When The Right One Comes Along

She started to sob and threw herself in Cal’s arms. “I’m afraid. I don’t want to go without Mommy. Or you.”

Cal held tight, clasping one hand over the back of the child’s head, smoothing down the tangled, matted mass of dark hair. He assessed the circumstances quickly and decided the extra couple of minutes it would take him to lift the girl out would likely make no difference to her mother. Air was getting in. If the woman was unconscious, she wouldn’t run out of oxygen. And if it was worse...well, he didn’t want to think about it.

A loud grinding noise reverberated around them—metal abrading against metal—as if the building was settling. Cal and the firefighter froze, waiting for the noise and the vibrations to cease.

“I’ll take you out, but after that you’ll stay with this man, so I can come back for your mother.”

She sniffled a bit, then nodded, her head resting against his shoulder. “Okay.”

Cal rose, with Kayla in his arms. They made their way over to the hoist and the firefighter radioed to let them know up top what was happening. They decided the firefighter should go first. He would take Kayla to the triage area once Cal got her out. Cal ordered Scout to wait. The firefighter was lifted out, then the harness was lowered again. Cal strapped himself in. Holding Kayla firmly against his chest, he wrapped the final harness strap around both of them. He signaled for the crew to start the extraction.

As they began to move, the little girl held on tight, her arms wound around his neck, her face still buried in the crook of his neck. They ascended slowly and cleared the building. He blinked rapidly to adjust his eyes to the late-evening sunshine, blinding after the darkness inside.

He wondered fleetingly how the sun could shine so intensely with all the destruction below, but he didn’t have long to dwell on it. They were swung away from the opening and Cal unfastened them, handing Kayla to the firefighter.

Just as Cal was strapping himself back in, he felt a strong breeze and spread his legs to brace himself. Even so, when the building beneath him shook, he was nearly knocked off his feet.

“An aftershock,” he heard someone yell, and the building shifted, then tilted perilously.

This time Cal did lose his balance. Landing on his backside, he was catapulted down the inclined rooftop headfirst. The harness he hadn’t fully secured snapped free. He tried to twist around as the edge of the rooftop rushed toward him. He managed to turn enough so that he wasn’t leading with his head when he hit the parapet wall. He lay still for a few moments to catch his breath. His left shoulder screamed but he didn’t think it was broken. He hoped it wasn’t dislocated, either. Nothing else seemed to hurt enough to worry about.

People on the rooftop and at street level were shouting and rushing about. Cal unfolded himself and, bracing against the parapet wall, he rose to stand on the steeply sloping rooftop. He took one quick glance over the edge and knew that if the parapet wall hadn’t been there or hadn’t held, it would have been game over for him.

He pushed that thought aside and turned to search the area for the firefighter and Kayla. They were huddled together against the railing by the rooftop stairwell and looked unharmed. His next thought was of Kayla’s mother and Scout. He had to get back into the building. Massaging his shoulder, he walked at an angle along the steeply sloping roof toward the elevator shaft opening and the hoisting mechanism.

“Let’s get this done,” he said to the firefighter operating the hoist as he strapped himself back into the harness.

“You aren’t going down there.”

“Darn right I am.” He gestured toward Kayla. “Her mother is down there, and so is my dog.”

“I don’t have permission to let anyone back in.”

“Then get it,” Cal snarled, forestalling any further argument.

The firefighter had a hurried conversation on his radio with the incident commander, and shook his head. “No go. The building might be unstable now and they’re worried about another aftershock.”

Cal cursed under his breath and yanked his own radio off his belt and contacted Incident Command. “Yeah, I have to go back in,” he said. “Why? Because there’s a person still in there. The mother of a child I just brought out. Yes, I realize she’s probably deceased. And Scout—my partner—is down there.”

“Your partner is in there?” the incident commander boomed into the radio. “Have you contacted him? Is he okay?”

Clearly Williams had forgotten that Cal was with the K-9 Unit and his partner was a dog. Cal ran a hand over his hair. He didn’t bother to set him straight. “I have to go in.”

“No.”

“I have to—”

“I said no.”

“But—”

The voice on the other end became more human, less like the commanding officer at a serious incident. “Look. I understand your position, but we have no idea if anyone still down there is alive. It was a significant aftershock, and the building shifted considerably.”

“Yeah. But I have to make sure.”

There was a long pause. “No. It’s too dangerous. We haven’t ascertained the structural integrity of the building, and the probability of another aftershock is high. I’m sorry, but I can’t risk it. I can’t clear you to go in.”

