"We got some keys, but for some reason they don't work. This also means any civilians coming down are in serious trouble unless they can hold their breath for seventy-odd stories; they won't be able to rest up on a clean floor. Hasta la vista, amigos."

After the group left, Oscar began to wonder why he felt so smug. A typical house fire drew temperatures around twelve hundred degrees. This would be a lot hotter. Cold-drawn steel, such as that used in the elevator cables in this building, failed at eight hundred degrees. The building was constructed around a steel core, and the heat would eventually deform that at around two thousand degrees. More than one of these boys probably weren't coming back. Still, he felt smug.

Oscar couldn't even imagine the commissions they were going to convene trying to explain tonight. Not that he had to worry about it. When this was finished, there would be no evidence and no witnesses. The others would be long gone and he would be in Costa Rica reading about it four days late in the Wall Street Journal. Wall Street Journal.

The question was, did he feel anything over the fact that he had planned and was in the process of murdering some two hundred souls, including one Patterson Cole, who'd paid for the whole thing? It was hard to tell. Oscar's primary concern right now was whether they would actually get the money. A million five in his pocket would go a long way toward a.s.suaging his guilt. There was so much testosterone and adrenaline in the air, Oscar didn't really know how he felt. Besides, there was no stopping it now. They'd done it, and they would have to live with it.

65. GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS.

Stillman had just sent another group upstairs, this with two women firefighters in it, their round faces reminding him for some reason of a pair of semi-pro women softball players he'd once met in a bar in Portland. He turned back to the wall just as G. A. Montgomery stepped out of the confusion, G. A.'s face dripping with perspiration, his nose and cheeks red.

"Everything moving along according to plan?" G. A. asked.

Oscar glanced around to see if anybody had noticed them. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand we've been getting cell phone calls from upstairs, from Patterson. You got the cash?"

"Jerry started it early. Stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"I wondered what happened. I got your call that everything was starting, and I just went ahead and did what I was supposed to. I guess the others did their share 'cause the city's in a tizzy. But what about the money? You got it?"

"You know I do."

"Where?"

"Don't get your nose out of joint. It's close. Right now I need to know how things are going."

"There's three firefighters trapped in the mid-fifties. Everybody else is below the lower fire. On sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen."

"And they're sending people to get above it?"

"They tried. The stairwell's too hot. You get up around twenty, it's hotter than a hooker on payday. It gets worse as you go up. A lot worse."

"What about elevators?"

"With the exception of one we left for ourselves, they're all disabled."

"How many more hours do you estimate this will take?"

"Not long. Our highest fire has been burning over an hour with no water on it. h.e.l.l, by now every floor between fifty-four and the roof has to be full of smoke."

"n.o.body's going to believe this is an accident," G. A. said. "The papers will be full of speculation. It will go on for years."

"All the same, it couldn't have gone better." Oscar tried to smile, feeling his lips and cheeks stiff with the trying. G. A. always had been a worrier, ever since the night he'd recruited Oscar into this little group. G. A. had received the initial offer from Patterson Cole's man, Norris Radford. Together they'd approached Jerry Monahan. Monahan had in turn suggested Marion Balitnikoff, and Balitnikoff brought in the Lazenbys. He couldn't remember how Tony Finney got into it. One or more of them might have backed out, except that Norris Radford had been FedExing Oscar bundles of cash so that they'd been paid nearly $50,000 each for their practice runs, $10,000 a week to prepare for tonight. And that didn't take into account the cost of the engine they'd had built to ensure they were the first firefighters responding to the Columbia Tower. Good thing, because tonight the real Engine 10 was in Ballard fighting a ship fire.

"Know where everybody is?" G. A. asked.

"I think so."

"Good. Round them up. I need to see the whole team. Now."

66. IT'S TOO d.a.m.n HOT On floor fifteen Finney took stock of their situation. They were one floor below staging. They'd climbed seven stories on the aerial and then scurried up the remaining floors at a pace he knew they couldn't maintain. Kub, who could move like lightning for a hundred meters on the flat, was having trouble keeping up. Finney wondered whether any of them could make it another sixty stories. His thighs were trembling from the load. Diana looked ashen.

He wanted to stop and strip off some of the nonessential equipment, maybe remove the liners from his bunkers, wear only the light Nomex sh.e.l.l without the vapor barriers that kept in all the body heat, but if they did that and got caught by fire, they'd be as bad off as the civilians. They certainly couldn't jettison the spare bottles. And if they didn't take the rope bags and hardware, they might as well not make the trip.

It would get easier by seventeen pounds, he knew, after they emptied their first bottles and off-loaded the empties.

Floor fifteen was clear enough that all three had taken off their facepieces and were gulping building air. When Kub sat against the wall, Finney noticed the nose cone of his facepiece was half full of sweat, the fluorescent lights glaring off the tiny moving puddle like a mirror. Kub had unsnapped his coat, and his T-shirt was sopping. Diana took her coat off and then her T-shirt, dropping the shirt, which slapped the floor like a wet dishcloth. She was left with a damp sports bra and bunking pants.

