”
Where was Caleb in this mess? Had he found little Lacey yet?
The growl of a downshifting motor sounded from Simmons's right, and he turned to see Engine Two rolling into view. And a good thing, too. They needed all the help they could get.
“Lieutenant!” Wayne's eyes were wide with fear. “Sir, we got ourselves a problem. The owner says their stove stopped working last year, and they've been cooking on a propane grill.”
“What're you saying? Where?”
“In
there
.” The driver jabbed a finger. “There's a full tank in the kitchen.”
“LACEY!”
Caleb hurried on his knees over the wood floor. There wasn't much in the room, other than an old fireplace and a collapsible baby stroller. Judging by what he'd seen, this family was low-income, with not much to their name. He hoped they were current on their insurance, because this place was going to be unsalvageable.
Nevertheless, he had a chance to give them something far more valuable: their daughter's life.
“Lacey,” he said, touching her arm.
She showed no reaction to his presence. She was a beautiful girl, in jeans and a red sweatshirt with tiny flowers on it. Her hair was in cornrows, pulled back into beaded braids. The smoke had knocked her out, but she was still breathing.
Thank God for that.
Caleb knelt down, slid both arms beneath her small frame, then lifted her in a single motion by using his legs to alleviate the strain. He was up. He had her. He was going to get her out of here alive.
ERIC WAS MORE scared than he'd ever been in his life. This was nothing like their training. This was the real deal,with no guarantees.
He jammed a chock beneath the entry door to keep it from closing and pinching the hose behind him. He inched farther into the house, hefting the one-inch-and-three-quarters with Terrell's assistance a few feet back.
He heard creaks and groans and the high-pitched hiss of flames on dry wood. He was scared, but this was what he had dreamed ofâthe chance to save lives, to put himself at risk for the sake of others.
“Move, rookie,” Terrell urged. “Keep going.”
Eric was about to rise into a stabilized crouch, a position from which he could control the torrent of water through the hose. He looked back at his partner, thinking of the captain's admonishment to stick together. Despite the constant pranks and the ribbing about his bed, he knew that Terrell had his back.
He turned again to face the flames.
And that's when his world exploded.
A BONE-JARRING blast rocked the brick structure, shaking rafters loose. In the hallway, the ceiling caved in and deposited splintered shafts of wood onto the floor in front of Caleb. Smoke and fire billowed.
That route was blocked.
Caleb stumbled back from the doorway, the girl still cradled in his arms. He hoped the wave of concussive heat hadn't reached down her throat and sucked the last bit of life from her chest.
Carbon monoxide was the greatest danger here. It inhibited the blood's ability to carry oxygen through the body, and a minuscule amount could do quick damage. The percentages were all there in his head, from years of training:
.04% . . . Headache after one to two hours of exposure.
.32% . . . Dizziness, nausea after five to ten minutes; unconsciousness after thirty.
1.23% . . . Instant unconsciousness; death in one to three
minutes.
Judging by Lacey's current condition, Caleb knew he was working with a very short fuse.
IN THE AFTERMATH of the explosion, a fireball leaped into the sky and belched a plume of black smoke. Simmons watched it from the front lawn. Through the front door, he saw chunks of wood drop onto Eric's helmet, saw flames wrap themselves around the kid's breathing apparatus and tank.
“Back out, back out, back
out
!”
Simmons wheeled away from the house, helping draw out the charged hose. For the first time ever in his years of working with Caleb, he felt the heart-dropping conviction that his captain was gone. That thought sapped his mental strength and left his arms and legs feeling momentarily numb.
Had Caleb survived that explosion? Was he trapped beneath a beam?
Simmons had no doubt about his friend's eternal futureâthey had the same Father now, right?âbut that gave him no desire to see Caleb's life stolen away.
Not while Catherine's heart was still up for grabs.
And not today. Not on the lieutenant's shift.
Simmons told himself to keep moving, to ignore that dread in his chest. He had to clear his head and stay sharp if there was to be any hope of salvaging a horrible situation.
His own words came back to him:
“You have to
lead
your
heart . . .”
CALEB SLAMMED THE door to the room with a backward kick of his boot, set Lacey on the floor, then took up his ax. They had to escape this place, and that meant he'd have to go through the lone window.
But the bars . . .
These cross sections of iron, meant to keep intruders from getting in, now hindered him from getting out.
He knocked out the glass with the ax, took hold of the metal, and rattled with all his mightâfinding no give, no indication of a breach. He knew there was little chance of breaking through in the time allotted, and yet the way he had entered was cut off from him.
“Over here!” he yelled through his mask.
He shook the bars. Reached out a hand. Waved for someone, anyone, to notice. Most likely, he was out of sight on this back corner of the house. The crew's visibility was hampered by the black haze and waves of heat.
“Over here,” he cried again. “Over
here
!”
No one came.
AT THE CURB, Engine Two was now braking to a halt. Four fire-fighters jumped from the vehicle, ready to battle this thing, and Simmons rushed forward to enlist the aid of their solidly built leader. Captain Loudenbarger had come over from Station Six to fill a temporary vacancy at Station Two. Though he was new to this crew, he wasn't new to the job, and Simmons could think of no one he'd want here more in this moment.
