It’s a whole different thing when you do it for real.
Normally, you never enter a structure without a hose line, both as a source of water to hold back the flames and as a lifeline back to the place where you entered. You stay on the hose—always, always—or risk getting lost in an unfamiliar space. You feel the couplings to know which way is out.
But we didn’t have a hose. The hose had gone around back with the pumper.
Here’s some irony: We’d ordered new radios, but they hadn’t come yet. Even good radios were hard to work in tough conditions, but the static on the captain’s line had been unacceptable. I read once that most firefighter deaths came back to communication problems, and that didn’t surprise me at all.
Did I think what we were doing right now could lead to firefighter deaths?
Yes.
But we’d just have to work like hell and hope for the best.
And find the boy, if we could.
Inside, we worked our way around magazine stands and lines of carts.I kept one glove on the guide line at all times, and alternated the other between feeling around the space and keeping contact with DeStasio’s boot up ahead. The rookie was behind me, doing the same.
I worried about our air supply.
We’d been in five minutes. The smoke was thick. Somewhere, a window blew out, but the smoke didn’t thin.
We kept crawling. I could only see filtered light down low and blackness up top.
Soon, I could see flames rolling across the ceiling.
It was going to be time to get out soon. I’d been in bigger fires than this, and hotter fires than this, but I’d never been so ill equipped. I remembered an old-timer back in Austin telling me when I was a rookie, “It’s an emergency until you get there. Then it’s just work.”
Somehow, this felt like an emergency.
Sixty more seconds,I thought,and then we’re out of here.
That’s when I heard Owen’s voice over my radio. Laughing. Actually, more likegiggling.
“What’s funny, rookie?” I asked.
But no answer. Only more laughter. Why was he on the radio?
I turned back to reach for him, but he wasn’t there.
“Rookie?” I said. “Rookie, are you on the guide line?”
“I think I see a bunny rabbit,” Owen said, through the radio. Or—that’s what it sounded like.
“What is he babbling about?” DeStasio shouted, still moving forward.
More laughing through the radio.
There was no reason—at all—for the rookie to be laughing. Firefighters do plenty of laughing, but never, ever when they’re working a fire. “It could be cyanide poisoning,” I said. I’d learned all about it when I applied for the antidote kit. “It makes you kind of drunk at first before the real symptoms kick in.”
In theory, Owen had been breathing the air from his canister. But we’d moved fast getting in here. His breathing apparatus could have been ill fitting. Or leaking. Or knocked loose without his realizing it.
“Rookie, where are you?” I couldn’t see him. I beamed my flashlight behind me. But he wasn’t there.
I felt a sting of panic in my chest. “DeStasio, stop! The rookie’s off the guide line!”
DeStasio stopped.
I panned my flashlight around. Nothing but smoke. “Rookie, where are you?” I said into my radio. “What can you see?”
