All Clear

“You can’t get through that way!” the man shouted. “Help me break this door down!”

Mike shook his head. “I’m not a fireman!” he shouted back.

“Neither am I!” the man bellowed, hacking at the door. “I’m a reporter. I’m supposed to be covering this fire, not fighting it, but there’s no one else here!”

I don’t have time for this, Mike thought.

“I’ll go get the fire brigade!” he said, to get away from the reporter.

“No use! That’s the fire station,” the reporter shouted, pointing with the axe at a flaming building down the street and chopping ineffectually at the door again. “I just saw an incendiary land on the roof!”

And if it burned through to the floor below, the building and this whole end of the street would go up, and he’d never get through. Mike grabbed the axe from the reporter and began hacking at the door, splintering the heavy wood while the reporter ran to get one of the sandbags piled up against the corner lamppost.

“Why in God’s name they’ve locked every one of these buildings when they knew there were bound to be raids, I don’t know,” the reporter said, coming back with the sandbag. “And what good did they think putting a bucket of water and a stirrup pump outside the door would do?”

Mike had the door open. The reporter dumped the sandbag across his arms, grabbed the stirrup pump and bucket, and raced up a rickety staircase. Mike ran up after him, but by the time he got there with the sandbag, the reporter already had the incendiary out.

Mike smothered it with sand, just in case, and the reporter said, “That’s one less fire I’ll have to cover tonight,” but by the time they got downstairs again, flames from the warehouse next door were licking at the side of the building, and yet another wave of planes was buzzing overhead.

“Do you hear that?” the reporter said unnecessarily, and then Mike realized he was talking about a jangle of bells. A fire brigade.

A fire engine pulled into the street, and men swarmed off it and began hooking up a hose to the hydrant. Water belched from the hose and then slowed to a trickle.

A fire engine pulled into the street, and men swarmed off it and began hooking up a hose to the hydrant. Water belched from the hose and then slowed to a trickle.

“There’s no water in the main!” one of the firemen shouted.

“We’ll have to hook them up to the pumps!” the one in charge said, and the men connected the hoses to portable pumps and began playing water on the flames.

Good, Mike thought. The professionals can take over. The reporter seemed to be thinking the same thing. He picked up his camera from where he’d left it on the doorstep and began snapping pictures of the firemen training a hose on the fire station.

Mike edged away from him, gauging whether he could get down Paternoster Row to the cathedral or was going to have to go around. The blaze didn’t seem to be any bigger, but the wind was starting to pick up, fanning the flames.

“Here,” a fireman said, shoving a hose into Mike’s hands. “Take this branchpipe down to Officers Mullen and Dix.”

“I’m not one of your firemen,” Mike said, determined not to get caught again. He thrust the hose back at him and said what he should have said to the reporter. “I have to get to the cathedral. I’m a member of the St. Paul’s fire watch.”

The fireman slapped the heavy nozzle and hose back into Mike’s hands. “Then this is where you belong.”

“But—”

“If we don’t stop it here, nothing you can do at the cathedral will save her. Run it along there, where Mullen and Dix are,” he ordered, pointing at two firemen, barely visible through the smoke, playing water on a warehouse fifty yards or so up the street.

And fifty yards closer to St. Paul’s, Mike thought.

“Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” he muttered, and slung the hose over his shoulder and limped off with it down the wet street, stepping over two other hoses and going around a pile of burning debris. He’d hand the branchpipe to Mullen and Dix and take off, and hopefully the smoke would keep the first fireman from seeing what he’d done. Or at least give him a head start.

If he could get past the fire they were trying to put out. It was a bookstore—he could see the wrought-iron signboard above the door: T. R. Hubbard, Fine Books—

and the inside of the store was an inferno, flames leaping from every single window all the way up to the roof and lunging out into the middle of the narrow street.

Mullen and Dix, playing a pathetic stream of water—which turned instantly to steam—on it, were backed almost up against the warehouse across the street, even though it was on fire, too—as if they were afraid the flames in front of them would make a sudden lunge—and their helmeted heads were ducked against the blaze.

And the heat. The air was hideously hot and full of burning cinders. One landed on Mike’s ear, sizzling, and he swiped wildly at it as if it was a wasp.