The Glass Inferno

CHAPTER 46

The sound of a muffled explosion startled Barton. He looked over at Shevelson and was about to ask “What was that?” when there was a louder, sharper explosion.

The makeshift table on which they had spread the blueprints trembled slightly; a second later the lights in the lobby went out.

There was dead silence for a moment, and then the comm station in the cigar stand broke into an excited babble of transmissions. In the lower lobby, some of the women began to scream. Barton blurted, “What the hell happened?” Somebody turned on a portable electric lantern in the cigar stand. Shevelson was dimly outlined in the glow. He shook his head tensely and said, “Quiet.”

Barton strained his ears and then heard it. A steady rain of debris falling down the elevator shafts, and then, suddenly, louder crashes thudding from the core bottom.

“The core walls are going,” Shevelson said quietly. “The explosions must have ripped right through them.” Barton could imagine the chaos within the core itself: pieces of cinderblock and Pyrobar tumbling to the bottom from the floors far above, joined by crumbling bits of mortar, calcined plaster, lengths of cable and conduit, strips of piping, pieces of burning wood… .

“Let’s get outside,” Barton said, “we can’t tell anything from in here.” He ran for the door, followed by Shevelson and Garfunkel, who had groped his way up from the lower lobby. On the plaza, the wind cut through his suit coat like a scalpel. He shivered and turned up his collar, debating whether he should go back inside and borrow a turnout coat. Then he saw Infantino standing by the CD communications van and ran over.

“What The hell happened, Mario?”

Infantino seemed dazed, as if he were just coming out of heavy shock.

“I’m not sure; there were two explosions I don’t know what caused them.” He stared up at the building and Barton followed his eyes to the sixteenth floor. Flames flickered behind the windows almost the total length of the floor. He could see flames through the gaps in the Curtainwall where the windows on seventeen had been. They were stronger on eighteen through twenty-two. There was probably little fuel for the fire on seventeen, Barton thought; most of it had been consumed. But the fires on the other floors looked serious.

“I don’t know what caused the first explosion,” Shevelson said slowly, “but I’m fairly sure the second one was the steam line going; it probably ruptured somewhere between the sixteenth and twentieth floors.”

The steam line must have ripped through several floors and spread the fire upward, Barton thought. There was, as yet, no telling the extent of the damage to the utility core but all the main electrical and gas lines ran up it.

There was no immediate way of knowing if their security had been breeched, but he couldn’t risk it. He turned to Garfunkel. “Get hold of Donaldson and tell him to shut off all the main electrical circuits and the gas line. Right now.”

“You’re cutting all the elevators,” Infantino said grimly. “I’ll need them to get men up to the fire floors.”

Barton slowly shook his head. “Mario, you’re the boss here. But if the main gas line has been breeched, the upper floors will become a bomb, and even the flicking of a light switch could set it off.”

“Do you know what a length of two-and-a-half-inch hose weighs, Craig?

More than seventy pounds. Do you think you could carry one up sixteen or eighteen flights -or be of much use once you got it there?”

“Forget it,” Shevelson interrupted. “The elevators are already out.

The board was dead when we left. And I don’t think-you have to worry about the gas line being breached. I’m afraid it already has been, but you won’t like where.”

“What are you driving at?” Barton asked. He started to shiver and jammed his hands in his pockets to keep them warm.

Shevelson didn’t get a chance to answer. There were faint popping sounds from far above and a second a sailing pane of glass shattered in the street a hundred feet away. It hadn’t come from the, twenty-first or the twenty-second floors, Barton realized with a shock. It had come from higher, much higher. He craned his neck and could make out the faint flicker of flames at the very top of the building, a few floors below the roof. The fire was in the machinery room, the point where the gas line had probably ruptured.

He looked at Infantino, who shook his head. “There’s no way to reach that. It’d be murder to climb the steps and even if we got there, with the electricity off, there’s no way of operating the booster pumps so we would have a water supply.”

