“Keep them here,” Murchison told Maples, gesturing to the four young men. He jogged up behind Stluka, followed his sight line, and saw at the top of St. Martin’s Hill a vast wash of tapered flame shooting up like a jet tail. Embers sailed high, drifting with the wind into nearby pines, which shortly glowed with flame. A moment later, a second ignition, same as the other, close by. The noise of the warehouse firefight drowned out the explosion. Given the distance, it seemed strangely innocent, the silence.
The Carlisle house, Murchison thought. The Victorian next door. Manny.
From behind, an eerie monstrous crack split through the firefight din, giving way to a rolling howl that ended in something like thunder. Everybody spun toward the sound as the earth beneath their feet shuddered and a vast new surge of smoke boiled out of the warehouse. The roof had crashed in.
Stluka was the first to move. He turned back to the cornered girl and three times, fast, punched her in the face. Her eyes rolled back as her knees buckled and he snagged her arm, gripping it tight. “You are going to tell me every single thing you know about this fire. About the fires up there on that hill. About Manny.”
She winced, face bloody. “Fuck you, let
go.
I don’t—”
Murchison came up behind Stluka, grabbed his jacket. “Jerry—”
Stluka fought him off. “Some men just got trapped in there. Men with families, I’ll bet. They’re likely to die. That’s murder, understand?” He shook her. “You talk. Or we’ll go in for your
stuff.
And so help me God, I’ll shoot that shiny crap off your face before I let you come out again.”
Manny leaned back in his seat, hoping to hide his face in shadow. He was breathing through his mouth. “We can’t just sit here like this. We’ll get spotted.”
“Be quiet.”
“There’s gonna be people.”
“Keep it together.”
Manny unfolded the list of addresses for the Frontline foreclosure properties they were due to hit in Baymont. “Why we stopped here, anyway?”
“Quiet, I said.”
Manny sank down a little, not to hide but to get the best angle on the fires uphill. Like a kid at Christmas, Ferry thought. Good. Keep him entertained.
They were parked beside the stand of old, towering Monterey pines just inside the stonework gate at the bottom of the hill. A funeral home, still sandbagged against the flooding from a recent water main break, sat dark across the way. The pie shop next door was empty, too, same as the other stores in the slummy strip mall on the other side of the street.
The nearest houses were around the corner on either side, seventy-five yards away at least. Manny was right—soon, people would start bubbling out of their homes, heading up toward St. Martin’s Hill, drawn by the sirens and word of the fire. Likely they’d head through the panhandle, though. It’d be safe here.
Ferry checked his watch. The tanker was late. Maybe the station had canceled its order. Maybe the driver had spotted the flames, stopped to CB in and tell the refinery he was circling back. Soon there’d be pumpers and ladder trucks heading in. Should’ve timed the fuses different, Ferry thought. Given us more time. Too late now. One more miscalculation.
Air brakes hissed and squealed beyond the trees, announcing the tanker’s arrival. The driver downshifted for the turn through the stonework gate. He didn’t see the fire after all, Ferry thought. Too busy worrying about his schedule, his load, making it up the hill. The truck was a brand-new Peterbilt ten-speed, 400 horsepower Cat, Muncie Fuller tranny, pulling a shiny aluminum DOT 406, nine thousand gallons. From the groan of the tranny Ferry figured he had the standard load, at best 10 percent outage in the tank trailer. The truck throttled low toward the next turn, then braked and downshifted again, at the panhandle, where the long, slow seesaw uphill began. A sign posted on the back of the tank trailer read:
SAFETY IS NO ACCIDENT
.
“Okay,” Ferry said. “Follow me.”
He got out, walked to the back, and opened the door as sirens approached down Magnolia Street. Manny came around, too, walking clumsily in the oversize boots. Ferry grabbed the next tub as a pumper truck, sent from the only local firehouse crew not called to the warehouse fire, pulled through the stonework gate. He stopped, Manny standing beside him, both of them watching as first the pumper, then a ladder truck moments later, and finally a rescue unit made the turn at the base of the panhandle and headed up St. Martin’s Hill toward the fires.
“That was luck.” Manny stared at the rescue unit’s taillights as they vanished uphill. “The timing, I mean.”
“Close the doors,” Ferry said. “Be quiet about it.”
Manny eased both doors shut, then followed Ferry beneath the canopy of the trees. The ground was thick with pine duff, still spongy and wet from the rain and the recent main break and flooding. Up top, though, the trees would be dry. Credit the wind, Ferry thought. He set the tub down at the base of the centermost pine, placing it deep in shadow and away from the sight line from the street. As he pried off the flare cap, Manny gazed up into the dense branchwork.
