Into The Inferno Part 14

"Her sister still there as a patient?"

"I believe so."

"She okay? I'm a friend."

"Her condition hasn't changed."

It was hard to realize how much hope I'd invested in Stephanie Riggs, a woman who really had no reason to help me.

She'd promised to call this morning.

Promised.

It was a bigger disappointment than it should have been. Between my dissatisfaction with the meeting and Stephanie's failure to contact me, I was feeling as forgotten as a puppy in a locked garage.

I dug through my wallet for Stephanie's cell phone number, but I'd misplaced it.

I sat down with the s.h.i.+pping manifest from Continental Freightways. DuPont was a possibility. They were a chemical company. But what bothered me more than the manifest was that I'd been lied to by the guy at JCP, Inc. I picked up the phone and called them back, asked for Mr. Stuart, was told he was out to lunch. No s.h.i.+t, I thought. He was out to lunch when I spoke to him. They took my phone number and promised he would call back.

In the officers' room I looked up Jane's on the Internet. It was a rocket fuel company, or had been. Now they were researching hydrogen fuel cell technology for all sorts of things: s.p.a.cecraft, jets, automobiles, hovercraft, military vehicles, submarines. A quick glance at their literature told me they used platinum in their work. I didn't see how platinum could have caused our problems, but then, what did I know?

While I was on the Internet, on a whim, I went to my favorite search engine and began trying out various phrases: downed firefighters, fatal firefighter illness, firefighter mystery casualty, brain-dead firefighters downed firefighters, fatal firefighter illness, firefighter mystery casualty, brain-dead firefighters. After about twenty-five minutes of experimenting, I came across an obituary for a firefighter in Chattanooga, Tennessee: Vic Swenson, former all-state tailback for the Olewah Owls and twenty-year veteran of the Chattanooga Fire Department, died yesterday after a long, undiagnosed illness, the result of the controversial Southeast Travelers Freight fire three years ago. For the past three years Vic has resided in the Sunnyside Nursing Home, where he's made lots of friends. He was active in fis.h.i.+ng and hunting and played golf at least once a week, and most of his friends said he was the smartest "cheater" they ever saw. Vic always had a smile for everyone and will be missed by his wife, Sally, and three children, Vic Jr., Echo, and Heather. Memorials may be made to the Citizens' Fund for Truth about Southeast Travelers.

For many long minutes I found nothing else on the Internet about the Citizens' Fund for Truth, and then I came upon a Web site put up by a CFD firefighter named Charlie Drago called "The Truth about the Southeast Travelers Incident." Unfortunately, the site was bollixed beyond belief, so that there was only the home page. Lots of tantalizing promises of links and other pages, but none of it worked. I tried a different Web browser, but that didn't produce anything, either. Only the home page. No links. No contact information. No phone number. Also, the word incident incident had been spelled had been spelled incedent incedent.

I phoned the Chattanooga Fire Department main switchboard, told them I was a fire officer in North Bend, Was.h.i.+ngton, and was looking for Charles Drago. I was told he was on duty today and given a station house phone number, which I then called. "Yeah. Charlie's working today. Let me get him for you."

As did the woman who answered the phone, Charlie Drago had a Southern drawl so thick you could cut it with a chain saw. I explained who I was and detailed my situation. "You told anybody about this?" he asked. "Anybody at all?"

"Well, yes."

"Then you'd better watch your a.s.s, buddy. They'll be coming after you. No s.h.i.+t. They're probably following you right now. They'll burn your home down. They tried to burn mine down. They'll blow you to smithereens. I mean this. No s.h.i.+t. They'll blow you to Kingdom Come. Your life ain't worth a plug nickel."

"Who will? Who will blow me to smithereens?"

"Them."

"Who's them?"

"Whoever was responsible for our incident at Southeast Travelers. Probably the same a.s.sholes who're responsible for what's happening to you fine folks. We lost three guys there. Well, one's dead. The other two only wish they were."

"Vic Swenson?"

"Yeah. He was one. How did you know that? You're not working for the insurance company, are you? You b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"No, Charlie. I'm not working for the insurance company. I'm a firefighter in North Bend. What happened to these guys at the freight company fire?"

"They tried to burn my house down. You see my Web site? It's all on my Web site."

"I was just there. I couldn't find anything on it."

