Page 6

Becca was beginning to like this guy. He was good in a crisis.

While Dunston was busy doing that, Becca decided to check out the east staircase, which wasn’t far from the large room the civilians were in. Pushing open the door she was met immediately by thick smoke billowing out. She carefully approached the railing of the landing and looked down. Cappy was right; four, maybe five flights down the staircase was nothing but a twisted jumble of steel and concrete, and there were flames licking upward. No one could get down that way, not even a firefighter. She turned her flashlight upwards.

It could work…

The staircase was still intact from this floor up to the roof level, which was the next flight up.

“Forward command to Chief Roberts, over,” her radio spoke.

“Go ahead, Cappy,” Becca answered.

“O/C Rescue says they could attempt a landing. Navy choppers are on their way. Over.”

“Copy that.”

“Keen to Chief Roberts. Over.”

“Go for Roberts. Over.”

“We got to seven, Chief. Looks clear the rest of the way down. Over.”

Becca left the staircase and hurried back to the civilians. On the way, she tagged two firefighters to follow her. She ordered one of them to immediately lead the next group of ten women that Dunston had waiting for them down the north stairs. But this time, she told the fireman to radio when they got down to ten.

Who knew how long it would take for the Navy to get their choppers here. Camp Pendleton was close—it literally bordered Oceanside to the north—but Becca didn’t want to wait. While she still had that north staircase available as an avenue of escape for the civilians, she was going to use it.

With the second group of ten women heading to the stairs, Becca told the other firefighter—a woman—to lead the third group to the roof and get them on the O/C Rescue chopper.

***

They lost the north staircase after the second group of women—thankfully—made it out of the building safely. The fire on eleven had gotten past Putnam’s defenses and entered the stairwell, rendering it useless for escape. By then, Becca had sent the third group of women with another firefighter down the stairs. In only a few minutes, though, they had all come running back up to fifteen, choking on smoke, their faces sooty and blackened.

“No chance, Chief,” the firefighter accompanying the women had stated. “It’s gone.”

Fortunately, Putnam’s crews had managed to keep the fire from getting towards the rear of the building, where the service elevators were. Also, fortunately, the power was still on in the structure. But there was no way Becca was going to put the civilians in the elevators. At this point, the firefighters shouldn’t even be using them, but those two elevators were essential in the fight now. They had just helped deliver a new supply of air tanks to the crews on fifteen. Besides, if the power did go out and firefighters were stuck inside the lifts, they had the training needed to get themselves out safely.

This meant the elevators were a last resort.

The only hope now was the choppers. O/C Rescue had gotten their group of ten women airborne off the roof, but it would take upwards of twenty minutes before the pilots could land, unload and take off again to retrieve more people.

Meanwhile, there was still a fire to kill.

To that end, Becca herself relieved a firefighter at the front of one of the hoses, after his air tank’s alarm had gone off, and began trying to push back the flames which were still advancing.

After ten minutes, though, her radio spoke.

“Forward command to Roberts, over,” Cappy’s voice said.

Becca, crouching while manning the hose, turned to the fireman behind her and gestured for him to take over.

“Roberts, over,” she said once she had handed off the nozzle.

“I got the Navy chief in the lobby, over,” Cappy told her.

“Patch him through, over.”

A new voice came on after Cappy made the connection.

“Chief Borner, Navy Air Rescue.”