Chapter 1
Becca heard the explosion but couldn’t see it. She was still more than five blocks from the scene and there were too many other buildings in the way. But she could see the smoke. Even against the night sky she could see it. Lots of it. Black. Thick. It was as if somewhere behind the buildings blocking her view, a volcano was belching out its fury just prior to erupting.
“Christ,” she muttered. Her instincts told her she was about to arrive at a shitstorm. Like, a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of shitstorm. After all, if she could hear an explosion from this far away—even with her sirens blaring—things were bad. Really bad.
She pressed harder on the accelerator, pushing her department-issued fly car up to sixty miles an hour on this road whose speed limit was only forty-five. Fortunately, because it was night and the neighborhood was more white-collar commercial than residential, traffic wasn’t heavy. Also fortunately, the few other vehicles on the street were heeding her car’s sirens and lights and getting the hell out of the way.
She spotted the police cordon two blocks ahead. A couple of police cruisers were partially blocking the road. Along with two blue police barriers, they were preventing lookie-loos from getting any closer to the scene. As Becca sped closer, uniformed officers quickly removed the barriers and waved her command car through.
After expertly making two screeching corner turns, Becca finally arrived at the scene.
She came to a tire-squealing halt next to two Type 1 fire engines, hoses snaking from both of them. There were several other trucks stationed nearby and what seemed like scores of firefighters and other emergency personnel scrambling around. It looked like chaos but Becca knew better. Everything was where it should be and everyone was doing what they needed to be doing. Good thing too, because this was not a fire. It was an inferno.
Somehow an office tower on the outer edge of Carlsbad, near the 78 highway, had caught fire. On various levels of the glass building, enormous orange-red flames were shooting out of windows and reaching upwards. In other sections, it was nothing but smoke escaping from the interior—that thick black smoke she had noticed on her drive here.
Overhead she could see choppers. One was from Oceanside/Carlsbad Rescue, the other was from the local news.
Grabbing her white battalion chief’s helmet and her respirator mask from the car’s passenger seat, Becca got out. She was already dressed in her turnout gear, complete with steel-toed boots. She had known before she left the station that she wasn’t going to be on the sidelines for this one.
Captain Herc was by her side almost instantly, having been alerted that she was about to arrive.
As tall as Becca at six feet, he already smelled like smoke and his face was covered with sooty smudges.
“What do we got, Cappy?” Becca asked as they walked towards the burning structure.
“Fifteen story building, Chief,” he said. “Fire started on the eleventh floor. This is a bad one. The smoke is so thick we can barely see two feet in front of us. I’ve set up a rallying point on five.”
“What was that explosion I heard driving here?”
“Probably a gas line.”
“Shit,” Becca muttered. If they had to contend with gas and flames…
Cappy stepped in front of her and stopped. They were in the parking lot of the burning building, about twenty yards from the main entrance.
“It gets worse,” he said. “There are people in there.”
Becca blinked. People in this context meant civilians. He was right; that was worse.
“Fuck me,” she muttered.
Cappy explained. Turns out, the company which owns the building was having some kind of celebration tonight. All of their employees and their families were invited.
“The party is up on the top floor,” he added.
“How many?” Becca asked.
“A hundred, a hundred-ten.”
“Why the hell haven’t they gotten out?” Becca demanded.
Cappy shook his head.
“By the time the nine-one-one call came in, the fire was already running wild,” he said. “The east staircase was destroyed by that explosion,” he told her. “That’s the one closest to them. There’s another staircase, to the north, but fire is blocking the way to it.”
Fuck!
“It’s gotten up to fifteen already?” she pressed, her mind doing some situational strategizing.
“It’s up to fifteen and down to seven, Chief,” Cappy informed her.
Becca sighed. This meant half the goddamn building was on fire!
“Let’s go,” she said, heading towards the entrance. “We’ll set up forward command on five. What do we have working to move around with?”
“Service elevators in the back, Chief,” Cappy said. “Right this way.”
***
On five, Becca took charge immediately. She told Cappy to ring in a third alarm and then set about organizing all the firefighting personnel from the different fire companies that were on the scene. In less than twenty minutes her people had necessary equipment like air tanks, extra PPE and tools like axes and fire hooks brought up here. She had also gotten reports from the various crews spread throughout the building fighting the fire.
One of her fellow battalion chiefs, Putnam, who was up on the eleventh floor with his crew radioed in.
“Eleven to forward command! Over!”
Cappy responded.
“Forward command, go ahead eleven.”
Becca stepped closer.
“It’s getting past us!” Putnam said, the urgency in his voice obvious. “We need more men! Over!”
The use of the gender-specific pronoun didn’t faze Becca at all. She knew that there were several women, including herself, at this scene and she also knew Putnam didn’t mean anything by it. The fact is, in this country, the vast majority of firefighters were still men. Becca doubted that common usage of a gender-neutral noun such as “personnel” would ever happen at the scene of an emergency—at least not during her career. Besides, when facing down a fire, the last thing a firefighter needs to worry about is being PC.
Just then, a fresh crew of firefighters arrived up on the fifth floor. They were all geared up, complete with air tanks. Becca made her decision.
Turning to Cappy, she said, “Tell eleven we’re on our way.” She started walking towards the new crew. But she then called back over her shoulder, “And then tell the police to move their barricades at least five blocks further back!”