Barton glanced back at the building and was shocked to see the scenic elevator stalled a little below the middle. It was difficult to tell because of the swirling snow, but it looked like the tracks a few floors beneath the elevator had been torn away from the side of the building. Then he could make out the dark shadow behind the twisted rails and realized that part of the shear wall itself had been blown out.

My God, Jenny….

Behind him he was vaguely aware of Infantino talking to the communications officer in the van. “Call for ambulances; there’ll be casualties coming down. And we’ll need-” He cut off. Fuchs was running across the plaza toward them. Infantino waited until he got there, then Started talking again, as much to Fuchs as to the comm officer.

“We’ll need additional companies-a lot of them-Call the department in Southport and ask for shape charges and Primacord and a man who knows how to use them. Also ask them if they can send a detachment of men with proximity suits.” Barton said automatically: “I know how to use explosives.” ‘ , Infantino didn’t take his eyes off Fuchs, who had remained silent throughout his orders to the communications officer.

“Forget it, you’re not a fireman, Craig.” Then it suddenly occurred to Barton what Infantino was talking about.

“You set off a high-level explosion in there and you could damage the building structurally.”

“What do you think has happened already?” Infantino said curtly.

“There are no longer any chances that aren’t worth taking.” He was still looking steadily at Fuchs- “If you want to countermand my orders, you’ll have to do it now,” he said quietly. Fuchs shook his head and turned to look back at the building. He looked small and old, Barton thought. And beaten.

“Chief?”

A runner had dashed out of the building to report to Infantino.

Barton listened intently. It was worse than he had imagined. The fire was raging on the twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third floors.

There were also reports that the upper machinery floor was on fire.

Infantino silently pointed at the top of the building and the runner turned, stared for a moment, then continued with his report.

“The explosion was on sixteen, sir-a storage room for a paint company.

It blew out part of the inner wall of the utility core and apparently broke the steam line, or caused it to explode in turn.”

“What about the salvage team on that floor?”

The runner licked his lips nervously, glanced quickly at Fuchs, then back to Infantino. “Most of the men are all right, sir, but rookie David Lencho and fireman Mark Fuchs are unaccounted for. We’re trying to get a rescue squad in there now but it’s pretty hot.” His eyes flicked over again at Fuchs, who turned without a word and walked back toward the building.

“Anything else?” The runner shook his head and Infantino said, “Okay, report back to your company.” After the runner had left, Infantino turned to Barton. “The Chief had three sons; Mark’s the only one who followed him into the department.”

“It’s a rough night for all of us,” Barton said quietly.

Infantino looked at the side of the building where the scenic elevator hung suspended halfway down. “Yeah, I guess it is.” He started back toward the Glass House.

“You coming, Craig?”

“Right behind you.” The wind whipped around his trouser bottoms and he was suddenly acutely aware of the cold, not only on his face and hands, but pressing against his back and legs. He began -to shiver uncontrollably as his teeth started to chatter. There were more popping sounds from above, and he and Infantino abruptly broke in a run for the lobby doors. Behind them, falling glass slashed onto the plaza.

At least, Barton thought, most of the tenants had been evacuated and lodged elsewhere for the night, except for those in the downstairs lobby and luncheonette. And those who were still in the Promenade Room or trapped in the scenic elevator. But there was no point in thinking about the latter; there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

Shevelson had found an electric lantern and set it on one end of their table so they could see the blueprints.

Barton walked over and leaned his knuckles on the table, staring blindly at the prints. He felt choked with a sense of futility, a feeling that there ought to be something he could do and the knowledge that there wasn’t.

For a moment the lobby was silent except for -the crackle of messages at the building’s comm center behind them-the occasional thud from the elevator banks as more debris cascaded into the bottom of the utility core.

The calm before the storm, he thought. In another few minutes, they would begin bringing down the injured from the upper floors and relief companies would start showing up.

“Barton?”

. “Yes?”

Shevelson had an unlit cigar in his mouth and Barton noticed there were tears in his eyes.

“Our pretty building’s a goddamned mess, isn’t she?”