Cajun Nights

by Don Donaldson

  There were more explosions. From where he sat, fifty yards away, Vogel was awed at what he had created. Flames licked the air like tongues from perdition and a steady plume of black smoke fouled the new day. There was another explosion and a piece of cement block thrown from the conflagration like a missile struck Vogel in the chest, breaking his sternum and rupturing his liver. Through the pain and the sure knowledge that he was a dead man, Vogel prayed that the smoke with its heat-activated toxic vapors would find its way into the city.

  *

  Once again Kit felt swamp water lapping at her legs and gnats dancing in her face. Frigid blue eyes stared at her over a rifle barrel. This time her eyes were open to see the rifle buck against Vogel’s shoulder as he fired. In the distance a muffled bell was ringing. Nothing could save her now. She was going to die.

  She woke screaming, her nightclothes clammy with sweat. Hands to her face, she rocked herself gently, her hair swinging in soggy profusion against her ears. Gradually she became aware of the ringing telephone. She leaned over and picked up the receiver. At the other end, she heard Broussard say, “There’s a huge fire burning at CCI. If my suspicions are right, we could have big trouble.”

  She checked the voice against her memory and found it genuine. It was truly him and not Vogel.

  “I’m headin’ over there now with Phillip,” he said. “You’d better come, too.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Hearing the turnout bell, Tracy Gannon stopped beating her pancake batter and listened for the call.

  “Pumpers eleven and twelve, to Crescent City Industries,” the watchman’s voice said over the fire-station loudspeaker. “Repeat. Pumpers eleven and twelve, to Crescent City Industries.”

  For Tracy, this call was special—the first one after learning that she had passed the lieutenant’s exam. Today, she would automatically be the number-one nozzle man, the one responsible for working the big line. And to Tracy, that’s what fire fighting was all about. The rest of it was really only support for the nozzle man. And today she was it. Hidden in that pleasure was hope that the battalion chief or pumper twelve from the other station responding would beat her to the scene. If she got there first, she would be ranking scene officer and would be in charge, a prospect that would have caused her no concern if this were a house fire. But a two alarm at a chemical plant? Not a comforting thought.

  She was in her seat in the pumper a good ten seconds before Kent Davis, the driver, slid behind the wheel. “Shit, Trace, you musta been wearing your gear to cook breakfast.”

  “Don’t you mean, ’Shit, Lieutenant Trace’?”

  Davis grinned. He tried her title himself. “Lieutenant Gannon. Has a nice ring, don’t it?”

  Ben Eaves, the hookup man, swung into the jump seat behind Davis and they all waited for the rookie, Al Germain, to appear. With their heavy insulated parkas, boots, and helmets, the three firemen filled the spaces allotted to them. There was no air conditioning in the part of the station housing the rolling stock and the thermometer on the wall by the watchman’s booth was holding steady at ninety-two degrees. Outside, it was not much less. Sweat was already beginning to soak into their underwear.

  By Tracy’s count it was fifteen seconds before she heard the flap of Al Germain’s boots and felt him step onto the running board on her side. Even before he got seated, the pumper was rolling.

  When Germain was settled in the jump seat behind her, Tracy slid open the window that separated them, looked stiffly over her shoulder, and said to the back of Germain’s head, “Nice of you to join us.” The siren began its slide to a shriek and she added in a shout, “You gotta cut fifteen seconds off your turnout time.”

  Germain nodded and said nothing, his eyes fixed on the back of the pumper. As soon as he could manage it, he was transferring to a different station house. He wasn’t taking orders from a woman.

  “What did you think of the suggestion Owen Everett made at the city-council meeting yesterday?” Kent Davis said, wheeling the big Pirsch around a corner.

  “Didn’t hear about it,” Tracy replied. “What’d he say?”

  “He thought we should just use the old equipment for the false alarms.”

  “Jesus, he really said that?”

  “Kind of gives you the willies, don’t it? Picture this. You pull up in front of a house that’s in flames, the owner runs up to the truck, and you say, ’Oh, this is a real fire? We’ll be right back with the good equipment.’”

