Andy pushed his hands against the glass. “Ain’t gonna be easy.” He shook his head. “Thing’s made not to break. But them folks down there 388 Melissa Good ain’t gonna know we’re here less we tell ’em.” He lifted his sledge hammer and paused, looking for a place to start. “Damn lousy time fer you to lose that cell phone of yours.”

“Mmph,” Dar muttered, annoyed at herself for that very fact. “Came off my belt.” Kerry had left hers charging in the room and she wasn’t really sure what kind of reception she could expect inside the chaotic wreckage anyway. She cleared a space for her father to work, then realized there were some living obstacles there in the half light. “You’d better move back,” Dar told the watching Stuarts coldly.

“Go to Hell,” Roger Stuart answered, then jerked as he was suddenly face to face with a sledge hammer head and a pair of icy cold eyes behind it.

“You will move your carcass out of mah way, sir,” Andrew rasped.

“Because I have about run out of my patience with you.” He poked the senator with the hammer handle. “Now take this little lady of yours and go back of there fore I throw you head over buttocks.”

“Do you know who the hell I am?” the senator growled.

“A right jackass. Now move.” Andrew poked him again.

“Listen here, you stupid hick.” Stuart stood up, then stopped speaking as he was lifted and pushed against the wall, the hammer handle cutting off his wind. “Jesus,” he rasped.

“That would be Commander Hick to you, useless excuse fer a gov’ment paycheck.” Andy released him, then gave him a shove, sending him sprawling into a pile of roof tiling. “Waste of mah good tax dollars, that’s for damn sure.”

“Just wait until we get out of here,” Kerry’s father threatened. “I’ll slap lawsuits on the lot of you.”

Andrew turned his attention back to the window. “Jackass.” Kerry’s mother hurried to her husband’s side and knelt by him, brushing the pieces of plaster off his stained and burned jacket. “Those who can, do, those who can’t become lawyers. Those who ain’t got no use at all, run fer gov’ment.”

Dar almost laughed at the look on the senator’s face, but she was too tired. Instead, she forced her attention on the glass. “Dad,” she ran a hand over the surface, “try here, near the frame.”

“Not in the middle?” Andrew drawled, cocking his head at her in question.

“No. I think its designed to flex there. It’ll be more rigid, and have a higher tendency to shatter here, at the edge.”

Andy gave her a look. “All right.” He lifted the hammer and faced the glass, concentrating on it carefully. “Make sure everybody’s staying back. This stuff’s gonna fly.”

Dar took a quick look around, ignoring the glares. “Everyone cover up. We’re going to break this window.” People scrambled to get out of the way and the frightened children were gathered into the corner.

“Okay. Go ahead.” She held her arm over her eyes and stepped back, stifling a cough as the air seemed to thicken again with smoke.


Eye of the Storm 389

It would be such a relief to breathe fresh air. Just the thought of it made her dizzy.

Andrew took aim, then swung the hammer back, and launched it forward, getting his entire body into the swing as it hit the edge of the window. With a spectacular crash, it shattered into millions of tiny bits, exploding in both directions.

Andy threw himself backwards to avoid the flying glass, then felt himself picked up and slammed against the frame as the air pressure sucked the heated air out of the building, bringing a hot, roaring explosion down the hall and heading right for them.

“GET DOWN!” KERRY yelled, pulling herself and Cecilia painfully to the floor as a superheated rush of fire and air exploded over her head and out the window, its crashing roar slamming against them like a physical force. Then the flames licked at the ceiling. She got to her feet and bolted forward regardless of the falling chunks of burning material.

Three people had been caught in it. She tried not to look at them and panic as she dove over a smoldering chair in the smoky darkness and was caught up abruptly by a pair of hands. “Let me…” Then she realized it was Dar.

“C’mon!” Dar yelled. “Everyone get over to the window!”

The heat was increasing quickly and now it was anything but silent as the chaos outside filtered in. The children screamed and the survivors scrambled over to the opening, clinging to the frame as smoke poured out of it.

“You almost got us killed!” Roger Stuart raged.

Dar ignored him as she peered back into the smoke, shading her eyes. Outside, the firemen had spotted them and were working to get the huge basket cranked up to their level, shouts of alarm and encourage-ment echoing up to them. Andrew pushed the last of the glass out of the way, one hand protectively curled around his wife, and Kerry helped a young woman over the fallen furniture.

