Smoke billowed from the room, reminding me of a certain battle in Afghanistan, and I pulled my shirt up over my nose and mouth as a makeshift filter. It wouldn’t help much, smoke is extremely poisonous, but something is better than nothing. I had to get moving. Smoke is the big killer in most fires, but those flames would do just fine if we didn’t get out of here fast.
There was no time to check and see if either Max or Jerome were alive or not, so I pulled myself up and grabbed hold of Jerome’s gun strap and Max’s collar and dragged them to the stairwell I’d just come through a few moments earlier. The door opened inward into the well and I reared back and kicked it hard as I could. The hinges snapped and the door flew back before hitting the landing with a loud slap. I realized my hearing was coming back because I heard the sound.
I stopped for a second to get my breath. I saw red flickers in the lower stairwell, below smoke thick as water, telling me this way was blocked. I shook Max, but he just rocked back and forth limply. But his chest rose and fell, telling me he was alive at least.
Smacking Jerome did no good, he was out cold like my dog. I looked up the stairwell trying to think. No way could I take them both at the same time.
I hoisted Max onto my shoulders and ran the two floors to the top of the elevator shaft. The fresh air got me to coughing so bad I didn’t know if I could stop. But I had to, so I did. I lay Max on the gravel and headed back into the smoky darkness.
Cops and firemen have a little inner service rivalry and we joke with each other a good deal, but say what you want, it’s no fun running into burning buildings. Personally…I hate it.
My lungs screamed as I found Jerome where I’d left him. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing and that was a bad sign. Having plenty of room there on the platform, I performed a textbook, Battle Field Roll, coming off the floor with him, all three hundred pounds, held tight over my shoulder. Going up the stairs was a little slower than it had been with Max, and once out of the chimney I collapsed, dropping him harder than would have been acceptable to a field medic. But hey, I was no more a medic than I was a pet detective.
I coughed up gunk that had the color and consistency of the tar beneath the gravel I was kneeling on, and this time, I couldn’t stop for at least three minutes. Falling on my back, I tried to suck in as much nighttime air as my lungs would allow. Sweat and blood ran freely down my hairline and I began to notice that the gravel was becoming hot beneath me.
Rolling over to all fours, I saw that Max was standing. He looked shaky, but he didn’t look hurt. Jerome was still out. I walked over to the retaining wall and looked down. Flames and smoke surrounded the building, working their way both up and down.
My original plan had been to repel down from the eighth floor window and avoid all the guards in the stairwells, but repelling straight down now was impossible without getting crisped or smoked out. Just in case, I’d brought along a couple of rope climbers. I took the climbers and a roll of rope out of the backpack and hooked them to my belt with a carabiner.
I went back to Jerome and dragged him to the wall. Then I cut the rope that held the grappling hook to the zip line. That left about five feet of rope to work with. I hoisted Jerome up and let him lean across my shoulder while I ran the rope through the carabiners and my harness. Then I hooked his harness to mine with my last carabiner.
Max moved away from the shed as flames started poking through spots on the roof. The tar and gravel were turning to liquid.
With no time to waste, I held an arm out to him.
“Let’s go for a ride buddy. Here!”
As he started to move, a large section of the flooring between us caved into what looked like the entrance to Hades. Max was cut off from me. I started to unhook from Jerome when the wall we were standing by collapsed into space, taking us with it. I felt gravity take hold and we swung out and down. I saw the wall to the other building coming insanely fast and there was no breaking from here because this was no rigged zip line, just a straight pendulum. I jerked Jerome around so his body would take the brunt of the impact. It was a cold move, but I had to stay conscious if I was to have any chance of saving Max. We hit hard, and even through Jerome’s big frame, I felt the shock of the blow. I shook it off. I had to get back to Max. I spotted the closest window about three feet below us and let out enough rope. I got my feet straight against the wall, pushed back, and let us fall. We crashed through the window in a spray of glittering glass. I barely managed to grip the window sill to keep us from sweeping back out. Little slivers of glass lacerated my fingers and palms. I gripped Jerome with my legs, hauled him up and over the sill, then took out my K-Bar and cut off Jerome’s harness. He fell like a three hundred pound sack of flour on the floor and lay still.
Fire engines were arriving, their strobes and sirens stabbing through the smoke.
I clipped the climber to the rope at chest level and down around my knees and hooked my feet in the straps. I was racing against time and Max didn’t have much.
The Alpha had abandoned him and the smoke and heat were everywhere. Max bit at the red tendrils of flame as they attacked him, but each time, they danced away, leaving only pain behind. Never in his life had he experienced fire like this and he could only comprehend it as he would any other enemy. But attacking proved useless, so he backed away and moved around the edge of the burning hole that gaped through the roof. He first headed to the elevator shed, but the ground turned soft and hot and then started to melt into itself. Max had to jump back as the entire structure fell into the ever-widening gap of smoking heat from below. He moved in a cautious circle, checking each step and eventually coming back to the wall where he had crashed into the building. He smelled the Alpha on the grappling hook and rope and a rage of his own burned hot at the thought of the Alpha letting the Pack be destroyed like this. The Alpha had proven himself insufficient in protecting the Pack. Pilgrim would be the only one left, and Pilgrim was too weak to protect even himself.
