“Dump?” asked Ivan.
“Turn over. In the snow. Then come back with the sledges and take more crates.”
“Okay.”
The fire was eating rapidly into the far wall, and part of the floor was now a pond of burning oil and gas, floating on a few centimetres of meltwater. Steve’s snowmobile snarled through the fire and outside into the dark. The Sno-Cats and the other snowmobile followed, skidding in the water. Terry and Suzy, along with Don Treadwell, joined the men spraying and shovelling fire retardant along the edge of the burning pond.
Howie O’Rourke loped back in and headed straight for the huge green Nodwell tractor, which looked like a house on caterpillar treads. The pond had already spread around it. Howie bent and wrenched a three-metre length of duckboards right out of the ice and slid it into the flames. It began to burn, but it gave him a chance to sprint across to the tractor. He climbed over the tread and into the cab. The Nodwell’s engine, not started in weeks, refused. Howie leaned out of the cab.
“Get the cable, somebody — we gotta winch this stupid beast outa here.”
Max Wilhelm dragged the cable in, and Howie came back across the duckboards. He pulled them to within a metre of the front of the Nodwell, carried the cable out and hooked it up. Then he waved a signal to Hugh, up in the machine shop, and the cable went taut.
Very slowly the big tractor began to grind across the floor. No one but Howie paid it any attention; most were trying to get to the burning wall and keep the fire away from the JF4 bladder. The hangar was filling with ice crystals as well as smoke: as the fire melted the floor, steam escaped through the flames into air that was -45°C. The crystals fell back into the fire, or swirled in the turbulent air, glittering like sparks. It took over ten minutes to haul the Nodwell outside into the darkness. By that time Howie had gone to join the others along the wall.
They worked clumsily but systematically, coughing in the smoke as they shovelled retardant. Tears poured down their faces and froze when they stepped back from the flames. The overhead lights went out; emergency lamps tripped on, but had little effect in the smoke. The men fought the fire by its own light.
Without warning, a jet of fire rose almost to the ceiling. Howie knew at once what had happened: the fuel line from the JP4 bladder had burned through, and fumes from the bladder, drawn out by the rising air, had ignited.
“Everybody out!” he screamed. “Out, out!”
Those near the back of the hangar raced for the ramp to Tunnel D, Howie and the others turned and went outside. The vehicles gave a little shelter from a rising breeze, but it was horribly cold.
“Okay,” Howie rasped, “when the bladder goes, we gotta sneak back in and keep the fire outa the tunnel.”
“How?” Gordon panted. An instant later the snow lit up, a lambent red-orange, and the men saw each other clearly. They crouched behind the Sno-Cats as the bladder exploded in a geyser of fire and steam. The wall of the hangar, already weakened, caved in. The roof sagged and cracked; flames shot up through it into the smoking dark.
“Hugh’s still in the machine shop,” Steve yelled over the roar. “Let’s get in there.”
“Wait a minute,” Howie yelled back. “He’ll be down in the tunnel. Go in there now and you’re dead.” He looked grimly at the fire, and swatted at a fragment of glowing ash that settled on his sleeve. Despite the flames, it was hard to see the interior of the hangar, but the floor was still burning, sending still more black smoke into the air.
“Let’s bulldoze it,” Steve said. “Get the D4 and D8 moving, and bury the fire on the floor.”
“Good.” Howie grabbed Simon Partington and hustled him over to the D4. As its engine started, Howie went on to the D8, which had been outside for days. The night before, he’d had to blowtorch its pony engine to thaw it enough to start the diesel so he could clear the snow from the hangar doors. The pony engine was frozen again, but Howie stolidly dug the blowtorch out of the cab and went to work. Ben Whitcumb lurched up beside him.
“I got the flamethrower,” Ben said. “It ought to work faster.”
“You know how to use it?”
“Yes.” Ben didn’t bother to put on the flamethrower’s backpack; he leaned it against his leg and put the nozzle close to the engine. A long yellow flame gushed out, and Ben hastily twisted the nozzle until the flame was hot and blue. It took over five minutes, but the pony engine caught the first time Howie tried it, and the diesel bellowed into life a moment later.
Simon meanwhile had driven the D4 back to the hangar, with the bulldozer’s blade pushing a mound of snow ahead of it. A cloud of ice crystals formed around the D4 as it entered the hangar; the snow was melting, vaporising and refreezing. But most of it stayed solid, and Simon was able to lay a two-metre strip along the edge of the burning pool. He backed out, scraped out more snow and went in again.
Howie, with the D8’s huge blade, rapidly made up for lost time. The smoke was less of a problem, since the fire had burned through the rear wall and more of the roof. After four runs, however, Howie had to stop: most of the floor fire had been smothered, but the burning fuel bladder was so hot that it was impossible to get close to it, and chunks of the roof were falling around the tractors in showers of sparks.
Steve clambered up into the cab. “What about the diesel bladder?”
“It oughta be okay. There’s thirty metres of ice between it and the JP4.”
“I hope you’re right. Let’s see what needs doing in the tunnel.”
Howie, Simon, Steve and three or four others went into the hangar at a clumsy trot, coughing in the smoke. Behind the machine shop the fire had spread along the rear wall and down the ramp towards Tunnel D. The men went through the machine shop and down the stairs to the tunnel, where they found almost twenty people fighting the fire. Smoke hung like a black fog under the tunnel lights.
From the top of the stairs, Steve watched the fire spreading down the ramp, through the high stacks of crates along the walls. In the dry cold every scrap of wood, fabric and plastic seemed to ignite instantly. The flames glazed through a pink cloud of retardant, slowed but not stopped. He went down the stairs and found Hugh in the crowd.
“It’ll burn right down both sides of the tunnel, and along the duckboards,” Steve said. “The hangar’s a dead loss. But if we can clear out some of these crates — like a firebreak—”
“Good. Ray, George, Ivan! Come on back. And you chaps, too.” Hugh soon had a team working on each side of the tunnel, moving crates away from the approaching fire.
“Anyone hurt?” Steve asked Hugh.
“No, thank God.” Hugh coughed. “Smoke’s a nuisance. Anything left of the hangar?”
“The far side is completely gutted. We kept it away from the machine shop, but if any more of the roof comes down, that could be wrecked, too.”
“Bloody hell. And tonnes of snow on the roof.” He looked quickly up at the roof of the tunnel. Long icicles were forming from it, and above the ramp the frost was entirely gone. Where the crates had been removed, the tunnel walls glistened unnaturally. “We may lose part of the roof here as well,” Hugh said.
“That ought to put out the fire, anyway,” Steve answered.
Despite all their efforts, the fire spread through the crates right up the firebreak. Hugh ordered everyone down the tunnel. The icicles had vanished; twenty metres of roof plate, four whole sections, were bare and dry above the fire. The walls were hidden in smoke and steam; burning crates crashed to the floor of the tunnel. The stink of roasting meat drifted through the smoke, and canned goods exploded with muffled bangs.