Return to Eden (19 page)

News people had begun circling like a
flock of vultures who’d caught the scent of blood, adding to the
noise and general chaos.

“
Lieutenant Dominic
DiCarlo. Me and my team were sent to help. We got any idea how many
people might be down there, chief?” he asked the fire and rescue
marshal as soon as he reached him and gained his
attention.

“
Possibly as many as
twenty,” Marshal Thompson responded.

Surprise flickered through Dominic and
he responded before he’d thought it through. “Only
twenty?”

“
That ain’t bad enough?”
one of the other rescuers growled, having sized up the SEAL team
and apparently decided they’d come to grab the ‘glory’.

Anger flickered through Dominic. “It’s
a four story building—minimum of forty units, I’m thinking! You’re
sure there aren’t more people down there?”

“
Forty Eight—each. Three
units down there. Luckily, this was new construction—not completely
finished, in point of fact. According to the owner they hadn’t
leased but about half of the units and, of those, only a handful of
tenants had moved in. So, they’re thinking a maximum of two dozen
people could be down there.”

“
Think … not know? Unless
somebody was entertaining guests,” Dominic pointed out. “Well,
let’s get to it, then. I’ll go in first, have a look around. If it
looks doable, me and my team will set up a search ….”

“
Nobody’s going down there
until we’ve had time to assess the risks!”

Dominic gaped at the man in outrage.
“There’s people down there that need help. And I’m guessing they
might not be able to wait.”

“
Maybe. We don’t know if
there are
any
survivors.”

“
And if there are, they
won’t be survivors long ….”

A man shoved his way into the group.
“One of our people is down there.”

The group of men stared blankly at the
newcomer. “Who’s ‘our’?” the fire marshal demanded.

“
FSGD--State … geological
division. Dr. Claire Collins. Any chance she survived?” he
asked.

“
We don’t know if anybody
survived … yet. I was about to go down,” Dominic
responded.

“
Like hell!” Marshal
Thompson growled. “I already told you we’re trying to assess the
risk. This is my jurisdiction ….”

“
So I’ll go down and
assess the fucking risk!” Dominic barked at him. “That’s what I’m
here for! That’s what I’m trained for!”

“
I think we need to get a
handle on crowd control,” the newcomer muttered. “If the ground is
unstable we’re liable to have a much larger disaster on our
hands.”

“
To say nothing of the
fact that we can’t hear ourselves think over the noise let alone
anybody that’s injured and trying to call out for help!” Dominic
agreed.

It was a lucky break to Dominic’s mind.
The state man redirected the fire marshal’s attention and while
they were focused on rounding up enough personnel to push the
civilians back, he and his men headed over to the hole to assess
the situation.

“
Looks like that spot over
there is going to be our best bet, Lieutenant,” Jones said,
pointing.

Dominic felt his belly clench as he
studied the black mouth yawning like some kind of giant monster.
Most of the debris had slid down from the side where they were
standing, though, creating a small, slope sided underground
mountain … that was like a mine field. “Yeah. Jones, you and Diaz
go find something to tie on to that seems likely to
stay.

Jones and Diaz exchanged a look.
Several building were lying in a heap at their feet. It was
anybody’s guess what, if anything, would follow them down. How were
they supposed to figure out what would make a safe
anchor?

Dominic had no trouble interpreting the
look. He’d considered the dilemma himself. “Use that fire engine
over there. Hopefully it won’t end up on top of me,” he muttered as
they headed off to secure lines to lower him down.

They bluffed their way through the
interference they ran into along the way and inside of fifteen
minutes after he’d landed, Dominic was dangling at the end of a
safety line over a hole that looked like the Grand Canyon. The sun
had risen in the meantime and a wedge of light was inching its way
downward over the mountain of debris, but the bottom could have
been a thousand miles down. It was pitch black. As soon as he’d
been lowered enough that the racquet created by the crowd at ground
level began to fade, he began to shout, identifying himself as a
rescuer and hoping he would get a response from at least a few of
the people known to be trapped in the debris.

To his relief, he heard
someone—actually several—almost immediately.

Extracting survivors was rather like
the old game of pickup sticks. You had to extract each survivor
with exquisite care not to disturb the pile or it would shift and
make it impossible to extract other survivors. The first task,
though, was to locate as many as possible and see to their
immediate needs while they figured out how to pull them out of the
wreckage intact.

It was near noon—about six hours after
the collapse—when Dominic finally made it down to the level where
Claire was trapped. He didn’t think he would’ve found her then
except she was babbling a little incoherently.