The Glass Inferno

CHAPTER 69

Barton was still struggling into his aluminized proximity suit when the evacuation U.H-1 settled down on the plaza to discharge its passengers. Infantino was already into his suit and impatient for Barton to finish.

“Any more information from the Sikorsky?” Barton asked.

“Just that Burleigh is working at the linkup. By the time we get up there, maybe they’ll have beat us with the elevator. One thing for sure; we can’t blow these charges with people on the roof. Here, let me help you with your respirator.” He stepped behind Barton and adjusted the straps.

“Did you get your men out of the stairwells?”

“The upper floors have been cleared-I don’t think we need to worry about the lower ones.”

“What about the streets below?”

“The police have been given their orders.” He frowned.

“I shouldn’t be letting you go on this one.”

“You have somebody else who knows how to handle explosives-and who knows the building?”

The copilot of the waiting U.H-1 ran up. “Okay, they’re all off but the elevator passengers. You men ready?”

Barton nodded. He recognized the copilot from his weekend reserve work when he had been with the squadron but couldn’t remember his name.

He’d won thirty dollars from him in a poker game one night-that he recalled. But the name was a blank. He gathered up the heavy canvas satchel containing the explosive charges connected by the primacord.

Infantino finished the adjustments on, his own respirator, then picked up the other satchel. Once they were on the Observation Deck, they would have to connect the two explosive arrays together.

They walked clumsily across the plaza toward the waiting U.H-1, its blades cutting cleanly through the snow-thickened air. The copilot helped Infantino and Barton climb inside and then belted into his own seat.

The pilot glanced back briefly at Barton and said, “All comfy, Captain? Here we go.” Barton nodded and the pilot felt for the four antitorque pedals with his feet. Then he checked the position of the collective, a two-foot stick centered in its left-hand panel, and the cyclic stick above him. He nodded at the copilot who was now on radio, and moved the collective. The ‘copter rose and hovered for a second, slowly turning as he corrected the torque.

Then they were airborne, rising quickly into. the black night.

“I can’t set it down too close the the restaurant,” the pilot yelled at them. “They’re loading another U.H-1 up there and that Sikorsky is still overhead-its downdraft would rip us apart.”

“Try the penthouse,” Barton shouted back. “There’re some gardens separating it from the Promenade Room you won’t be able to set down there. You’ll have to use its roof.” He turned to Infantino and said in a musing voice, “That was going to have been the best address in the city. Got any idea what that penthouse would have rented for?”

Infantino didn’t look impressed. “Right now it’s only good for one thing and after that, it won’t be good for much of anything.”

“We’re coming in!” the pilot yelled. The ‘copter slipped sideways toward the glistening rooftop, sailing over a loading U.H-1, and then settling down on the,small snow-covered roof of the penthouse.

Infantino and Barton unbelted and Barton tugged open the door.

They got out quickly and Barton glanced back at The Promenade Room roof in time to see the Sikorsky swing the elevator cage in and slowly lower it toward the roof. Two figures ran over to it and pried the doors open.

People straggled out to clamber on the waiting U.H-1; several of them had to be carried.

Even at a distance he could recognize Leroux. The commanding figure and the white hair, caught for a moment in the spotlights from the rescue craft, were unmistakable. Barton’s heart suddenly leaped with relief.

Behind Leroux was Jenny, and she was looking over at them.

Probably wondering who they were and what they were up to. There was no chance that she would recognize him, dressed as he was in the mirror-bright proximity suit. He started to wave but she and Leroux had already disappeared into the waiting rescue ‘copter. Another U.H-1 was hovering alongside the building to take off the last of the passengers..

Infantino was busy pulling. the satchels out of their own ‘copter.

The last item he took out was an electric lantern, which he flicked on.

“Got everything?” he asked.

“Everything,” Barton said. He reached to put on his respirator, then paused a moment. “Be sure the Primacord fits into its slot under the charge backoff. These charges have to be level on the floor and they need the backoff space to concentrate their punch.”

“Understood,” Infantino said, slipping on his facepiece. He motioned Barton to do the same. Now Barton felt like he was in a world of his own, his breath sighing through the respirator valve. Heavy winds beat across the roof, and for a moment the ‘copter behind them teetered, then righted itself.

“You guys better hurry!” the pilot yelled at them. “We can’t hold here under this wind for very long.” The copilot rolled the door shut and the pilot pulled back into his seat. Suddenly the rotors stopped. That. was stupid, Barton thought. You didn’t kill your engine under these circumstances. Then he heard the high whine of the starter and watched the blades begin to slowly rotate again. The pilot had lost his fire. Well, that was his problem, he’d have to get it started again.

Barton and Infantino picked up their heavy canvas bags and trudged across the penthouse roof. It would be murder to try and climb through the restaurant trapdoor and down the ladder into the kitchen, Barton thought, even if they could make it across the gardens to the icy Promenade Room roof. Not with their bulky suits and satchels of explosives. But inside the penthouse was a staircase that led to the kitchen hallway and from there they could get to the Observation Deck.

They pushed through the door of The rooftop entrance and carefully descended the steps to the penthouse anteroom.

The inside door was locked. Infantino tried it one more time then stepped back and kicked it open with his heavy boot. They stood in the gloom of the penthouse for a second trying to orient themselves. The air was thick with smoke, which explained why the tenants hadn’t sought refuge there. Infantino slowly flashed his lantern around, the light cutting through the smoke to the paneled walls and splashing off the parquet floors. Like the other upper apartment floors of the building, the penthouse was still unfinished and the inside was a confusion of supplies and building materials, with sheets of wallboard and lumber stacked against one of the walls.