The two wheelchairs. Dar grabbed Stuart by the arm. “Give me a hand with those kids.” She pointed, realizing only then she could have made a better choice of assistants.

Well. No time. Stuart stared at her, half his face lit in fire, half in shadows, and for a long moment Dar thought he was going to refuse. Then he wrenched his arm free and shoved her away from him.

“Go there,” he ordered Cynthia, pushing his way past a fallen book-case and towards the frightened children, who were unable to maneuver their chairs through the debris. It was very hot as they got to them, and Dar felt like she was breathing the fire itself as she touched the chair, then jerked her hands back at the heat. “Hang on.” She unbuckled the petrified little boy and picked him up in her arms, ducking as a burning part of the ceiling fell, and almost stumbled as the flaming chunks hit her shoulder.

She shook them off and plowed forward, the child shivering so vio-390 Melissa Good lently his teeth chattered in her ear. “Take it easy. We’re gonna be fine,”

she told him, as small hands clutched desperately at her. The fire bucket was just reaching their level when she staggered to the edge of the window and the two firemen inside yelled orders almost impossible to hear over the roar of the fire and the noise of the crowd outside.

One had a hose, and he yelled something, then he opened a valve, and a jet of water exploded past them, hitting the fire behind them and making it hiss in protest. Someone screamed next to Dar and she realized it was Kerry’s mother. She looked back, but nothing was visible through the smoke, then she searched the survivors huddled nearby and didn’t see the senator among them. “Shit.” She started to put the child down, intent on going back when her mother caught her arm. “Can you watch him for a minute?”

“Where are you going?” Ceci asked.

“See if I can…” Dar watched a ball of black smoke billow forward, stopping her speech.

Then a coughing, soot covered form stumbled out of the darkness, soaked from the hose’s spray but carrying the other crippled child.

Dar felt Kerry lean against her, and she glanced towards her partner, whose soot covered face was almost unrecognizable in its weary tension.

Her eyes, with an indescribable expression in them, were on her father, as the man came up to them, staggering under his load as a gust of wind from the circling helicopters washed in.

A spotlight hit them from above, and Dar shaded her eyes, blinking back spots as the firemen came closer to the building. They threw ropes over and Andrew caught one, tugged it back and tied it off around the steel window frame. “We got kids here!” he yelled. “We’ll hand ’em over to you.”

“Tie that to yourself!” the fireman hollered. “Don’t want you falling out the window while we’re doing this.”

Andrew nodded, hastily fastening the heavy rope around his waist and tying it with an efficient knot. “All right. C’mere, squirt.” He held out a hand to the nearest of the children and caught the boy around the waist and hoisted him out over the open space between the edge of the window and the bucket. The fireman grabbed him and lifted him in, then handed him to another fireman who had climbed up the long ladder zig zagging behind them.

The crowd clustered closer, nervously edging away from the fire at their backs, momentarily dampened by the fireman’s efforts. They started to push and Dar braced her legs to keep her balance. “Stay back. Let’s get the kids out first.”

“She’s right,” Roger Stuart yelled. “Pushing won’t help. Stay where you are.”

An explosion sent the floor shuddering under their feet and people screamed, trying to keep their balance. One man panicked and jumped for the basket, his feet slipping on the wet floor and making him miss his hold, leaving him hanging from one arm. Andrew leaned out, grabbed Eye of the Storm 391

the back of his pants, and yanked him up with a single, powerful heave into the basket head first.

The fireman pulled him in, then looked over. “Better hurry up. We can’t hold this.”

Two more people pushed to the front, clawing blindly at Andrew’s arm. “Get back.” The ex-SEAL pushed them gently. “C’mon now. Let the kids out. Dar, gimme that little boy.”

“I’ve got him.” Dar had tied the end of the second rope around her and now she leaned out and handed the child carefully to the fireman hanging on the front of the basket. “Careful. He can’t walk.”

“You be careful, ma’am,” the fireman warned, as he passed the child back.

Kerry got between the panicked survivors and Andrew. “Okay. Just take it easy. We’re all going to get out of here,” she yelled to be heard over the noise. “There aren’t that many of us…and look, the fire’s not getting any closer for now.” She pointed with her good hand. “Don’t start rushing the window. You’ll fall out and then you’ll really get hurt.”