“Monterey pine. Trash heap of trees.”
“Upright log pile,” Ferry said. “All it means to me.”
The flare caught fire. Ferry pointed back toward the street. “Go slow. Easy.”
They walked single file across the pine duff to the van. Manny stared out the window as they pulled away. “That’s gonna light up like crazy.”
“No joke.”
Manny spun his head around. He finally got it. “How are we gonna get back out?”
“Like I told you before. Stay close.”
It took them twenty-five minutes to plant the rest, one after the other up the hill, the whole time hearing the howl of sirens in the night while ahead of them, unseen but always audible, the Peterbilt tramped and clutched up the incline, back and forth through the neighborhoods, to avoid anything steeper than a 7 percent grade. It shuddered up the narrow winding streets, taking corners in the lowest gear possible to avoid scraping parked cars or peeling alligators off the tires by hitting a curb. No doubt the driver heard the sirens, too, Ferry thought, even saw the fires now, but he was trapped in the maze. No way back down till he reached the top.
At each stop, Ferry kept the van running as Manny hurried to the back of the van, collected the tub, hustled businesslike, but not too fast, to the already jimmied door, stole inside the abandoned house, planted the bomb in a cellar if it had one, near a gas line in any event, and lit the flare, then scurried back to the van. He’d begun to enjoy himself finally.
At the last house, Ferry reached into the glove compartment once Manny was gone. He withdrew the kid’s .357 and tucked it into his belt beneath his overalls, right beside his own gun, a Smithy 645. Make sure everybody’s stepped away from the tanker, he thought. One stray bullet and the whole thing fails. To put it mildly.
By the time Manny climbed back into the van, the first bomb went hot downhill in its stand of pines. The only crews to arrive so far were fighting the St. Martin’s fire—the next ones in would be turnout crews from out of town; their hoses wouldn’t fit the hydrants. They’d be forced to fight the tree fires with just the water in their pumper reservoirs, five minutes max. Once the crowds started down, you’d have chaos. Everything else up here would rage hot for a good long while.
At the crest of the hill, they both looked back. From this vantage, the warehouse, the Carlisle house, and the Victorian next door, the Monterey pines downhill, they burned hot and high, still uncontained, the blazing corners of a citywide triangle. As they watched, the first of the downhill houses exploded, the roof melting away where the jet from the bomb burned through like a massive blowtorch.
Manny stared at the fires with a kind of reverence. “Thank you, Richard.”
Ferry let off the brake and steered toward Home in the Sky. “Thank me for what?”
“You know for what.” No more whiny objections. The boy had settled into what seemed like an almost ethereal contentment. “This is awesome. Just awesome.”
As they pulled into the gas station, the owner and the tanker driver argued nose to nose, yelling, gesturing to the fires. The driver was beside himself, his thumper pole in one hand, the other sailing wildly around his head. He was white and string bean tall, with long sandy-colored hair, pinpoint eyes, and a hatchet-shaped nose. The owner was black, short but muscular. Despite the cold he wore shorts and a T-shirt from which his arms bulged like hams.
Ferry eased the van near where they stood, rolled the window down to listen.
“Safest place for the damn gas is in your tanks, now unlock the latches.”
“Safe? How ’bout where it’s sittin’ right now, inside your truck. Now turn the damn thing around and head on off my lot.”
“I’ll burn up my brake lines I try to go back down that hill with a full load.”
Ferry parked the van just beyond the Peterbilt and gestured for Manny to get out with him. “Act scared, like you don’t know what the hell’s going on.” Ferry eased out onto the pavement and edged toward the two men. Manny did likewise, except he had an edgy grin on his face.
Ferry called out, “You guys see what the hell’s going on down there?”
The owner and driver ignored him.
“Nothing more dangerous than an empty truck. Jesus, listen to me, will ya? It’s the fumes’ll blow you sky-high.” The driver pointed to a blister on the side of one of the trailer tires. “Got that taking a damn turn up here. I could lose that tire, understand? I stop at a guillotine, they’d nail me for sure. My container’s empty? They wouldn’t let me budge. Like a bomb on wheels. I’m sure as hell not driving down into no fires. Jesus.”
“And you sure as hell ain’t unloading, and you ain’t staying here.”