Infantino located the stairs with his lantern and started to walk toward them. Suddenly Barton reached out a restraining hand and signaled for quiet. He stood there for a long moment and listened, with his feet as well as with his ears. Beyond the distant shriek of the wind, there was no noise, no sense of the pulsing life that had been the building. Even with the insulation, there should have been the subtle feel of throbbing life in the building below-it was impossible to completely mask the vibrations of powerful machinery, he thought.

But now there was no noise, no vibrations, no feeling of the power and life that had once filled the building.

“What’s the matter?” Infantino asked, his voice sounding muffled from behind his facepiece.

Barton shook his head. “Nothing-let’s get on with it.”

They walked over to the carpeted steps that led down to the kitchen hallway, and then climbed down the smoke-filled stairwell to the Observation Deck. The smoke was blinding them now and Infantino motioned Barton to hug the wall.

It was in the stairwell where they stumbled across the two bodies.

A man and his wife, probably. She had on a heavy fur coat and he had a tablecloth wrapped around his head and shoulders. Barton guessed that they had been two of the tenants on the roof who had changed their minds before the helicopters showed up. They had tried to get back down and died of smoke inhalation on the stairs. He pulled off a glove and knelt down to check for a pulse. Nothing. He looked up at Infantino, who shook his head and pointed at their bags. Barton stood up and they stepped over the bodies and continued down the stairwell.

Once on the Observation Deck the -air was somewhat cooler, though the smoke was just as thick. Barton pulled the canvas bag from his shoulders and Infantino did the same. Barton was the lead man in positioning the charges and he searched for the corner he had chosen from Shevelson’s blueprints. He set the first charge in position and carefully measured out the distance to the second charge.

With these two in place, they needed only to stretch the Primacord taut to position the other charges. Infantino linked into his array and placed his charges on the other side of the central room. Barton checked quickly to make sure all the charges were upright in their positioning sleeves, then taped a length of Primacord from Infantino’s array onto a lead cord from his own. They had three charges left and Barton began to-unreel the remaining Primacord toward the central room. Infantino wedged the door open and once inside, Barton set one of the charges at the base of the Freon tank and the remaining two opposite sides of the water reservoirs.

After he had finished, Barton signaled Infantino and they went back to the Observation Deck proper. Barton taped a detonator cap onto one of the lengths of Primacord and inserted a delay fuse. He took a pair of crimping pliers from the canvas satchel and crimped the soft copper sleeve of the detonator cap onto the fuse. Once the charges were set off, they stood a good chance of collapsing the entire floor; certainly there would be vents for the cascading water and Freon to reach the floor below. And with any luck at all, the fire floors might pancake one onto the other.

For a moment Barton couldn’t find the butane lighter in the bottom of the canvas bag and searched frantically through it, then located it in a partially ripped seam of the satchel. He thumbed it and played the flame over the fuse until it started to sputter and then roared into life.

He and Infantino ran to the stairwell and seconds later were in the penthouse and racing for the ladder to the penthouse roof.

Outside a U.H-1 was waiting for them, the copilot standing by the open door. Above, the slowly revolving blades quivered in the heavy wind and the ‘copter rocked slightly. Barton fumbled at his facepiece and hastily climbed in. “We’ve got about fifty seconds-let’s get moving!”

Infantino followed him in and they belted down.

The pilot grabbed at the collective stick and increased power.

There was a heavy sputtering and then silence as the ‘copter blades wound down. “Must’ve got water in the ignition,” the pilot grunted.

He keyed the starter motor. It coughed and the blades twisted once more.

“We’ve got thirty seconds before all hell breaks loose!” Barton said tensely.

“I’m doing my damnedest, Captain.” The slight film of sweat on the pilot’s face glistened in the light from the instrument panel. He tried again and Barton sighed with relief as the motor caught and the blades began their accelerating dance around the rotor. The ‘copter shook itself in the wind, rose several feet and rotated slowly.

Then a gust of air caught it and it rose faster. The cabin rotated and stabilized as the pilot worked the antitorque pedals.

They were five hundred yards away from the Glass House now, heading east.

Barton glanced back. At that moment the shape charges and their connecting lines of Primacord detonated simultaneously. The Observation Deck filled with fire and boiling smoke. The windows around the side of the deck abruptly flew out in jagged shards that sailed over the streets below. The roof bowed slightly upward from the pressure wave and then sank in the middle along the line that bordered the garden area. Sheets of aluminum curtainwall puffed outward, split and peeled away from the steel frame.

Inside the building, the concrete floor of the Observation Deck rumbled and cracked away from its supporting beams. Huge sections of it fell to the machinery room below. Clouds of steam and half-vaporized Freon blew out through the window holes under the pistonlike pressure of the falling floor sections. The fires on the machinery floor puffed out instantly. The weight of the falling masses of concrete and the sudden deluge of thousands of gallons of water in Turn shattered portions of the machinery-room floor, which caved in toward the center.

The water and the Freon plunged down the slope to the flaming apartment floor below, smothering the fires and then flowing down the stairwells and the elevator shafts.

It was over in fifteen seconds. In the ‘copter Infantino and Barton had watched the disaster in silence. Barton suddenly felt sick.

The building looked as if a giant claw had raked across it, tearing at its skin and muscle and digging deep into its vital organs.

It had been his baby, Barton thought. He had conceived it and seen it delivered from his drawing board into the hands of Leroux, who had served as midwife.

And now he had just helped to murder it.