Through the Fire Read online

  Advance Praise for Through the Fire

  “A sizzling debut novel from a writer who really has the goods. Shawn Grady is an author to watch.”

  —JAMES SCOTT BELL

  bestselling author of Deceived

  “With equal parts drama, suspense, and poetic prose, Shawn Grady weaves a captivating story. The characters are complex and interesting and the story world is so well drawn, I feel as though I've experienced the life of a firefighter. Excellent read!”

  —KATHRYN CUSHMAN

  author of Waiting for Daybreak

  “Shawn Grady is the real deal—a real-life fireman who can take you into the inferno, scare the living daylights out of you, and drag you back out reeking of smoke and gasping for air. Through the Fire is the best fire-fighting novel I've ever read, and there's enough mystery and suspense to keep you scorching through the pages.”

  —RANDY INGERMANSON

  Christy Award–winning

  author of Oxygen

  “With an expert hand, Shawn Grady delivers a haunting story filled with high-action suspense, intriguing insider details, and characters to cheer for as they navigate deep waters and fiery depths.”

  —AMY WALLACE

  author of Enduring Justice

  THROUGH

  THE

  FIRE

  SHAWN GRADY

  Through the Fire

  Copyright © 2009

  Shawn Peter Grady

  Cover design by Lookout Design, Inc.

  Art direction by Paul Higdon

  Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  Printed in the United States of America

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Grady, Shawn.

  Through the fire / Shawn Grady.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-7642-0595-8 (pbk.)

  1. Fire fighters—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3607.R3285T47 2009

  813'.6—dc22

  2009007607

  * * *

  For

  My bride, Sarah Beth

  The true binding of this book

  Midway in the journey of our life

  I found myself in a dark wood,

  for the straight way was lost.

  —DANTE ALIGHIERI

  The Divine Comedy, Inferno

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND THANKS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER

  1

  Even smoke runs from the fire.

  But I find myself compelled to enter hell’s havoc and the swirling chasm, to take for my own the taming of the element, screwing my courage to the sticking place. When blackness billows heaven-bent from hallways, and flame tips lick lintels like a serpent’s tongue, the Sirens stand singing. Mast ties won’t hold fast.

  Enter the cloud.

  Enveloped by heat.

  Vanquish the destroyer.

  I come from a family of firemen. And borne into my blood was a gift. It arrives at times in whispers, other times more subtle. But beyond the beckon of skeptical sensibilities I’ve become convinced.

  The fire speaks to me.

  I know where it is going. I know what it will do. Some call it heightened intuition. Others credit Irish luck. But I know that it’s more.

  And it was this very thing, this brash self-confidence, that propelled me down a fateful course one thirty-first of October.

  Captain Butcher slammed his palm on the clipboard sliding off the dash. He cursed. “We ain’t doing nobody no good if we don’t get there alive, Aidan.”

  I winked at him, tightening and relaxing my grip on the steering wheel. His silver-laced moustache rowed back and forth like a set of oars. Our normal driver had taken the day off, so lucky for Butcher, I stepped up as acting operator.

  I hung a hard right and the clipboard fell again. This time he missed. He grabbed the side of his door and slung my name with a slew of expletives.

  I couldn’t help but grin. “Nice alliteration, Cap.”

  “Nice what? Watch out. Slow down.”

  We threaded through the glowing Reno arch, under its mainstay mantra, The Biggest Little City in the World. South Virginia Street stretched out before our blaring Pierce Quantum pumper. I laid on the air horn through intersections and wound the grinder into a high wail. The burgundy hues of the autumn sunset filtered through the foothills, bathing building sides with amber tones and glinting windows.

  A pillar of black cloud rose from the south.

  Deep into District Three. We’d be third engine in, coming from downtown. I hated being anything but first in. But third was better than second. At least we wouldn’t be stuck hooking up water supply.

  Static crackled from the radio, “All units, be advised, we have reports of occupants trapped.”

  I pushed the pedal to the floor. The rig surged like an elephant charging. Cars and businesses passed as blurs. The guys in the back strapped on their packs, cranking open the air valves to the beep-beep-beep acknowledgment of the built-in motion sensors. Butcher flipped through the map book.

  Another transmission, “Battalion Two, Engine Three on scene, large footprint concrete tilt-up, retail building, heavy smoke showing from the roof. We’ll be in live-line operations.”

  It was McKinley. I heard the strain in his voice. Not high-pitched or excited, but almost muted. Like he was trying really hard not to sound high-pitched or excited. He had been a good fireman, an excellent operator, and now that he had promoted to captain, I knew he’d prove the same.

