The Finder: A Novel (23 page)

Let's get out of the footprint.

Wickham nodded. He shined his light down a long hall filled with pipes. That way.

The roaring increased. The concrete ceiling was cracking.

It's collapsing!

They ran as fast as they could in their heavy, clinking equipment, their flashlight beams bouncing crazily up and down. The horizontal pipes on the ceiling started snapping like sticks, water bursting from
them. A wave of dust hit their backs, then smoke. They pulled on their air masks.

Ray followed Wickham. They turned a corner. It was blocked with concrete.

The header had collapsed. Wickham swore behind his mask.

They stopped. Ray switched on his radio.

Company Ten, Team Alpha, we're trapped down in the service hall running west on the sublevel.

No answer.

Now a wave of dust and debris was blowing steadily at them. Somewhere above them was enormous downward compression.

Wickham said something in the noise . . . pulled him close and yelled in his ear.

Under a T joint.
Reinforced.

Ray nodded. They trained their lights along the ceiling. The dust was so thick that both flashlights were necessary. Ray grabbed Wickham and they held each other close until they found a T joint in the corridor. They squatted under it. Ray turned on his radio. All he could hear from it was roaring. No voices. Just an open mike somewhere.

The ceiling collapsed ten yards away, right where they had been standing, pancaking flat against the floor. Then five yards away the ceiling collapsed and hit the floor with such force that debris spat at them like shrapnel. They lay flat on the floor under the beam.

It's coming!

They could hear the roaring above them, the tremors shaking the floor. Then the floor collapsed beneath them and Ray grabbed for Wickham and they fell together, holding each other, spinning as they dropped through the darkness. Ray landed on something hot that burned away his overalls and T-shirt. The hot thing slid along the muscles of his stomach, instantly charring his flesh. He moaned in shocked agony, as did Wickham, and they fell off the hot thing and tumbled another six feet, Ray landing flat on his back, Wickham facedown on top of him, heavily, crushing him nearly, pinning him, Ray's nostrils filling now with the smell of burning rubber and burning flesh, his belly a flank of torment, the pain of a thousand knives hammered into him.

Atop him Wickham writhed. Oh! No! No!

A hissing sound.

A groan. Panting. Groaning. No. No, please, no.

Wicks . . .

Ray was pinned with his left arm under his back, Wickham on top of him.

Something burning in the darkness, hissing.

Meat burning.

Oh, God, please, please . . . No more, please, God. Mother of God . . . I'm begging! . . . No, no . . . Molly, I'm—I'm sorry . . . oh . . . oh.

Wickham's head lay on Ray's chest, his body jerking. Ray moved his right hand down to Wickham's head, felt for the helmet, the visor, then slipped his hand down the neck, found the shoulder, ran his hand along Wickham's upper arm, and pulled on his arm. Ray squeezed Wickham's hand.

Molly!

I'll tell her, I promise. Don't worry.

He let go of Wickham's hand and tried to feel what was pinning them. His ribs hurt. He worked his gloved hand down over Wickham's back until he came to the metal pipe that had crushed Wickham's backbone. It was so hot it seared through Ray's insulated glove just at the touch, and he yanked away his hand even as his fingertips began to burn. He worked his hand back to his torso and found the flashlight jammed beneath him. Then he switched it on, only to see a cement girder four inches from his face. By crooking his neck he could see the top of Wickham's helmet, his shoulder, and beyond that, the pipe, which wasn't a pipe at all but a heavy-duty electrical cable that had fried off its insulation and was still burning downward into Wickham's back, cooking the bone and flesh as it sank through him.

Every movement an agony, back, ribs, stomach, Ray brought his hand to Wickham's. He squeezed it again.

No response.

Oh, Wicks. What will I tell Molly?

He realized his goggles were dusted over. He brushed them off. He found the flashlight again and lifted his head just enough to see that he
and Wickham were trapped between two giant cracked slabs of concrete sandwiched atop one another. Sweeping the beam back and forth, he saw an immense horizontal landscape of debris: what looked like part of a car, electrical wiring and panels, popped and flattened drums of unknown content, dripping water pipes, all compressed within the irregular two-foot gap between the slabs. Anything higher than two feet had been crushed to that depth, a depth that, when you thought about it, would just about accommodate the thickness of one man lying atop another.

He found his radio using the flashlight and turned it on.

Company Ten, Team Alpha.

No response. He switched it off. What is left of my stomach? he wondered. He closed his eyes. A tightness in his lungs. Ribs hurting. The air was bad, filled with dust. He wiggled his right foot, then his left. He couldn't feel his left arm pinned behind his back, though the pain in his left shoulder told him the joint was being stretched beyond capacity. The pressure of Wickham . . . he couldn't get a deep breath. He felt himself get cold, the onset of shock. He might have internal organ damage that he couldn't feel yet.

Had he passed out?

It seemed so. He felt wetness between his legs. He had urinated while he was unconscious.

Wickham was soft now on top of him. Ray felt down toward the hot cable, touched it with his glove. It had cooled.

He tried to wriggle out from beneath Wickham, but it was no good. The space was too tight. He wasn't quite getting enough air. He could not fully expand his chest; he wasn't getting full use of his lungs. If the rubble above them settled another inch, Wickham would crush him to death. His flesh would split. Well, maybe that was already happening. He felt a claustrophic anger toward Wickham now, a fury to survive. The other problem was that the circulation in his left arm was impeded; eventually this would cause swelling and even tissue death.

He had to assume that part of the tower had collapsed from the plane hitting it, which was surprising; the building was engineered to take a direct hit. The squad had gotten there right away, helped the
thousands streaming down the fire stairs dazed and panicked. The women who had taken off their pumps and were walking through glass. Then the bodies had started to land on the street.