"d.a.m.n it! I posted that just yesterday. They trash my site. You know what else? I think they're following me again. Hey. Check it out. If they're not following you by now, they will be. Now tell me the truth. You're not one of them, are you?"

"Charlie, I'm not sure-" Even as I spoke, the house bells clanged. This guy was crazy. I wondered why they even left him on duty. Battier than bat s.h.i.+t. "That's our house bell, Charlie. We've got a call. I'll talk to you later."

"Vaya con Dios, amigo."

"Sure, Charlie."

I wasn't on duty, but it was a long-standing tradition that extra hands hanging around the station responded in the event of a fire call. Had it been an aid alarm, I wouldn't have bothered, but the tones were for a fire call, and when the dispatcher announced what we had, it came in as a trailer fire. Heavy black smoke reported by cell phone callers on the freeway. More calls were being received from neighbors out on Edgewick Road.

In our department most "smoke in the vicinity" calls turned out to be bogus, a yard crew burning brush, a hobbyist farmer tuning up his tractor, a woodstove stoked down too far.

At "working fires" our department relied on mutual aid from nearby departments and on volunteers, who would race from their day jobs or abandon their spouses at night to risk their lives backing us up. It was absolutely the best part of small-town America, and having been raised in the city, I loved every part of it.

Before I cleared the office, my girls rushed downstairs in a state of breathless agitation.

"A fire, Daddy! A fire!" Allyson yelled. It was funny to see her shed her matronly manner so quickly. "Can we go?"

Britney was so intoxicated with the thrill of it, she couldn't speak at all, just stood next to her older sister gasping for breath. Morgan pretended to be above it all, but I could see she was amped, too.

Any other day I would have said no, but this might be their last chance to see me doing one of the few things I did well.

I tossed Morgan the keys to the Lexus. "Do not go over the speed limit. Adjust the mirrors. Obey all the traffic laws. Don't worry about missing anything. If it's a good fire, it'll still be burning when you get there. Park off the roadway. Watch out for firefighters and incoming apparatus. Volunteers out here get pretty jazzed. Don't get in anyone's way."

"Yes, Mr. Swope," said Morgan.

Ian Hjorth, who had already kicked off his station boots and put on his bunking boots and pants, was climbing up behind the wheel of the engine. Without taking off my civilian clothes, I climbed into the cab next to him. Karrie and Ben Arden were seated behind us in the crew cab. They would finish dressing and don air masks while we drove, prepared to step off the rig and fight fire upon arrival.

Manned by the first arriving volunteer at the station, the tanker would respond to refill our pumper when we ran out of water. Empty, it would then be driven to the nearest hydrant to be refilled. Our engine carried a thousand gallons, enough to put out most structure fires in their incipient stages. The tanker carried an additional five thousand.

Just below Mount Was.h.i.+ngton, I spotted a pall of heavy black smoke rising from behind a low hill. The color and the speed with which the smoke was rising were indicators that we had a structure fire.

On the radio I confirmed that we had a column of black smoke. This would let our volunteers on Wilderness Rim know to bring the engine we kept parked up there at our satellite station. It would also let Snoqualmie, our mutual aid department from the next small town over, know we really had something. It would let the first volunteer to arrive at the station know that he should bring the tanker.

We exited the freeway and rolled up a narrow road shaded by trees on both sides. Here and there a driveway or an open yard fronted the road. Two horses in a field lashed out with their rear legs and galloped off at the sound of our siren.

Half a mile from the freeway, we found smoke coming from the rear of a large lot mostly hidden by trees and brush. "It's Caputo's place," Ian Hjorth said, swinging our engine into Caputo's driveway.

"I spotted a hydrant about two hundred yards back."

"I'll tell the tanker guy when he gets here."

Because I was the first officer on scene, I would automatically become the incident commander, which meant I would remain outside the fire building and coordinate fire-fighting efforts, remain in contact with incoming units on the radio, and dole out a.s.signments to individual firefighters as they showed up in their private vehicles. It would be my responsibility to make sure everybody on the fire ground worked as a team, that rescues were made promptly, that n.o.body was injured.

The first rule of fire fighting was: Don't get hurt.

If all the civilians weren't out of the building, or if we didn't know for certain whether they were out, our priority would be rescue. Most of the time, though, rescue and extinguishment went hand in hand. You put the fire out-the victim was no longer in danger.