  Butcher directed me down a side street so we’d be out of the way of Engine Five laying their hose from the hydrant.

  I pulled us up near the ladder truck. The aerial elevated
and rotated toward the roof. The Engine Three crew flaked out their hose line to the front doors. A small sea of disquieted faces gathered in the parking lot, shopping bags in hand, children clinging to shoulders.

  I set the brake and hopped out of the rig. The tang of burning wood pierced the air. Fire crackled, spitting and popping. I strapped on my air pack.

  Butcher came up to me. “Word is, a mother and her son are trapped in the back. They were last seen by the dressing rooms. Smoke’s banked down to the floor.”

  There was no way they could breathe in that. I grabbed my flathead axe and started with him toward the front doors.

  “Truck Three is committed to topside,” he said. “Battalion Two assigned us and Rescue One with search, but I need to coordinate with him and Captain McKinley. We’ll split into two teams. Timothy Clark with me. You take the new kid and head on in.”

  “Got it.”

  “And Aidan . . .” He stopped walking.

  “What?”

  “I’m trusting you with our probie.” He held my gaze for a second longer, then turned and strode over to the battalion chief’s rig.

  Probie firefighter Matt Hartman’s eyes circled wide like china saucers. He pulled on his air mask and tightened his gleaming yellow helmet. This was his third shift.

  We advanced to the door. “Ready, bud?”

  Fog filled his facepiece. “Yeah,” he said with a muffled voice.

  “Lightweight truss,” I said. “Looks like it’s running the rafters hard. Be heads-up.”

  At the entry I strapped on my mask, the smell of rubber meeting my nostrils as I seated the nose cone. Thick gray smoke hovered in the doorway, greeting us like a silent apparition. A chainsaw started in the parking lot.

  I clicked on my voice amplifier and pulled rope out of the small bag on my air pack. I carabinered it to a door handle. “We follow this to get out. Keep a hand on my shoulder.”

  Hartman nodded.

  We crouched and entered the maw. Sounds of the outside faded, and warmth pressed in around my hood. Our flashlights penetrated only two feet in front of us. The sound of hose streams hitting walls rumbled to our distant right. A dull roar like a freeway overpass reverberated above, interspersed with metallic groans. My hands found the smooth tile of a walkway alongside a carpeted section. I trailed a glove and pushed us on toward the back of the store.

  Bump. Bump. Bump.

  The ladder truck company made the roof, sounding out each step with a tool. I reached out with all my senses.

  I listened beyond.

  Searching.

  There you are.

  Rolling like a tumbleweed, tearing through the trusses . . . south . . . southeast.

  I stopped.

  “What is it?” Hartman said.

  I looked behind us. Orange flickers danced through the smoke. “We don’t have much time.”

  We moved on until I felt the rope bag tug on my waist belt. I unclipped it and dropped it on the pathway. “Matt, connect your tag line to mine.”

  “What tag line?”

  “The red bag on your air pack.”

  He twisted like he was doing the hula hoop. “I don’t have one.”

  We were a hundred feet in, and out of rope to follow back.

  The smoke swirled around us. If we ran out of air we’d suffocate. We ran the risk of getting lost in an everyday retail mart, our final breaths taken beside the baby toys and discount-movie bins.

  This is how firemen die.

  I looked at the rope bag, then ahead into the graphite abyss. Somewhere in that lay a woman and a child.

  “All right,” I said. “Stick close. Let’s go.”

  Rumbles and groans crescendoed. I quickened the pace, tapping my glove to feel the tile every dozen steps. The temperature elevated.

  Two white lights swung through the haze. A pair of firefighters materialized in front of us, a woman’s limp body clutched between them.

  “You guys Rescue One?”

  The firefighter at the head moved backward, struggling.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’s the kid?”

  “What kid?”

  I followed alongside. “We heard there was a mother and a child.”

  “We . . . searched the whole . . . back there. Nobody else.”

  I stopped. “No, we heard there was a kid—”

  In my mind I saw a vision of a sudden bright flame.

  Southeast corner.

  Under the roof, by the wall. By McKinley’s crew.

  I grabbed the radio from my jacket pocket.

  “Engine Three, get—”

  A tangerine flash filled the room.

  I tackled Hartman to the floor. Rescue One scrambled beneath the searing heat, dragging the woman with one hand each. Hartman made his knees and scuttled after them. The store glowed like a volcanic cloud.

  “Matt!” I yelled. “Matt!”

  He turned.

  I motioned toward the rear of the building. “This way.”