Diana scouted out a watercooler and began tossing down water from a small paper cup. "If we don't drink," she said, "we're going to get dehydrated, and that's going to cause us to start making bad decisions."

"h.e.l.l," Kub said, struggling to his feet. "We already made one bad decision. We're here, aren't we?"

Diana's smile was weak.

Finney said, "This next is going to be the tricky part. We not only have to get past stairwell division, but we have to get past the fire."

"It's already way hot," Diana said, pulling her facepiece back on and opening the valve on her regulator.

As he began breathing bottled air again, Finney laughed at their audacity. The three of them didn't stand a chance of bluffing their way past stairwell command, much less plunging into what would probably be the worst heat they'd ever encountered. The higher they went, the hotter it would get.

Moving with a load again was not a pleasant experience. After only one floor Finney's thighs began burning and his shoulders ached where the air-pack straps pulled. The insides of his bunking coat and pants were still wet and clammy from their first climb. Soon that clamminess would feel like a sauna. It didn't help that the air coming through Finney's regulator didn't come fast enough. Nor did it help that he secretly believed this whole wrong-headed idea would get Diana and Robert Kub killed. Just what he didn't need. More dead partners.

They climbed past sixteen and encountered smoke so thick they had to keep one hand on the guardrail to maintain equilibrium. They slogged through running water that came down the steps like a mountain stream. Finney a.s.sumed the water was pouring out the door on the fire floor, that the panicked firefighters on that floor were using too much water, but sometimes pranksters opened one of the stairwell valves, and these could remain open for weeks, or until somebody charged the system and water began spilling out the way it was tonight.

Finney led the way, though the others followed so closely that when he slowed they b.u.mped into him. On eighteen they ran into five firefighters kneeling under the heat. Just inside the door to that floor another crew worked a hose line.

A short man in an orange captain's helmet rose from a crouch and approached. "Okay, I want you three on this backup line, while these others rotate inside. Give me your pa.s.sports."

"This isn't the firefighting stairwell," Finney said. "I thought everyone was in A."

"We're using both now. Give me your pa.s.sport."

"They told us to go higher," Finney lied.

"Forget that. n.o.body's going higher. And give me those spare bottles."

"We're supposed to take the bottles with us."

"We tried that. It's too hot. Who the h.e.l.l are you guys?"

Finney didn't hear the rest-he was moving.

They were already hot, but as soon as he reached the turnback on the stairs, he could feel severe heat beginning to crawl inside his bunkers. Because he was first in line and higher than the others, it would hit him first. He hoped that would give him some measure of control, that he could turn back before Diana and Kub were burned too badly.

They pa.s.sed nineteen, and by now the stairwell was so smoky their flashlights were useless. Last week's burns on his ears and neck began to feel raw and sore. He welcomed the pain; it was sharp and precise and took his mind off what they were walking into.

By the time they reached twenty-three, it was hotter than anything Finney had ever known.

Waiting for the others, who had slipped back, he dropped to one knee.

He sensed rather than felt Diana making her way up the last half-flight, but Kub stopped below on the turnaround landing and said, "I'm on fire! G.o.dd.a.m.n, I'm on fire. d.a.m.n, my neck. G.o.dd.a.m.n!"

Finney could hear him splashing water from the floor onto himself. He grabbed handfuls of water himself and splashed it around his own facepiece.

"It's too hot," Diana said, dropping her load in the water on the floor at Finney's feet. "It's way too hot."

Finney stood, and when he did, the sweat inside his bunkers scalded him in a half-dozen places.

He found the wall and felt along it until he had the door. "We'll go in and cool off."

Not only was the door locked, but it was hot to the touch, which usually meant there was fire on the other side. In this situation Finney couldn't be sure. It was a metal door, and convection from the stairwell might be responsible. As he thought about it, the dispatchers announced on the radio that Columbia Command had been on scene sixty minutes, plenty long enough to warm the door from the outside.

"Give me the Halligan," Finney said.

A pry bar about three feet long with a simple straight claw on one end and a set of short, right-angle levers on the other, the Halligan was designed so that, in combination with a flathead axe or a sledge, the right-angle levers could be pounded into the crack in a door, which then made it relatively easy for someone on the long end to lever the door open.

Finney inserted the end of the Halligan, then reached out until he found Diana. "Hold this," he said. "Keep your hands back."

Working blind in the smoke, he struck several blows with the back of the flathead axe until the Halligan was securely in the crack in the door. Metal screeched as Diana pried the door open. A tongue of flame shot out. Together, they shouldered the door closed.

In the brief light from the flames, Finney caught a glimpse of Diana and Kub both. Neither looked happy about the situation. Kub was kneeling in the running water. "What do you want to do? We can go up and try another floor. We can go down and quit."

"How many floors have fire on them?" Kub asked. "What floor is this?"