“There's a hydrant right over there,” Loudenbarger directed his men. “Give me one supply line to Engine One.”
They rushed off.
“Sir,”Simmons said.“We've got two people inside. We need you.”
“Hey,” Loudenbarger called out. “Hurry up with that supply line, and pull a second inch-and-three-quarters. We've got somebody inside!”
Simmons thanked his fellow officer, then reclaimed a section of the fire hose by corralling it in his arms. “All right. Get back in there, Eric. Let's
go
.”
“Where's Captain Holt?” Loudenbarger said Simmons.
“He's trapped in that house.”
The moment Simmons spoke the words, the front windows spit out a shower of sparks as another rafter crashed down like a guillotine. The structure's wood sections were coming apart, and it was only a matter of time before the bricks began to dislodge from their places in the crumbling mortar.
“Let's get him on the radio, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.” Simmons raised the two-way to his mouth and tried to reach Caleb. “Captain, you've gotta get out of that house. The roof is about to give.”
Where was he? Why wasn't he responding?
Simmons held the receiver to his ear, hoping for even a faint voice, but there was not a sound. An ambulance rolled up from Phoebe Putney, but it would do them no good if they couldn't find Caleb and Lacey.
He shoved aside his doubts and tried again. “Captain, do you read me? Do you read me? You've gotta get out!”
Simmons did actually hear something now. Could that beâ?
Wait. It was his own voice, in a half-second delay.
He turned, still shouting into the two-way, and located the source of the discombobulated echo. There, in an open storage bin of Engine One, sat Caleb's radio, abandoned in the midst of the action.
CALEB PEELED OFF his air mask and snugged it over the girl's petite face. He rested the tank beside her unconscious form. “Breathe,” he pleaded. “Breathe, Lacey. I need you to breathe for me, baby.”
He wrapped her in his fire-resistant brush coat. Looked around for a way out. Already, fumes were sucking raspy coughs from his lungs.
“God, get me outta here. Get us outta here!”
Claws of flame pried at the edges of the closed door, probing at the keyhole, and sliding along the gap at the floor.
For a split second, his thoughts turned to his mentor, his father-in-law, retired Captain Campbell. What would
he
do in this situation? He could almost hear the man's voice telling him to reject the window and the door, to think creatively. This room was a cube. What did it matter if only a few sides of the box were barricaded?
Overhead, the ceiling was already compromised.
That left the floor.
Choking, Caleb fumbled for his ax. Then he saw it. The air vent near the wall. He lifted the ax handle and slammed it into the vent cover, then pulled it off in one motion. He brought down the handle again to dislodge the ductwork just below the surface. The small hole in the floor had to be larger for them to escape to the crawl space beneath, and the flames beating at the door gave him little time.
Chop fast, Caleb!
He brought down the weighted blade on tongue-and-groove wood. He pulled back a jagged chunk of flooring, dipped his face to the hole, and drew stale but clean air from the space beneath the house.
This could work. It would have to.
He chopped again. Swung a third time with all his strength. He gritted his teeth as he lifted the ax a fourth time over his head, then let out a roar. He was falling into a rhythm now.
Heave-growl-chopppp . . . Heave-growl-choppp . . .
Splinters flew. The hole widened with each blow.
Choppp . . . Choppp . . .
The blade caught. He grunted and tore it loose. Over his shoulder, he saw the fire stretching murderous talons along the door's upper seam. Golden and hot, the conflagration was toying with him. Embers spilled from the ceiling and scattered across the floor.
He gasped for air as the smoke attacked his lungs. He grabbed the air mask and took a deep breath, then placed it back over Lacey's mouth.
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beepâ
The warning chime on his SCBA told Caleb this whole scenario was about over. His oxygen reserves were almost gone, and if he didn't hurry, he and young Lacey would be gone for good.
Choppp, choppp, choppp . . .
The opening would have to do.
With quick movements, he tore away exposed spikes of wood, then removed the mask from Lacey's face and shoved aside the expended tank. He took the girl in his arms again. He lowered her through the gap in the floor, easing her onto clods of dirt a few feet below. Still wrapped in his jacket, she was safe for the moment.
From above, the roof gave a loud groan.
Caleb's turn to go down.
He ignored a thick splinter that jabbed through his white shirt, pulled it from his skin in a spray of blood, and shoved himself face-first through the hole.
T
he house was about to collapse around him. Only seconds to go. Caleb caught his weight with planted hands, then wormed down into the crawl space without landing on top of Lacey. He rolled onto his side, giving no time to aches and pains, no attention to scurrying spiders.
He looped his left arm around the girl's back, hooking a hand under her arm, then searched for the best way out of this disaster area.
A waft of fresh air, from about twenty feet away . . .
A ventilation grate.
He dragged himself forward a half-foot at a time, with his right elbow wedged into the ground and boots scrambling against compact earth. From the room above, beams and drywall crumbled in burning sections and came after him through the hole he'd created.