Max should have heeded his instincts and taken control when he had the chance. Now it was too late. Max looked past the destroyed part of the wall and saw the darkness below.
Making it to the roof, I unhooked from the harness and sprinted to the elevator shed. I had only a half-formulated plan as to what I was going to do, but I had to save Max.
I spotted him moving toward the wall, but I also saw that I might be too late. The roof was mostly gone; melted away and fallen into the destroyed structure.
Max felt the rage burning and building within him. The flames licked higher and closer. Twice now he’d almost fallen through the molten slag that had been solid moments before. Death fast approached. Instinctively, he’d started to jump over the wall several times, stopping only because he saw the Alpha across the expanse and thought he might be coming back for him.
Max’s vision was highly developed and he could see far better in dark conditions than humans, but his depth perception, like all canines, was poor, allowing only a twenty-or-so-yard window. Beyond that, everything went flat, so that a drop could be twenty yards or twenty thousand. Max felt the danger of the fall, but the very real danger of fire was far closer. When it comes to terrors in the animal kingdom, fire is king. And even Max was not immune to it.
Max saw the Alpha make the rooftop and watched as he hooked up his strange devices. With each passing second, his anger grew. The Alpha had left him here. The Alpha had abandoned his pack-mate, leaving him to die. The genetic drive to take over the pack had never felt so strong. Max considered trying to make the jump to the other building just so he could confront the Alpha. He knew himself to be faster, stronger, with more abilities, but the leap was impossible and so he stayed his ground. But in his heart, rage burned as bright and hot as the fires below.
My plan was to zip line down, hook Max up and repeat what I had done with Jerome. I’d lost the zip attachment, so I looped a small section of rope over the line, gripped it tight and dropped off.
“MAX!” I yelled, as I zipped t
oward the wall. I had to get his attention; we were working with seconds before the whole place would collapse in on itself. I saw him look at me, but he wasn’t moving.
“HERE!” I screamed, trying to be heard over the roar of the flames, the crackling of crumbling brick and steel and the sirens coming in from everywhere.
Max didn’t budge. He stood about ten feet back from the wall and I could see the massive hole in the roof widening outward with incredible speed, the edges dripping black tar and rocks of gravel that disappeared into the raging fire beneath.
The Alpha shouted his name and Max looked up to see him flying through the air toward him.
Good. Max would not have to attempt the jump. The Alpha was coming to him.
“MAX! HERE!” I screamed again, and this time I saw his eyes look up to mine as I broke hard and let my feet smack into the wall. The heat had already done its damage though, and the brick collapsed inward and then fell apart, the grappling hook coming free and dropping beneath my feet. I grabbed for wall, but clutched only empty air. I started to fall, the small loop of rope slipping through my fingers, but I clutched at the main rope as it dropped my weight straight down, following the hook.
My body jarred as my grip stopped my downward momentum, but then I was starting the swing back towards the other building and Max was still standing there watching me.
“AHHHHH!” I screamed. I held up my forearm toward him, just as any decoy would in bite work, and yelled with all the authority I could command, “MAX…PACKEN!”
Max saw the Alpha land at the wall and watched as it disintegrated and he fell backwards. Max’s first reaction was to leap for the Alpha, to save him, but the genetic Pack Drive within him held him back. With the Alpha gone, he would assume control of the Pack.
The Alpha’s arm came up and he screamed the attack command. A very tiny part of Max, way down deep, tried to tell him no, that it was the Alpha, the one who saved him from the dog fighters, the bear killer, but the panic and the flames and the burning drive of genetics took control of him. The Alpha wanted him to attack? Max would obey.
The roof collapsed, fires jetting upward, but Max was already on his way. I saw fury and rage and death in his eyes and his powerful jaws sprung open like the maw of some prehistoric monster. He soared up and over and straight toward my outstretched arm. “PAKEN!” I yelled again and raised it just a little to try and give him every chance to find the mark. My speed was mounting, increasing the angle between us and it was anyone’s guess which would win. His limbs stretched, perfectly balanced and streamlined with his head, body and tail. He flew like an arrow and never had I seen a more perfect aim, but still I could see he wasn’t going to make it.
Max ran, his powerful muscles compressing and stretching, gaining speed on the short narrow runway that still remained. He gathered all his energy in one perfectly placed compact ball of power and launched off the roof and straight toward his prey… The Alpha.
The night and the smoke and the noise blew past him like a dream from another reality. All that mattered was engaging the Alpha. Now, finally, he would show The Alpha who was superior. He would show him who should be the Pack Leader.
Max’s front and back legs worked in perfect unison as he stretched to his furthest, his body exquisitely aligned, even his ears and tail streamlined, his eyes locked like lasers on his target. Across the heavens and the horrible drop below he flew, in a timed arc that would have taken a super computer longer than it took his brain to calculate the exact formula to execute. The wind caressed him as he made the impossible journey. And he was close, but the distance was great and his lead up too short. He was going to miss and fall to his death.
