Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [135]
Then the lieutenant understood. He carried a portion of the hose over the trapped man, to his other side, and began inserting it into the crack that held the man's arm.
"Get it good and tight," Cray said unnecessarily. "Ready?"
The lieutenant nodded.
Cray called over his shoulder, "Open the pumper nozzle."
Using his hands as a megaphone, the Rescue Squad man relayed the order. A side wall in the neighboring room fell, sending a blast of hot air through a door. Burning debris from the ceiling began falling on them.
"Have I said it's hot in here?" Cray asked.
"You did, yes." The wounded man almost smiled.
Then the hose filled with water, expanding and rising, and lifting the beam all along its length. With a grinding groan the weight of the fallen wall shifted, and the cavity opened, freeing the arm.
Cray grabbed the wounded man's legs and the lieutenant brought up the man's shoulders. They carried him out of the room, his maimed arm trailing across the floor. Clumps of burning ceiling fell behind them.
They put him on a litter, a Rescue Squad man at each end. He was carried toward an ambulance that had arrived while Cray was in the room. Katrin was still standing near a pumper.
Cray breathed the cool air, wiping his forehead with a hand.
The lieutenant removed his gas mask. He fixed his eyes on Cray, then said, "Sir, the makeup on your eyebrows is coming off, dripping down your face, from the heat in the building."
Cray dabbed at a brow and looked at his hand. A black smudge.
The lieutenant's words were barely audible above the fire's sibilance. "That was nice work with the hose in there, Captain Cray."
He stared at the lieutenant.
"I'd have never thought of it."
"Like I said, I'm an engineer." Cray's pistol was in a belt holster under the greatcoat.
"The radio in my truck is broken," the lieutenant said, "and it's going to take me at least ten minutes, maybe fifteen, to find a telephone to report your location."
The American nodded, then turned for Katrin and quickly led her away from the burning buildings. The sounds of buckling wood and falling lathes and plaster followed them along the street.
13
THE BOMBERS had returned half an hour after their first run, an unusual double punch for one morning. Katrin and Cray had not been near a shelter, so they had climbed into the basement of a ruined building and huddled in a corner under a table, mouths open and fingers in their ears. When the all clear sounded, they emerged to find that smoke and drifting ash had swallowed Berlin. Their ad hoc shelter had been at the edge of the target area, and the new fires and craters and shattered buildings were to the south, the direction they needed to travel.
They picked their way along, no one else on the street yet. For a few minutes after each terror raid, Berlin stood in mute shock, like a man just slapped, incapable of comprehension, yet full of helpless outrage. Then Berliners slowly emerged from their hiding to begin again their inventory. The Allies destroyed, Berliners made an accounting, an endless cycle.
Smoke was as thick as cotton, and Cray could make out nothing beyond the reach of his arm. Katrin coughed into her hand. He led her around a cluster of tortoiseshell spectacle frames, blown from an eye doctor's office by a bomb blast, then past a dozen white linen napkins tied together with a red ribbon, so newly deposited on the street that the rain had not yet dampened them. They passed shattered seltzer bottles, a pencil sharpener ripped from a desk, a silver teapot and a brass coronet, scattered across the street. They carefully stepped through new fields of brick and plaster, and around timbers, some still on fire. Above them the sky was a sulfurous yellow, the sun hidden in the haze.
"Do you smell perfume?" Katrin asked.
"Lilac, smells like."
"Some woman's perfume bottle was vaporized by a blast, probably, and now the smell wafts down the street." She sniffed. "I can also smell fresh bread and mothballs, and there's a whiff of ammonia, maybe someone's kitchen floor cleaner. It's always like