“Crouching,” she said.
He looked at her and nodded. “Yeah, crouching.”
She nodded back at him.
“You understand,” he said simply.
“Yeah, I understand. I’ve been around fires since my father first brought me along with him to his work.”
“And his work was?”
“A fireman, what else?”
He laughed. A slow groan came from the door as one of its hinges was forced from the wall. Smoke slithered beneath the firewall door. “Ready to meet her?” he said.
“Sure, but I always thought of fires as he, not she.”
“To each their own.” He wrapped a kerchief around his face to cover his mouth. She pulled out a mouth filter from her bag and slipped it on. They looked at each other – only their eyes were visible. She thought he looked solid, like a brick. He thought, “What’s a spectacular woman doing here, at my side?” Then they ran up the last set of steps and threw themselves at the firewall door. It flew off its remaining hinges and crashed to the floor without offering any resistance. So much so that their force carried them some five or six yards into the corridor where they stood in a daze before they realized what had happened.
By then the fire had leapt behind them in response to the new source of oxygen from the stairwell. Joan took a step back toward the stairwell and was stunned by the intensity of the heat. She put up her hand to shield her face. Wu Fan-zi seemed immune to the extreme temperature. Overhead a beam creaked. Joan looked up just as it swung free from one side and headed straight for Wu Fan-zi’s back. She leapt at him, pushing him out of the way just in time. The beam sent shocks of sparks up the far wall and immediately cut off any possibility of their access to the north side of the building.
Wu Fan-zi took it all in quickly. The stairs would be on fire before they could get back to them. He grabbed her hand and pulled her forward toward the south end of the building, toward the abortion surgeries, toward the source of the fire. The next five minutes were so intense that Joan could only remember the feeling of her hand in his. Her eyes were scalded with the heat and her hair was singed, but his choice to run toward the source of the fire saved their lives. A fire needs motion. Once it has eaten a field it must move on to another. Going to the source of a blaze can lead you to a calm behind the storm. Although Joan knew this, she had never been forced to put theory into practice. It was the single most terrifying thing she had ever done.
When they finally got to the second abortion surgery, they were stunned by what they saw. The whole room was tilted. The blast had been so intense that there was almost nothing left in the room. Kicking aside the remaining timbers of the doorframe, Wu Fan-zi ushered Joan into the scorched room and he immediately began to take in the blast site, noting details, trying to remember everything he saw. While he did so, she was drawn by some force she didn’t even begin to understand to the fetus in the cage. He saw her and quickly raced to her side.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded but couldn’t take her eyes off the thing in the cage.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
She tried but couldn’t take her eyes away from the thing – the being in the cage.
“Look at me,” he said again but with infinite gentleness this time. Then he reached over and pulled her head toward him. “Puke if you need to but don’t faint. I couldn’t carry you out of here and I’m not leaving you here.” Something cleared in her eyes and the slightest smile creased her lips. “You’re on fire,” she said pointing to his suit coat.
“Damn!” he said whipping off his jacket and throwing it to the ground. As he stomped out the embers, he swore, “Fucking hell.”
“Never been on fire before Wu Fan-zi?” she said with a quiver of hysteria on the fringes of her voice.
“Dozens of times – but my jacket! Do you know how hard it is to find a jacket that fits a guy built like me? Fucking hell.”
“Get me out of here and I’ll buy you three in Hong Kong. I know just the right tailor.”
Wu Fan-zi leaned in toward the cage. “What does the etching on the sheathing say?”
“It doesn’t translate well into Mandarin but basically it says NO MORE GAMES. THIS MUST STOP. THE LIGHT MUST COME.”
“The light,” Wu Fan-zi muttered, “. . . more with the fucking light.” He was on his hands and knees searching.
“What are you looking for?”
“Yes!” he said scooping up metal threads from the floor.
“More phosphorus?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“And there’s the window,” she said.
“He likes to watch.”
“No. It can’t be that. You wouldn’t be able to see much of anything out of a window like that – it probably leads to an airshaft or an interior courtyard. I think the window is just there to assure a good flow of oxygen.” She glanced at the titanium banner again. “He likes to bring the light,” she said.
“Maybe, but he fucked up this time. Too much something or other. The last time the building didn’t burn. This whole place is going to go up. Look at this with me. I don’t think there’ll be a second chance to go over this crime site.”
“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
“It’s why I ran into the building, yeah. And you?”
She didn’t say. She wasn’t sure why she’d run into the building. Then she looked at Wu Fan-zi and she was less “not sure.”
“Force centre beneath the operating table,” he said.
“Right. Uneven scoring. Much more force to the north side than the south.”
“Right. And so much explosive that it destroyed the planch.”
“Could be he got bad exotic.”
“Why wouldn’t he buy it all at once?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was too expensive.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s getting hot, what else?”
“The cage.”
“The etching on the metal wrapper.”
“The fetus.”
She wavered and he steadied her.
The fire whooshed up a wall across the way. “Fuck, back draft.” He turned to her. “Ready for another run.”
“With you? Sure.”
“Hold on and we’ll get out of here. If that window leads to a corridor or even an airshaft we have to head in the other direction.”
“Through the other abortion surgeries?”
“Yeah.”
“Hold on tight.” She grasped his hand and he pulled her hard through a flaming hole in the wall. Into a second surgery.
The voyage out was simpler than the one going to the surgery. Going out all they needed to do was avoid the fire beast. As well, since they didn’t need to go to a specific destination as they had coming in, they could keep veering away any time they encoun-tered fire. And fire had one significant disadvantage – it liked going up and they were going down.
When they stepped into the cool air outside the back of the hospital, she looked at him. “You’ve got ash in your hair.”
“Yeah, well you’ve got a little less hair than you had when we went in.”
“Then there’s your jacket.”
“Just an offering to the beast. You’ll get me a new one.”
She took his arm and squeezed him. “I’ll get you two and twenty if you want.”
They sat at a stone table in the hospital’s back courtyard staring into each other’s eyes. “It’s just the excitement of the moment, you know,” he said.
“Yeah, getting out alive is a bit heady,” she responded.
“Your hair’s still smoking.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I like it.”
“Really?”
“I’m a fireman, after all.”
With that she came into his arms. Her elegance and his rock squareness fit together with remarkable ease. Then his cell phone rang.
Fong’s charge into the lobby of the Hilton sent ripples of anxiety throughout the great building. His anger dared even the manager to approach him. So he didn’t. The cops in the lobby manning the phones were exhausted. No one had slept. The news of the second blast had spread a thick layer of impotence over their fatigue. But Fong didn’t care. Things were escalating out of control and he knew it. Only a break in the case could regain them the initiative, put some lead back in their pencils.