“Never heard of it or you.” Dane said. He had turned his attention back to the ruins. A crane was lifting a large piece of steel reinforced concrete up into the air. There was a bustle of excitement.
“I would like to talk to you about acquiring your assistance.”
“My assistance in what?” Dane asked. A pair of firefighters in long yellow coats and helmets were coming toward them.
“A rescue.”
“As you can see, I'm already occupied,” Dane said.
“This is a different sort of-” Freed paused as two firefighters arrived and Dane stood.
“Dane, we're in to the southeast side,” the first of the firefighters said.
Dane nodded. He walked away from Freed without further acknowledging the other man's presence and headed in to the ruin. Freed began to follow but the firemen stopped him. “It's not safe in there. Authorized personnel only. Whole thing could shift and then we'd have to dig you out too,” one of them said.
Dane climbed over what had been the outer wall of the factory, carefully picking his way through shattered brick. At least there wasn't much glass in the building. He always had to be concerned for Chelsea's paws getting cut. Chelsea nimbly followed him, surprisingly agile for her weight.
Dane passed areas they'd already searched as he went farther into the building. Over his head was open to the sky, the path that the heavy equipment operators had forged, torn between the rush to get into the building and the fear of shifting some of the rubble and possibly killing someone who was trapped inside some void area.
The woman's confrontation outside showed the paradoxes of Dane's and Chelsea's work, yet everyone here worked under dual pressures that conflicted. Dane paused and put his hands to his head. He felt a driving pain over his left eye and the eyelid flickered uncontrollably. It was always like this. He'd taken some painkillers on the second job, but he'd found they interfered too much. Since then he'd accepted the pain as the price to be paid.
A group of firemen were gathered around a dark opening. They turned as Dane and Chelsea came up. The leader had a steel cable in his hand and he pointed into the hole. “I've been down. You get to the first floor, then move horizontal. Goes about thirty feet. There's void areas all along what used to be a corridor. One interior wall is holding good and appears solid. I couldn't see too well.”
From long experience, Dane knew that void areas were what rescuers prayed for. Open spaces in the rubble where a person might have survived. Dane had seen many destroyed structures over the years, but all of them had had some spaces in them.
“What's on the plans?” Dane asked as he knelt and looked in, shining a flashlight that one of the firemen handed him.
“Down there is the first floor, admin section.” A fireman laid a set of blueprints on a piece of shattered concrete. “It's the last place we have to get to, but it's also where there were the most employees who were at work at the time. Best we could find out was that there were seven, maybe eight people in there.”
Dane closed his eyes as the pain in his head picked up the beat. Seven, maybe eight. Throughout the rest of the factory they'd found eight bodies, spaced among the machinery. This would be different. Seven or eight all together. He's seen that, and worse.
“Did you run a mike down?”
The fireman nodded. “No noise. We yelled and got nothing back. Ran fiber optic as far as it will go and nothing either.”
Dane glanced at Chelsea who had settled down on the dusty remains of a heating duct, her head between her paws. She looked reluctant to go in. Dane wasn't exactly keen on it either, but there was always the chance someone was unconscious down there.
“Let's do it,” Dane said, standing. He switched on the light he wore on his hard-hat and pulled the chinstrap down.
The fireman hooked the steel cable to the harness that Dane wore then to Chelsea's harness. Dane hooked a leash from his harness onto the Chelsea as an extra safety. Then he looked down once more into the hole. He closed his eyes for a second and concentrated, then he slid his legs in. Chelsea was on her feet, her muzzle next to his face as he lowered himself down. “Good girl,” Dane said.
He felt with his toes, getting support, then he reached up. The firefighters handed her to him and he grunted from the weight. “Big fat dog,” he whispered affectionately. “I'm going to have to put you on a diet.”
Chelsea growled and nuzzled her head into his armpit. Awkwardly and with great difficulty, Dane made his way down until he reached the ground level, then he put Chelsea down. He shone his flashlight around. To his right was a cinder block, load bearing wall, the reason this void space existed. The opening extended about thirty feet straight ahead, at one point narrowing to a two-foot opening.
Dane turned the flashlight and the light on his helmet off. He slowed his breathing and ignored the pain over his left eye. He stayed perfectly still for a minute, then he turned the lights back on and looked at Chelsea. “Search,” he whispered in her ear.
Chelsea moved forward, her head down, sweeping back and forth, her tail straight up and erect. Dane watched her, his face resigned. She stopped after six feet and turned her head to the left. She raised a paw. Dane pulled a small red flag out of his backpack and marked the spot. Another body lay somewhere underneath.
They continued down the corridor, leaving three more red flags. As he was placing the last one, Dane suddenly lifted his head. He looked to his right. The cinder block wall was solid on that side. He pressed up against the wall as Chelsea watched him curiously, until as much of his body as possible was touching it. He stayed like that for thirty seconds, then he suddenly pushed away.
“Stay!” he ordered Chelsea. She obediently sat down as Dane made his way back until he was at the bottom of the shaft.
“I need a jack-hammer!” he called up.
“Right away.” Ten seconds later the equipment was lowered on a rope. Dane dragged it behind him back up the corridor, making sure the air pressure hose didn't get snagged on rubble. He returned to where Chelsea waited.
He placed the tip of the hammer against the cinder block and went to work.
Chips of cinder flew, but his steel rimmed glasses protected him. He carefully took out eight blocks, one at a time, making sure that those surrounding the hole remained intact, a technique he had learned from a rescue expert in Houston during a job there.
As he removed the last block, Chelsea suddenly lunged forward and pressed against, him, her nose in the hole, barking furiously, her tail wagging, thumping Dane on the leg. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Dane said, patting her head. “Good dog.”
He pushed the jackhammer aside and slithered into the hole. The beam of light from his helmet caught the suspended dust and raked over the edge of a desk that had taken the impact of the concrete floor from above. Dane could see a tiny space where the metal front of the desk didn't touch the tiled floor. He slid his hand through, fingers probing into the space under the desk.
His entire focus was on the ends of his fingers, feeling tile, dust, the outline of the desk well, the splintered leg of a chair. Then he felt something warm and yielding: skin. Living skin, he knew as soon as he touched it.
Dane turned on the small FM radio for the first time. “I've got a live one,” he whispered into the mike.
“We're coming down!” was the immediate reply from the firemen waiting above.
Dane kept his fingers pressed against the flesh. He knew whoever it was, was unconscious, but he also knew the importance of human contact, even to an unconscious mind.
Soon the small space on the other side of the cinder block wall was filled with men and equipment. Dane remained where he was as they carefully widened the hole in the wall and then came through. The firefighters shored up the collapsed ceiling so they could rip the desk out of their way and not have everything tumble in on them.