Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [43]
“I was waiting for you to go up those stairs with me. Were you scared?”
“The stairs were gone. I told you that. I told you I was going outside.”
“It turned out the stairs were gone, but what if they hadn’t been?”
“What kind of question is that? They were gone.”
“I didn’t know that at the time. I ordered you to stay inside with me. You and I both know we’re in a paramilitary organization here. We have officers and we have firefighters. The last time I checked, the officers gave the orders. The firefighters followed them.”
They stared at each other for a few tense seconds.
“You’re saying I should obey your orders even if it costs a life?”
“What the hell do you think would have happened if Ladder One hadn’t dragged that hose line up there and cooled your ass off? You were damn lucky you didn’t both get incinerated, you and that old woman. And maybe Moore, too. She’s a damned idiot, just like you.”
Just as Finney was reappraising Sadler in light of his refusal to cut the old woman’s chest so she could breathe, Finney could see in Sadler’s nearly opaque brown eyes that he was wondering whether Finney had abandoned Bill Cordifis the way he’d abandoned him.
Finney’s story about Leary Way couldn’t be verified, and these days everybody in the department sized Finney up in terms of what they imagined happened at that fire. They saw Finney; they saw a dead partner. People connected the dots in different ways. It was as if Finney didn’t have any other history, as if all those years he’d worked on Ladder 1 didn’t count for beans.
“By rights I should write charges on you,” Sadler said. “Insubordination at the scene of an emergency. You could get eight shifts off without pay.”
“I’d gladly trade eight shifts off for that woman’s life.”
“Oh, that’s cute. Make me look like the bad guy.” Sadler stepped close. For a few moments neither spoke. In different circumstances, perhaps with a few drinks under their belts, they might have come to blows. They both knew it would be ludicrous for Sadler to write charges on Finney after a successful rescue, no matter what orders he’d disobeyed. It would only serve to spotlight Sadler’s misjudgment and failure to reach her from inside the building. “When you came down to Twenty-six’s three weeks ago, people told me you had an ego the size of Texas, that you had a problem following orders. I didn’t listen because I like to size a man up for myself. But they were right. You’re a freelancer. A loose cannon. You go off and do what you like. It’s easy to see why Reese didn’t promote you.”
Sadler turned and walked away. When he was ten feet distant, he turned back and said, “I noticed your hand. You going to need stitches?” Finney had cut his hand through his glove sometime during the rescue, probably while breaking out the window. Someone had wrapped a roll of gauze around it; he couldn’t recall who. “I’ll get somebody to fill in so you can go see the doc.”
“Sure.” Although he knew in this instance it was true, Finney didn’t like being called a freelancer. In the old days freelancers were highly valued members of the department, firefighters who could get things done without being told. But these days everybody worked in pairs and they worked to a master plan—a man walking the fire ground by himself was in danger of a reprimand from the safety chief.
A few minutes later Finney noticed Captain G. A. Montgomery and Robert Kub. As Marshal 5’s unit administrator, G. A. rarely did fieldwork, so Finney was surprised to see him at a fire scene. Then again, they had a possible fatality.
G. A. took a couple of purposeful strides toward the house, surveying the disheveled firefighters in the rehab area. Clad in a fire department windbreaker, black slacks and dress shoes, a white shirt, and a tie that was so tight his neck veins stood out, G. A. Montgomery was hardly dressed to pick through a fire scene. Nevertheless, that’s what he and Kub proceeded to do.
Ten minutes later they trotted back around the side of the house and met Finney as he was carrying his MSA backpack to the rig.