“Your tanks are safer loaded than they are now. You deaf? I unload, park out on the street, down the hill, I don’t care. Wait till the fires burn out. What’s the problem? You’re being seriously fucked about this.”
Ferry edged to position himself between the tanker and the two men, figuring ten feet was good. He feigned bafflement, like he couldn’t figure out why all the yelling, then turned toward the truck briefly, subterfuge while he opened his overalls and removed the .357. Turning back and raising the gun in one movement, he aimed, sighting the driver and firing twice at his back, high left side, the heart. The tall man jerked from the impact and the blood spray showered the owner. The driver didn’t fall, though, just stood there wavering, but Ferry’d planned for that, moving quick to his right and taking aim now at the owner, who stood rooted to his spot, stunned, eyes perplexed as his hands went instinctively to his face. A big man, he’d require closer range, even with the Magnum, so Ferry closed another five feet, aimed again for the heart, and landed three fast shots. Like shooting a bear. He didn’t fall, either, just tottered, still blinking the other man’s blood from his eyes.
Ferry realized he’d missed by the gaping wound on the big man’s arm. It had shielded his chest from at least one of the shots. Ferry stepped closer, avoiding the driver, who’d fallen to his knees now, one hand to the ground to keep himself upright as he coughed up blood. The owner could do no more than clench his jaw in rage and swing loosely with his ruined arm as Ferry stepped in and fired the last round in the cylinder point-blank. Even with that, the man wouldn’t fall. He twisted away, eyes blind, staggering toward the door of his station. Fine, Ferry thought, go on, go. He turned back to the driver, kicked the man’s arm away so he fell to the pavement.
Searching for Manny, Ferry called out, “Get over here!”
Manny had taken refuge near the pumps, crouching once the gunfire started. He rose to his feet, mouth agape.
“I said move, damn it. Here. C’mon.”
Manny edged toward him, eyes trained on the owner, who stumbled, fell to his knees, dragged himself to his feet, but then just stood there, weaving, five yards from his office door. Blood bubbled from his chest.
“Jesus, you didn’t say—”
“Search this guy’s pockets for his keys.”
Manny grabbed his stomach, like he was ready to hurl. “Maybe they’re still in the cab.”
“Search his pockets!” Ferry reached out and grabbed Manny’s shoulder, driving him to his knees. “Don’t argue.”
Manny stared at the .357. “You used my gun. You were going to get rid of it.”
“I am getting rid of it. Here.” He wiped the .357 clean, then laid it on the pavement, right beside the boy’s knee.
Manny stared at it. “No. Wait. No, this is—”
“I don’t have time to explain. Search his pockets.”
Ferry waited as Manny, still on his knees, finally obeyed, inching closer to the driver. The man lay sprawled in his own blood, still alive, his eyes open as he worked his mouth, trying to breathe. Manny couldn’t get the nerve to touch him at first, but as he finally reached into the dying man’s pockets, Ferry drew the Smithy 645 from inside his overalls, crouched down low, and shoved the barrel up into Manny’s neck. The shot blew open the boy’s carotid artery and took half his jaw away. He windmilled onto his haunch, his neck spewing blood. Ferry caught backspray, too, this time. He used his arm to wipe it away so he could see.
Edging over, he took out a handkerchief, wiped his prints off the 645, and forced it into the driver’s hand, molding his finger onto the trigger. The man, still alive, fought, but weakly. Ferry managed to get the right fit, pressed his own finger over the driver’s, and fired the gun one shot after the other, aiming once for Manny, hitting him in the shoulder, then just wildly, emptying the clip. The shoulder shot knocked Manny back onto his elbows. He was whimpering, “No no no no no,” his hand clasping around an invisible something.
Ferry ran to the Peterbilt, climbed into the cab, and threw the internal plug valve switch—no need for the pumps, gravity would do the work—then hurried to release the other two valve switches at the front and back of the trailer unit. Before opening the outside discharge valves at the hose couplings, he went back to Manny.
The boy’s mouth still opened and closed of its own volition, no sound. If Ferry had never killed a man before, he might have wondered if the boy was praying, but he knew it was just the brain shutting down from blood loss. He crouched before Manny and grabbed the collar of the boy’s overalls in one hand, rolled his bloody body onto its front, with his free hand grabbed the overalls again, this time in the small of the back, and half dragged, half trundled the all-but-dead boy over to the tanker. It was hard, the kid big and heavy to begin with, doubly so like this. The blood trail left behind would never convince a cop with any smarts, but the trail wouldn’t be there long.