I can't tell you how much I loved this job.

Right away I needed to determine whether there were exposures we had to protect with hose lines, whether there were nearby structures that might be damaged by fire. As in all building fires, we needed to ventilate the occupancy at the same time we put water on the fire; otherwise the smoke and steam had nowhere to go. The oldest way to ventilate was to go to the roof and cut a hole over the fire, ideally about four feet by eight feet.

We would also need firefighters standing by in full gear with an extra hand line just in case our primary team got in trouble.

Ian would place the apparatus near the building but not so near as to get scorched if the fire got out of hand, nor so far away that the hose lines wouldn't reach inside. He would get the pump running, open the lines for the firefighters who would crawl inside under the heat, and help hook up a supply line from the tanker.

House trailers, even double-wides, tended to have fewer exits and smaller windows than wood-frame homes. They also burned hotter inside. In the past ten years, North Bend Fire and Rescue had lost two elderly home owners in trailer fires. You had to worry about losing a firefighter in one, too.

Karrie Haston and Ben Arden would take in the first hand line. Ideally, I would go in with Karrie, because she was still on probation and so far had been to only one good fire. Crawling inside alongside her would allow me to make sure she didn't get into trouble and would also give me a chance to see how she reacted to heat, stress, and lack of visibility. Her skills on aid calls were exemplary, and except for her constant questioning of authority around the station, something I viewed as a habit she'd picked up from years of bucking her father's heavy-handed authoritarianism, she'd acquitted herself well in most arenas. But so far I had yet to see her fight fire. It was pretty simple: you couldn't fight fire, you couldn't have the job.

"It's Caputo's place, all right," Ian Hjorth said again. As we pulled into the driveway and stopped, low-hanging branches tore at the paint on our fire engine and slapped loudly against the light bars on the roof.

A large maroon Chevrolet sedan blocked our approach.

The driver, a doughy woman of about seventy, stood thirty feet in front of the idling car pointing at the burning trailer as if we couldn't see it. It was impossible to hear what she was shouting over the sound of our motor and the stream of radio chatter crossing the airwaves.

"What we got here is a nickel holding up a dollar," I said, trying to push my door open against the bushes. Ian inched the rig forward to help.

"Caputo's mother," Ian said. "She was here when he hacked his toe off with the maul last fall."

Something first-in fire personnel always thought about was what the next-in units would see when they got there. Arriving at a fire, each unit got an indelible look at the structure and the work being performed or not being performed, and when the next-in units found us stuck in the bushes, they would laugh their heads off.

Stalling around outside a fire building was not a reputation I wanted to carry to my grave.

"You guys stay on board," I said to Karrie and Ben. Branches shrieked against the door as I worked it open.

Beyond the Chevrolet lay a small gra.s.sy swale and beyond that the trailer, black smoke pouring from a partially open window on the right-hand side. Less concentrated plumes of smoke issued from cracks and seams in the trailer.

Still facing the domicile, the old woman backed up unsteadily, tottering in a clump of weeds. I asked if this was her car, but she couldn't hear me over the rumbling of our diesel engine. When I spotted the keys in the ignition, I slid the seat back, got in, placed the car in drive, and parked on the sod just past her, leaving the keys in the ignition.

"I know he's in there," she said, her voice tremulous. "I came over to bring him some greens for dinner."

I, too, figured Caputo was in there, since his flatbed truck was parked where he always parked it on the north side of the driveway.

Our diesel roared past, and I missed the rest of what she said. Ian, Ben, and Karrie disembarked and went to work. I yelled that there was probably a man inside. Behind us, a volunteer jogged into the driveway. "Grab the next guy and lay a backup line to the front door," I said.

Then Morgan and my daughters showed up on foot. I caught Morgan's eye and pointed to the old woman in the bushes. "Don't move from there." The three of them went to their a.s.signed position, as cute as porcelain dolls, all three in shorts, deck shoes, and pastel blouses. Too bad n.o.body had a camera.

Ian had already switched the transmission out of drive and into pump. The fire was beginning to rip, flame licking out the front door. We were on the verge of losing the trailer, and probably the owner, too. If he wasn't already dead.

"Look out for those dogs," Ian said as I walked around the fire engine. I hadn't heard any barking, but Caputo's Dobermans had been in the back of my mind since we arrived.