  Glancing over to see if Tracy was smiling, Davis saw she wasn’t. He had been around long enough to know what she was probably thinking. “Don’t worry. If we make the scene first, you’ll do fine. They wouldn’t have given you your stripes if they didn’t think you could cut it.”

  He wheeled the pumper onto Parkland, a street that would bring them out right at the location of CCI. By using Parkland, he would avoid the commuter nightmare that, because of the construction over there, had recently become a daily occurrence on Waring. “Check our setup position, will you?” he asked. “I can’t picture the place.”

  Tracy pulled a small notebook from under the seat, ruffled through it, and studied the CCI layout on page thirty-four. “Set up to best advantage,” she said. “We get the south plug; number twelve gets the north.”

  Then they saw it, dead ahead. Black smoke boiling a hundred feet into the air… and something else.

  “I hope that’s not what I think it is,” Davis said grimly, referring to the series of dull thumps they heard over the siren. Tracy said nothing but had the same misgivings. She remembered a training film that showed how fifty-five-gallon drums could become projectiles that made fighting a chemical fire a game of Russian roulette.

  Her heart thundered in her ears when she saw that they were the first piece of equipment on the scene. Davis went down the drive and stopped a safe distance away. There was a dull whump that shook the truck and a drum hurtled obliquely into the air. It struck the chimney of the main plant, cutting a large gash in the brickwork near the base. The chimney leaned in slow motion and toppled in a heap onto the asphalt drive that ran behind the plant.

  The black smoke from the fire rose high into the air, some of it dissipating in the atmosphere. Much of it settled back onto the meadow, producing a gray haze that covered many acres.

  The flying drums were problem enough, but Tracy Gannon was just as worried about the proximity of the plant’s two storage tanks for ammonium nitrate, a substance she knew to be extremely explosive. From the size of the fire, she guessed that those tanks were already dangerously hot. They had to get the flames under control. But that could be hazardous, too. Water made some chemical fires worse. She looked at the two cars in the parking lot and turned to Al Germain. “Scout the main building and see if you can turn up somebody that knows what’s stored in that warehouse.” While the rookie tried the plant’s doors, she reached for the radio mike. “Pumper eleven to haz mat team. Pumper eleven to haz mat team.”

  A voice mushy with electronic clutter responded. “Haz mat team. Go ahead.”

  “We’re at Crescent City Industries where there’s a grade four in progress in a detached structure north of the main building. Nearby ammonium-nitrate tanks are at risk. Please advise.”

  On the highway, passing motorists were wondering why the pumper was doing nothing to put out the fire. While waiting for the hazardous-materials team to get in touch with a responsible plant official, Tracy realized that plant employees would soon be arriving for work. She leaned across Kent Davis and called through the window to Ben Eaves who was standing nearby.

  “Ben, go out to the highway and keep the drive clear.”

  There was a crackle from the radio. “Haz mat team to pumper eleven. Pumper eleven, please respond.”

  “Eleven here, go ahead.”

  “Contents of warehouse water compatible. Repeat, contents…”

  Al Germain stuck his head in the window. “Can’t find anybody,” he said.

  “That’s okay, we got wh
at we needed,” Tracy replied. “Let’s go with the big line on this one.”

  In the periphery of her field of vision, something moved, something she earlier thought was a piece of sheet metal. She jumped from the truck and pulled one of the respirators off its rack. Slinging it onto her back as if it didn’t weigh thirty pounds, she told Germain, “Get your unit on and come with me.”

  Another drum shot into the air, spinning end for end, and they both pressed themselves against the pumper. Vogel lay well clear of the smoke but was close enough to the fire for the firemen to feel its heat on their faces as they carried him to safety and laid him on the grass. He moaned and Tracy pulled off her mask. Directing her orders to Kent Davis, she said, “Put in a call for an ambulance. Then, let’s get this thing knocked down before that ammonium nitrate goes.”

  When Davis got the pumper in position, Tracy attached the straight-tip nozzle to the three-and-a-half-inch line and, with Al Germain helping, began to drag hose toward the fire. Davis eased the pumper from the parking lot, laying hose as he went. At the end of the driveway, he picked up Ben Eaves. The inbound lanes were filled with traffic and it was fortunate that the plug was on their side of the highway; otherwise, they would have had difficulty getting to it.