"Twenty-three," said Diana, who'd been counting as painstakingly as Finney.

"It couldn't have spread that far," Kub said. "The next couple have to be free."

"So we're going up?" Finney asked. No answer. "If you're nodding, I can't see you."

They both mumbled yes.

At the turnback midway between twenty-three and twenty-four Finney was again burned inside his bunkers. It was not possible, he realized, to endure this kind of heat without burns, no matter what he wore. He tried to stop on twenty-four to open the door, but Kub nudged him in the smoke and said, "One more. This might not be any good."

Finney didn't think anybody anybody could climb one more set of stairs. But if Kub could, he could. They forced themselves to twenty-five and pried the door, pulling it open against the rushing water on the stairwell landing. There was something else, too, something on the floor. could climb one more set of stairs. But if Kub could, he could. They forced themselves to twenty-five and pried the door, pulling it open against the rushing water on the stairwell landing. There was something else, too, something on the floor.

Except for a small, nasty cloud that followed them in from the stairs, there wasn't much smoke on this floor. The fluorescent lights were on. Kub closed the door behind them. They dropped their gear and tried to cool off. After he'd thought about it awhile, Finney went back and opened the door, curious as to what the obstruction in the stairwell had been.

It was a woman in her fifties dressed in jeans, deck shoes, and a gray uniform shirt with the name "Alma" st.i.tched across the breast pocket. Finney dragged her inside.

Diana took her mask off and knelt beside the woman, feeling for a carotid pulse. She looked up at Finney and Kub and shook her head.

Hoping to find safer pa.s.sage, they checked stairwell A, but found it as hot as the one they'd come up.

"What are we going to do?" Diana asked.

"Let's check the elevators," Finney said.

"Even if they work, we'd be crazy to use them," Kub said.

"We wouldn't be crazy to use the shaft."

67. ROGUE PENNY.

All three took off their MSAs and dropped the cylinders and backpacks onto the floor near the elevators. They took off their helmets and hoods and opened their coats. Diana's hair was plastered to her head with sweat, her bare shoulders sleek and tawny. Though his torso was lean and muscular, Kub's face looked haggard and drawn.

Finney opened the hardware bag and began rigging carabiners on a sling that he draped over his shoulder, clipping a small loop of webbing onto each carabiner. "See if you can scrounge up a coat hanger, anything we can use for an elevator key."

He took out a pulley and extra webbing of various lengths. He got out a pair of thin, leather gloves he kept in his inside coat pocket for rope rescues, stepped into a waist harness, and cinched up the leg and waist straps. He put a carabiner through the ring on the front of his belt, tied a figure eight in the end of a six-hundred-foot rope, and clipped himself in.

"Let's see if this'll work." Diana went to the elevator and inserted a long elevator key into the small hole on the upper right side of the door.

"Where'd you find that?" Finney asked.

"In the box." She nodded at a small, red box on the wall next to his head.

Elevators had two sets of doors, the inside door was attached to the elevator car and traveled up and down the shaft with the car. It was generally finished on the inside, innards exposed when viewed from the outside. In addition, each landing had its own door that was finished on the tenant side.

From inside the car, the doors could be opened with hand pressure. From the landings, the outer door required a special key consisting of a piece of steel tubing, the end of which flopped down on a hinge. The key was inserted into a pencil-size hole in the door, placed just far enough inside for the shorter portion to flop parallel with the door, so that when twisted the end fell across a latch mechanism and released the door lock.

Working together, it took Diana and Finney thirty seconds to open the door.

It was perfect. The shaft was four cars wide and there was a ladder on the wall.

Out of a perverse whimsy, Finney found a rogue penny in the thigh pocket of his bunking pants and tossed it into the shaft. For a second he thought he'd lost the coin, but then he heard it ping far below.

"I'll string up a lead line. One of you can follow, and then we'll haul up the equipment. Then the last one can come up."

"Sure you're strong enough?" Diana asked. "Those stairs were no picnic, and you've had a rough week."

More like a rough year, he thought, and no, he wasn't sure. But there were two reasons why he needed to go himself. The first was that Kub wasn't a truckman and didn't know how to rig ropes. The second was that (and he hoped this wasn't only male vanity) even in a weakened state his upper body strength was greater than Diana's. "I'll manage."

"What if fire breaks through the elevator doors on one of the lower floors?" Kub asked.

"Then you two go back down and be safe."

"John," Diana said. "We're on twenty-four. You're not planning to climb all the way to seventy-six? That's got to be over five hundred feet."

"If I remember the prefire for this building, these elevators only go to forty. We'll regroup there."

Finney couldn't shake the feeling that he was asleep and he would awaken in a hospital bed. Or a box. After all, it had happened before-the hospital bed. The box was yet to come. Far in the future he hoped. Though it could easily be tonight. For some time now he had the feeling he was going to die, and as he readied himself to step into the elevator shaft, the feeling intensified.

"You okay, John?" Diana touched his face with a bare hand.