That seemed like a long time ago now.

It would be many hours, perhaps days before they dug him out, if they ever did so.

He realized that he was dehydrated. There was a water bottle in the pocket of his bunker coat, but it was trapped beneath him. Another reason he had to get out from beneath Wickham. He worked his left arm free then hugged Wickham upward, like a man lifting a sagging dance partner, and after many minutes of effort, dragging the weight inch by inch against the resistance of the cement beam above, he was able to shift the heavy, nearly severed torso to the side, where there was enough room to slide it wetly a few feet away. The flashlight showed Wickham's open eyes, their surface already glazed dull by dust.

He felt the pressure against his chest and burnt stomach release. A tremendous difference.

He could actually breathe now. He panted with his eyes shut. His ribs hurt. His head pounded as the blood came back to it. Now perhaps he could work his legs out. He pulled on his legs one at a time, bending his knees upward to see if they worked. They were fine, right? No, one leg hurt. In fact, a lot of him hurt, he realized, especially where the front of his stomach was burnt away.

The pain rode up and down and through him and he had to tell himself not to give in to it, but he did nonetheless, feeling himself falling toward unconsciousness. He needed water badly, he realized. Water would save him, if he was to be saved. He awkwardly pulled up Wickham's bunker coat and found the water bottle there, a full liter. He drank half of it. He felt around in the pocket some more and found two packets of peanut butter crackers. That was Wickham, always ready. He ate the crackers slowly and washed them down with the rest of the water.

Then he examined his burn, holding the flashlight above him. The flesh was seared down to and into the muscle and wept blood and lymphatic fluid that itself had mixed with the fluids of Wickham and the
dust that covered everything. I don't know what to do about this, Ray thought. He found his own water bottle and considered washing out the wound. But he might need that water, he realized. He could clean the wound and find it still became infected. In burn victims, he knew, survival was based on the total percentage of skin area affected. His burn was deep but not wide. He decided to save the water.

Now he turned on the radio.

Company Ten, Company Ten, go ahead.

No answer.

Had there been a complete loss of radio transmission?

It appeared so.

He wondered if he could hear voices above him, faint sirens, something. Maybe not.

He glimpsed at Wickham. If Ray had been on top, he'd be the one dead now. It was that simple. Because he landed below Wicks, he'd survived.

Lucky, thought Ray. I can't be luckier than that.

The limp fireman recovered from the rubble sixteen hours later was rushed by police escort to St. Vincent's Hospital, intravenous saline lines inserted in both wrists and both ankles. His nasal passages and esophagus were plugged with cement dust. His heart was beating weakly once every two seconds. In addition to his severe third-degree burn and the sepsis that had quickly set in, he was found to have a collapsed lung, fractures of the tibia, nine ribs, one vertebra, and a finger on the left hand, cartilage damage to the left shoulder, and a ruptured spleen. When he awoke two days later, his mother and father were seated next to him. The president was going to attack Afghanistan, they told him, the war against terrorism had begun.

An hour later the deputy fire commissioner for legal affairs appeared in his room and shut the door. The short fat man with white hair pulled up a chair close to Ray's head. We need to have a little talk, Firefighter Grant. I apologize to you for pressing this matter upon you only hours after you have regained consciousness. But it's an impor
tant matter that we need to get straight. Ray nodded vaguely, not knowing what else to do. We see no reason why his wife, Molly, needs to know how much Firefighter Wickham suffered. She saw most of the body. That was difficult enough. We had our own people work on him before the funeral home came. She was told he was killed before he was burned so badly. We had to tell her something. But we don't want anyone knowing the particulars. This department lost more than three hundred men, Firefighter Grant. We will be finding bodies for weeks to come. I am ordering you as a fireman in the brotherhood of firemen and I am asking you as a man of honor that you never discuss Firefighter Wickham's suffering and injuries. The men who found you and Wickham are all sworn to secrecy on this matter. You do not need to fear that others will speak of it. And if they somehow do, the fire department will never comment on it except to say that Wickham was killed in the heroic line of duty. No one needs to know he was nearly burned in half by a hot cable. It would hurt individuals and it would hurt the morale of this department in a time of great suffering. In addition to your injuries and trauma, this will be an extra burden to you. I recognize that, the department recognizes that. Furthermore I ask that you never tell your father, not because he is your father and from what I understand a very honorable man but because he is a policeman, and you know of the very difficult relationship between the two departments in this city. You should also know there was one newspaper reporter who was nearby when Firefighter Wickham's body was recovered and had a question, but we had a little talk with him. I expect that this information will perish with you. That you will never tell anyone, ever. Especially the news media. Are we agreed about this, Firefighter Grant?

Yes.

Firefighter Wickham's suffering was a sacred sacrifice that must not be polluted or cheapened by public discussion of it. Are we clear about this?

Yes.

You're sure. Including your father?

Yes.

They shook hands.

He stayed in the hospital six weeks and was unable to attend Wick-ham's funeral, the flag-draped casket carried on the back of a pumper truck, as was the tradition, followed by row upon row of his brothers in their dress blue uniforms.

Had he been in the chair all night? He opened his eyes, felt stiff in the chair. Did I wake up before? wondered Ray. I thought I woke up. His head felt light. He needed coffee, sugar, something.

"Did you enjoy your trip?" asked Gloria, about to go off duty.

"My trip?"

"Your little drug trip."

He shook his head, blinked. "You knew?"

"Of course."

"But said nothing?"

She was waking his father, breakfast ready on a tray. "Nothing to say, once the juice was in your arm, except that if you do it again, I'm going to report you."