26. BEND OVER AND KISS YOUR BIG OLD.

WHATCHAMACALLIT GOOD-BYE.

Ideally, the first-in unit at a structural fire would view three sides of a building as they roll up on it, always making sure to drive all the way past the front to see down that third side. This generally produced a fair idea of what was happening. Because the mobile home was capped at either end by thick brush, viewing three sides without a walk-around was not going to happen.

We had a couple of minutes before the rest of the units would be asking for instructions, so I set off on a quick 360 of the building.

The diesel engine, the whining pump, and the volunteers shouting at one another made it impossible to know whether there was anybody yelling for help from inside.

If you knew him as I did, you'd be as surprised as I was that Max Caputo hadn't torched his place before now.

Calamity rained down on the man-divorces, drunkenness, car accidents, multiple manglings prior to the table saw incident yesterday, traumatic loss of teeth in bar fights, skin rashes so severe they required hospitalization. Caputo was the only man I'd ever heard of who'd been attacked by both a bear and a cougar.

What he'd probably done, I realized in a flash, was wash down the painkillers the doctors had prescribed for his severed fingers with beer, a potent combination of booze and drugs that would disorient you or me or anybody. No doubt he set fire to his own place by accident.

Black smoke was jetting out the narrow vertical bathroom window and along the roofline. The windows were coated inside with a tarlike substance, a sign the fire had been burning for some time.

It was close to a backdraft situation, and I told Ben as much when I pa.s.sed him. "I'll warn the others," he said. Under the right conditions a backdraft could throw a door into the street, blow a firefighter across the yard, kill him and all his unborn children.

I wore multilayered bunking pants, tall rubber boots, a bunking coat and helmet. I put on my heavy firefighting gloves, gloves you could pick up a hot ingot with, then gave my radio report.

"Dispatch from Engine One. We have smoke from a single-story double-wide trailer approximately twenty by forty. Brush on three sides. We're getting water on it now."

In my experience dogs tended to act predictably in a fire: There were those that p.o.o.ped and those that ran away. Sometimes both at the same time. A third type of dog would bark and snap at anything that moved. I had the feeling Caputo's Dobermans weren't running and had, by now, about p.o.o.ped themselves silly. That left only the third response.

Yesterday, they had been chained at the south side of the house, but now when I stepped through the brambles, there were no dogs to be seen. The paths back here were low tunnel-like affairs beaten down by the Dobermans. At the rear of the trailer I reached a clearing and found an abandoned dog chain lying next to a tree stump, food bowls nearby.

In an open s.p.a.ce between the rear of the double-wide and the encroaching woods, two large oil drums were on their sides, each with a capacity of maybe thirty gallons, along with half a dozen large brown paper sacks. The area smelled of dog s.h.i.+t. I kicked one of the drums and got a hollow sound for my trouble; the oil on the spout looked fresh. We hadn't seen any of this yesterday, but then, we hadn't been back here.

The property sloped away from the trailer so that the back door was accessed via seven or eight wooden steps. The door was locked, the window blacked over on the inside from the smoke. There were no water streams inside, not yet.

Even though only a minute or two had pa.s.sed since our arrival, it seemed to me as if we'd been jick-jacking around for a week.

I was rounding the corner at the far end of the trailer, headed back around toward the front, when something in the brush caught my eye.

Against my better judgment, I waded up to my hips in blackberries and dug deep into the p.r.i.c.kly vines until I had my hands on a dog collar.

It was still attached to the animal.

He was breathing rapidly, more or less positioned as if he'd been thrown there. Dark lips curled off his canines as the Doberman growled at me. I saw no blood and figured he was either drugged or dying.

If somebody had come here to attack Caputo and his animals, Max wouldn't have been able to put up much of a fight with his mangled hand. Even if they'd reattached his fingers yesterday at the hospital, which I did not believe had happened, he wasn't going to be able to form a fist or hold a weapon.

After I waded out of the blackberries, my eyes fell once again on the oil drums.

There was something wrong here.

My thoughts turned to six dead firefighters in Kansas City back in the eighties, to another incident in Texas City, Texas, that happened long before I was born, where twenty-seven firefighters and almost six hundred civilians were killed when a s.h.i.+p blew up at dockside.

Das.h.i.+ng along the back of the mobile home, I picked up one of the empty brown paper sacks and sniffed it.

Fertilizer. Ammonium nitrate!