Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [140]
Near seventy-four, Kub’s warning bell began ringing again.
The door to seventy-four was locked. Of course.
Before Finney could bang on it, the door opened and a small Asian woman in a simple black dress and too much mascara gave him a wide-eyed look and waved for him to enter. “Yes?” she said, as if afraid he wanted to sell her magazines.
Seventy-four was well-lit and relatively cool inside. Working their way out of their backpacks, helmets, and coats, the three were quickly besieged by a crowd, the men in suits or tuxedos, the women in dresses appropriate for a wedding party. Still breathing heavily, Kub slumped to the floor and onto his back. Finney and Diana followed suit. Finney felt as if he might not ever sit up again. The ceiling began spinning. He couldn’t catch his breath. His underwear was soaked, one ear stopped up with a constant flow of perspiration. The tick in his cheek felt like a small bird trying to hatch out of an egg. After a few moments, he felt as if he were glued to the floor. Diana lay next to him, Kub somewhere above his head.
“I’m beat,” Kub said.
“Me, too,” said Finney.
Diana sighed deeply.
For a while everybody clamored at once. When it calmed, one of the building security men leaned over Finney. He had wiry hair that had probably been red in his younger years but was mostly gray now, a lined face, and compelling brown eyes that wouldn’t let Finney look away. Long hairs grew out of his ears and nostrils. “What’s going on, partner?”
“How about you give me an update first?” Finney asked, his throat raw from smoke. He sounded like Tallulah Bankhead, cigarette larynx.
“Sure. According to the TV there’s a couple of fires down low. They got control of one and then went higher and found another. There’s a third one burning somewhere around fifty-five or sixty. The last half hour or so our air has been getting smokier.”
“You have a plan?” It was Patterson Cole peering over the security man’s shoulder. Cole was the last person Finney expected to see here.
“I have a plan,” Finney said, sitting up on his elbows. Cole looked like an actor, a look-alike playing the part of an old man. But it was Cole all right, his sidekick in the bow tie hovering beside him.
Finney explained that they’d brought ropes and three climbing harnesses and had been planning to lower people down the side of the building to the roof on sixty. Now they had decided they would try the elevator shafts instead. It would take time, but it could be done. They could lower people using a pulley and the brake rack they’d brought along. He and Diana could rig it in five minutes. The air in the elevator shafts was still breathable. It was probably better than the air outside the building.
Several minutes later, the three of them reluctantly climbed to their feet, groaning as they stretched damaged muscles and felt chafed skin where their loads had dug in and where they’d been burned. Finney’s wounds from the Bowman Pork fire were oozing.
With the assistance of the security people, they opened the elevator doors and set up a rope and anchor system. One of the guards had rock-climbing experience and volunteered to go first. Knowing he was fresher than they were, Finney agreed. With the help of his two friends on forty, he would set up a receiving system. Finney, Kub, and Moore would send people down in the three harnesses they’d brought up, recycling the harnesses back by rope. It wasn’t going to be particularly elegant, but once the system was running, they could refine it on the fly. There were, by head count, 189 people to lower, plus the two