The Storm

CHAPTER 28

GAMAY FOUND A STATE OF CHAOS IN THE CONTROL ROOM. Two of Marchetti’s men were working the computers with all due haste, trying to bring the robots or the firefighting system back online.

The chief, a short but burly Greek man, was monitoring the fire. In the background Gamay could hear the radio conversations between the two firefighting teams. It didn’t sound like they were winning.

“How bad is it?” she asked, thinking it hadn’t seemed quite as overwhelming down below.

“It’s grown quickly,” the chief said. “The whole engine room is burning. Fuel leak of some kind. Has to be.”

“Is it spreading?” Gamay asked, fearful that Paul would end up trapped.

“Not yet,” the chief said.

As Gamay tried not to focus on the words Not yet, Leilani came in looking scared and bewildered.

“What’s happening?”

“Engine room fire,” Gamay said. “One of the crew is trapped inside. And the automatic systems are down.”

Leilani sat down and began to shake. It seemed like she might break down, but Gamay couldn’t worry about that right now.

“What if it does spread?” Gamay asked. “My husband and Marchetti and your other men will be cut off.”

“Not if they contain it first,” the chief said. “They have to beat it back.”

“You need more men down there.” The words came from Leilani.

Gamay and the chief looked over.

“If the robots aren’t working, you need to send more men,” she repeated.

“She’s right,” Gamay realized, surprised by her suddenly strong stand.

“We’re trying to get the robots back online,” the chief insisted.

“Forget the damn robots,” Gamay said. “Four men can’t fight this fire.”

“We have only twenty crewmen on board,” the chief said.

That had always seemed like a mistake to Gamay, suddenly she saw why. “Anyone trained to fight fires should be down there,” she urged, “or Paul and the others should pull back.”

The chief looked over at the two men working on the computers. “Anything?”

They shook their heads. “It’s a looped code. Every time we break through the outer layer, it resets and we have to start over.”

Gamay didn’t know exactly what that meant, but it sounded like there wasn’t much point in continuing.

The chief exhaled. “The robots are down for the count,” he said, admitting the obvious. “Go,” he said to the men at the computer terminals. “I’ll have the others meet you at the engine room.”

The two men at the computer stations headed for the door.

“Thank you,” Gamay said, glad to know backup was headed Paul’s way.

Marchetti’s voice came over the radio: “Any luck, chief?”

“Negative,” the chief said into a microphone. “We’re locked out, sending you help.”

“Understood,” Marchetti said. “We’re going for the override.”

“What does that mean?” Gamay asked.

“They’re going to flood the compartment with Halon,” the chief said. “It’ll suppress the fire and put it out.”

“What’s the drawback?”

“Halon’s toxic. And it requires a closed room to be effective. Once they activate it, the doors will shut and lock automatically. They’ll be trapped in there until the sensors determine that the fire is out and the room temperature has dropped below the reignition point.”

Gamay felt sick. She knew what that meant.

“It shouldn’t be a big problem,” the chief said. “Once the compartment is flooded, the fire should burn out in thirty seconds. The temp in there is two hundred and fifty-five now. By my calculations the cooldown time should take about ten minutes if everything goes according to plan.”

Ten minutes with Paul sitting behind a locked door in a cauldron of heat. She could barely stand the thought. But another thought was worse.

“If everything goes according to plan,” she repeated. “The way things are going, that’s an awfully big assumption. What if the doors don’t shut? Worse yet, what if they don’t open?”

The chief said nothing, but she guessed from his body language that he had already thought of that.

DOWN IN THE ENGINE ROOM, Paul and Marchetti had begun fighting toward the far wall. It seemed to take forever to cross the cavernous space. In one section debris and burning fuel blocked their path. In another, steam was blasting from a broken waterline.

With Marchetti’s crewmen at their backs to keep them from getting cut off, they forged onward one yard at a time, beating the fire back as they went. Eventually they saw a path through.

“Hold the line,” Marchetti said. “Keep the fire back while I run through. I’ll signal you when I get there.”

Paul slid forward and grabbed the nozzle. “Okay, go!”

Marchetti let go, and it took all of Paul’s strength to keep the hose on target. As Marchetti lumbered forward, Paul washed down the flames to the left and then back to the right on a wide-pattern setting, drenching Marchetti purposefully in the process.

He watched as Marchetti made it through the first wave of flame and continued forward only to be suddenly obscured by a sideways blast of fire and smoke. Paul directed the hose into the blast and forced the flames back, but he still couldn’t see through.

“Marchetti?”

He heard nothing.

“Marchetti?!”

The smoke was so thick, Paul could barely see a thing. He was sweating inside the fire suit, and his eyes were stinging badly from the fumes and the salt of his own perspiration. He washed the walkway back and forth with the spray until he saw a dim light through the darkness. It was down low, close to the ground. Marchetti’s beacon.

“Marchetti’s down!” Paul shouted. “I’m going to get him.”

He shut off the nozzle, dropped the hose and ran forward. The crewmen swept in behind him, washing him down as he went.

He made it past the blast furnace of the open flame and reached Marchetti. Marchetti’s hood was blackened, his mask half off. It looked like he’d run smack into a protruding beam. Paul pressed the mask back onto Marchetti’s face and Marchetti coughed and came around.

“Help me up,” he said.

An explosion shook the engine room, and debris rained down on them from above. Paul lifted Marchetti to his feet, but he immediately stumbled back down to his knees. He put a hand out.

“No balance,” he said.

Paul heaved him up and kept him vertical. They trudged forward like two men in a three-legged potato-sack race. They reached the wall. The manual override beckoned.

“We’ve made it,” Paul shouted into the microphone. “Get out. We’re going to trigger the Halon.”

Paul reached for the handle, flipped the safety aside and put his hand on the override. He waited what seemed like forever. Another explosion rocked the engine room.

“We’re clear of the bulkhead,” one of the crewmen finally reported.

“Now,” Marchetti said.

Paul yanked the handle down hard.

From eighty points around the room Halon 1301 blasted into the compartment at an incredible rate, hissing from the nozzles and flowing in from every direction. It quickly filled the room, smothering the fire. In places the flames jumped and flickered and seemed to cower in a desperate quest for survival. And then, as if by magic, they went out all at once.

Stunning silence followed.

It seemed unearthly to Paul. The raging flames, the explosions, the buffeting currents brought on as the fire sucked air in and expelled heat, all were gone. Only the thick smoke lingered, accompanied by the continued hissing from the Halon nozzles, the sound of dripping water and the creak and groan of superheated metal.

The absence of flame seemed almost too good to be true, and neither Paul nor Marchetti moved a muscle as if doing so might break the spell. Finally Marchetti turned toward Paul. A smile crept over his face, though Paul could barely see it through the smudged, soot-covered face mask.

“Well done, Mr. Trout. Well done.”

Paul smiled too, proud and relieved at the same time.

And then a shrill electronic beeping began, accompanied by the strobe light on the back of Marchetti’s SCBA. Seconds later Paul’s own strobe began flashing and chirping. The two alarms combined into an annoying cacophony.

“What’s happening?” Paul asked.

“Rescue beacons,” Marchetti said.

“Why are they going off now?”

Marchetti looked glum. “Because,” he said, “we’re running out of air.”