Sean Chercover - The Trinity Game

Years of monthly fire drills also kicked in, and muscle memory took over. The men abandoned their belongings and moved quickly to the door. A few put their hands on the door, testing for heat. The foreman and the IT guy grabbed the fire extinguishers mounted on either side of the door. Someone opened the door, and the foreman led the other men into the hallway.

The light strips ran left, down the hallway, to the nearest fire exit. The foreman clasped the IT guy on the shoulder and pointed left.

“You’re in charge,” he barked into the guy’s ear. The rumbling had grown to a roar—he had to yell to be heard. “Take them out.”

The group followed the IT guy outside to safety. The foreman turned right, walked through strobing red light toward the double doors at the end of the hallway.

The doors burst open and three men came out in a stumbling run, clothes charred and smoking, skin melting off faces and hands. Through the open doors, everything was raging flame. Smoke billowed into the hallway.

Two of the melting men continued lurching, past the foreman and toward the fire exit. The other man pitched forward onto the floor. The foreman dropped the useless fire extinguisher, ran to the prone man, and hoisted him up in a fireman’s lift.

He ran for the exit. Another concussive blast from behind. The double doors flew open and a wave of heat rolled over him.

The hallway filled with fire.

Andrew Thibodeaux heard the blast. In the distance, a fireball rose through a ragged hole in the metal roof of the refinery’s main building. The top third of the adjoining wall collapsed and more flames leapt free. Thick black smoke filled the air above and climbed into the sky.

For a full minute, he sat watching the fire grow, without a conscious thought in his head. Then his stomach tightened, and he sobbed once, twice, and again. The sobbing stopped as quickly as it had hit him. He wiped his eyes, turned the ignition over, and drove.

Thank you, Lord…thank you, Lord…thank you, Lord…

Julia Rothman heard the call on her police scanner and mashed the accelerator to the floor, making record time to Belle Chasse.

It was a hellstorm. Massive black clouds billowed skyward from a wall of orange flame, and the whole scene shimmered with heat, like a mirage on the highway.

She flashed her press credentials through the windshield, and the deputy waved her past the police line. Michael Alatorre, sheriff of Plaquemines Parish, stood with one foot on the bumper of his cruiser, barking orders at another deputy. Six fire engines and an ambulance idled nearby, lights flashing impotently in the midday sun. A couple dozen firemen stood around smoking, gazing, awestruck by the blaze.

Julia jumped from her car, hooked a few strands of black hair with her little finger, and put them behind her ear.

The sheriff recognized her and tipped his hat, his expression grim. “Young lady.”

“Jesus, Sheriff Alatorre, what the hell happened here?”

“Don’t know yet, some kinda accident.”

“How many dead?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. We can’t get near it. Fire chief says we just gonna have to let it burn for a while.” He flipped open his notebook. “Supervisor says he thinks there were one hundred forty-five men on shift in the main building when the thing blew, but that’s unconfirmed. Far as we know, forty-three came out alive, eighteen taken to hospital in varying degrees of distress. Some were pretty bad off, probably not all of them will make it.” He gestured at the ambulance. “They just stickin’ around in case somebody else staggers out, but…”

They both looked back to the inferno. Nobody else would be staggering out.

Julia raced back to the office, logged onto the Internet, and directed her browser to the Tim Trinity Word of God Ministries.

Thinking: If that sonofabitch actually predicted this…

Thinking: What has Danny gotten himself involved in?

Thinking: Why didn’t I—Oh my God, what have I done?

Daniel stayed in his hotel room all morning, anxiously flipping between the cable news networks, praying that Julia had been able to convince the refinery executives of the danger. This last hour was the toughest. He’d been too nervous to eat breakfast and now felt a little queasy. He checked his watch every few minutes, confirming the time displayed on the television screen. Noon could not come soon enough. He paced the floor, sat and checked the Internet news sites, stood and paced some more. He read Psalm 23 about a dozen times.

As the final seconds ticked by, he counted them down, like a New Year’s Eve reveler watching the ball drop on Times Square, waiting to kiss everybody and sing “Auld Lang Syne.”

Noon arrived. No disaster.

He flipped through the channels, and nothing had changed. Just the usual parade of Democrats and Republicans, shilling their talking points about a broken economy and how not to fix it. He decided to give it a little longer, to be sure.

He left the television on, shaved with the bathroom door open. And as the minutes ticked by uneventfully, his heart soared. He’d done the right thing, he was sure of it. If God had wanted the refinery to blow, it would’ve blown, so He must’ve wanted Daniel to take action. It seemed so clear now.

Daniel had spotted a nice-looking pub the previous day, just around the corner from the hotel. He decided to take himself out for a burger and a beer to celebrate.

At twelve thirty, the news was still the same. He shut off the television and headed out.

He entered the pub at 12:46. The television above the bar was running CNN, and he glanced up at the screen.

Everything was fine.

“Afternoon,” said the bartender, “can I pull you a pint?”

“Thanks, I’ll take a Guinness.”

“Menu?”

Daniel shook his head. “Cheeseburger, rare. And fries, well done.”

“You got it.”

The bartender moved to the computerized cash register and entered the order, then to the taps. Daniel watched black stout flow into the pint glass, creamy head forming on top. It was a slow pull, as Guinness should be. Most pubs in America didn’t use nitrogen tanks, but this one obviously did, and for that he was grateful. The extra wait would be worth it.

A voice behind him said, “Hey, Larry, turn up the volume.” The bartender abandoned Daniel’s half-pulled pint, grabbed a remote and aimed it at the television.

Daniel looked up. On the screen was an aerial shot of a massive inferno.

The newscaster was saying, “…details still coming in, but here’s what we know so far: at 11:19, Central Standard Time, a large explosion rocked the Belle Chasse oil refinery in southern Louisiana, followed by three or four secondary explosions…”

Damn! Central Standard Time—of course.

“…The fire is still raging, and officials say it will be some time before they can move in and bring it under control.”

Daniel closed his eyes to stop the room from spinning, forced himself to breathe.

Goddamnit, this was not supposed to happen. This could not happen…

The newscaster was saying, “…according to a company spokesman, the fire began adjacent to the number six silo, which was undergoing repair work, and quickly spread through a feeder line to the main unit, where the first explosion occurred. We do not have casualty numbers in yet—we do know that eighteen workers were taken to area hospitals, but most of the workers inside the main facility did not make it out. Many lives have been lost.”