  At the plug, Eaves connected the suction hose to the plug while Davis put the wooden suction blocks under it. Davis then disconnected the deployed part of the line at the five-hundred-foot connector and hooked into the discharge panel. He checked the pressure chart under the seat and set the gauge for 175 psi.

  While Gannon and Germain waited for water, pumper number twelve and the chief pulled into the parking lot. With a chief at the scene, responsibility shifted to him, much to Tracy’s relief. Al Germain straddled the hose and grasped it in both hands, steeling himself for the surge to come. The first water came at hydrant pressure and the hose was limp. But as the pumper took over, the trickle became a torrent and the hose tried to rip itself from his grip. Even though they were well clear of any smoke, the two firemen on the hose were wearing their masks and yellow compressed-air bottles. There was a muffled “whump” from the fire and a piece of shrapnel ricocheted harmlessly off Gannon’s helmet. But another piece, no bigger than a fly, silently nicked the line that ran from her mask to the regulator at her waist. Soon, she was getting no air and she stripped her mask off to breathe. She did this without concern since the prevailing wind was carrying the smoke almost directly away from them.

  A rogue breeze, spawned by pockets in the fire that were hotter than others, emerged from the fire as a tiny whirlwind, churning with black smoke as it advanced toward the two firemen. They were engulfed so quickly, evasion was impossible. With his mask in place, Germain was safe, but Tracy Gannon’s lungs were filled with it. The whirling cone moved away and disintegrated. Tracy coughed.

  Swiftly, the toxin made its way from her lungs into her bloodstream. In her scleras and parts of her brain, the cells comprising vessels no larger than spider silk contracted violently at the toxin’s touch, ripping holes in the vessel walls through which blood quickly flowed. Like frightened children, neurons in the affected areas panicked, irresponsibly consuming the dwindling oxygen supply through wild activity. From far away, Tracy heard a sound she had not heard for ages: the sweet notes of the music box her father had given her for her tenth birthday.

  As Ben Eaves approached to help maneuver the line, Tracy turned it on him. The powerful stream of water knocked him backward onto his left arm and it snapped with a sickening pop. Al Germain let loose of the hose and it began to swing over the landscape in an erratic arc. Though she now had minimal control, Tracy was able to rake the downed man every few seconds. Each time she did, he rolled over the ground like a puppet.

  While Germain stood stupidly by doing nothing, the chief ran toward Tracy, his shoulder lowered. He hit her hard, waist-high, knocking her off her feet. Eyes glazed, she scrabbled at his face with her gloved hands. Her hands were everywhere. Suddenly, she was slashing at him with a ragged piece of metal. In desperation, the chief clipped her on the chin with his fist, knocking her unconscious.

  “What the hell’s wrong with this woman?” the chief said.

  Germain shrugged and shook his head.

  The chief went over to Eaves, who was writhing on the ground and holding his broken arm.

  *

  The two inbound lanes on the highway that passed in front of CCI were now packed with commuters from Cypress Springs, the mammoth housing development eight miles south of the plant. Where the new cement ended about a mile north of CCI, there was an abrupt ten-inch drop into a bed of sand that ran beside the old road for several miles. A hundred yards back, there was a flashing arrow pointing left and a string of orange barrels arranged in a curving arc. Here, the opportunists who had used the new stretch of road to get the jump on their more conservative neighbors were trying to buy their way back into the other lane with grins and waving arms. Except no one was going anywhere for awhile. Ten cars beyond the bottleneck, an eighteen-wheeler with a flatbed full of reinforcing bars had its hood up. Perched on one fender, the driver was scratching his head and staring into the engine. Under the cab, a large puddle stained the cement. Kit made a mental note to go home a different way.

  Through the windshield Kit saw a bank of ominous black clouds creeping across the once promising sky, changing it to one that appeared fully capable of delivering the rain and gale force winds predicted by the weatherman. About a half mile north of CCI, on the other side of the cement median, a gray haze hung low over the landscape. On its fringe, she saw the bodies of dozens of cows.