The arc was too much. I gritted my teeth and let loose my grip. The rope slipped through my hands, singeing my flesh as it burned through my fingers. My heels hit the grappling hook and I regripped; the pain nearly unbearable as friction ate at my flesh.
Max saw that he could not make the target and there was nothing he could do to change it. But then the Alpha dropped several feet on the rope and Max stretched his neck and turned to the side, allowing a fraction of an inch more, and at the last instant, bit down with all his strength, feeling the familiar texture of flesh and tasting blood and then the incredible impact as his body whipped into the Alpha’s. He heard the Alpha grunt and felt the acceleration as the combined weight and momentum sent the two of them spinning along the rope’s trajectory.
Max hit like a Cruise Missile, clamping down on my upraised arm, his scimitar-like canines slicing through the muscles and skin as though they weren’t there. The awesome, crushing force of his bite, as he closed, stole my breath. It felt like the bones had been crushed. Maybe they had. And then came the impact of his body’s weight, momentum and angle of attack. I turned my shoulder, trying to absorb as much as I could, and still he swung into my ribs and hip, spinning us viciously… and it wasn’t over. I saw the wall coming at us with terrible speed.
Max felt his teeth begin to tear through the Alpha’s muscles and realized, on the instinctual level that dogs realize things, that if they ripped through he would fall. So he ground down until he felt bone and held. But then the battle frenzy started to abate and he began to understand that the Alpha was not calling him to challenge him, but rather he had ordered the attack to save him. So instead of going into the usual thrashing mode that had proved successful on so many occasions, he simply held and waited for the Alpha to finish whatever it was that he was going to do. Once again, Max saw that the Alpha knew exactly what he was doing, and so he acquiesced and assumed the Beta position in the pack. But just barely.
And then Max saw the wall coming at them.
We struck hard, my back and shoulder smashing into the unforgiving brick. I forced all my breath out just before impact, but even then it was a complete shock to my system and I felt myself blacking out. Max bit down harder and the sheer pain brought me around just in time. I gripped the rope with all my strength and looked into Max’s eyes. The panicked death look I’d seen before was gone, replaced with the same fierce determination and indomitable will that I had come to recognize in him.
They hit the wall and a lesser dog would have fallen to his death. But Max was made of sterner stuff than that and maintained his grip, looking into the Alpha’s face. The Alpha grinned.
I grinned and started climbing. Max’s ninety pounds hanging, suspended by his hold on my forearm alone. The power of his bite, all the way down to the bone, kept the muscles and tendons from shredding, but did nothing to ease the pain.
Wrapping my legs around the rope as high as possible and gripping with my heels, I stood up and gained several feet. I repeated this three times, sweat and blood coursing down my face. I’d hit the wall between the ninth and tenth floors and still had maybe four feet to reach window height on the tenth. The windows were also spaced about seven feet to the right and a good twelve feet to the left. I’d have to get a little swinging momentum to make it and my arms were already shaking badly. That, and Max couldn’t hold on forever, jaw and neck muscles can only go so far.
At least he wasn’t thrashing.
Time to suck it up, Marine. I gripped the rope with my free hand, dragged my heels up under my butt, taking hold with my heels and stood up.
42
Max could feel his hold starting to give and crunched down, feeling the Alpha wince, but other than that, he gave no sign. Max no longer had any desire to advance in the Pack. He wanted nothing more than to stop causing pain to the Alpha, but that wasn’t possible now. He had to continue to hold the bite until the Alpha gave him the release command.
Max had killed lesser animals with bites half as deep and couldn’t begin to understand how the Alpha was maintaining consciousness, let alone still fighting, but he was, and in the way that dogs understand, he knew he was trying to save both of their lives. So Max did what he could, by remaining as still as possible as the Alpha pulled them both up the rope.
Inching up the rope with th
e climbers and one arm, I made it to where I thought I could hit the window. There was no way on earth I could make it to the roof, so it was the window or nothing.
Once in place, I pushed my feet against the wall and walked my way up till I was almost perpendicular. Max’s weight tore at my forearm and I gripped my shirt and harness with that fist to keep him up. If I’d let my arm hang down, his teeth would have shredded down and off, no matter how hard he bit.
I took five steps to the left and shoved out and toward the right, fighting to keep from spinning. I hit the wall about ten inches shy of my target, jolting Max’s body and feeling my arm tear in several places. That one got a grunt from me. I swung back and forth until I was back in my original position.
I wanted to rest, but couldn’t afford to. Every second suspended there stole my quickly depleting energy, and the pain from Max was becoming too much to bear. I got my feet up under me again and walked out as far as the rope would allow, then pushed out and away. For an instant I thought I was going to miss again, but one foot smashed through the window and I hooked it hard, holding us in place. The other foot shoved against the wall a final time and I swung in a tight circle, my butt smashing out the rest of the glass. I let loose the rope and I fell in a heap on an old couch and end table that somehow managed to hold my weight without collapsing. Max, of course, landed on all fours and stood there like he’d just gotten back from a casual stroll.
Gil Mason/Gunwood USA Box Set Page 43
