Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [127]
“I come out of this building every day. My wife works here.”
“I hope she’s not here now.”
“She’s home.”
“And you’re being blackmailed.”
Reese considered Finney for a moment. “Did you have anything to do with setting this?”
“Don’t look at me. Who checked out the building and told you it was invulnerable? Who’s telling you to pull out? Look, Charlie. Get somebody from the company that installed these systems and get them here fast.”
“I suppose we’re fakes, too?” Marion Balitnikoff stepped around the corner behind Finney, followed by Michael Lazenby in full battle gear. “And I suppose that rig we’ve got out in the street is a fake.”
“They’re part of it,” Finney said. “And yes, that rig outside is a fake.”
Reese said, “You’re going to have to leave, John. You’re in the way.”
1932 HOURS
Everyone’s attention was captured by four burly SPD officers wrestling with a firefighter in yellow bunkers. Diana’s heart leaped into her throat when she recognized Finney. Working together, they wrestled him to the ground and snapped handcuffs onto his wrists, one officer’s knee on his back, another putting his full weight on his neck. They dragged him through the foyer toward the doors on Fifth Avenue, past Reese and Smith, who both ignored the commotion, past the building security guards. It looked as if Finney were being carried away in the jaws of an animal, perhaps a great crocodile.
As they exited the building, Finney turned and looked back over his shoulder, and for just a second he caught her eye.
When she turned around to gauge the reaction of the other Seattle firefighters on the floor, most of the looks were shocked, but the faces of three men bore the definite aura of triumph: Balitnikoff, Lazenby, and Oscar Stillman.
Diana followed Finney and the police officers outside to Fifth Avenue, where one of the officers began speaking into the remote mike on his collar. Several engines were in the street, hose lines connecting one of them to a hydrant across the street, firefighters loading hose on their shoulders at the rear of that rig.
Keeping Finney in the center of their phalanx, the officers headed across the street.
It took a few moments for Diana to take in what happened next.
There was a noise high above. She didn’t know what it was until she saw Finney turn and, using his chest and shoulder, bull two of the policemen back toward the doorway she was standing in. They had retreated six or eight steps when a loud impact occurred in the center of the street. Particles of something small and hard stung Diana’s face. Water began spraying into the air in several directions, some of it onto her. A second impact in the street struck the roof of the engine and threw more particles at the building and at her. Then all was quiet except for curses and the water gushing into the street from severed hose lines.
The two police officers who’d been in front had turned and chased Finney, so that all five had missed the explosion by eight or nine feet. A window had fallen into the street. If Finney hadn’t turned them around, they might all be dead. The officers were wet from the hoses, and even though they’d missed the center of the impact, two of them were bleeding.
“What the hell happened?” asked the officer closest to Diana. “I thought he was trying to escape.”
“A window broke out upstairs,” Diana said. “He was trying to get you out of harm’s way. I think he saved your life.”
“That was a window? Shit, it sounded like a cannon.”
Another section of glass crashed to the street, this smaller than the first. Pushed by flame and heat and maybe by firefighters attempting to ventilate, falling sheet glass would probably continue to come down into the street like guillotine blades all night.
Diana knew those large sheets of windowpane wouldn’t fall in a straight line. Like maple seeds, they fluttered this way and that, some landing a hundred yards or more from the base of the building. Some would land flat, others on edge. They would cut hose lines, destroy cars, kill people.
When Diana looked up, she saw a dull glow