  At the entrance to CCI, a fireman was sending inbound traffic on Waring back the way it had come. Another was diverting outbound traffic onto Parkland. After identifying herself, Kit was allowed onto the plant grounds, where two teams of firemen were playing huge streams of water high into the air over the warehouse. Angry orange flames could still be seen leaping skyward from gaping holes in its roof.

  Near a small fir tree to the far right of the fire, she saw what appeared to be the body of a man in civilian clothes. Not far away, she saw Phil Gatlin, Bert Weston, and a fireman in full gear standing around Broussard who was kneeling on the ground over a prostrate form in blue pants and a blue T-shirt. On the ground to the left of the group, there was another body dressed in blue, and beside it, two piles of fire gear.

  As she joined the small group, Phillip looked at her in despair. “Quite a mess, huh?” He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “If I was a better shot, none of this would have happened.”

  “What do you mean?” Kit asked.

  “Vogel. He set the fire.”

  At the mention of Vogel’s name, Kit stiffened. “How do you know that?” she croaked.

  “He told us himself. That’s him over there.”

  She followed his finger to the body by the fir tree.

  “Some flying debris caught him in the chest. Could be he isn’t going to make it if that ambulance doesn’t get here soon.”

  Despite his inability to do her any harm now, Vogel’s mere presence brought Kit’s shakes back and she realized that if she didn’t do something now to conquer this unreasonable fear, she might never be rid of it, might relive nightly for the rest of her life that horrible moment in the swamp. She felt she had to look into those frigid eyes one more time.

  She detached herself from the group and cautiously went over to where Vogel lay motionless, his eyes rolled back in his skull. She must see those eyes! Softly, she spoke his name. But there was no response. She called it again and his eyes rolled into view. She made herself look deeply into them. “There’s an ambulance on the way,” she said.

  His lips quivered and he pulled his right hand from where it lay under his thigh. In it was the watchman’s pistol. It wavered in his grip, the barrel making tiny circles as he tried to hold it steady.

  Kit’s mouth opened to cry out, but the sound lodged in her throat.

  Vogel struggled up
on one elbow. “You,” he hissed in a weak whisper. “You’re to blame for everything.” His finger tightened on the trigger and his hand grew white. Now she would die. And this was no dream.

  Kit’s fear turned to anger and her foot lashed out. The toe of her shoe struck Vogel in the wrist and his fingers splayed open. The gun flew from his hand and fell harmlessly in the grass several feet away.

  Unable to hold himself up any longer, Vogel collapsed onto his back. His chest heaved. A frightful rattle issued from his dry lips and his frosty eyes grew colder still. She could see his life ebbing away, receding like a tide flowing back to its source. His mouth opened as if to protest and then it was over. There was no need to feel for a pulse. He was dead.

  Slowly she walked over and picked up the gun. As much as she had reason to despise him, she could not rejoice at the death of anyone. Yet a part of her felt reborn. In kicking the gun from his hand, she had redeemed herself for her behavior in the swamp and she was sure her dream would not return.

  Rejoining the others, she heard the fireman in the group, a heavyset black man with a gray mustache and the designation CHIEF on his helmet ask Broussard, “How bad is it?”

  The medical examiner struggled to his feet. “Fractured humerus, a broken nose, possibly a fractured rib.”

  The chief looked up and down the highway. “Where’s that damn ambulance?”

  “The one over there won’t be needing it,” Kit said, pointing to Vogel.

  “Dead?” Gatlin asked.

  “Yes. You better take this,” she said, handing Phillip the gun.

  “He had that?” Phillip said, shocked.

  She nodded.

  “Damn, but I hate it when my people go down,” the chief said. “And it’s even worse when it’s freaky. This one was coming over to help with the hose when that one,” he motioned to the other figure on the ground close by, “spun around and whap.” He slapped his gloves into his open palm. “… she let him have it right in the chest. It was no accident either. It was deliberate because she had to turn all the way around to do it and then she kept it up even after he was down. When her helper on the hose saw what was happening, he let go, figuring that without him, she wouldn’t be able to control it. But she’s a strong one, stronger than some of the men, and she got along pretty good without him. I had to knock her down to get her to stop. Then she went after me with a piece of metal. Crazy she was. As sorry as it sounds, I hit her on the chin to quiet her down.”