  He stared at me and turned toward the front.

  “Matt!”

  He looked back again.

  A transmission burst from my radio. “Battalion Two to all units, evacuate the building. Repeat, all units evacuate the structure. We are going defensive.”

  Fire rolled overhead.

  “Come on, Matt! We can still find the kid.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Matt, come on!”

  He pointed to the front. “They’re calling us out!”

  A thunderous bang hit ground not far from us.

  “Now’s the time,” I said. “Let’s get back there.”

  I turned and crawled toward the back, certain he would follow me.

  I felt the frame of a doorway and swiveled my head to make sure I still had him. But he hadn’t moved. He knelt, frozen with indecision, as though his knees and gloves were affixed to the floor. There I saw in his face, through the clear curvature of his mask and the gold-lit reflections of fire, the simple look of a child, innocent and uncertain.

  And then the roof collapsed.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Sometimes a thousand thoughts fill a second . . .

  Hartman.

  Rescue One.

  The guys on the roof.

  My fiancée. My father. My childhood.

  All encapsulated in a simple pill.

  . . . and then you swallow hard.

  Steel framework swung like a pendulum from the ceiling. Debris dumped between us. I tucked tight up against the doorframe, hiding my hands in my helmet, coated by a thick rolling wave of smoke and ash. A large form hit my lower legs, pinning them. The roar continued with a series of objects hitting the floor in syncopated rhythm, slowing in progression until an aftermath of silence.

  I groaned and tried to move my legs.

  Three long air-horn blasts sounded outside, the emergency evacuation signal. Pallets of heat pressed in like a sauna. Visibility was zero. I fought and wiggled to free myself.

  The wailing cry of a motion sensor pierced the air.

  Hartman.

  Working the handle of my axe between my legs and the debris, I found just enough purchase to create a space so I could slide out. I pulled free and dropped the axe head to the sound of metal and wood clacking.

  “Matt!” My voice dissipated.

  I scampered toward the cycling alarm from Hartman’s air pack. Raucous radio traffic spilled from the speaker in my jacket pocket. Broken transmissions cut short, voices walking on others.

  I felt my way onto a small rubble pile. Plywood. Truss beams. A half-dome light fixture.

  The wailing grew louder.

  “Matt! Matt, can you hear me?”

  My personal light melted into the smoke. I made out fragmented pieces of metal and wood. Then, finally, a glove.

  I grasped it into mine. “Hartman. Matt!”

  He didn’t move. His alarm continued.

  I pulled out my radio. The traffic was incessant
.

  Would everyone just shut up!

  Someone took a breath between sentences. I depressed the transmit button. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. Firefighter down.”

  The radio fell silent.

  I continued. “Command, Engine One Firefighter O’Neill with emergency traffic.”

  Battalion Chief Mauvain came back, “Go ahead, Aidan.”

  “Chief, I have a firefighter down, unconscious and trapped about two hundred feet inside the structure, toward the C side.”

  “Copy that, Aidan. Do you have an ID on the downed firefighter?”

  “Engine One Firefighter Hartman.”

  “Copy. A rescue team is on their way now.”

  I flung from the pile anything I could grasp. I lifted and tossed concrete and metal. Seconds lengthened like oxygen tubing, every moment stealing life from Hartman’s vital organs.

  Minutes passed. Where’s that rescue team?

  Then I remembered.

  We’d left our tag line.

  There was no way for them to know where we were. They were wandering in the dark. They could be twenty feet away and still not see us.

  “Over here!” I said. “Over here!” The room swallowed my words.

  My low air pressure alarm sounded.

  Five minutes left.

  I had to work fast. I pushed and scooped at a frenzied pace. Every piece I removed replaced itself with another. I stood with a sheet of plywood and, while leveraging it, lost my balance, dropping it and falling open handed on a nail. It penetrated my leather glove, piercing my palm with a searing pain. I shouted and ripped a two-by-four block from my hand.

  A distant voice cut through the cloud. “O’Neill, that you?”

  On my knees, clutching my glove, I turned to see four spotlights floating like ships through a fog-blanketed harbor. “Yeah. Hey! Over here.”

  “Hang tight, Aidan.”

  “Hang on, buddy.”

  “Command, rescue team has made patient contact.”

  I waved them over. “Right here, guys, right here.”

  They say many hands make light work. In less than a minute we cleared the remaining rubble off Hartman and shut off his alarm.

  A fine veil of dust coated his facepiece, behind which bowed darkened eyelids and parted lips. I opened the bypass valve on his regulator, flooding his mask with positive pressure air.