Cal heard the click of the radio disconnecting and was tempted to hurl the device over the edge. Instead, he glanced around. He saw the firefighter who’d been in the building with him preparing to take Kayla down to street level on the articulated boom lift of a fire truck. She was holding on to him, her chin resting on his shoulder. When his eyes met hers, she raised a hand and waved to him, and he was sure her mouth formed the word mommy. That decided it for him. He had to go in. He’d promised her he’d go back to find her mother. The odds might be against it, but he couldn’t ignore the possibility that Kayla’s mother was still alive.

And he wouldn’t leave Scout.

There weren’t many people left on the rooftop, and those who remained were in the process of making their way back to street level.

Soon it would be him and a firefighter who’d been helping with the hoisting mechanism. Cal didn’t know where the firefighter he’d argued with had gone, but this guy was young—no more than twenty-four or -five—and in the process of dismantling the contraption.

“Hey!” Cal called as he did his best to jog up the slanted roof toward him. “Hold on a minute. I need to go back in.”

The kid looked around, seemingly confused. “I was told no one else is going in. I’m supposed to wrap up here and get off the rooftop.”

“Well, I have to go back in.” When the kid just stared at him, Cal sighed. “Hey, my partner’s in there...”

“Your partner?” The kid sounded horrified. “But we lifted everyone out before the aftershock hit. We tracked everyone going in and out.”

Cal’s mind was made up. He doubted he could do anything for Kayla’s mother; he had to face reality. But Scout was still down there, his condition unknown. He was going in, with or without Command authorization, whether this kid was going to help him or not. He raised himself to his full six feet two inches and tried to look intimidating. “I don’t have time to argue. You saw that little girl?” The kid nodded. “Her mother’s down there. I don’t know what kind of shape she’s in, but I can’t leave her without determining her condition. What if she’s still alive? You want to tell that little girl that we abandoned her mother to die? And my partner is the search-and-rescue canine hoisted down after me. I’m not leaving him, either.”

“Okay,” the kid said hesitantly, and reached for his radio. “I’ll just get it cleared.”

Cal shot out a hand and placed it over the kid’s, held his gaze. “You’re not going to get clearance. I’ve tried and Command refused it.”

“But...”

Cal felt the guilt trickle through him. It was one thing for him to disregard a direct order from Command, especially with the blot on his past. It was something entirely different for him to coerce someone else to do so—and that someone still young and inexperienced. “Look—” he checked the kid’s nametag “—Adam, I’m disobeying an order by going back in, but I have to do it. Like I said, there’s no way I’m leaving my dog. And I want to verify the condition of the girl’s mother. I owe it to Kayla to make sure. What if she is alive and I can save her?”

Cal examined the ropes and pulleys of the hoisting mechanism. His voice was solemn. “I don’t want to implicate you in what is essentially insubordination. Go. But if you could leave this stuff behind, I’d appreciate it.”

Cal could see that Adam was trying to work things out in his own mind. When Adam spoke, his voice was a little shaky but he seemed resolved. “You can’t do this on your own. I’ll help you.”

“You understand what it means if you do?”

Adam nodded.

Cal had a silent debate with himself. He was involving the rookie in something that could cost the kid his job, his career. But he acknowledged that he needed Adam’s help. If sparks flew, he’d just take all the heat, accept all the blame. He’d say he’d pressured the kid. It would be even worse for him, but Adam would get written up for a mild misdemeanor without the risk of losing his job.

“Then let’s do it,” Cal said.

The elevator shaft no longer provided a straight vertical descent. Their progress was slower and Cal had to guide himself down, using his feet to push away from the obstructions and around protruding structural elements. They couldn’t use their radios or they’d be discovered; they communicated by a prearranged sequence of tugs on the guywire.

When Cal reached the third floor, he could no longer follow the elevator shaft. The force of the aftershock had created a hundred and thirty-five-degree elbow in the passage. He was lowered through the elevator door opening, directly into the tilted two-story atrium of the main lobby. When he emerged from the elevator shaft, he was suspended a good twenty feet above floor level. Two thoughts flashed through his mind. First, that the space had shifted considerably with the aftershock, just as he’d been warned. And second, that Scout was nowhere in sight. As his feet touched the floor and he unbuckled himself, he swept his gaze around the room and called Scout. Relief flooded through him when he heard the short, sharp barks signaling the dog’s location. Following the sound, he could tell that Scout was in the same cavity from which they’d rescued Kayla. He must have tracked the scent back to Kayla’s mother, but the opening they’d cleared was blocked again.