Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [59]
Even though only a minute or two had passed 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 prickly 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 ship blew up at dockside.
Dashing along the back of the mobile home, I picked up one of the empty brown paper sacks and sniffed it.
Fertilizer. Ammonium nitrate!
The combination of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel was the same explosive compound that had been used to blow up the World Trade Center in New York the first time, as well as the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
There was a good chance the trailer was going to blow up.
My daughters!
Before I could think the situation through, I found myself on the ground. On my butt. I’d landed hard. With no warning.
With even less warning, I was on my back, staring up at ribbons of black smoke in a blue sky. I hadn’t fainted. Nor had I tripped. There had been no explosion. Not yet.
Struggling to a sitting position, I peered around to see what had taken my legs out from under me. There was nothing around me, no man or woman, no dog, no offending object.
I rolled to one knee and regained my feet, only to fall again.
Day 3: Worse headache, dizziness, falling down.
It was the second time today I’d fallen.
Taking a glove off and placing the radio mike to my lips, I said, “Dispatcher from Edgewick Command, we’re going to evacuate. We have indications of large quantities of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil on the premises. All incoming North Bend units stand by one-half mile away. We have ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. Lots of it.”
Reaching my feet unsteadily, I grabbed the sidewall of the trailer for support and then let go. The metal wall was as hot as a pancake griddle. I moved slowly at first, more confidently after a few steps.
When I reached the front of the trailer, I realized nobody on scene had heard my radio transmission.
Ben and Karrie were still in the smoky front doorway. I reached into the smoke and slapped Ben on the rump. “The place is filled with ammonium nitrate. Abandon the building. Now!” Twisting her head around, Karrie looked at me through the mask of her SurviveAir face piece. “I mean it! Out!”
Reaching up into the cab, I turned the siren on and switched it to the abandon building warning, a tone we’d never used except in practice.
I dashed to where my daughters and Morgan had been. The old woman was there, but my girls and Morgan were missing. Choking on my own dry throat, I called out my daughter’s names. “Britney? Allyson?”
“Daddy?”
The three of them were watching me curiously from the other side of the maroon Chevrolet. Judging from the looks on their faces, I’d been bleating their names like a maniac.
I stepped between them, picking up Allyson under one arm, Britney under the other, adjusting their skinny little bodies as I ran. “Follow us, Morgan. You, too, lady. Everybody out of the yard. It’s going to blow up.”
Behind me, I heard the